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.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 41797
   :PG.Title: The Story Book Girls
   :PG.Released: 2013-01-06
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: Christina Gowans Whyte
   :DC.Title: The Story Book Girls
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1906
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

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THE STORY BOOK GIRLS
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      Cover

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      The STORY
      BOOK
      GIRLS

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      CHRISTINA
      GOWANS
      WHYTE

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      LONDON
      HENRY FROWDE
      HODDER & STOUGHTON
      1906 

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   THE GIRLS' NEW 1/- NET. LIBRARY.

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   (Crown 8vo. Cloth, with Coloured frontispiece.)

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   A Girl of the Northland  . . . BY BESSIE MARCHANT
   The Story Book Girls . . . . . BY CHRISTINA G. WHYTE
   Dauntless Patty  . . . . . . . BY E. L. HAVERFIELD
   Tom Who Was Rachel . . . . . . BY J. M. WHITFELD
   A Sage of Sixteen  . . . . . . BY L. B. WALFORD
   The Beauforts  . . . . . . . . BY L. T. MEADE

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   HENRY FROWDE AND HODDER & STOUGHTON.

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   CONTENTS

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   CHAPTER I

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   `ELMA LEIGHTON`_


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   CHAPTER II

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   `MISS ANNIE`_


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   CHAPTER III

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   `THE FLOWER SHOW TICKET`_


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   CHAPTER IV

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   `CUTHBERT`_


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   CHAPTER V

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   `"THE STORY BOOKS" CALL`_


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   CHAPTER VI

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   `THE MAYONNAISE`_


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   CHAPTER VII

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   `VISITORS AGAIN`_


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   CHAPTER VIII

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   `THE PARTY`_


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   CHAPTER IX

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   `AT MISS GRACE'S`_


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   CHAPTER X

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   `COMPENSATIONS`_


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   CHAPTER XI

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   `THE SPLIT INFINITIVE`_


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   CHAPTER XII

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   `THE BURGLAR`_


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   CHAPTER XIII

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   `A RECONCILIATION`_


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   CHAPTER XIV

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   `THE FIRST PEAL`_


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   CHAPTER XV

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   `THE ARRIVAL`_


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   CHAPTER XVI

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   `THE THIN EDGE OF THE WEDGE`_


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   CHAPTER XVII

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   `A REPRIEVE`_


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   CHAPTER XVIII

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   `"LOVE OF OUR LIVES"`_


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   CHAPTER XIX

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   `HERR SLAVSKA`_


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   CHAPTER XX

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   `THE SHILLING SEATS`_


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   CHAPTER XXI

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   `AT LADY EMILY'S`_


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   CHAPTER XXII

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   `THE ENGAGEMENT`_


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   CHAPTER XXIII

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   `HOLDING THE FORT`_


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   CHAPTER XXIV

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   `THE HAM SANDWICH`_


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   CHAPTER XXV

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   `THE WILD ANEMONE`_


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   CHAPTER XXVI

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   `UNDER ROYAL PATRONAGE`_


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   CHAPTER XXVII

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   `THE HOME-COMING`_


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   CHAPTER XXVIII

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   `ADELAIDE MAUD`_


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   CHAPTER XXIX

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   `MR. SYMINGTON`_


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   CHAPTER XXX

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   `"NOW HERE THERE DAWNETH----"`_





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.. _`Elma Leighton`:

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   CHAPTER I


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   Elma Leighton

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In a pink and white bedroom where two beds, Elma's
and Betty's, seemed the only pink and white things
unspotted by multitudinous photographs, Elma
Leighton sought sanctuary.  Pursued by a tumultuous
accusing conscience, which at the same time gracefully
extended the uncertain friendliness of hope, for who
could say--it might still be "embarr*ass*ment," she
opened her little own bright red dictionary.

She prayed a trifling prayer that her self-esteem
might be saved, as she turned shakingly the fine India
paper of the 50,000 word compressed edition of the
most reliable friend she at that moment possessed in
the world.  Parents commanded.  Relations exaggerated.
Chums could be spiteful.  But friends told the
truth; and the dictionary--being invariably just--was
above all things a friend.

She wandered to "en," forgetting in the championship
of her learning that "m" held priority.  She
corrected herself with dignity, and at last found the word
she wanted.

It was emb*arr*assment.

Woe and desolation!  A crimson shameful blush
ran up the pink cheeks, her constant anxiety being
that they were always so pink, and made a royal
progress there.  The hot mortification of despair lent it
wings.  She watched the tide of red creep to the soft
curls of her hair as she viewed herself in her own little
miniature cheval between creamy curtains, and she
saw her complexion die down at last to an unusual
but becoming paleness.

She had said "embarr*ass*ment."

Nothing could have been more fatal.  It was like
a disease with Elma, that instead of using the
everyday words regarding which no one could make a
mistake--such as "shyness" in this instance--she should
invariably plunge into others which she merely knew
by sight and find them unknown to herself as talking
acquaintances.  Cousin Dr. Harry Vincent, Staff
Surgeon in His Majesty's Navy, eyeglass in eye, merry
smile at his lips ("such a dashing cousin the Leightons
have visiting them" was the comment), the sort of
person in short that impressed Elma with the need of
being very dashing herself, here was the particular of
all particulars before whom she had made this
ridiculous mistake.

"Now," had said Dr. Harry in the drawing-room
when visitors arrived, "come and play something."

Any other girl overcome by Elma's habitual fright
when asked to play, would have said, "I'm too shy."  Elma
groaned as she thought how easy that would
have been.

But Dr. Harry's single eyeglass fascinated her as
with a demand for showing some kind of culture.

She blinked her eyelids nervously and answered,
"My embarr*ass*ment prevents me."

Dr. Harry never moved a muscle of his usually
mobile and merry countenance.  But the flaming
sword of fear cut further conversation dead for Elma.
She became subtly conscious that the word was wrong,
and fled to her room.

"While I'm here," she said dismally, "I may as
well look up 'melodramic.'"  This was a carking
care left over from a conversation in the morning.

It proved another tragedy.

Being really of a cheerful sunny nature, which never
for long allowed clouds to overshadow the bright
horizon of her imagination, she acquainted herself
thoroughly with the right term.

"One consolation is, I shall never make that
mistake again as long as I live.  Melodramatic," she
repeated with the swagger of familiarity.

Then "emb, emb--Oh! dear, I've forgotten again."

Concluding that embarrassment was a treacherous
acquaintance, she decided to drop it altogether.

"After this I shall only be shy," she said with a
certain amount of refined pleasure in her own humour.

She regarded her figure dismally in the cheval.  Her
chubby face had regained its undistinguished pink.
She was sorry she could not remain pale, it was so
much more distinguished to be pale.

"How long I take to grow up--in every way."  She
sighed in a reflective manner.

What she was thinking was how long she took to
become like one of the Story Book Girls.

It is probable that she would never have run to
long words, had it not been her dearest desire to grow
up like one of the Story Book Girls.  It was the desire
of every sister in the Leighton family.  Each worked
on it differently however.  Mabel, the eldest, now
seventeen, in the present delights of hair going up
and skirts letting down, took her ideas of fashion
straight from "Adelaide Maud" the elegant one.
"Adelaide Maud" wore her hair in coils and sat under
heliotrope parasols.  Mabel surreptitiously tried that
effect as often as five times a day with the family
absent.

Jean threw all her ambitions on the sporting carriage
of "Madeline" who was a golfer.

Betty determined to wear bangles and play the
violin because "Theodora," the youngest of the lot,
did that.  And Elma based her admiration of
"Hermione" on the fact that she had "gone in" for
science.  Long ago they had christened their divinities.
It did not do to recognize latterly that the Dudgeons
were known in society by other names altogether.
One can do these dreamy, inconsequent things with
the most superb pleasure while one's family remains
between certain romantic ages; in the case of the
Leightons at the moment when Elma ran to her
bedroom--between the ages of ten and seventeen.  Betty
was ten, Elma twelve, Jean fifteen and Mabel
seventeen.

It was an axiom with the girls that their parents
need not know how they emulated the Story Book
Girls.  Yet the information leaked out occasionally.

It was also considered bad form to breathe a word
to the one elder brother of the establishment.  Yet
even there one got into trouble.

"Why on earth do you call her Adelaide Maud
when her name is Helen?" asked Cuthbert one day
bluntly.  "Met her at a dance--and she nearly slew
me.  I called her Miss Adelaide!"

"O--o--o--oh!"

It is impossible to explain the thrill that the four
underwent.  Cuthbert had met Adelaide Maud!

"Did she talk about us?" asked Elma breathlessly.

"Doesn't know you kids exist," said Cuthbert.

Here was a tumbling pack of cards.

However the idylls of the Story Book Girls soon
were built up again.

Four girls at the west end of a town dreamed dreams
about four girls at a still further west.  They lived
where the sun dropped down behind blue mountains
in the sunny brilliant summer time.  The Story Book
Girls were grown up, of "county" reputation, and
"sat in their own carriages."  The others invariably
walked.  This was enough to explain the fact that
they never met in the quiet society of the place.  But
one world was built out of the two, and in it, the
younger girls who did not ride in carriages, created
an existence for the Story Book Girls which would
have astonished them considerably had they known.
As it was, they sometimes noticed a string of large-eyed
girls with a good-looking brother, going to church
on Sunday, but it never dawned on one of them that
the tallest carried a heliotrope parasol in a manner
familiar to them, nor that another exhibited a rather
extraordinary and highly developed golfing stride.
Grown-up girls do not observe those in the transition
stages, and just at the fiercest apex of their admiration,
the Leightons were certainly at the transient stage.
They reviewed their own growing charms with the
keenest anxiety.  Everybody was hopeful of Mabel
who seemed daily to be shedding angularities and
developing a presence which might one day be
compared with Adelaide Maud's.  The time of her
seventeenth birthday had drawn near with the family
palpitating behind her.  Mrs. Leighton remembered that
delicious period of her own youth, and was indulgently
friendly, "just a perfect dear."

"We are going to make a very pretty little woman
of Mabel," she informed her husband.  He was a tall
man, with a fine intellectual forehead, and handsome,
clear-cut features.  He stooped slightly, giving an
impression of gentleness and great amiability.  He
answered in some alarm.

"You don't mean that our little baby girl is growing up."

"Elma declares that Mabel reaches her 'frivolity' in
May," said Mrs. Leighton sedately.  A quiet smile
played gently over a face, lined softly, yet cleared of
care as one sees the mother face where happy homes
exist.

Mr. Leighton groaned sadly and rubbed his finger
contemplatively along the smoothed hair which made
a gallant attempt at hiding more than a hint of baldness.

"Why can't we keep them babies!"

"Betty thinks we do," said his wife.

"One boy at College, and one girl coming out!
It's overwhelming.  We were only married yesterday,
you know," said poor Mr. Leighton.

It troubled Mrs. Leighton that Mabel insisted on
wearing heliotrope.  She had white of course for her
coming out dress, and among other costumes the
choice of colours for a fine day gown.  The blue eyes
of the Leightons were gifts handed down by a beneficent
providence through a long line of ancestors, and
one wise mother after another had matched the heavenly
radiancy of these wide orbs as nearly as possible in
sashes and silks for the children.  Therefore
Mrs. Leighton begged Mabel to have at least that one day
gown in blue.

"I begin to be sorry I said you might have what
you liked," she said dismally.  "Heliotrope will
make you look like your grandmother."

"Oh no it won't," clamoured Jean.  "It will only
make her look like Adelaide Maud."

"Traitor," was the expression on three faces.

Sporting Jean had really rather a dislike to the
garden-party smartness of Adelaide Maud, and
occasionally prejudice did away with honour.

"I'm joking," she said penitently.  "Do let her
wear heliotrope, mummy."

Mrs. Leighton sighed amiably yet disappointedly,
but at last gave Mabel permission to wear heliotrope.
They had patterns from Liberty's and Peter Robinson's
and Woolland's in London, and a solid week of rapture
ensued while Mabel saw herself gowned in a hundred
gowns and fixed on none.

They sat over the patterns one day with Mrs. Leighton
in attendance.  Mabel's choice lay between fifteen
different qualities of heliotrope.

"I shall have this," she said one minute, and "No,
this" the next.

"Patterns not returned within ten days will be
charged for," quoted Jean.

Just then a certain rushing sound of light wheels
could be heard.  Each girl glanced quickly out of the
window.  The clipity-clop of a pair of horses might
be clearly distinguished; and through the green trees
skirting the bottom of the garden, appeared patches
of colour.

Two Story Book Girls drove past, Adelaide Maud
and Theodora.  Theodora was sitting in any kind of
costume--what did *her* costume matter?

Adelaide Maud was in blue.

The girls gazed breathlessly at one another.

"I think you must really now make up your mind,"
said Mrs. Leighton patiently, whose ears were not
attuned so perfectly to distinction in carriage wheels.

Mabel glanced round for support.

"Oh, mummy," said she very sweetly, "I do
believe you were right.  I shall have blue after all."

That was a few weeks before the great day when
Mabel attained her "frivolity" and put up her hair.
Cousin Harry's being with them gave an air of festivity
to the occurrence, and curiously enough, Mrs. Leighton's
drawing-room filled with visitors on that afternoon
as though to celebrate the great occasion.

Throughout her life Elma never forgot to link the
delight of that day, when for the first time they all
seemed to grow up, with the despair of her sallies in
Cousin Harry's direction.

When she did trail back to the drawing-room, crushed
yet educated, she found Mabel with carefully coiled
hair standing in a congratulatory crowd of people,
looking more like Adelaide Maud than one could have
considered possible.

"Such excitement," whispered Jean, "Mrs. Maclean
has brought her nephew and he knows the Story Books."

It put immediate thoughts of having to explain to
Cousin Harry out of Elma's mind.

"Oh, do you know," she said excitedly to him, "I
want one thing most awfully.  I want to know
Mr. Maclean so well in about five minutes as to ask him a
fearfully particular question."

Dr. Harry, who, as he always explained to people,
was continually nine hundred and ninety-nine days
at sea without meeting a lady, could be counted on
doing anything for one once he had the chance of being
ashore.  Even a half-grown lady of Elma's type.

"Mr. Maclean shall stand on his head inside of three
minutes," he promised her.

Elma noticed a new twinkle in his eye.  It enabled
her to take her courage in both hands and confess to him.

"I'm always trying to use long words, Cousin Harry.
It's like having measles every three minutes.  It was
awfully nice of you not to laugh.  I went to look it
up, you know."

Nothing pleased Elma so much as the naturalness
with which she made this confession.  She felt more
worldly and developed than she could have considered
possible.

Cousin Harry roared.

"Try it on the Maclean man," he said.

But Mr. Leighton had that guest in tow, and they
talked art and politics until tea appeared.  Elma
did all she could in connection with the passing of
cups to get near him, but Cuthbert and Harry and
Mr. Maclean were too diligent themselves.  She saw
Mr. Maclean's eyes fixed on Mabel when she at last
gained her opportunity.  Mabel had gone in a very
careful manner, hair being her chief concern, to play
a Ballade of Chopin, and this provided an excellent
moment for Elma to sidle into a chair close to
Mr. Maclean.  It was pure politeness, she observed, which
allowed anyone to stare as much as one liked while a girl
played the piano.  Mr. Maclean was quite polite.

Mabel had the supreme talent which already had
made a name for the Leighton girls.  She could take
herself out of trivial thoughts and enter a magic world
where one dreamed dreams.  Into this new world she
could lift most people with the first touch of her fingers
on the keys of the piano.

Elma's thoughts soared with the others, and Mabel
played till a little rebellious lock of the newly arranged
plaits fell timorously on her neck.  She closed with a
low beautiful chord.

Mr. Maclean sighed gently.

Elma leant towards him.

"You know the--er--Dudgeons, don't you?  Do
you know the eldest?"

He nodded.

"Is Mabel like her?" she asked anxiously.

"Mabel," said Mr. Maclean.

"Yes, Mabel.  Is she--almost--as pretty, do you think?"

"Mabel is a thousand times more pretty than Miss
Dudgeon," said Mr. Maclean.

"Oh, Mr. Maclean!" said Elma.

He could not have understood her sigh of rapture if
he had tried to.  At that moment his thoughts were
not on Elma.

She was quite content.

She sank back on the large easy chair which she had
appropriated, and she felt as though she had brought
up a large family and just at that moment seen them
settled in life.

"Oh, I do feel heavenly," she whispered to herself.
"Mabel is prettier than Adelaide Maud."

"I beg your pardon?" asked Mr. Maclean.

"Oh, nothing--nothing," said Elma.  "I don't even
care about emb--emb--Do you mind if I ask you?"
she inquired.  "Is it embarr*ass*ment or emb*arr*assment?"

"Emb*arr*assment," said Mr. Maclean.

"Thank you," said Elma.  "I don't care whether
I'm embarrassed now or not, thank you."





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.. _`Miss Annie`:

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   CHAPTER II


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   Miss Annie

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Of course one had to go immediately and tell all this to
Miss Annie.

Miss Annie lived with her sister in a charming
verandahed house, hidden in wisteria and clematis, and
everything was delightful in connection with the two sisters
except the illness which made a prisoner of Miss Annie.
Miss Annie lay on a bed covered with beautiful drawn
thread work over pink satinette and wore rings that
provoked a hopeless passion in Elma.

Whenever she considered that one day she might
marry a duke, Elma pictured herself wearing Miss Annie's
rings.

From the drawn thread work bed Miss Annie ruled
her household, and casually, her sister Grace.  It never
appeared that Miss Annie ruled Miss Grace however;
nothing being more affectionate than the demeanour
of the two sisters.  But long ago, the terrifying nature of
Miss Annie's first illness made such a coward of poor,
sympathetic Miss Grace, that never had she lifted a
finger, or formed a frown to reprove that dear patient,
or prevent her having her own way.  The nature of Miss
Annie's illness had always been a source of great mystery
to the Leighton girls.  It was discussed in a hidden
kind of way in little unintelligible nods from grown up
to grown up, and usually resolved itself into the
important phrase of "something internal."  Old Dr. Merryweather,
years ago, had landed himself into trouble
concerning it.  "A poor woman would get on her feet
and fight that tendency of yours," he had said to Miss
Annie.  "Money simply encourages it.  You will die
on that bed if you don't fight a little, Miss Annie."  Miss
Annie had replied that in any case her bed was
where she intended to die, and forthwith procured
quite sweetly and pathetically, yet quite determinedly,
another doctor.  That was over twenty years ago;
but Miss Grace still passed Dr. Merryweather in the
street with her head down in consequence.  She did
all she could to provide the proper distraction for Miss
Annie, by encouraging visitors and sacrificing her own
friends to the leadership of her sister.  Miss Annie had
always shone in a social sense, and she let none of her
talents droop merely because she was bedridden.  It
was considered a wonderful thing that she should manage
the whole household, to the laying down or taking up
of a carpet in rooms which she never saw.  Gradually,
on account of this wonderful energy of Miss Annie's,
Miss Grace acquired a reputation for ineptitude to
which her sister constantly but very gracefully alluded.
"Poor Grace," she sighed.  "Grace takes no interest
in having things nice."

It was Miss Grace however who, in her shy
old-fashioned manner, showed interest in the blue-eyed,
fair-haired Leighton children, and introduced them
to her sister when they were practically babies.  She
decoyed them into the house by biscuits covered with
pink icing, which none of them ever forgot, or allowed
themselves to do without.  Even Mabel, with her
hair up, accepted a pink biscuit at her first tea there
after that great occasion.  They always felt very small
delicious children when they went to Miss Annie's.
They had acquired, through Miss Annie, a pleasant
easy manner of taking the nervous fussy attentions of
Miss Grace.  It was astonishing how soon they could
show that in this establishment of magnificence, Miss
Grace did not count.  She was immaterial to the general
grandeur of the verandahed palace belonging to Miss
Annie.  They were always on their best behaviour in
the house where not only a footman, but an odd man
were kept, and Elma, at the age of seven, had been
known to complain to Mrs. Leighton when a housemaid
was at fault, "We ought to have a man to do this!"  Indeed
there seemed only one conclusion to it with Elma:
that after knowing exactly what it was to call on people
who had men servants, in her youth, when she grew up
she should be obliged to marry a duke.  The duke always
met her when she waited for Miss Grace in the
drawing-room.  He had a long curling moustache, and wore his
hair in waves on either side of a parting, very clamped
down and oily, like Mr. Lucas, the barber.  It was
years before she sacrificed the curling moustache to a
clean-shaven duke, and shuddered at the suggestion of
oil in his hair.

The despair of her life stood in the corner of the white
and gold drawing-room.  It was an enormous Alexander
harmonium.  Once, in an easy moment, on conversing
affably with her duke in a whisper, she had suggested
to him that Miss Grace might let her play on this
instrument.  Miss Grace, coming in then, was in time to see
her lips moving, and considered that the sweet child
worked at her lessons.  Elma was too sincere to deceive
her.  "I was talking to myself and wondering if you
would let me play on the harmonium."

She should never forget the frightened hurt look on
Miss Grace's face.

"Never ask me that again, dear child.  It was hers--when she
was able to--to----"  Miss Grace could go
no further.

The blue eyes filling with frightened tears in front of
her alarmed the gentlest soul in the world.

"But, my pet," she said very simply, "there's my
own piano."

Could one believe it?  Off came all the photograph
frames, and the large Benares vases on China silk,
brought years ago from the other side of the world by
Miss Grace's father, and Elma played at last on a
drawing-room grand piano.  Mrs. Leighton's remained under
lock and key for any one below a certain age, and only
the schoolroom upright belonged to Elma.  What
joy to play on Miss Grace's long, shiny, dark, ruddy
rosewood!  She must have the lid full up, and music
on the desk.  Miss Grace made a perfect audience.
Elma regretted sincerely the fact that her legs stuck
so far through her clothes, so that she could not trail
her skirts to the piano and arrange them as she screwed
herself up on the music stool.  However, what did a
small thing like that matter while Miss Grace sat with
that surprised happy look on her face, and let her play
"anything she liked"?  Anything Elma liked, Miss Grace
liked.  In fact, Miss Grace discovered in her gentle,
amiable way, a wonderful talent in the child.  It formed
a bond between the two which years never broke.  Miss
Grace would sit with her knitting pins idle in her lap,
and a far-away expression in the thin grey colour of
her eyes.  Elma thought it such a pity Miss Grace
wore caps when she looked so nice as that.  She would
think these things and forget about them and think of
them again, all the time her fingers caressed the creamy
coloured keys, and made music for Miss Grace to listen
to.  Then exactly at four o'clock, Miss Grace seemed to
creep back to her cap again, and say that tea would
be going in and they must "seek Miss Annie."

Miss Annie poured tea from the magnificent teapot,
which the footman carried in on a magnificent silver
tray.  She reclined gracefully in bed, reaching out a
slender arm covered with filmy lace to do the honours
of the tea table.  Crumpets and scones might be passed
about by Miss Grace.  In a very large silver cake
basket, amongst very few pieces of seed cake (Miss
Annie took no other) Elma would find a pink biscuit.
After that the ceremony of tea was over.  It was
wonderful to see how Miss Annie poured and talked and
managed things generally.  Elma could play to Miss
Grace, but politeness somehow demanded that she
should talk to Miss Annie.

Elma had always, more than any of the Leighton
children, amused Miss Annie.  The little poses, which
Miss Grace, with wonderfully sympathetic understanding,
had translated into actual composition in music, the
poses which caused Elma to be the butt of a robustly
humorous family, crushing her to self-consciousness and
numbness in their presence, Miss Annie had the supreme
wisdom never to remark upon.  Had not Miss Grace and
she enjoyed secretly for years Elma's first delightful
blunder?

"My father and mother are paying a visit to the
necropolis.  They are having a lovely time.  Oh! is
that wrong?  I'm sure it is.  It's London I mean."

They had known then not to laugh, and they never
did laugh.  The little figure, with two fierce pigtails
tied radiantly with pink bows, the blue eyes, and very
soft curling locks over the temples, how could they
laugh at these?  Instead they took infinite pains over
Elma's long words.  Miss Annie herself invariably
either felt "revived" or "resuscitated" or polished
things of that description.  It pleased her that such
an intensely modern child should be sensitive to
refinement in language.  For a time Elma became famous as
a conversationalist, and was known in her very trying
family circle as Jane Austen or "Sense and Sensibility."  The
consequences of her position sent her so many
times tearful to bed, that at last she put a severe curb
on herself, and never used words that had not already
been sampled and found worthy by her family.  The
afternoons at Miss Annie's, however, where she could
remove this curb, became very valuable.  The result
was that while things might be "scrumptious" or
"awfully nice" or "beastly" at home, they suddenly
became "excellent" or "delightful" or "reprehensible,"
in that cultured atmosphere.  Only one in the world
knew the two sides to Elma, and that was her dear and
wonderful father.  She was never ashamed of either
pose when completely alone with that understanding
person.  Her mother could not control the twitching at
the lips which denotes that a grown-up person is taking
one in and making game of one.  Elma's father laughed
with the loud laugh of enjoyment.  It was the laughter
Elma understood, and whether or not a mistake of hers
had caused it, she ran on to wilder indiscretions merely
that she might hear it again.  Oh! there was nobody
quite so understanding as her father.

He invariably sent his compliments to Miss Annie,
and one day, to explain why she went there continually,
she told him how she played on Miss Grace's piano.
He was greatly pleased, delighted in fact, and
immediately wanted her to do the same for him.  Elma's
sensitive soul saw the whole house giggling at herself,
and took fright as she always did at the mere mention
of the exhibition of her talents.

"I can't, when Miss Grace isn't there," she had
exclaimed, and neither she nor anybody else could
explain why this should be, except Mr. Leighton
himself, who looked long and with a new earnestness
at his daughter, and never omitted afterwards in sending
his compliments to the two ladies to mention Miss Grace
first.

Mabel was entirely different in the respect of playing
before people.  She played as happily and easily to a
roomful as she did alone.  She blossomed out with the
warmth of applause and admiration as a rose does at
the rising of the sun.

"Mabel is prettier than Miss Dudgeon," said Elma to
Miss Annie on the day when she described the great
"coming out" occasion.

Miss Annie arrested the handsome teapot before
pouring further.

"What! anybody more pretty than Miss Dudgeon?"
she asked.  "That is surely impossible."

"Mr. Maclean said so," said Elma.

"And who is Mr. Maclean?" asked Miss Annie.

"Oh--Mr. Maclean--Mr. Maclean is just Mrs. Maclean's
nephew.  But he knows Miss Dudgeon, and
he looked a long time at Mabel and said she was
prettier."

"You must not think so much of looks, Elma," said
Miss Annie reprovingly.  "Mabel is highly gifted, that
is of much more consequence."

"Is it?" asked Elma.  "Papa says so, though he
won't believe any of *us* can be gifted.  He thinks there's
a great deal for us to learn.  It's very de--demoralizing."

"Demoralizing?" asked Miss Annie.

"Yes, isn't it demora-lizing I mean, Miss Annie?"
Elma begged in a puzzled manner.

Miss Annie daintily separated half a slice of seed cake
from the formal pieces lying in the beautiful filigree
cake basket.

"I do not think it is 'demoralizing' that you mean,
dear.  'Demoralizing' would infer that your father,
by telling you there was a great deal to learn, kept you
from learning anything at all, upset you completely as
it were."

Miss Annie was as exact as she could be on these
occasions, when she took the place of the little bright red
dictionary.

This time her information seemed to please Elma
immensely.  Her eyes immediately shone brilliantly.

"Oh, Miss Annie," she said, "it must be 'demoralizing'
after all.  That's just how I feel.  Papa tells
me, and I see the great big things to be done, and it
doesn't seem to be any use to try the little things.  Like
Mozart's Rondos!  They *are* so silly, you know.  And
when you see people like Mr. Sturgis painting big
e--e--elaborate pictures, I simply can't draw at school
at all."

Miss Grace leant forward on her chair, pulling little
short breaths as though not to lose, by breathing properly,
one word of this.  She considered it marvellous that
this young thing should invariably be expressing the
thoughts which had troubled her all her life, and never
even been properly recognized by herself, far less given
voice to.  It enabled her on many occasions to see
clearly at last, and to be able, by the light of her own
lost opportunities, to give counsel to Elma.

Miss Annie's eyes only looked calmly amused.  It
was an amusement to which Elma never took
exception, but to-day she wanted something more,
to prevent the foolishness which she was afraid of
experiencing whenever she made a speech of this nature.
Miss Annie only toyed with a silver spoon, however,
looking sweet and very kindly at Elma, and it was Miss
Grace who finally spoke.

She had recovered the shy equanimity with which
she always filled in pauses for her sister.

"You must not allow the fine work of others to
paralyze your young activities," Miss Grace said gravely.
"Mr. Sturgis was young himself once, and no doubt
at school studied freehand drawing very diligently to
be so great as he is now."

"Oh, no," said Elma, "that's one of the funny parts.
Mr. Sturgis doesn't approve of freehand drawing at
all.  He says it's anything but freehand, he says
it's--it's--oh!  I mustn't say it."

"Say it," said Miss Annie cheerfully.

"He says it's rotten," said Elma.

There was something of a pause after this.

"And it's so funny with Mabel," said Elma.  "Mabel
never practises a scale unless mamma goes right into
the room and hears her do it.  But Mabel can read off
and play Chopin.  And papa takes me to hear Liszt
Concertos, and I can't play one of them."

"You can't stretch the chords yet, dearie," said Miss
Grace.

"No, but it's very demor--what was it I said?" she
asked Miss Annie anxiously.

"Demoralizing," said Miss Annie.

"And there's paralyzing too," said Elma gratefully.
"That's exactly how I feel."

She sat nursing one of her knees in a hopeless manner,
until it struck her that neither Miss Annie nor Miss
Grace liked to see her in this attitude.  Nothing was
ever said on these occasions, but invariably one knew
that in order not to get on the nerves of Miss Annie,
one must sit straight and not fidget.  Elma sat up
therefore and resumed conversation.

"Mabel says it is nothing to play a Liszt Concerto,"
said Elma hopelessly.

"Is Mabel playing Liszt?" asked Miss Grace in
astonishment.

"Mabel plays anything," sighed Elma.

"That is much better than being prettier than Miss
Dudgeon," said Miss Annie.

She took up a little book which lay near her.  It was
bound in white vellum and had little gold lines tooled
with red running into fine gold clasps.  Two angel
heads on ivory were inserted in a sunk gold rim on the
cover.  Miss Grace saw a likeness in the blue eyes there
to the round orbs fastened on it whenever Elma had
to listen to the wisdom of the white book.  The title,
*The Soul's Delineator*, fascinated her by its vagueness.
She had never cared to let Miss Annie know that in
growing from the days when she could not even spell, the word
"delineator" had remained unsatisfactory as a term to
be applied to the soul.  There was The Delineator of
fashions at home--a simple affair to understand, but
that it should be applied to the "ivory thoughts" of
Miss Annie seemed confusing.  Miss Annie moved her
white fingers, sparkling with the future duchess's rings,
in and out among the gilt-edged pages.  Then she read.

"The resources of the soul are quickened and enlivened,
not so much by the education of the senses, as by the
encouragement of the sensibilities, i.e. these elements
which go to the making of the character gentle, chivalrous,
kind; in short, the elements which provoke manners
and good breeding."

Miss Annie paused.  Her voice had sustained a rather
high and different tone, as it always did when she read
from the white book.

"Mabel has very nice manners, hasn't she?" asked
Elma anxiously.

"Do you know that you have said nothing at all
about the Story Book Girls to-day, and everything
about Mabel," said Miss Annie.  "I quite miss my
Story Books."

Elma's eyes glowed.

Miss Annie had marked the line where the dream life
was becoming the real life.  Elma, in two days, had
transferred her *mise en scene* of the drama of life from
four far-away people to her own newly grown-up sister.
It was a devotion which lasted long after the days of
dreaming and imagining had passed for the imaginative
Elma, this devotion and admiration for her eldest sister.

In case she should not entertain Miss Annie properly,
she ran back a little, and told her how it was that Mabel
had got a blue gown after all.  It was delightful to feel
the appreciation of Miss Annie, and to watch the wrinkles
of laughter at her eyes.

Exactly at five o'clock however Miss Grace began to
look anxiously at Miss Annie, and Miss Annie's manner
became correspondingly languid.

"You tire your dear self, you ought not to pour out
tea," said Miss Grace in the concerned tone with which
she always said this sentence at five o'clock in the
afternoon.

Saunders came noiselessly in to remove, and Elma
bade a mute good-bye.

"You tire yourself, dear," said Miss Grace to Miss
Annie once more, as she and Elma retired to the door.

"I must fulfil my obligations, dear," said Miss Annie.

She nodded languidly to Elma, and Elma thought
once again how splendid it was of Miss Annie to be
brave like this, and wondered a trifle in her enthusiastic
soul why for once Miss Grace did not pour out tea for
her sister.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`The Flower Show Ticket`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER III


.. class:: center large

   The Flower Show Ticket

.. vspace:: 2

"I call it mean of Mabel."

Jean sat in a crinkled heap on her bedroom floor,
and pulled bad-temperedly with a wire comb at straight
unruly hair.  It had always annoyed Mabel that Jean
should use a wire comb, when it set her "teeth on edge
even to look at it."

Mabel however was out of the way, well out of it,
they decided, and Elma and Betty had invaded the
room belonging to the elder two in order to condole
with Jean.

"Mabel could easily have got another ticket--and
said she didn't want it!  Didn't want it, when we're
dying to go!  And then off she goes, looking very
prim and grown-up, with Cousin Harry."

Jean threw her head back, and began to gather long
heavy ends in order for braiding.

"Just wait till I grow up!  I shall soon take it out
of Mabel," she said.

"Oh, girls, girls!"

Mrs. Leighton's voice at the door was very accusing.

"Well, mummy, it was mean.  We've always
gone together before, and now Mabel won't go with
one of us."

"Not if you behave in this manner," said Mrs. Leighton.
"I do not like any of my girls to be spiteful,
you know."

"Spiteful!" exclaimed Jean.  She ran rapid fingers
in and out the lengthening braid of hair, till long ends
were brought in front.  She put these energetically in
her mouth, while she hunted for the ribbon lying by her.

"Oh, Jean," said Mrs. Leighton, "I've asked you so
often not to do that."

"Sorry, mummy," said Jean, disengaging the ends
abruptly.

Mrs. Leighton sat down rather heavily on a chair.

"You didn't say you were sorry for being spiteful,"
she remarked gravely.

"Well, mummy, are we spiteful, that's the question?"

Elma sat on a bed, looking specially tragic.

"It's *awful* to be left out of things now by Mabel,"
she said.

Betty looked as though she meant to cry.

"Well, I never," said Mrs. Leighton.  "You must
take your turn.  You don't come wherever your father
and I go, or Cuthbert.  You know you don't."

"I think that Cuthbert might occasionally take us,
however," said Jean.

"We all went to the flower show last year," wailed Elma.

"Yes, with the parasols papa brought us from
London," said Betty.  "And Mabel said it was like
carrying four bassinettes in a row, and snapped hers down
and wouldn't put it up till she got separated from us."

"She was growing up even then," said Jean in a
melancholy manner.

"Come, come, girls," interrupted Mrs. Leighton.
"You may be just the same when you grow up.  I
won't allow you to be down on poor Mabel.  Especially
when she isn't here to speak for herself."

"When we grow up there will always be one less to
tyrannize over," said Jean.  "Honestly, mother, I
never would have thought that Mabel could be so
priggish.  Do you know why she wouldn't have us?
I'm too big and gawky, and Elma is always saying
silly things, and Betty is just a baby.  There you are."

"Well, it isn't very nice of Mabel, but you mustn't
believe she means that," said Mrs. Leighton.  "And
after all, Mabel must have her little day.  She was very
good, let me tell you, very sweet and nice when you were
babies and she just a little thing.  She nursed you,
Elma and Betty, often and often, and put you to
sleep when your own nurse couldn't, and she has looked
after you all more or less ever since.  You might
let her grow up without being worried."

"It's hateful to be called a nuisance," said Jean,
somewhat mollified.

"Why do you waste time over it, I wonder," said
Mrs. Leighton.  "Instead of moping Jean might be
golfing, and Elma and Betty having tea at Miss Annie's;
with nobody at all being nice to your poor old mother."

It dawned on them how selfish they might all be.

"Oh, mummy," cried three reproachful voices.

"Well, Elma likes Miss Grace much better than she
does me, and Betty likes her rabbits, and Jean despises
me because I don't play golf.  I lead a very lonely
life," said Mrs. Leighton.

"Oh, mummy!"

"My idea, when I came into your room," said
Mrs. Leighton, "was to propose that we might walk into
town and get Jean's new hat, and take tea at Crowther's,
and drive home if my poor old leg won't hold out for
walking both ways.  But we've wasted so much time
in talking about Mabel----"

"Oh, mummy--Your bonnet, your veil, and your
gloves, and do be quick, mummy," cried Elma.  "We're
very sorry about Mabel."

They flew in self-reproachful manner to getting her
off to her room and making their own things fly.

"After all, we are a beastly set of prigs," called out
Jean to Elma.  "And I think I ought to have a
biscuit-coloured straw, don't you?"

It was one of a series of encounters with which
the new tactics of Mabel invaded the family.  Mrs. Leighton's
gentle rule was sorely tried for quite a long
time in this way.  Although she reasoned with the
younger girls on the side of Mabel, she took Mabel
severely to task for her behaviour over the flower show.

"It wasn't nice of you," she told her, "to cut off
any little invitation for your sisters.  You must not
begin by being selfish, you know.  There are few enough
things happening here not to spread the opportunities.
Jean wouldn't have troubled you.  She may be at the
gawky stage, but she makes plenty of friends."

Mrs. Leighton could be very impartial in her judgments.

But Mabel was hurt.  She preserved a superior air,
which became extremely annoying to the girls.

The greatest crime that she committed was when
Jean, amiably engaging her in conversation in the old
way, asked, "And how was Adelaide Maud dressed?"

Mabel turned in a very studied manner and stared
past Jean and every one.

"I don't think I observed Adelaide Maud," she said.

This was more than human beings could stand.

"I think it's most ir--ir----"

"Oh, find the word first and talk afterwards," said
Mabel grandly.  "You kids get on one's nerves."

"Kids--nerves," cried Jean faintly.  "I think Mabel
is taking brain fever."

Elma left the room abruptly, much on the verge of
tears, and she tried to find solace in her dictionary.
The word was "irrelevant"--yet did not seem to fit
the occasion at all.  What would Miss Annie or Miss
Grace do, if a sister had turned old and strange in a
few days like that?  What would mother have done?
Mother's sisters always complimented each other when
they met.  They never quarrelled.  Of course they never
could have quarrelled.  "Forgive and forget," Aunt
Katharine once had said had always been their motto.
Forgiving seemed very easy--but forgetting with
Adelaide Maud in the question--what an impossibility!
Miss Annie had an axiom that when you felt worried
about one matter the correct thing to do was to think
about another.  Elma thought and thought, but
everything worked round to the traitorous remark of Mabel's
about Adelaide Maud.  It seemed as though her head
could hold nothing else but that one idea about
Adelaide Maud, until suddenly it dawned on her that
it was really rather fine and grand of Mabel that she
should talk in this negligent manner of any one so
magnificent.  This reflection gave her the greatest
possible comfort.  To be condescending, even in a
mere frame of mind, to the Story Book Girls seemed
like the swineherd becoming a prince.  Elma began
to think how jolly it would be to hear Mabel saying,
"You know, my dear Helen, I don't think you ought
to wear heliotrope, it hardly suits you."  There was
something very delicious in having Mabel starchy and
proud after all.  Elma heard her coming upstairs to
her bedroom to dress for dinner just then.  The fall
of the footsteps seemed to suggest that some of the
starchiness had departed from Mabel.  Much of the
quality of sympathy which had produced such a person
as Miss Grace, was to be found in Elma.  Jean and
Betty had hardened their two little hearts to the
consistency of flint over the behaviour of Mabel, but the
mere fact that Elma thought her footsteps seemed to
flag and become tired roused her to chivalrous eagerness
towards making it up.  She went into Mabel's room
and sat on the window seat.  It was a long, low, pleasant
couch let into a wide window looking on the lawn
and gardens at the front of the house.  The sun poured
in on Elma, who forgot the habits of upright behaviour
which she exhibited at Miss Annie's, and sprawled
there with her fingers on the cord of the blind.

Mabel drew her hatpins out of fair braids in an
admiring yet disconsolate manner.  She took a hand
glass and had first a side view, then a back view of the
new effect, patted little stray locks into place, and
ruffled out others.

"What's up, Mabs?  You don't look en--thusiastic,"
asked Elma.

"It's papa.  After my lovely day too.  He wants me
to play that Mozart thing with Betty to-night.  Mozart
and Betty!  Isn't it stale?  I hate Mozart, and I
hate drumming away at silly things with Betty."  A
very discontented sigh accompanied these remarks.

"I really don't see why I should always be tacked
on to Betty or to Jean or you.  I haven't a minute to
myself."

"Oh, Mabs, you've had a lovely day!"

The words broke out in an accusing manner.  Elma
had certainly intended to comfort Mabel, yet
immediately began by expostulating with her.

Mabel turned round, with her seventeenth birthday
present, a fine silver-backed brush, in her hand.

"*Have* I had a lovely day, have I?" she asked.
"I've had simply nothing of the kind.  Jean went on
so about not going that Cousin Harry seemed to
think I had injured her.  He made me feel like a criminal
all afternoon.  These navy men like lots of girls round
them.  One or two more don't make the difference to
them that it makes to us.  At least it's a different kind
of difference.  A nice one.  I think it was abominable
of him.  My first chance--and to spoil it, all because of
Jean!  It wasn't fair of her."

Elma began to feel her reason rocking with the sudden
justice of this new argument.

"A minute ago, I thought it wasn't fair of you,"
she said reflectively.  "I can see it will be awfully
hard to get us all peacefully grown up.  Betty will
have the best of it.  I shall simply give in to her right
along the line.  I can see that.  I really couldn't stand
the worry of it."

"I suppose you wouldn't have gone to the flower
show without Jean?" asked Mabel in rather a scornful way.

"Good gracious, no," said Elma simply.  "I should
have presented her with the one and only ticket, just
for the sake of peace."

"That's a rotten, weak way to behave," said Mabel,
with a touch of Cuthbert's best manner.

"I know.  I don't mean that you should have given
her the ticket.  You weren't made to be bullied.  I
was.  I feel it in my bones every time any one is horrid
to me."

"I'm getting tired of giving up to others," said Mabel,
still on her determined tack.  "You can't think what
it has been during these years.  I mustn't do this and
that because of the children.  It's always been like
that.  And now when I'm longing to go to dances and
balls, I've got to go right off after dinner and play
Mozart with Betty.  It's all very well for papa, he
hasn't had the work I've had.  If I play now, I want
to play something better than a tum-tum accompaniment."

"Mozart isn't tum-tum," said Elma, "and papa
has been listening to us all these years.  It must have
been very trying."

"Well, all I can say is that, at his time of life, he
ought to be saved from hearing Betty scrape on her
fiddle every night as she does nowadays.  Instead,
you would think he hadn't had one musical daughter,
he's so keen on the latest."

"Miss Annie says it never does to be selfish," said
Elma gravely.  "I think that's being selfish, the
way you talk."

Mabel stopped at the unclasping of her waist-belt.

"Miss Annie!  Well, I like that!  Don't you know
there isn't so selfish a person in the world as Miss Annie.
I've heard people say it."

She nodded with two pins in her mouth, then released
them as she went on.

"Miss Annie made up her mind to lie on a nice bed
and have Miss Grace wait on her.  And she's done it.
There's nothing succeeds like success."  Mabel nodded
her head with the wisdom of centuries.

"Oh, Mabs, how can you?"  Elma was dreadfully
shocked.  A vision of poor martyred Miss Annie, with
"something internal," being supposed to like what
was invariably referred to in that household as "the
bed of pain," to have conferred on herself this dreadful
thing from choice and wilfulness, this vision was an
appalling one.

"How can you say such things of Miss Annie?  Who
would ever go to bed for all these years for the pleasure
of the thing?"

"I would," said Mabel.  "Yes, at the present moment,
I would.  I should like to have something very pathetic
happen to me, so that I should be obliged to lie in bed
like Miss Annie, and have somebody nice and sympathetic
come in and stroke my hand!  Cousin Harry, for
instance.  He can look so kind and be so comforting
when he likes.  But, oh!  Elma, he was a beast to-day."

The truth was out at last.  Mabel sat suddenly
on the couch beside Elma, and burst into tears.

"I think I hate being grown up," she said, "if people
treat you in that stiff severe way.  Nobody ever did
it before--ever."

Elma stroked and stroked her hand.  "The Leighton
lump," as they interpreted the slightly hysterical
quality which made each girl cry when the other began,
rose in riotous disobedience in her throat, and strangled
any further effort at consolation.

"Why don't you say something," wailed Mabel.

"I'm trying not to cry too," at last said Elma.

Then they both laughed.

"I should go right to Cousin Harry and tell him all
about it," Elma managed to counsel at last.  "I
thought you were a beast--but it's awfully hard on you.
It's awfully hard on all of us--having sisters."

"Yes, isn't it," groaned Mabel.

"Harry is very understanding.  Almost as
understanding as papa is."

"Papa!  *Do* you think papa understands?"

"Papa understands everything," said Elma.  Then
a very loyal recollection of the afternoon they had
spent in the cheery presence of Mrs. Leighton beset
her.  "Also mamma, I think she's a duck," said Elma.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`Cuthbert`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER IV


.. class:: center large

   Cuthbert

.. vspace:: 2

There was a tremendous scurry after this to allow
of the four getting ready in time for dinner.  Mabel
and Elma regained high spirits after their confidences,
and everybody seemed in a better key.

Mrs. Leighton came in to inquire of Mabel why
Cuthbert had not returned.  Cuthbert, by some years
the eldest of the family, had attained great brilliance
as a medical student, and now worked at pathology
in order to qualify as a specialist.  His studies kept
him intermittently at home, but to-day he had been
down early from town and had gone out bicycling
with George Maclean.

"Cuthbert!" exclaimed Mabel.  "Why, I can't
think--why, where's Cuthbert?"

"Why, yes, where's Cuthbert?" said Jean.

Their minute differences had engaged their minds
so fully, that no one had really begun to wonder about
Cuthbert until that moment.

"He is always in such good time," said Mrs. Leighton
in a puzzled way.  "Didn't he say to any one that he
would be late?"

No one knew anything about him.  They speculated,
and collected at the dinner-table still speculating.
Even Cousin Harry knew nothing of him, but that,
of course, was because of the flower show.  While
the meal was in progress, Mr. Maclean appeared quietly
in the room.  He had prepared a little speech for
Mrs. Leighton, but it died on his lips as he saw her face.
It was a curious thing, as they afterwards reflected,
that Mr. Maclean went on speaking to Mrs. Leighton
as though she knew of everything that had happened
to Cuthbert.

"He is all right, Mrs. Leighton, but he wouldn't let
me bring him in until I told you that he was all right."

"Bring him in----"

It seemed to the Leightons that Mr. Maclean had
been standing all his life in their dining-room saying that
Cuthbert was all right, but wouldn't be "brought in."

Mr. Leighton put down his table napkin in a methodical
manner.

"You'd better come with me and see him, Lucy,"
he said to his wife.

Nothing could have more alarmed the girls.  On
no occasion had Mr. Leighton ever referred to his
wife as Lucy.

"Oh, Cuthbert must be dead," cried Betty.

"Nonsense," said Mr. Leighton, with a white face.
"Where is Harry?"

Harry had slipped out after a direct glance from
Mr. Maclean, and was at that moment assisting two
doctors to lift Cuthbert from a carriage.

"Look here, you kids," sang out Cuthbert, "I've
only broken a rib or two.  You needn't look scared.
I shall allow you to nurse me.  You won't be dull, I
can tell you."

Mrs. Leighton gave a sharp little gasp.  Her face
looked drawn and only half its size.

"Oh, Cuthbert," she said.

"I won't move," said Cuthbert, "till you stop
being anxious about me.  Maclean, you are a bit of
an idiot--look how you've frightened her!"

Elma found Betty in partial hysterics in the dining-room
with Jean hanging over her in a corresponding
condition.

"I say, you two," she said in a disgusted manner.
"You'll frighten mother more than ever.  Get up,
and don't be idiots."

"You're as pale as death yourself," cried Jean hotly.

"Oh--am I," said Elma in almost a pleased voice.
She longed to go and see the effect for herself, but the
condition of Betty prevented her.

"Well, it's our first shock," she said in an important
manner.  "I never felt *awful* like this before."

"I'm sure Cuthbert will die," cried Betty.

"Oh, don't."  Elma turned on her fiercely.  "Why
do you say such dreadful things."

"If you think he will die, Betty, he will die," sobbed
Jean.

"Oh, Jean, Jean, do brace up," said Elma.  "I
don't want to cry, and every minute I'm getting nearer
it.  Harry says it's just a knock on the ribs, and the
navy men don't even go to bed for that."

"Liar," sobbed Betty, "Cuthbert isn't a softy."

"Well, of course, if you want him to be bad, I can't
help it," said Elma.  "I'm off to see where Mabel is."

Mabel--well, this was just where the magnificence
of Mabel asserted itself.  She had done a thing which
not one of the people who were arranging about getting
Cuthbert upstairs and into bed had thought of.  At
the first sight of his white face and some blankets
with which he had been padded into a carriage, after
the accident which had thrown him from his bicycle
and broken three ribs, Mabel turned and went upstairs.
She put everything out of the way for his being carried
across the room, and finally tugged his bed into a
convenient place for his being laid there.  She dragged
back quilts and procured more pillows, so that when
Cuthbert finally reclined there he was eminently comfortable.

"You'll have to haul out my bed, it's in a corner,"
he had sung out as they carried him in, and there
was the bed already prepared for him, and Mabel with
an extra pillow in her arms.

"Good old Mabs," said Cuthbert.  "I promote
you to staff nurse on the spot."

Mabel was more scared than any one, not knowing
yet about the ribs or Cousin Harry's tale of the navy
men who went about with broken ones, and rather
enjoyed the experience.  She was so scared that it
seemed easy to stand quiet and be perfectly dignified.

"Come, Mabs dear, and help me to look for bandages.
The doctor wants one good big one," said the recovered
voice of Mrs. Leighton.

Mr. Leighton went about stirring up everybody
to doing things.  He was very angry with Betty and
Jean.  "Any one can sit crying in a corner," he declared,
"and we may be so glad it's no worse."

"It's our first shock," said Betty, who had rather
admired the sentiment of that speech of Elma's.

Mr. Leighton could not help smiling a trifle.

"Well," he exclaimed kindly, "we don't want to
get accustomed to them.  I should really much rather
you would behave properly this time.  You might
take a lesson from Mabel."

Nobody knew till then what a brick Mabel had been.
To have their father commend them like that, the girls
would stand on their heads.  Lucky Mabel!  There
was some merit after all in being the eldest.  One
knew evidently what to do in an emergency.  The
truth was that Mabel's temperament was so nicely
balanced that she could act, as well as think, with
promptitude.  She had always admired dignity and
what Mr. Leighton called "efficiency," whereas Jean
and Betty believed most in the deep feelings of people
who squealed the loudest.

"Nobody knows the agony this is to me," Jean
exclaimed in a tragic voice.  "Feel my heart, it's
beating so."

"Go and feel Mabel's," said Elma.  "I expect it's
thumping as hard as yours.  And she got Cuthbert's
bed ready.  She really is the leader of this family.
There's something more in it than putting up one's hair."

The doctors came down much more merrily than
they went up, and joined in the dining-room in coffee
and dessert while Harry stayed with the patient.

Mr. Leighton seemed very deeply moved.  The thing
had hurt him more than he ventured to say.  A
remembrance of the white look on his son's face, the
appearance of the huddled figure in the cab, and the anxiety
of not knowing for a few moments how bad the injury
might be, had given him a great shock.  His children
were so deeply a part of his life, their welfare of so much
more consequence than his own, that it seemed
dreadful to him that his splendid manly young son had
been suddenly hurt--perhaps beyond remedy.  Mrs. Leighton
used to remark that she had always been
very thankful that none of her children had ever been
dangerously ill, her husband suffered so acutely from
even a trifling illness undergone by one of them.  Now
she gazed at him rather anxiously.

Mr. Maclean told them at last how it had happened.
Cuthbert had done something rather heroic.  Mr. Maclean
recounted it, it seemed to Elma, in the tone
of a man who thought very little of the reckless way
in which Cuthbert had risked his life, until she
discovered afterwards that he as well as Cuthbert had
made a dash to the rescue.

It was a case of a runaway bicycle, with no brakes
working, and a girl on it, terror-stricken, trying to
evade death on the Long Hill.  Cuthbert had rushed
down to her.  Cuthbert had gripped the saddle, and
was putting some strength into his brakes, and actually
reaching nearly a full stop, when the girl swayed and
fainted.  They were both thrown, but the girl was
quite unhurt.  Something had hit Cuthbert on the
side and broken three ribs.

Mabel stared straight at Mr. Maclean.

"Where were you?" she asked.

Mr. Maclean looked gravely at her.  "I was somewhere
about," he said with unnecessary vagueness.

"Then you tried to save the girl too," said Elma
with immediate conviction.  She greatly admired
Mr. Maclean, and resented the manner of Mabel's question.
"How beautiful of you both," she exclaimed enthusiastically.

Mr. Maclean seemed a little annoyed.

"I nearly ran into them," he growled.  "Cuthbert
was the man who did the clean neat thing."

Mabel stirred her coffee with a dainty air, and then
she looked provokingly at Mr. Maclean.  In some
way she made Elma believe that she did not credit
that he could be valorous like Cuthbert.

"I think it was most grand-iloquent of you," Elma
said to Mr. Maclean by way of recompense.

The word saved the situation.  Where doctors'
assurances had not cleared anxiety from the brow of
Mr. Leighton, nor restored the placidity which with
Mrs. Leighton was habitual, the genuine laugh which
followed Elma's effort accomplished everything.

"I shall go right up and tell Cuthbert," said Jean.

"No, you won't!  Cuthbert mustn't laugh," said
Mrs. Leighton hurriedly.

"Oh, mummy," said poor Elma.

Nobody laughed later, however, when all four girls
were tucked in bed and not one of them could sleep.
Betty in particular was in a nervous feverish condition
which alarmed Elma.  She would have gone to her
mother's room to ask advice, except for Mabel's great
indication of courage that afternoon, and the certainty
that Mabel and Jean were both sensibly fast asleep
in the next room.  She took Betty into her own bed
and petted her like a baby.  On windy nights Betty
never could sleep, and had always gone to Elma like
a chicken to its mother to hide her head and shut out
the shrieking and whistling which so unnerved her.
But to-night, nothing could shut out the fear which
had suddenly assailed her that everybody died sooner
or later, and Cuthbert might have died that day.  She
lay and wept on Elma's shoulder.

At last the door moved gently and Mrs. Leighton
came in.  The moon shone on her white hair, and made
her face seem particularly gentle and lovely.

"I've been scolding Mabel and Jean for talking in
bed," she said, "and now I hear you two at it."

"Oh, mummy," replied Elma, "I'm so glad you've
come.  You don't know how empty and dreadful we
feel.  We never thought before of Cuthbert's dying.
And Betty says you and papa might die--and none
of us could p--possibly bear to live."

She began to cry gently at last.

"I can't have four girls in one house all crying,"
said Mrs. Leighton; "I really can't stand it, you know."

"What--are Mabel and Jean crying?" asked Elma
tearfully, yet hopefully.  "Well, that's one comfort
anyway."

Mrs. Leighton sat down by their bed.  Long years
afterwards Elma remembered the tones of her mother's
voice, and the quiet wonderful peace that entered her
own mind at the confident words which Mrs. Leighton
spoke to them then.

"I thought you might be feeling like that," she
said; "I did once also, long ago, when my father turned
very ill, until I learned what I'm going to tell you
now.  We aren't here just to enjoy ourselves, or that
would be an easy business, would it not?  We are here
to get what Cuthbert calls a few kicks now and again,
to suffer a little, above all to remember that our father
or our mother isn't the only loving parent we possess.
What is the use of being taught to be devoted to
goodness and truth, if one doesn't believe that goodness
and truth are higher than anything, higher than human
trouble?  If you lost Cuthbert or me or papa, there
is always that strong presence ready to hold you."

"Oh, mummy," sobbed Betty, "there seems
nothing like holding your hand."

Mrs. Leighton stroked Betty's very softly.

"Would you like a little piece of news?" she asked.

"We would," said Elma.

"The only person who is asleep in this household--last
asleep, is--Cuthbert."

"O--oh!"

Elma could not help laughing.

"And another thing," said Mrs. Leighton.  "Didn't
you notice?  Not one of my girls asked a single
question about the girl whom Cuthbert saved."

"How funny!"

Betty's sobs became much dimmer.

"Do you know who she was?" asked Mrs. Leighton.

"No," chimed both.

"Well, I don't know her name," said Mrs. Leighton.
She rose and moved towards the door.  "But I know
one thing."  She opened the door softly.

Elma and Betty sat up dry-eyed in bed.

"Remember what I said to you to-night," Mrs. Leighton
said, "and don't be very ungrateful for all
the happiness you've known, and little cowards when
the frightening time comes.  Promise me."

They promised.

She prepared to draw the door quietly behind her.

"She is staying with the Story Books," whispered
Mrs. Leighton.  Then she closed the door.





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.. _`"The Story Books" Call`:

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   CHAPTER V


.. class:: center large

   "The Story Books" Call

.. vspace:: 2

Mabel was sitting with Cuthbert when the Story Books
called.

They really did call.

And nothing could have been more unpropitious.

First, they called very early in the afternoon, just
when Betty, with her arms full of matting for her rabbits,
rushed out at the front door.  She nearly ran into
them.  The matting slipped from her arms, and she
stood spell-bound, gazing at the Story Books.
Mrs. Dudgeon was there, looking half a size larger than any
ordinary person.  An osprey waved luxuriantly in a
mauve toque, and her black dress bristled with grandeur.
She produced a lorgnette and looked through it severely
at Betty.  Betty became half the size of an ordinary
mortal.

Adelaide Maud was with Mrs. Dudgeon.

Adelaide Maud was in blue.

Adelaide Maud seemed stiff and bored.

"Is your mamma at home?" Mrs. Dudgeon asked.

Betty kicked the matting out of the way in a
surreptitious manner.

"Oh, please come in," she said shyly.

It was tragic that of all moments in one's life the
Dudgeons should have come when Betty happened to
be flying out, and they had not even had time to ring
for Bertha, who, as parlour-maid, had really
irreproachable showing in manners.

Betty tripped over a mat on her way to the
drawing-room.  Betty showed them in without a word of
warning.  Jean was singing at the piano--atrociously.
Jean might know that she oughtn't to sing till her voice
was developed.  Elma was dusting photographs.

Nothing could have been more tragic.

The girls melted from the room, and left Mrs. Dudgeon
and Adelaide Maud in the centre of it, stranded, staring.

"What an odd family," said Mrs. Dudgeon stiffly.

Adelaide Maud never answered.

The Leightons rushed frantically to other parts of
the house.

The second tragedy occurred.

Mrs. Leighton utterly refused to change her quiet
afternoon dress for another in which to receive
Mrs. Dudgeon.  She went to the drawing-room as she was.

They ran to Cuthbert's room to tell him about it.
Cuthbert seemed rather excited when he asked which
"Story Book."  Elma said, "Oh, you know, *the* one,"
and he concluded she meant Hermione, who did not
interest him at all.

"Why couldn't you stay and talk to them?" he
asked.  "They wouldn't eat you.  Who cares what
you have on?  The mater is quite right.  She is just
as nice in a morning costume as old Dudgeon in her war
paint.  You think too much of clothes, you kids."

"Yet you like to see us nicely dressed," wailed Jean.

"Of course I do.  Mabel in that blue thing is a dream."

Mabel looked at him gratefully.

"Oh, if only Mabel had been sitting there embroidering,
in her blue gown, and Bertha had shown them
ceremoniously in!  How lovely it would have been!"
said Elma.

"I couldn't have worn my blue," said Mabel with a
conscience-stricken look.  "You know why."

"Oh, Mabel--the rucking!  How unfortunate!"

"It never dawned on us that we should ever know them."

Cuthbert looked from one to another.

"What on earth have you been up to now?" he asked
suspiciously.

"Mabel got her dress made the same as Adelaide
Maud's," said Betty accusingly.  She rather liked
airing Mabel's mistakes just then, after having been so
sat upon for her own.

"Well, it's a good thing that Adelaide Maud, as you
call her, won't ever come near you," Cuthbert remarked
in a savage voice.

"But it's Adelaide Maud who's in the drawing-room,"
said Elma.

Cuthbert drew in his breath sharply.

"Oh, Cuthbert, you aren't well."

"It's the bandage," he said.  "Montgomery is a
bit of an idiot about bandaging.  I told him so.  Doesn't
give a fellow room to breathe."

He became testy in his manner.

"You oughtn't to have all run away like that, like a
lot of children.  Old Dudgeon will be sniffing round to
see how much money there is in our furniture, and
cursing herself for having to call."

"Adelaide Maud was awfully stiff," sighed Elma.

"Our furniture can bear inspection," said Mabel with
dignity.  "The Dudgeons may have money, but papa
has taste."

"Yes, thank goodness," said Cuthbert.  "They
can't insult us on that point.  This beastly side of
mine!  Why can't we go downstairs, Mabel, and tell
them what we think of 'em?"

"I'm longing to, but terrified," said Mabel.  "It's
because we've admired them so and talked about them
so much."

"Adelaide Maud wouldn't know you from the furniture,"
said Jean.  "You may spare yourself the agony
of wanting to see her.  I think they might be nice
when we've been neighbours in a kind of way for so long."

"Well--they're having a good old chat with the
mater at least," said Cuthbert.

"I haven't confidence in mummy," said Jean.  "I
can hear her, can't you?  Instead of talking about the
flower show or the boat races, or something dashing of
that sort, she will be saying----"

"Oh, I know," said Mabel.  "When Elma was a
baby--or was it when Betty was a baby--yes, it was,
and saying how cute Cuthbert was when he was five
years old----"

"If she does," shouted Cuthbert.  "Oh, mother mine,
if you do that!"  He shook his fist at the open door.

A sound of voices approaching a shut one downstairs
came to their ears.  Each girl stole nimbly and silently
out and took up a position where she could see safely
through the banisters.  First came the mauve toque
with its white osprey quite graciously animated, then
a blue and wide one in turquoise, which from that
foreshortened view completely hid the shimmering gold of
the hair of Adelaide Maud.  Mrs. Leighton was weirdly
self-possessed, it seemed to the excited onlookers.  She
had rung for Bertha, who held the door open now in
quite the right attitude.  Good old Bertha.
Mrs. Dudgeon was condescendingly remarking, "I'm so
sorry your little girls ran away!"

"Little girls!" breathed four stricken figures at the
banisters.

Adelaide Maud said, "Yes, and I did so want to meet
them.  I hear they are very musical."

"Musical!" groaned Mabel.

"She just said that to be polite--isn't it awful?"
whispered Jean.

"Hush."

"Once more, our best thanks to your son."

Mrs. Leighton answered as though she hadn't minded
a bit that Cuthbert had been nearly killed the day
before.

"So good of you to call," said she.

"Oh," cried Elma, with her head on the banister
rail, after the door shut, "I hate society; don't you,
mummy?"

"I think you're very badly behaved, all of you,
listening there like a lot of babies," said Mrs. Leighton.

"Come and tell your little girls all about it," cried
Jean sarcastically.

Mrs. Leighton smiled as she toiled upstairs.

"It ought to be a lesson to you.  Haven't I often
told you that listeners hear no good of themselves,"
she exclaimed.

"Oh, mummy, we are musical," reminded Mabel,
softly.  "Think of that terrific compliment!"

Their mother seemed to have more on her mind than
she would tell them.  She puffed gently into Cuthbert's
room.

"These stairs are getting too much for me," she said.

"Well, mater?" asked Cuthbert in an interrogating way.

"Well, Cuthbert, they are very grateful to you,"
she said.

He lay back on his pillows.

"Don't I know that patronizing gratitude," he said.
It seemed as though they had all suddenly determined
to be down on the Dudgeons.  His face appeared hard
and very determined.  He had the fine forehead which
so distinguished his father, with the same clear-cut
features, and a chin of which the outline was strong and
yet frankly boyish.  He had a patient insistent way of
looking out of his eyes.  It had often the effect of
wresting remarks from people who imagined they had
nothing to say.

This time, Mrs. Leighton, noting that familiar appeal
in his eyes, was drawn to discussing the Dudgeons.

"Mrs. Dudgeon was very nice; she said several very
nice things about you and us.  She says that Mr. Dudgeon
had always a great respect for your father.
He knew what he had done in connection with the
Antiquarian Society and so on.  Miss Dudgeon was
very quiet."

"Stiff little thing," said Jean, with her head in the air.

"She was very nice," said Mrs. Leighton.  There
was a softness in her voice which arrested the flippancy
of the girls.  "I don't know when I have met a
girl I liked so much."

"Good old Adelaide Maud," cried Jean.

A flush ran up Cuthbert's pale determined face.  It
took some of the hardness out of it.

"Did she condescend to ask for me?" he asked
abruptly.  "Or pretend that she knew me at all?"

"She never said a word about you," said his mother;
"but----"

"But--what a lot there may be in a but," said Jean.

"She looked most sympathetic," said Mrs. Leighton
lamely.  Cuthbert moved impatiently.

"What silly affairs afternoon calls must be," said he.

"Miss Steven--the girl you ran away with--isn't well
to-day, and they are rather anxious about her.  She is
very upset, but wanted to come and tell you how much
she thanked you."

"Oh, lor," said Cuthbert, "what a time I shall have
when I'm well.  I shall go abroad, I think."

Elma gazed at him with superb devotion.  He seemed
such a man--to be careless of so much appreciation, and
from the Story Books too!  Cuthbert appeared very
discontented.

"Oh, these people!" he exclaimed; "they call and
thank one as they would their gardener if he had
happened to pull one of 'em out of a pond.  It's the same
thing, mummy!  They never intend to be really friendly,
you know."

Elma slipped downstairs and entered the drawing-room
once more.  A faint perfume (was it "Ideal"
or "Sweet Pea Blossom"?) might be discerned.  A
Liberty cushion had been decidedly rumpled where
Mrs. Leighton would be bound to place Mrs. Dudgeon.
Where had Adelaide Maud, the goddess of smartness and
good breeding, located herself?  Elma gave a small
scream of rapture.  On the bend of the couch, where the
upholstering ran into a convenient groove for hiding
things, she found a little handkerchief.  It was of very
delicate cambric, finely embroidered.  Elma's first
terror, that it might be Mrs. Dudgeon's, was dispelled by
the magic letters of "Helen" sewn in heliotrope across
a corner.  It struck her as doubtful taste in one so
complete as Adelaide Maud that she should carry heliotrope
embroidery along with a blue gown.  She held her prize
in front of her.

"Now," said she deliberately, "I shall find out
whether it is 'Ideal' or 'Sweet Pea.'"

She sniffed at the handkerchief in an awe-stricken
manner.  The enervating news was thus conveyed to
her--Adelaide Maud put no scent on her handkerchiefs.

This was disappointing, but a hint in smartness not
to be disobeyed.  Mrs. Dudgeon must have been the
"Ideal" person.  Elma rather hoped that Hermione
used scent.  This would provide a loophole for herself
anyhow.  But Mabel would be obliged to deny herself
that luxury.

Elma sat down on the couch with the handkerchief,
and looked at the dear old drawing-room with new eyes.
She would not take that depressing view of the people
upstairs with regard to the Story Books.  She was
Adelaide Maud, and was "reviewing the habitation" of
"these Leighton children" for the first time.

"Dear me," said Adelaide Maud, "who is that sweet
thing in the silver frame?"

"Oh," said Mrs. Leighton, "that's Mabel, my eldest."

Then Adelaide Maud would be sure to say with a
refined amount of rapture, "Oh, is that Mabel?  I
have heard how pretty she is from Mr. Maclean."

Then mother--oh, no; one must leave mother out of
this conversation.  She would have been so certain to
explain that Mabel was not pretty at all.

Elma sat with her elbows out and her hands
presumably resting on air.  "Never lean your elbows on
your hips, girls," Miss Stanton, head of deportment,
informed them in school.  "Get your shoulder muscles
into order for holding yourself gracefully."  One could
only imagine Adelaide Maud with a faultless deportment.

Elma carried the little handkerchief distractedly to
her lips, then was appalled at the desecration.

Oh--and yet how lovely!  It was really Adelaide
Maud's!

She tenderly folded it.

How distinguished the drawing-room appeared!  How
delightful to have had a father who made no
mistakes in the choice of furniture!  Cuthbert had said
so.  She could almost imagine that the mauve toque
must have bowed before the Louis Seize clock and
acknowledged the Cardinal Wolseley chair.  It did not
occur to her to think that Mrs. Dudgeon might size up
the whole appearance of that charming room in a request
for pillars and Georgian mirrors, and beaded-work
cushions.  It is not given to every one to see so far as
this, however, and Elma--as Miss Dudgeon for the
afternoon--complimented her imaginary hosts on
everything.  As a wind-up Miss Dudgeon asked Mrs. Leighton
particularly if her third daughter might come
to take tea with Hermione.

"So sweet of you to think of it," said the imaginary
Mrs. Leighton, once more in working order.

Out of these dreams emerged Elma.  Some one was
calling her abruptly.

"Coming," she shrieked wildly, and clutched the
handkerchief.

She kept it till she got to Cuthbert.  It seemed to
her that he, as an invalid, might be allowed a bit of a
treat and a secret all to himself.

"Adelaide Maud left her handkerchief," she said.
"We shall have to call to return it."

He gazed at the bit of cambric.

"Good gracious, is that what you girls dry your eyes on?"

He took it, and looked at it very coldly and critically.

"Thank you," he said calmly.

"Oh, Cuthbert," she exclaimed with round eyes,
"you won't keep it, will you?"

"I shall return it to the owner some day, when she
deserves it," said the hero of yesterday, with a number
of pauses between each phrase.

"Don't say a word, chucky, will you not?"

"I won't," said Elma honourably, yet deeply puzzled.

Imaginary people were the best companions after all.
They did exactly what one expected them to do.

It seemed rather selfish that Cuthbert should hang on
to the handkerchief.  But of course they would never
have even seen it had it not been for the accident.

She surrendered all ownership at the thought, and
then gladly poured tea for the domineering Cuthbert.

"You are a decent little soul, Elma," said he.

"And you are very extraasperating," said Elma.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`The Mayonnaise`:

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   CHAPTER VI


.. class:: center large

   The Mayonnaise

.. vspace:: 2

The girls gave a party to celebrate the recovery of
Cuthbert.  They were allowed to do this on one
condition, that they made everything for it themselves.

This was Mr. Leighton's idea, and it found rapturous
approval in the ranks of the family, and immediate
rebellion in the heart of Mrs. Leighton.  It was her
one obstinacy that she should retain full hold of the
reins of housekeeping.  Once let a lot of girls into the
kitchen, and where are you?

"Once let a lot of girls grow up with no kind of
responsibility in life, and where are you then?" asked
Mr. Leighton.  "I don't want my girls to drift.  No
man is really healthy unless he is striving after
something, if it's only after finding a new kind of beetle.
I don't see how a girl can be healthy without a definite
occupation."

"They make their beds, and they have their music,"
sighed Mrs. Leighton.  "Girls in my day didn't
interfere with the housekeeping."

"I've thought about their music," said Mr. Leighton.
"I'm glad they have it.  But it isn't life, you
know.  A drawing-room accomplishment isn't life.  I
want them to be equipped all round.  Not just by
taking classes either.  Classes end by making people
willing to be taught, but the experiences of life make
them very swift to learn.  We can't have them sitting
dreaming about husbands for ever.  Dreams and
ideals are all very well, but one scamps the realities
if one goes on at them too long.  Elma means to marry
a duke, you know.  Isn't it much better that in the
meantime she should learn to make a salad?"

"The servants will be so cross," said Mrs. Leighton.
She invariably saw readily enough where she must
give in, but on these occasions she never gave in
except with outward great unwillingness.

"Oh, perhaps not," said Mr. Leighton.  "They
have dull enough lives themselves.  I'm sure it will
be rather fun for them to see Mabel making cakes."

"Mabel can't make cakes," exclaimed Mrs. Leighton.
Her professional talents were really being
questioned here.  Throughout the length and breadth of
the country, nobody made cakes like Mrs. Leighton.

Mr. Leighton grew a little bit testy.

"You know, my dear, if this house were a business
concern it would be your duty to take your eldest
daughter into partnership at this stage.  As it is, you
seem to want to keep her out for ever."

Mrs. Leighton sighed heavily.

"That's just it, John," said she; "I want to keep
her out for ever.  I want them all to remain little
children, and myself being mother to them.  Since
Mabel got her hair up--already it's different.  I feel
in an underhand sort of way that I'm being run by
my own daughter--I really do."

"More like by your own son," said Mr. Leighton.
"The way you give in to that boy is a disgrace."

"Oh, Cuthbert's different," said Mrs. Leighton
brightly.

"Poor Mabel," smiled Mr. Leighton.

It was an old subject with them, thrashed out again
and again, ever since Cuthbert as a rather spoiled child
of seven had had his little nose put out of joint by the
first arrival of girls in the imperious person of Mabel.
Mrs. Leighton had always felt a little grieved with
the absurdly rapid manner in which Mr. Leighton's
affections had gone over to Mabel.

"In any case, try them with the party," said he.
"The only thing that can happen is for the cook to
give notice."

"And I shall have to get another one, of course."
Mrs. Leighton's voice dwelt in a suspiciously marked
manner on the pronoun.

"Now there's another opportunity for making use
of Mabel," said her husband.

Mrs. Leighton let her hands fall.

"Engage my own servants!  What next?" she asked.

"Oh, I don't know," said he.  "Cuthbert does
heaps of things for me.  You women are the true
conservatives.  If we had you in power there would
be no chance for the country."

"Well, you might have persuaded Cuthbert to
succeed you as Chairman of your Company, with a
steady income and all that sort of thing," she exclaimed,
"instead of rushing him into a profession which keeps
him tied night and day, and gives him no return as
yet for all his work."

"I should never stand in the way of enthusiasm,"
said her husband.  "Cuthbert has a real genius for
his profession."

"Then why not find a profession for Mabel?"

"I have thought of that.  It seems right, however,
that a man ought to be equipped for one profession,
and a girl for several.  I can always leave my girls
enough money to keep the wolf from the door at least.
I have an objection to any girl being obliged to work
entirely for her living.  Men ought to relieve them of
that at least.  But we must give them occupation;
work that develops.  Come, come, my dear; you must
let them have their head a little, even although they
ruin the cakes.  A good mother makes useless daughters,
you know."

"Well, it's a wrench, John."

"There, there," he smiled at her.

"And the servants are sure to give notice."

She regretted much of her pessimism, however, when
she gave the news to the girls.  Not for a long time
had they been so animated.  Each took her one
department in the supper menu prepared under the guidance
of Mrs. Leighton.

First, chicken salad inserted into a tomato, cut
into water-lily shape, reposing on lettuce leaves--one
on each little plate, mayonnaise dressing on top.

The mayonnaise captured Mabel.

"But you can't make it, it's a most trying thing
to do--better let cook make it," interjected Mrs. Leighton.

"What about our party?" asked Mabel.

"Very well," said an abject mother.

So that was settled.

Then fruit salad, immediately claimed by Jean, who
knew everything there was to be known of fruit, inside
and out, as she explained volubly.  Mrs. Leighton's
quiet face twitched a trifle and then resolved itself
into business lines once more.

Meringues! they must have meringues!  Nobody
seemed to rise to that.  Elma felt it was her turn.

"They look awfully difficult," said she, "but I
could try a day or two before.  I'll do the meringues."

This cost her a great effort.  Mother didn't appear
at all encouraging, She snipped her lips together in
rather a grim way, and it had the effect of sending a
cold streak of fear up and down the back of the meringue
volunteer.

"Are they very difficult, mummy?" she asked
apologetically.

"Oh, no," said Mrs. Leighton airily.  "After
mayonnaise, one may do anything."

"I can whip cream--beautifully," explained Elma.
"It's that queer crusty thing I'm afraid of."

"I shall be ruined in eggs, I see that very distinctly,"
said Mrs. Leighton.

After this, there seemed to be no proper opportunity
for Betty.

"Couldn't I make a trifle?" she asked modestly.
"A trifle at ten."  Mrs. Leighton looked her over.
"Oh! very well--Betty will make trifle."

Betty looked as though she would drop into tears.
Elma put her hand through her arm and whispered
while the others debated about cakes, "I can find
out all about trifles.  Miss Grace knows.  She made
them cen--centuries ago, and Miss Annie never lets
the new cooks try."

Betty turned on her a happy face.

"Oh, Elma, you're most reviving," she said gratefully.

Then they had cakes to consider.  Now and again
they had been allowed to bake cakes, and they felt
that here they were on their own ground.  Betty revived
in a wonderful manner, and immediately insisted on
baking a gingerbread one.

"Nobody eats gingerbread at parties," said Mabel
in a disgusted voice.  "This isn't a picnic we're arranging,
or a school-room tea.  It's a grown-up party, and we
just aren't going to have gingerbread."

"Yet I've sometimes thought that gingerbread at
a party tasted very well," remarked Mrs. Leighton.

"Oh, mummy!"  Mabel seemed very sorry for her mother.

But Betty had regained her confidence.

"I shall bake gingerbread," she exclaimed in her
most dogged manner.

"There are always the rabbits, of course," said Jean,
with her nose in the air.

"Girls, girls," said Mrs. Leighton.

"Gingerbread one, walnut cream cake another.
What will you bake, Jean?"

"Orange icing," quoth Jean.

"And sponge cake cream for Elma," she added in
a thoughtful way.

"I do like the way you fling all the uninteresting
things at me," exclaimed Elma.  "I think sponge
cake cream is the moistest, flabbiest, silliest cake I
know.  We're putting cream in everything.  Everybody
will be sick of cream.  Why can't I bake a coffee cake?"

"Why can't she?" asked Mrs. Leighton severely.

"Coffee cake, Elma," said Mabel.  She had taken
to paper and pencil.  "I only hope we shall know
what it is when it appears!"

"And you'd better all begin as soon as you can,"
said Mrs. Leighton; "so that we find out where we
are a few days before the party occurs."

She still looked with foreboding on the whole
arrangement.

Cook preserved a hauteur on the subject of the
invasion, through which the girls found it very hard to
break.

"Never seed such a picnic," she informed the
housemaid.  "My, you should have been here when
Miss Betty burned her gingerbread!"

That was a sad occasion, and after all, there was
nothing for it but the rabbits.  Betty moaned over
the lost raisins, the "ginger didn't count."  "I stoned
every one of them," she sighed.  Mr. Leighton found
some brown lumps in the rabbit hutches.  "That's
not the thing for these beasts," he said; "what is
it?"  And Betty explained that it would be quite safe for
them, for (once more) hadn't she stoned every raisin
herself?

"I'm glad you're a millionaire, John," said
Mrs. Leighton grimly when she heard about it.

Elma made Betty try again.  Elma's heart was in
her mouth about her own performances, but she hung
over Betty till a success was secured to the
gingerbread.  Then she couldn't get the kitchen for her
coffee cake, because Mabs, in a neat white apron and
sleeves, was ornamenting a ragged-looking structure
of white icing with little dabs of pink, and trying to
write "Cuthbert" in neat letters across the top.  She
had prepared a small cake--"just to taste it."  They
all tasted.  It seemed rather crumply.

"Isn't there a good deal of walnut in it?" asked
Mrs. Leighton humbly.

"It's nearly all walnut," said Mabel.  "I like walnut."

Jean worried along with her piece.

"Nobody will survive this party," said she.

At last Elma's coffee cake got its innings.  She was
so nervous after the gingerbread fiasco that only the
ultimate good humour of Cook saved her.

"Don't hurry over it, Miss Elma; it's coming nicely.
I'll tell you when to stop beating."

Nothing else would have guaranteed the existence
of the cake.  Cook also saw to the firing.  This gave
Elma such a delightful feeling of gratitude that she
opened out her heart on the subject of meringues.
Cook said that of course it was easy for them "as
had never tried" just to rush in and make meringues
the first thing.  The likes of herself found them
"kittlish" things.  You may make meringues all your
life, and then they'll go wrong for no reason at all.
It was "knack" that was wanted principally.

"Do you think I've got knack, Cook?" asked Elma
humbly.

Cook gave her a clear night in the kitchen for the
meringues, as a reward for her humility.  It was
marvellous that nearly all of them came fairly decently.
Cook found the shapes "a bit queer," but "them as
knew" who was providing the party wouldn't think
they were "either here or there."

"I'll make it up with the cream," quoth Elma
happily.  A great load was off her mind.

She now devoted herself to Betty's trifle.  As a
great triumph they decided to provide a better trifle
than even Cook knew how to prepare.  Miss Grace
entered heartily into the plan.  They were allowed to
call one morning when she was ensconced in the parlour.
Saunders brought in solemnly, first, several sheets of
white paper.  These were laid very seriously on the
bare finely-polished table.  Then came a plate of
sponge cake in neat slices, a thin custard in a glass
jug, several little dishes, one of blanched almonds
cut in long strips, another of halved cherries, one of
tiny macaroon biscuits, and so on.  Miss Grace set
herself in a high chair, and proceedings began.  Elma
wondered to the end of her days what kind of a cook
Miss Grace would have made if she had been paid for
her work.  Everything was prepared for Miss Grace,
but she took an hour and a quarter to finish the trifle.
She added custard in silver spoonfuls as though each
one had a definite effect of its own, and she several
times measured the half glassful of cordial which was
apportioned to each layer of sponge cake.  The
ceremony seemed interminable.  Elma saw how true it
was what her father often said, that one ought always
to have a big enough object in life to keep one from
paying too much importance to trifles.  She
immediately afterwards apologized to herself for the pun,
which, she explained in that half world of dreaming
to which she so often resorted, she hadn't at all
intended.

Elma and Betty, however, to the end of their days,
never forgot how to make trifle.

Betty's trifle was a magnificent success.

Jean engaged a whole fruiterer's shop, as it seemed,
for her salad, and found she made enough for forty
people out of a fourth of what she had ordered.  This
put Mrs. Leighton back into her old prophetic
position.  Had she not told Jean a quarter of that fruit
would be enough?

Mabel arranged everything in good order for her
chicken concoction, and at last had only the mayonnaise
to make.  That occurred on the afternoon of the
party.  Cuthbert and Harry and Mr. Maclean were
all about--supposed to be helping.  May Turberville,
Betty's great friend, and her brother Lance, a boy of
fourteen, brought round various loans in the way of
cups and cream and sugar "things."  The
table in the dining-room was laid for supper with a
most dainty centre-piece decked with roses and
candelabra.  Most of their labours being over, the
company retreated to the smoke-room, where "high jinks"
were soon in process.  Lance capered about, balancing
chairs on his nose, and doing the wild things which
only take place in a smoke-room.

In the midst of it appeared Mabel, wide-eyed and
distressed, at the door.  The white apron of a few
days ago was smeared with little elongated drops
of oily stuff.  She held a fork wildly dripping in her
hand.

"Oh--oh, isn't it awful," she cried, "the mayonnaise
won't may."

It was the last anxiety, and, in the matter of the
pints of the Leighton girls, quite the last straw.  Just
when they had begun to be confident of their party,
the real backbone of the thing had given out.

Dr. Harry removed a cigarette from his lips.

"Hey--what's that?" he asked.  "Mayonnaise--ripping!
I knew an American Johnnie who made it.
Bring it here, and we'll put it right."

Mabel spread her hands mutely.  "In this atmosphere?"
she asked.

Oh!  They had soon the windows open.  Harry
insisted he could make mayonnaise.  "You don't
meet American men for nothing, let me tell you," he
said.  It was fun to see him supplied with plate,
fork and bottles.  He looked at Mabel's attempt at
dressing.

"Good gracious!" he said, "where's the egg?"

Mabel turned rather faint.  "I put in the white," said
she.

Dr. Harry roared.  Then he explained carefully
and kindly.

"Mayonnaise is an interesting affair--apart from
the joys of eating it.  A chemical action takes place
between the yoke of an egg and the oil and vinegar.
You could hardly expect the white to play up."

"It was Cook," exclaimed Mabel.  "She said
something about yokes for a custard and whites
for--for----"

"Meringues, you donkey," said Jean.

Dr. Harry made the mayonnaise.

Lance Turberville cut the most shameful capers
throughout.  He decorated Harry with paper aprons
and the cap of a chef, and stuck his eyeglass in the
wrong eye while Harry worked patiently with a fork
in semicircles.  He was sent off with Betty and May,
only to reappear later dressed out as a maid-servant.
Nobody except Dr. Harry could take the mayonnaise
seriously while Lance was about.  At that moment
the outdoor bell rang.  With the inspiration born of
mischief, and before any one could stop him, Lance
rushed off and opened it.

Three ladies stood on the doorstep.

He showed them solemnly into the drawing-room,
tripping over his skirt merely a trifle, and nearly giving
Bertha, who had primly come to attend to the door,
hysterics.  He advanced to the smoke-room, where
the mayonnaise was nearly completed.

"Mrs. and Miss Dudgeon and Miss Steven are in
the drawing-room," said Lance.





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.. _`Visitors Again`:

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   CHAPTER VII


.. class:: center large

   Visitors Again

.. vspace:: 2

By itself an occurrence like this would have been
unnerving enough.  Visitors on the afternoon of a party,
and such visitors!  But that the Leightons should all
be more or less in a pickle in regard to the mayonnaise
and Lance's foolery seemed to take things altogether
over the barrier of ordinary life, and land everybody
in a perfect fizzle.  The Dudgeons must have called to
see Cuthbert, who had never been down yet on these
occasions when Mrs. Leighton and Mabel and Jean
with perfect propriety had received them.  Mabel had
had her innings as the eldest of the house, but had
retained an enormous reserve when speaking to Miss
Dudgeon.  Not so Jean, who believed in getting to
know people at once.  Elma and Betty had never
ventured near them since that dreadful day when they all
did the wrong thing at the wrong moment.

"Anyhow, the drawing-room is a perfect dream
with flowers.  They can look at that for a bit," said
Jean, as they began to remove the regiment of bottles.
Dr. Harry's mayonnaise was creamy and perfect, and
Mabel was in high fettle correspondingly.

"Do you know," she said, "I don't care tuppence
for the Dudgeons just now.  Let's go in and give
them a decent reception for once."  It reflected the
feeling of all, that nothing could disturb their gaiety
on this day.

Elma was reminded again how right her father was
in declaring that once one had an absorbing object
in front of one, trifles dwindled down to their proper
level.  Why should any of them be afraid of the Story
Books?  Certainly not at all, on a day when they
were about to have a ripping party, and the
mayonnaise at last had "mayed."  Cuthbert gave a big jolly
laugh at Mabel's speech.

"Come along, all of you," he said.  "What about
those oily fingers of yours, Harry?  What a jewel
of a husband you'll be!  You, Lance, get off these
togs and behave yourself."

Lance promised abjectly to be an ornament to the
household for the rest of the afternoon.  Something
in his look as he went off reminded Mabel of other
promises of Lance.

"Be good," she called out to him.

"Yes, mother," exclaimed Lance, evidently at work
already tearing off the skirt, and looking demure and
mournful.  He seemed very ridiculous still, and they
went off merrily to the drawing-room.

"Cuthbert," whispered Elma, "I'm so frightened.
Take me in."

"I'm frightened too," whispered Cuthbert.

This made her laugh, so that as she held on to his
arm she approached Adelaide Maud in admirable
spirits.  The party invaded the drawing-room as a
flood would invade it--or so it seemed to the Dudgeons,
who were talking quietly to Mrs. Leighton.  The whole
room sprouted Leightons.  Mrs. Dudgeon resorted
entirely to her lorgnette, especially when she shook hands
with Cuthbert.  He stood that ordeal bravely, also
the ordeal of the speech that followed.

"You see the two very shy members of the family,"
he said, bowing gravely and disregarding some sarcastic
laughter from the background.  "May I introduce
my young sister Elma."

Here was honour for Elma.  She shook hands with
crimson cheeks.  Then came Adelaide Maud.  She gave
her hand to Cuthbert without a word, but when Elma's
turn came she said with rather sweet gravity, "This is
the little lady, isn't it, who plays to Miss Grace?"

Elma was thunderstruck; but Cuthbert, the magnificent,
seemed very pleased.

"Oh--Miss Grace didn't tell you?" asked Elma.

"No, I heard you one day, and Miss Annie told me
it was you."

Adelaide Maud sat down on a low chair, and drew
Elma on to the arm.

"What was it you were playing?" she asked.

"One is called 'Anything you like,' and one is 'A
little thing of my own,' and the others are just
anything," said Elma.

Adelaide Maud laughed.

The room was filled with chattering voices, and
Mrs. Dudgeon had claimed Cuthbert, so that it became a
very easy thing for them to be confidential without any
one's noticing.

"It's quite stup--stup----"  Elma stopped.

"Stupid?" asked Adelaide Maud.

"No, stup-endous," said Elma thankfully, "for
me to be talking all alone with you."  Her fright had
run away, as it always did whenever any one looked
kindly at her.  The sweet eyes of Adelaide Maud
disarmed her, and she worshipped on the spot.  "I've
always been so afraid of you," she said simply.  "It
ought to be Hermione, but I know it will always be you."

"Who is Hermione?" asked Adelaide Maud.

Elma suddenly woke up.

"Oh, I daren't tell you," said she.

Adelaide Maud looked about her in a constrained way.

"I wish you would play to me, dear," she said.

Was this really to be believed!

"I could in the schoolroom," said Elma, "but not here."

"Take me to the schoolroom," said Adelaide Maud.

Elma placed her hand in that of the other delicately
gloved one without a tremor.

"Don't let them see us go," she begged.

Three people did, however: Cuthbert with a
bounding heart, Mabel with thankfulness that the house
was really in exhibition order, and Jean with blank
amazement.  Elma had walked off in ten minutes
intimately with the flower that Jean had, as it were,
been tending carefully for weeks, and had not dared to
pluck.  There was something of the dark horse about
Elma.

They were much taken up with Miss Steven however.
She was very fair and petite, and had pretty ways of
curving herself and throwing back her head, and of
spreading her hands when she talked.  She seemed to
like to have the eyes of the room fixed on her.  Quite
different from the Dudgeons, who in about two ticks
stared one out of looking at them at all.  Mr. Leighton
came in also, and what might be called her last thaw
was undergone by Mrs. Dudgeon in the pleasure of
meeting him.  If she had her ideas on beaded cushions,
she had certainly no objections to Mr. Leighton.  In
five minutes he was explaining to her that sea trout
are to be discovered in fresh water lakes at certain
seasons of the year.

Unfortunately, just then Mrs. Dudgeon happened
to look out of the windows.  There were three long
ones, and each opened out on that sunny day to the
lawn at the side of the house.  If Mrs. Dudgeon had
kept her eye on the Louis Seize clock or the famous
Monticelli, all might have gone well, but she preferred
to look out of the window.  In spite of the general
hilarity of the party around her, her action in
looking out seemed to impress them all.  Everybody except
Mr. Leighton looked out also, and then came an ominous
silence.

Mr. Maclean giggled.

This formed a link to a burst of conversation.  Jean
turned to Miss Steven and engaged her in a whirlwind
of talk.  Cuthbert vainly endeavoured to move the
stony glance of Mrs. Dudgeon once more in the direction
of his father.  Dr. Harry wildly asked Mabel to play
something.

Mabel never forgave him.

Mrs. Dudgeon immediately became preternaturally
polite, said she had often heard of the musical
proclivities of the Misses Leighton, and Mabel had really
to play.

"Oh, Harry," she exclaimed, "I never played with
a burden like this on my mind, never in all my life.
The party to-night--and that mayonnaise (it will
keep maying, won't it?)--and Elma goodness knows
where with Adelaide Maud, and those kids in the
garden--couldn't Cuthbert go and slay them?"

She dashed into a Chopin polonaise.

The kids in the garden were what had upset
Mrs. Dudgeon.  There were two--evidently playing "catch
me if you can" with one of the maid-servants--the
one who had shown them in.  She rushed about in a
manner which looked very mad.  This exhibition
on the drawing-room side of the house!  Really--these
middle class people!

Mrs. Dudgeon extended the lorgnette to looking at
them once more.

A horizontal bar was erected in a corner of the lawn.
Towards this the eccentric maid-servant seemed to be
making determined passes, frantically prevented every
now and again by the two young girls.  The chords of
the "railway polonaise" hammered out a violent
accompaniment.  Mabel could play magnificently when in a
rage.  Little Miss Steven was enchanted.

Nearer came the maid-servant to the horizontal bar.
At last she reached it.  May and Betty sat down
plump on the lawn in silent despair.  Lance pulled
himself gently and gracefully up.  Not content with getting
there, he kissed his hand to the unresponsive drawing-room
windows.  To do him justice, there was little
sign for him that any one saw him, and Mabel's piano
playing seemed to envelop everything.  He did some
graceful things towards the end of the polonaise,
but with the last chords became violently mischievous
again.  With a wild whirl he turned a partial
somersault.  Mrs. Dudgeon shrieked.  "Oh, that woman,"
said she.  Just then Lance stopped his whirlings and
sent his feet straight into the air.  His skirts fell
gracefully over his face.  Dr. Harry laughed a loud
laugh, and at last Mr. Leighton asked what was the
matter.

"It's Lance," said Jean.  "He has been playing
tricks all the afternoon."

Everything might have been forgiven except that
Mrs. Dudgeon had been taken in.  She had screamed,
"That woman."

She began to look about for Adelaide Maud.

"Will you be so kind as to tell my daughter that we
must be going," she said to Mr. Leighton.

Cuthbert volunteered to look for her.

Dr. Harry really did the neat thing.  He went out
for Lance and brought him in with Betty and May.
He hauled Lance by the ear to Mrs. Dudgeon.

"Here you see a culprit of the deepest dye."

Lance looked very rosy and mischievous, and Miss
Steven, who had been immersed in hysterical laughter
since his exploit on the bar, was delighted with him.

"I am so sorry," said Lance gravely, encouraged by
this appreciation, "but I promised mother that I should
be an ornament to the company this afternoon."

"Oh, Lance," said May, "how can you!"

"By 'mother,' of course I mean Mabel," said Lance
to Mrs. Dudgeon in an explanatory fashion.  "She
has grown so cocky since she put her hair up."

Mrs. Dudgeon determined to give up trying to unravel
the middle classes.

Mr. Maclean broke in.  "Everybody spoils Lance,
Mrs. Dudgeon.  It isn't quite his own fault; look at Miss
Steven."

Miss Steven, always prompt to appreciate a person's
wickedest mood, had made an immediate friend of
Lance.

"They are a great trial to us, these young people,"
said Mr. Leighton gently.

The speech wafted her back to her gracious mood,
and for a little while longer she forgot that she had sent
for Adelaide Maud.

Meanwhile Cuthbert endeavoured to discover what
had happened to that "delicious" person.

With swishing skirts, and gleam of golden hair under
a white hat, Elma had seen herself escort Adelaide
Maud from the drawing-room to the schoolroom.
Adelaide Maud sat on a hassock in the room where
"You don't mean to say you were all babies," and
Elma played "Anything you like" to her.

Adelaide Maud's face became of the dreamy far-away
consistency of Miss Grace's--without the cap, and Elma
felt her cup of happiness run over.

"Does your sister play like that?" asked Adelaide
Maud.

"Far better," said Elma simply.

They heard the bars of the railway polonaise, and the
schoolroom, being just over the drawing-room, they had
also the full benefit of Lance's exploit.

Adelaide Maud laughed and laughed.

"Oh, what will Mrs. Dudgeon say?" asked Elma.

She told Adelaide Maud about the party, a frightful
"breach of etiquette," as Mabel informed her later.
Adelaide Maud's face grew serious and rather sad.

"What a pity you live in another ph--phrase of
society," sighed Elma, "or you would be coming too,
wouldn't you?"

"Would you really ask me?" asked Adelaide Maud.

Ask her?

Did Adelaide Maud think that if the world were made
of gold and one could help one's self to it, one wouldn't
have a little piece now and again!  She was just about
to explain that they would do anything in the world to
ask her, when Cuthbert came into the room.  Adelaide
Maud got so stiff at that moment, that immediately
Elma understood that it would never do to ask her to
the party.

Cuthbert explained that Mrs. Dudgeon had sent
him to fetch Miss Dudgeon.

"Oh," said Adelaide Maud.

She did not make the slightest move towards leaving,
however.

She looked straight at Cuthbert, and Elma could
have sworn she saw her lip quiver.

"I believe I have to apologize to you," she said in
a very cold voice.  "I cut out a dance, didn't I--at the
Calthorps'!"

"Did you?" asked Cuthbert.

Elma wondered that he could be so negligent in
speaking to Adelaide Maud.  She never could bear
to see Cuthbert severe, and it had the effect of terrifying
her a trifle and making her take the hand of Adelaide
Maud in a defensive sort of manner.

Adelaide Maud held her hand quite tightly, as though
Elma were really a friend of some standing.

"I didn't intend to, but I know it seemed like it," said
Adelaide Maud in perfectly freezing tones.

Cuthbert looked at her very directly, and seemed to
answer the freezing side more than the apologizing one.

"Oh--a small thing of that sort, what does it matter"?
he said grandly.

Adelaide Maud turned quite pale.

"Thank you," said she.  "It's quite sweet of you to
take it like that," and she marched out of the
schoolroom with her skirts swishing and her head high.
No--it would never do to invite Adelaide Maud to the
party.

Elma however had seen another side to this very
dignified lady, and so ran after her and took her hand
again.

"You aren't vexed with me, are you?" she whispered.

Adelaide Maud at the turn of the stairs, and just at
the point where Cuthbert, coming savagely behind,
could not see, bent and kissed Elma.

"What day do you go to Miss Grace's?" she asked.

"To-morrow at three," whispered Elma, with her
plans quite suddenly arranged.

"Don't tell," said Adelaide Maud, "I shall be there."

Mrs. Dudgeon departed with appropriate graciousness.
The irrepressible gaiety of the company round
her had merely served to make her more unapproachable.
She greeted Adelaide Maud with a stare, and
strove to make her immediate adieus.  Mr. Maclean,
always ready to notice a deficiency, remembered that
Mr. Leighton had never met Adelaide Maud, and
forthwith introduced her.  Adelaide Maud took this
introduction shyly, and Mr. Leighton was charmed with
her.  With an unfaltering estimate of character he
appraised her then as being one in a hundred amongst
girls.  Adelaide Maud, on her part, showed him gentle
little asides to her nature which one could not have
believed existed.  Mrs. Dudgeon grew really impatient
at the constant interruptions which impeded her exit.

"Mr. Leighton has just been telling me," she said by
way of getting out of the drawing-room, "that a little
party is to be celebrated here to-night.  I fear we detain
you all."  Nothing could have been more gracious--and
yet!  Mabel flushed.  It seemed so like a children's
affair--that they should be having a party, and that
the really important people were actually clearing out
in order to allow it to occur.

Miss Steven said farewell with real regret.

"I don't know when I have had such a jolly afternoon,"
she said.  "I think I must get knocked over oftener.
Though I don't want Mr. Leighton to break his ribs
every time.  Do you know," she said in a most
heart-breaking manner, "I've been hardly able to breathe
for thinking of it.  You can't think how nice it is to see
you all so jolly after all."

When they had got into the Dudgeons' carriage, and
were rolling swiftly homewards, she yawned a trifle.

"What cures they are," she said airily.

Adelaide Maud, in her silent corner of the carriage, felt
her third pang of that memorable afternoon.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`The Party`:

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   CHAPTER VIII


.. class:: center large

   The Party

.. vspace:: 2

Nobody knew how anybody got dressed for the party,
and certainly nobody took any dinner to speak of.  It
was laid in the morning-room, and Mr. Leighton said
throughout that roystering meal that never again, no
matter how many ribs Cuthbert broke or how much
sympathy he excited, would he allow them to have a
party.

The occasion became memorable, not only because
of Cuthbert or the mayonnaise, or the Dudgeons, but
because on that night Robin Meredith appeared.  Mabel
and Jean lately had already in quite a practical manner
begun to wonder whom Mabel would be obliged to marry.
Jean was getting very tall, and showed signs of being so
near the grown-up stage herself, that she was anxious
to see Mabel disposed of, so as to leave the way clear.

"The eldest of four ought to look sharp," she declared;
"we can't allow any trifling."

This seemed rather overwhelming treatment of
Mabel, who was only seventeen.  But viewed from
that age, even a girl of twenty-one is sometimes voted
an old maid, and Mabel was quite determined not to
become an old maid.

"There seems to be only George Maclean," she had
sighed in a dismal way.  She was quite different from
Elma, who continually dreamed of a duke.  George
Maclean would do very well for Mabel, only, as Jean
complained, "George Maclean is a gentleman and all
that kind of thing, but he has no prospects."  So they
rather disposed of George Maclean, for immediate
purposes at least.  Then came Mr. Meredith.  After that,
in the language of the Leightons, it was all up with
Mabel.  She would simply have to get engaged and
married to Mr. Meredith.

Mr. Meredith was of middle height, with rather a
square, fair face, and a short cut-away dark moustache.
He spoke in a bright concise sort of way, and darted very
quick glances at people when addressing them.  He
came in with the Gardiners, and after shaking hands
with Mrs. Leighton he darted several quick glances
round the room, and then asked abruptly of Lucy
Gardiner "Who was the tall girl in white?"

Here was the point where the fortunes of the Leighton
girls became at last crystallized, concrete.  It is all
very well to dream, but it is much pleasanter to be sure
that something is really about to happen.

None of this undercurrent was noticeable, however,
in the general behaviour of that imaginative four.  They
began the evening in a dignified way with music.  Every
one either sang or played.  Jean in her usual hearty
fashion dashed through a "party piece."  Even Elma
was obliged to play the Boccherini Minuet, which she
did with the usual nervous blunders.

As Dr. Harry placed the music ready for her, she
whispered to him, "Whenever I lift my heels off the
floor, my knees knock against each other."

"Keep your heels down," said Dr. Harry with the
immobile air of a commanding officer.

Elma found the piano pedals, and in the fine desire
to follow out Dr. Harry's instructions played Boccherini
with both pedals down throughout.

"How you do improve, Elma!" said May Turberville politely.

And Elma looked at her with a mute despair in her
eyes of which hours of laughter could not rid them.
If only they knew, those people in that room, if only
they knew what she wanted to play, the melodies that
came singing in her heart when she was happy, the
minor things when she was sad!  All she could do when
people were collected to stare at her was to play the
Boccherini Minuet exceedingly badly.  The weight of
"evenings" had begun already to rest on Elma.  Her
undoubted gifts at learning and understanding music
brought her into sharp prominence with her teachers
and family, but never enabled Elma to exhibit herself
with advantage on any real occasion.

It was all the more inexplicable that Mabel could at
once dash into anything with abandon and perfect
correctness.  Technique and understanding seemed born
in her.  In the same way could she, light-heartedly
and gracefully, take the new homage of Mr. Meredith,
who made no secret of his interest in her from the first
moment of entering the drawing-room.  Mabel received
him as she received a Sonata by Beethoven.  With fleet
fingers she could read the one as though she had practised
it all her life; with dainty manners she seemed to
comprehend Mr. Meredith from the start, as though she
had been accustomed to refusing and accepting desirable
husbands from time immemorial.  It put her on a new
footing with the rest of the girls.  They felt in quite
a decided way, within a few days even, that the
old, rather childish fashion of talking about
husbands was to be dropped, and that no jokes were to
be perpetrated in regard to Mr. Meredith.  It began
to be no fun at all having an eligible sister in the
house.

On this night, however, they were still children.
About forty young people, school friends of themselves
and Cuthbert, sustained that gaiety with which they
had begun the afternoon.  Even the musical part,
where Mr. Leighton presided and encouraged young
girls with no musical talents whatever to play and
sing, passed with a certain amount of lightness.  Before
an interlude of charades, a strange girl was shown in.
She giggled behind an enormous fan, and made a great
show of canary-coloured curls in the process.  She
seemed to have on rather skimpy skirts, and she showed
in a lumbering way rather large shiny patent shoes with
flat boys' bows on them.

There was a moment of indecision before Betty broke
out with the remark, "You might have had the sense to
hide your feet, Lance."

The canary-coloured curls enabled Lance to look
becomingly foolish.  In any case, Mr. Leighton could
not prevent the intellectual part of the evening from
falling to bits.  They had no more real music.
Instead, they fell on Lance and borrowed his curls, and
made some good charades till supper time.

"I can't help feeling very rocky about that supper,"
whispered Jean to Mabel.  "Yet we've everything--sandwiches,
cake, fruit and lemonade, tea and coffee.
What can go wrong now?"

"Oh! the thing's all right," said Mabel, who was
in a severely exalted mood by this time.

They trooped into the dining-room, where girls were
provided in a crushy way with seats round the room,
and boys ran about and handed them things.  Mrs. Leighton
gave the head of the table to Mabel, who sat
in an elderly way and poured coffee.  The salad was
magnificent.  Aunt Katharine had come in "to look
on."  Mrs. Leighton told her how Mabel had arranged
forty-two plates that morning, with water-lily tomatoes
cut ready and chopped chicken in the centres, and
had nearly driven Cook silly with the shelves she used
for storing these things in cool places.

"Wherever you looked--miles and miles of little
plates with red water lilies," said Mrs. Leighton.  "It
was most distracting for Cook.  I wonder the woman
stays."

"What a mess," said Aunt Katharine.  "You spoil
these girls, you know, Lucy."

"Oh--it's Mr. Leighton," said she sadly.

"I don't think mayonnaise is a very suitable thing
for young people's parties," said Aunt Katharine
dingily.

By this time the white cake with "Cuthbert" in pink
was handed solemnly round.  Every person had a
large piece, it looked so good.

Every one said, "Walnut, how lovely," when they
took the first bite.

Every one stopped at the second bite.

"Cuthbert," called out Mrs. Leighton after she had
investigated her own piece, "I notice that your father
has none of the cake.  Please take him a slice and see
that he eats it."

Mr. Leighton waved it away.

"I do not eat walnuts," said he.

Mrs. Leighton went to him.

"John, this is not fair, this is your idea of a party,"
she said.  "You ought to eat Cuthbert's cake."

"He can't," cried Jean; "nobody can.  It's only
Mabel who likes iced marbles."

"You will all have to eat gingerbread," said the voice
of Betty hopefully.

Jean started up in great indignation with a large
battered-looking "orange iced cake" ready to cut.

"Betty always gets herself advertized first," she
complained.  "Please try my orange icing."

They did--they tried anything in order to escape
Mabel's walnuts.  It occurred to the girls that Mabel
would be quite broken up at the wretched failure of
her wonderful cake--the Cuthbert cake too.  It was
such a drop from their high pedestal of perfection.
Even mummy, who had been so much on her own high
horse at all their successes, now became quite feelingly
sorry about the cake.  She gave directions for having
the loose pieces collected and surreptitiously put out
of sight, but the large dish had to remain in front of
Mabel.  Mabel was still charmingly occupied over her
coffee cups.  She poured in a pretty direct way and
yet managed to talk interestedly to Mr. Meredith.  He
was invaluable as a helper.

"And now, at last," said she in a most winning
manner, "you must have a slice of my cake.  I baked
it myself, and it's full of walnuts.  Don't you love
walnuts?"

"I do," said Mr. Meredith.

May Turberville nudged Betty, and Lance stared
open-mouthed at the courage of Mabel.  He would do
a good deal for the Leighton girls, but he barred that
particular cake.  An electric feeling of comprehension
ran round the company.  They seemed to know that
Mabel was about to taste her own cake and give a large
slice to Mr. Meredith.  They made little airy remarks
to one another in order to keep the conversation going,
so that Mabel might not detect by some sudden
pause that every one was watching her.  One heard
Julia Gardiner say in an intense manner to Harry
Somerton that the begonias at Mrs. Somerton's were
a "perfect dream."  And Harry answered that for
his part he liked football better.  Even Mr. Leighton
noticed the trend of things, and stopped discussing
higher morality with Aunt Katharine.

Mabel seemed to take an interminable time.  She
gave Mr. Meredith a large piece, and insisted besides
on serving him with an unwieldy lump of pink icing
containing a large scrawly "e" from the last syllable of
Cuthbert's name.

"E--aw," brayed Lance gently, and Betty exploded
into a long series of helpless giggles.

"What a baby you are, Lance," said Mabel, amiably
laughing.  She bit daintily at the walnut cake.

Mr. Meredith bit largely.

There was an enormous pause while they waited to
see what he would do.

Cuthbert and Ronald Martin were near, aimlessly
handing trifle and fruit salad.  Mr. Meredith helped
with one hand to pass a cup.

"You know, Leighton," he said, "I have a great
friend, he was one of your year--Vincent Hope--do
you remember him?"

Cuthbert stared.  One mouthful was gone and
Mr. Meredith was cheerfully gulping another.

"What a digestion the man has," he thought, and
next was plunged politely in reminiscent conversation
regarding his College days.

Mabel sat crunching quite happily at the despised
walnut cake.

Lance approached her timidly.

"For Heaven's sake," he said, "give me a large cup
of coffee for the ostrich.  The man will die if he isn't
helped."

"Who on earth do you mean, Lance?" asked Mabel
innocently.

"Meredith.  Don't you see he has eaten the cake."

Mabel looked conscience-stricken.  Her own slice
had not dwindled much.

"It is rather chucky-stoney, isn't it?" she asked
anxiously.

"It's terrific," said Lance sagely.

Mabel looked quite crushed for a moment, so crushed
that even Lance's mischievous heart relented.

"Never mind, Mabel," he comforted her.  "If Meredith
can do that much for you without a shudder, he
will do anything.  It's a splendid test."

A golden maxim of Mrs. Leighton's flashed into
Mabel's mind, "You never know a man till he has
been tried."  It made her smile to think that already
they might be supposed to be getting to know
Mr. Meredith because of her villainous cake.

"The piece we tested wasn't so bad," she explained
to Lance, quite forgetting that she had skimmed that
quantity in order to get plenty of chopped walnuts into
the "real" cake.

A few people in the room seemed fearfully amused,
and poor Mabel in an undefined manner began to feel
decidedly out of it.  Lance went about like a
conspirator, commenting on the appearance of "the
ostrich."  He approached Cuthbert, asking him in
an anxious manner how long the signs of rapid poisoning
might be expected to take to declare themselves after
a quadruple dose of walnut cake.  Mr. Meredith
unruffled, still handed about cups for Mabel.

Jean was in a corner with her dearest friend Maud
Hartley.

"Isn't it wonderful what love can do?" she remarked
quite seriously.  It was a curious thing that Elma, who
dreamed silly dreams about far-away things, and was
despised for this accordingly by the robust Jean, did
not become romantic over Mr. Meredith at all.  She
merely thought that he must be fearfully fond of walnuts.

The supper was hardly a pleasure to her--or to
Betty.  Every dish was an anxiety.  They could almost
count the plates for the different courses in their desire
to know whether each had been successfully disposed of.
There was no doubt about the trifle.

"What a pity Mabel didn't make it," sighed Jean.
After all, Mabel had only inspired the chicken salad,
and even there Dr. Harry had made the mayonnaise.

"It isn't much of a start for her with Mr. Meredith,"
she sighed dismally, "if only we hadn't told anybody
which was which."

Mr. Meredith took a large amount of trifle, praising
it considerably.

This alarmed Lance more than ever.

"One good thing does not destroy a bad thing," he
exclaimed.  "The first axiom to be learned in chemistry
is that one smell does not kill another.  It is a popular
delusion that it does.  Meredith seems to have been
brought up on popular lines."

He posed in front of Cuthbert with his hands in his
pockets.

"We are running a great risk," said he.  "To-morrow
morning Meredith may be saying things about
your sisters which may prevent us men from being
friends with him--for ever."

Above the general flood of conversation, Aunt
Katharine's treble voice might now be heard.

"Mabel," she said in a kind manner, "I must
compliment you.  When your mother told me about this
ridiculous party, I told her she was spoiling you as she
always does.  In my young days we weren't allowed
to be extravagant and experiment in cooking whenever
a party occurred.  We began with the 'common round,
the daily task.'"  Aunt Katharine sighed heavily.
"But I never knew you could make a trifle like this."

Mabel had been sitting like the others, trying to
subdue the merriment which Aunt Katharine's long
speeches usually aroused.  The wind-up to this tirade
alarmed her however.  She would have to tell them
all, with Mr. Meredith standing there, that the trifle
was not her trifle.  She would have to say that it
was Betty's.

Before she could open her mouth however, the whole
loyal regiment of Leightons had forestalled her.

"Isn't it a jolly trifle!" they exclaimed.  Mabel
could even hear Betty's little pipe joining in.

"Oh, but I must tell you," she began.

Cuthbert appeared at the doorway.

"Drawing-room cleared for dancing," said he.
"Come along."

That finished it, and the girls were delighted with
themselves.  But one little melancholy thing, for
all her partisanship, disturbed Jean considerably.
Mr. Meredith, on giving his arm to Mabel for the first
dance, was heard distinctly to remark, "You make
all these delicious things as well as play piano!  How
clever of you."

And Mabel looking perfectly possessed floated round
to the first waltz as though she had not made a
complete muddle of the walnut cake.

Jean did not regret their generosity, but she was
saddened by it.

"It all comes of being the eldest," she confided to Maud,
"We may stand on our heads now if we like, but if
anything distinguished happens in the family, Mabel
will get the credit of it."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`At Miss Grace's`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER IX


.. class:: center large

   At Miss Grace's

.. vspace:: 2

Miss Grace sat crocheting in her white and gold
drawing-room and Elma played to her.  Then the
front door bell rang.

"Oh please, Miss Grace," said Elma with crimson
cheeks, "that is Adelaide Maud."

"She isn't coming, I hope, to disturb our afternoons,
and your playing," asked Miss Grace anxiously.

"Oh, Miss Grace, she has eyes like yours and listens
most interrogatively," said Elma in the greatest alarm.
The fear that Miss Grace might be offended only now
assailed her.

"Intelligently, dear," corrected Miss Grace.

"I never did truly think she would come," said Elma.

"Then, dear, it was not very polite to invite her."  Miss
Grace could not bear that Elma should miss any
point in her own gentle code of etiquette.

"In justice to little Elma, I invited myself."  The
full-throated tones of Miss Dudgeon's voice came to
them from the door.  "And what is more, I said to
Saunders, 'Let me surprise Miss Grace, I do not want
to disturb the music.'"

"And then of course the music stopped," said Miss
Grace.

She kissed Adelaide Maud in a very friendly way.

"Oh, but it will go on again at once, if neither of
you are offended," said Elma.  She was much relieved.

"You must not be so afraid of offending people,"
said Miss Grace.  "It is a great fault of yours, dear."

As Adelaide Maud bent to kiss her, Elma was
struck with the justice of this criticism.

"I believe I might be as fascinating as Mabel if
only I weren't afraid," she thought to herself.  The
reflection made her play in a minor key.

"Just let me say a few words to Miss Grace," had
said Adelaide Maud.  "Play on and don't mind us
for a bit."

Adelaide Maud spoke to Miss Grace in an undertone.
Elma thought they did it to let her feel at ease, and
correspondingly played quite happily.

"I have seen Dr. Merryweather," said Adelaide
Maud to Miss Grace.  "He says you must go off for
a change at once."

"Dr. Merryweather!"

Miss Grace turned very pale.

"Exactly.  I did it on my own responsibility.  He
was most concerned about you.  He said that what
Dr. Smith had ordered you ought to carry out."

"He was always very hard on Annie," said Miss
Grace, who saw only one side to such a proposal.

Adelaide Maud bent her head a trifle.

"You ought not to think of Miss Annie, at present,"
said she.  "It isn't right.  It isn't fair to her either,
supposing you turn really ill, what would become of
her?"

Neither noticed the lagging notes on the piano.
Instead, in the earnestness of their conversation, they
entirely forgot Elma.

Miss Grace shook her head.

"I can't help it," she said.  "Whatever happens
to me, I must stay by my bed-ridden sister.  Who
would look after her if I deserted her?  What is my
poor well-being compared to hers!"

The notes on the piano fell completely away.  Elma
sat with the tears raining down her face.

"Oh, Miss Grace," she said brokenly, "are you
ill?  Don't say you are ill."

The sky had fallen indeed, if such a thing could be
true, as Miss Grace in a trouble of her own--and such
a trouble--ill health--when Miss Annie required her
so much.

Adelaide Maud looked greatly discouraged.

"Now, Elma," she exclaimed abruptly, "Miss Grace
is only a little bit ill, and it's to keep her from getting
worse that I'm talking to her.  We didn't intend you
to listen.  Miss Annie will wonder why the piano has
stopped.  Be cheerful now and play a bit--something
merrier than what you've been at."

She pretended not to see that Miss Grace wiped her
eyes a trifle.

"I make you an offer, Miss Grace.  I shall come
here every day and stay and be sweet to every one.  I
shall take Miss Annie her flowers and her books
and her work, and I shall bark away all nasty
intruders like a good sheep dog.  I shall keep the
servants in a good temper--including Saunders who
is a love, and I promise you, you will never regret
it--if only you go away for a holiday--now--before
you have time to be ill, because you didn't take the
thing at the start!"

(Could this be Adelaide Maud!)

Elma flung herself off the music stool, and rushed
to Miss Grace.

"And oh, please, please, Miss Grace, let me go with
you to see that you get better.  You never will unless
some one makes you.  You will just try to get back
to Miss Annie."  Thus Elma sounded the first note
of that great quality she possessed which distinguished
the thing other people required and made her anxious
to see it given to them.

A break in Miss Grace's calm determination occurred.

"Oh that, my love, my dear little love, that would
be very pleasant."  She patted Elma's hand with
anxious affection.

Adelaide Maud looked hopeful.

"Won't you leave it to us?" she asked, "to Dr. Smith
to break it to Miss Annie, as a kind of command,
and to me to break it to Mr. Leighton as an abject
request?  Because I believe this idea of Elma's is
about as valuable as any of mine.  You must have
some one with you who knows how self-denying you
are, Miss Grace.  You ought to have Dr. Merryweather
with you in fact, to keep you in order."

"My dear, how can you suggest such a thing," said
Miss Grace.  She was quite horrified.

"Dr. Smith," she turned to Elma, "has ordered
me off to Buxton, to a nasty crowded hotel where
they drink nasty waters all day long."

"They don't drink the waters in the hotel, and
the hotels are very nice," corrected Miss Dudgeon.

"It will be very hot and crowded and dull," wailed
Miss Grace.  It was astonishing how obstinate Miss
Grace could be on a point where her own welfare was
concerned.

Elma clasped and unclasped her hands.

"A hotel!  Oh, Miss Grace, how perfectly lovely!"

"There, you see," said Miss Dudgeon, wonderfully
quick to notice where her advantage came in, "you
see what a delightful time you will confer on whoever
goes with you.  Some of us love hotels."

Perhaps nobody ever knew what a golden picture
the very suggestion opened out to Elma.  Already
she was in a gorgeous erection with gilt cornices and
red silk curtains, like one she had seen in town.  People
whom she had never met were coming and going and
looking at her as though they would like to speak to
her.  She would not know who their aunts or cousins or
parents were, and she shouldn't have to be introduced.
They would simply come to Miss Grace and, noticing
how distinguished she looked, they would say, "May
I do this or that for you," and the thing was done.
She herself would be able to behave to them as she
always behaved in her daydreams, very correctly
and properly.  She would never do the silly
blundering thing which one always did when other people
were well aware of the reputation one was supposed
to bear.  Didn't every one at home know, before
she sat down to play piano for instance, that she
invariably made mistakes.  Jean would say, "Oh, Elma
gets so rattled, you know," and immediately it seemed
as though she ought to get rattled.  Nobody in the
hotel would know this.  She saw herself playing to
an immense audience without making a single mistake.
Then the applause--it became necessary to remember
that Miss Grace was still speaking.

Miss Grace sat with her hands folded nervously.
She was quite erect in a way, but there was invariably
a pathetic little droop to her head and shoulders which
gave her a delicate appearance.  A very costly piece
of creamy lace was introduced into the bodice of her
grey gown, and on it the locket which contained Miss
Annie's portrait and hair rose and fell in little agitated
jerks.  Miss Annie wore a corresponding locket
containing Miss Grace's portrait and hair, but these always
lay languorously on her white throat undisturbed
by such palpitation as now excited Miss Grace.

"Oh, my dear," she said to Miss Dudgeon, "you
don't understand.  The gaiety of the place is nothing
to me.  It's like being here--where my friends say
to me how nice it is to have windows opening on to
the high road, where so many people pass.  I tell
them that it isn't those who pass, it is those who
come in who count.  You passed for so long, my dear."

She put her hand mutely on that of Adelaide Maud.

It was true then.  Miss Grace hadn't known her
all these years when the Leighton girls talked about
the Story Books so much, but only recently!  The
Dudgeons must really be coming out of their shell.

Elma's eyes grew round with conjecture.

Why was Adelaide Maud so friendly now?

"It was really Dr. Merryweather," said Adelaide Maud.

A faint flush invaded Miss Grace's pallor.

"It is most kind of Dr. Merryweather.  Years ago,
I am afraid we rather slighted him."

"Oh well, he keeps a very friendly eye on you, Miss
Grace, and he says you are to go to Buxton."

It became the first real trouble of Miss Grace's own
life, that she should have to go to Buxton.  Adelaide
Maud arranged it for her, otherwise the thing would
never have occurred.  It was she who persuaded
Dr. Smith to put it this way to Miss Annie that it would
be dangerous for her to have the anxiety of Miss Grace's
being ill at home, and most upsetting to the household.
It was better that the excursion should be looked upon
as a holiday graciously granted by Miss Annie, the
donor of it, than an imperative measure ordered by
the doctor for the saving of Miss Grace.

Miss Grace wondered at the ready acquiescence of
Miss Annie.  She seemed almost pleased to let her
sister go.  In a rather sad way, Miss Grace began to
wonder whether, after all, she might not have
released herself years ago.  Would Annie have minded?
The progress of this malady which now asserted itself,
she had quietly ignored for so long, that only a darting
pain, which might attack her in the presence of Miss
Annie, had compelled her to consult Dr. Smith.  He was
astonished at what she had suffered.

"You do not deserve to have me tell you how
fortunate it is that after all we have nothing malignant
to discover," he told her.  "But you will become
really ill, helpless occasionally, if you do not take this
in hand now."  Just after he had gone, Adelaide
Maud called.  She came to ask for money in
connection with the church, but she stayed to talk over
Miss Grace's symptoms.  The grey shadow on Miss
Grace's face had alarmed her.

"Aren't you well, Miss Grace?" she asked sympathetically.
Then for the first time since Miss Annie
had gone to bed, Miss Grace had given way and
confessed what the trouble was to Adelaide Maud.

It became astonishing to think how rapidly things
could happen in so tiny and so slow a place.

Here they were now, in a happy confidential trio,
the moving inspirator that smart, garden-party person,
Adelaide Maud.

The Leighton girls could not believe it.  They had,
with the exception of Elma, reached a hopeless
condition with regard to the Story Books.  The Dudgeons
had so palpably shown themselves, even although
graciously polite throughout, to be of so entirely
different a set to the Leightons.  None of the girls except
Adelaide Maud had called.  And after what Cuthbert
had done!  Elma certainly felt the difference that
might occur where Miss Grace and Miss Annie were
concerned.  "Why haven't we a footman and an odd
man?" asked Jean viciously.  "Then it would be
all right."

Now came the invitation for Elma to go with Miss Grace.

Both Mr. and Mrs. Leighton were greatly touched.
Mr. Leighton put his hand on Elma's shoulder.

"When you can make yourself indispensable to
your best friends, that is almost as great a thing as
playing the Moonlight Sonata without a mistake,"
said he.

But both Mrs. Leighton and he refused to let Elma
go.  They called on Miss Grace to explain.  The fact
that they had left Elma in a state of despair that
bordered on rebellion made them more firm.

"Elma is so young," said Mrs. Leighton, "and so
highly strung and sensitive, I can't let her go with an
easy mind.  She has visited so seldom, and then
invariably lain awake at nights with the excitement.
It wouldn't be good for you, Miss Grace.  I should
have you both very much on my mind."

Adelaide Maud was there.

"I see your point, Mrs. Leighton," she said brightly.
"But Elma knows Miss Grace so well, wouldn't it be
just like going with you or Mr. Leighton."

Mr. Leighton interposed.

"It's more for the sake of Miss Grace.  She must
have some one regarding whom she does not require
to be anxious.  Elma is a dreamy little being, and
might turn home-sick in an hour, or frightened if Miss
Grace were a little ill--anything might occur in that
way."

"But she is nearly thirteen.  Some day she must
be cured of home-sickness, and Miss Grace will take
her maid," said Adelaide Maud.  "Oh, Mr. Leighton,
don't hold in your daughters too much!  It's so hard
on them later."

Adelaide Maud looked quite pathetic.

"It isn't so with all of them," said Mrs. Leighton.
"Jean is quite different.  Jean can go anywhere."

Underneath Mrs. Leighton's kind, loving ways lay
a superb respect for the domineering manners of her
second daughter.

"I should never be afraid of Jean's lying awake at
night, or turning home-sick.  She is much too sensible."

Miss Grace became impressed with the virtues of Jean.

"Then Jean might come," she proposed apologetically.

Adelaide Maud could not forgive her.  After having
awakened that radiant look in Elma's eyes, to weakly
propose that she might take the robust Jean!

Mrs. Leighton's eyes wandered to her husband.

"Jean grows so fast.  Perhaps a change would do
her good," she suggested vaguely.

"I should feel much more confident of Jean," said he.

So it was arranged.

Elma never forgot it.  She wept silently in her
room, and accepted comfort from no one, not even her
mother.

"There is one thing, Jean oughtn't to have said
to mother she would go.  She put that in her mind
before mother went out.  I knew it was all up then.
Jean will always get what she wants, all her life, and
I shall have to back out.  Just because I can't play
sonatas without mistakes they think I cannot do anything."

Elma found Betty's shoulder very comforting.

A remark of Adelaide Maud's rankled in Mr. Leighton's
mind.  He was not altogether happy at having
to act the dragon to Elma in any case.  Adelaide Maud
had got him quietly by herself.

"Don't let little Elma begin giving up things to
those sisters of hers too soon, Mr. Leighton.
Unselfishness is all very well.  But look at the helpless
thing it has made of Miss Grace."

Then she relented at sight of his face.

"I'm almost as disappointed as Elma, you see,"
she said radiantly.

Mr. Leighton tried to put it out of his mind, but
Elma, sobbing in her bedroom, had at last reached a
stage where she couldn't pretend that nothing had
hurt her, a stage where the feelings of other people
might be reckoned not to count at all.  It was an
unusual condition for her to be in.  She generally
fought out her disappointments in secret.  Her father
came to her finally, and began smoothing her hair in
a sad sort of way.

"You aren't looking on your own father as your
worst enemy?" he asked her kindly.

Elma's sobs stopped abruptly.

"I was," she said abjectly.

It was part of the sincerity of her nature that she
immediately recognized where the case against
herself came in.

"I'm sorry about Jean," said Mr. Leighton.  "It
didn't strike me at the time that it would be such a
treat to either of you, you see.  And we chose the one
who seemed most fitted for going with Miss Grace."

"Mabel might have gone," wailed Elma.

Mabel!  Not for a moment had the claims of
Mabel been mentioned.  Mr. Leighton was completely
puzzled.

Elma in an honourable manner felt that probably
she might be giving away Mabel to an unseeing
parent.  Mabel wanted, oh very much, to stay at home
just then.

"But of course Jean wanted to go," she said hurriedly.
"more than Mabel did."

"Some day you will all have your turn," said Mr. Leighton
consolingly.  "I know it's very dull being
at home with your parents!  Isn't it?"

Elma laughed a little.

"It isn't that," she said, "but it would be
lovely--in a hotel--with a maid, you know--of your own!
Such fun--seeing the people.  And Miss Grace wanted me."

Mr. Leighton stroked her hair.

"I liked her wanting you.  I shall never forget that,"
said he.

"Oh!"  Elma gave a little gulp of pleasure.  This
was worth a great deal.  There was really nothing on
earth like being complimented by one's father.  She
sidled on Mr. Leighton's knee and put her arms round
his neck.  He still stroked her hair.

"You must remember that it isn't only in hotels
that you see life," he said, "or on battle-fields that
you fight battles.  It's here at home, where one
apparently is only sheltered and dull.  It's always easy to
get on for a day or two with new, or outside friends.
But it's your own people who count.  Don't make
it disagreeable for Jean to go with Miss Grace."  His
voice came in the nature of a swift command.  After
all, her mother and father had arranged it, and the
consciousness came down on her of how she slighted
those two, dearer than any, in being so rebellious.

"I won't," said Elma.  Quite a determined little
line settled at her quivering lips, "But I never felt
so bad in my life."

"Oh well, we shall see what can be done about that,"
said Mr. Leighton.  And it pleased him more than a
battle-field of victories could have done to see Elma
come into her own again.

"Do you think you could try the Moonlight Sonata
now?" he asked abruptly, looking at his watch.

It was his hobby that he must keep at least one
girl at the piano in the evenings.

"Not without a lot of mistakes," said Elma.

But she played better that night than she had ever
done.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`Compensations`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER X


.. class:: center large

   Compensations

.. vspace:: 2

Miss Grace brought home a delicate silver purse and
a silver chain set with torquoise matrix from Buxton
for Elma.

Mr. Leighton shook his head over the pretty gift.

"Bribery and corruption," said he.

But by that time Elma's soul had soared far above
the heights or depths of triumph or pettiness in
connection with the sojourn of Miss Grace.  Life had been
moving swiftly and wonderfully.  Jean indeed came home
from hotel life, full of stories of its inimitable
attractions; and nobody, although longing to be, had really
been much impressed.  Jean served to mark the
milestone of their own development, that was all.  She
had left at one stage and come back at another.  Where
she had imagined their standing quite still, they had
been travelling new roads, looking back on their
childish selves with interest.

Mabel and Elma had been thrown much together,
and Mabel had grown to depend on the silent loyalty
with which Elma invariably supported her in the
trying time now experienced in connection with
Mr. Meredith.  Where Jean, bolt outright, complained that
already Mabel had known him for a month or two,
and yet no hint of an engagement could be discovered,
Elma sympathized with Mabel's horror of any
engagement whatever.

"It would be lovely to have a ring, and all that kind
of thing," Mabel had confided.  "But fancy having
to talk to papa and mamma about it!"

It did not impede her friendship with Mr. Meredith
however.  He had found a flower which he intended
to pluck, and he guarded it to all intents and purposes
as one from which he would warn off intruders.  But
the reserve which made Mabel sensitive in regard to
anything definite, her extreme youth, above all the
constant espionage of her parents and sisters, led him
to a tacit understanding of his privileges, a situation
appalling to the business-like Jean.

"If I had had my hair up, I should have had two
proposals at Buxton," said she, and the remark became
historic.

Cuthbert put it in his notebook.  Whenever he
wanted to overcome the authority of Jean he produced
and read it.  She found her family a trifle trying on
her arrival.  She wanted to be able to inform them
how they should dress, and had a score of other things
ready to retail to them.  Yet most of them fell quite
flat, just as though she had had no special advantages
in being at Buxton.

Mr. and Mrs. Leighton talked this over together.

"It makes me think," said Mrs. Leighton, "that
you are not altogether wrong in crowding them up at
home here.  Jean got variety, but she seems to have
lost a little in balance."

"Still, that is just where experience teaches its
lesson," said Mr. Leighton.  "To get balance, one must
have the experience.  Yet Mabel, in an unaccountable
manner, seems to be perfectly balanced before
she has received any experience at all."

"Ah!  I expect she will still have her experiences,"
said Mrs. Leighton in her pessimistic way.  "No girl
gets along without some unpleasant surprise.  Betty
is longing for one.  Betty complains that in story books
something tragic or something wonderful happens to
girls whenever they begin to grow up, but that nothing
happens in this place.  Nobody loses money--if you
please--and nobody gets thrown out on the world in
a pathetic manner to work for a living, for instance."

"Do they want to work for their living?"

"They do want to be sensational," said Mrs. Leighton
with a sigh, "and as Elma says, 'We are neither
rich enough nor poor enough for that.'"

"Thank providence," said Mr. Leighton.

His girls were much more of a problem to him than
the direct Cuthbert, who had shown a capacity for
going his own way rather magnificently from the
moment he had left school.  Mr. Leighton was determined
to give his girls an object in life, besides the ordinary
one of getting married.  "There is great solace in
the arts," he had often affirmed, making it seem
impossible that a girl should look on the arts as ends in
themselves, as a man would.  "A girl must be trained
to interruptions," he used to declare.  He made rather
a drudge of their music in consequence of these theories
in connection with a career, but the hard taskmaster
in that direction opened a willing indulgence in almost
any other.  It alarmed him when Mr. Meredith
appeared so conspicuously on the scene, when Mr. Meredith's
sister called and invited Mabel to dine, when
invitations crossed, until the Merediths and themselves
became very very intimate.  Elma had the wonderful
pleasure of being allowed to accompany Mabel.  In the
absence of Jean, she fulfilled that sisterly position in a
loyal way, loving the exaltation of going out with Mabel,
becoming very fond of the Merediths in the process.
They had only recently come from town to live near
the Gardiners, and the whole place did its duty in
calling on them.  There were only Mr. Meredith and his
sister, and both were of the intensely interesting order
rather than of the frank and lively nature of the like
of the Leightons.  Mr. Meredith sang, and Miss
Meredith's first words to Mabel were to the effect that he
no longer wanted his sister to play for him after having
had the experience of Mabel as an accompanist.

"Aren't you glad papa made us musical?" asked
Betty of Mabel after that compliment.

Mabel was glad in more ways than one.  But it
seemed a little hard that just then Mr. Leighton should
insist on her going in for a trying examination in the
spring.

"When she ought to be getting the 'bottom drawer'
ready," complained poor Jean.

Nothing moved for Jean in the family just as she
expected.  She began to wonder whether she shouldn't
go out as a governess.  *Jane Eyre* had always enthralled
her.  It was one way of seeing life, to be very
down-trodden, and then marry the magnificent over-bearing
hero.

As a companion to Miss Grace, she had been a great
success.  Indeed, even Adelaide Maud was bound to
confess that Jean had been just the person to go with
Miss Grace.  Jean, in spite of her Jane Eyre theories,
was so down on self-effacement.  Her frank direct
ways were the best tonic for a lady who had never at
any time been courageous.  Miss Grace wrote
continually to Elma, "Jean has been very good in doing
this--or that," until Elma, swallowing hard lumps
of mortification, had at last to believe that she never
could have done these determined, cool-hearted things
for Miss Grace in the same capable manner.  She often
wondered besides whether, even to have had the delight
of being at Buxton, she could have dropped the glamour
of finding a new sister in Mabel, and of being the daily
companion of Adelaide Maud.  For the time had
now come, when, on being shown into Miss Annie's
drawing-room, her duke, clean-shaven and of modern
manners, had ceased to be really diverting, and in
fact often forgot to attend to her in the pause when
she awaited the coming of Adelaide Maud.

Adelaide Maud kept her word.  She reigned as
vice-queen over Miss Annie's household, indulging that lady
in all her little whims, for Miss Grace's sake, and never
omitted a single day for calling and seeing that Miss
Annie was comfortable.  Adelaide Maud had theories
of her own.  She said that every one in Ridgetown
attended to the poor, but that she believed in
attending to the rich.

"Now who would ever have looked after Miss Grace
if we hadn't?" she asked Elma.

Mrs. Dudgeon imagined she had other reasons for
being so devoted to Miss Annie, and considered that
Helen wasted her time in applying so much of it to
a bedridden invalid.

"Whom do you see there?" she asked stonily.

"Principally Saunders," said Helen, whose good
temper was unassailable.  "Saunders is a duck."

The "duck," however, was a trifle worried with
these changes, "not having been accustomed to sich
for nigh on twenty-five years, mum," as he explained
to Mrs. Leighton.

But the great boon lay in the restored health of Miss
Grace.  She came home shyly as ever, but with a fresh
bloom on her face.  What withered hopes that trip
recalled to life, what memories of sacrificial days gone
by, what fears laid past--who knows!  She was very
gentle with Miss Annie, and boasted of none of her
late advantages as Jean did.  Indeed, one might have
thought that the events of the world had as usual
taken place in Miss Annie's bedroom.  But, with a
courage born of new health and better spirits.  Miss
Grace called one day on Dr. Merryweather.  In a
graceful manner, as though the event had only occurred, she
apologized to him for the slight offered by Miss Annie.

"I hope you know that you still have our supreme
confidence," she said.  "It was your kind interest
which persuaded me to go to Buxton."

Dr. Merryweather seemed much affected.  He shook
her hand several times, but his voice remained gruff
as she had always remembered and slightly feared it.

"You must be exceedingly careful of yourself, Miss
Grace," he said bluntly, "Miss Annie has had too much
of you."

Too much of her.  Ah, well, she could never reproach
herself for having spared an inch of her patience, an
atom of her slender strength.

"Remember," said Dr. Merryweather, "courage
does not all lie in self-sacrifice, though"--and he looked
long at the kind beautiful eyes of Miss Grace--"a
great deal of it is invested there."

He held her hand warmly for a second again, and
that was the end of it.  Miss Grace went home fortified
to a second edition of her life with Miss Annie.

Adelaide Maud gave up her semi-suzerainty over the
masterful Saunders with some real regret.  It was fun
for her to be engaged in anything which did not entail
mere social engagements.  Miss Annie liked her
thoroughly, liked the swirl of her tweed skirts, the
daintiness of her silk blouses, the gleam of her golden hair.
Adelaide Maud had straight fine features, pretty mauve
eyes ("They are mauve, my dear, no other word
describes them," she declared), very clearly arched
eyebrows, and "far too determined a chin."  "Where
did you get your chin?" asked Miss Annie continually.

"My father had the face of an angel.  It wasn't
from him," said Adelaide Maud.  "I have my mother
to thank for my chin."

"Well, Heaven help the man who tries to cross you,
my dear," said Miss Annie, who had a very capable chin
of her own, as it happened.  The tired petulant look of
the invalid only showed at the droop to the corners of
her mouth.

Elma could no longer interest Adelaide Maud in
Cuthbert.  It seemed as though he had no further
existence.  Until one day when she told her that Cuthbert
had an appointment which would last throughout
the summer, and keep him tied to town.  Then the
chin of Adelaide Maud seemed to resolve itself into less
chilly lines.

"Oh, won't you miss him?" she suddenly asked.

Adelaide Maud was the most comprehending person.
She pulled Elma to her and kissed her when Elma said
that it wasn't "missing," it simply wasn't "living"
without Cuthbert.

"I'm so sorry you quarrelled with him," she said to
Adelaide Maud.

Adelaide Maud grew stonily angry.

"Quarrel with him?" she asked.

It reminded Elma of the Dudgeon's first call

"Oh, please don't," she cried in alarm.

"Then I won't," said Adelaide Maud, "but will
you kindly inform me when I quarrelled with your
brother Cuthbert."

It was exactly in the tone of one who would never
think of quarrelling with the Leighton set.  Elma
grew quite pale, then her courage rose.

"He thinks such a lot of you, and you don't think
anything of him.  Just as though we weren't good
enough!"

"Oh, Elma," said Adelaide Maud.

"And he likes you, and keeps things you drop, and
you won't even speak to him."

"Keeps things I drop!"

The murder was out.

"Oh, I promised not to tell, how awful."

Adelaide Maud grew very dignified.

"What did I drop?  Oh!  I think I remember--my
handkerchief!"

Mrs. Dudgeon had reflected openly on the fact that
it had never been returned to Helen.

"I wanted to keep it till we saw you again, but he
said he would give it to you when you were nice to him,
or something like that."

"Till I was nice to him!"  The chin dimpled a trifle.

"Somehow, I would rather he kept it," said Adelaide
Maud dreamily.

"Shall I tell him that?" asked Elma anxiously.

"Tell him--what nonsense!  You mustn't tell him
a syllable.  You mustn't say you've told me.  It
would be so ignominious for him to hear that I knew
he had been thieving!  Thieving is the word," said
Adelaide Maud.  Although she talked in a very
accusing manner, her voice seemed kind.

"Mayn't I tell him you didn't mean to quarrel?"
asked Elma anxiously.  "You don't know what you
are to all of us."

Here she sighed deeply.

"No," said Adelaide Maud, "you mustn't tell him
anything.  I think he must just wait as he suggested,
until I am nice to him."

"Until you deserved it, he said," cried Elma,
triumphantly, remembering properly at last.  "I knew
it was something like that."

"Then he may wait until he is a hundred," said
Adelaide Maud with her face in a flame.

It was difficult after this ever to talk to Adelaide Maud
about Cuthbert with any kind of freedom or pleasure.

Elma went home that evening in the bewilderment
of an early sunset.  Bright rays turned the earth golden,
the leaves on the trees laid themselves flat in heavy
blobs of green in yellow sunlight, the sky faded to a
glimmering blue in the furthermost east.  A shower
of rain fell from a drifting cloud and the drops hit in
large splotches, first on Elma's hat, on her hand, and
then in an indefinite manner stopped.  As she turned
into her own garden, the White House seemed flooded
in a golden glow of colour.

Then at last they heard thunder in the distance.

Elma never forgot that shining picture, nor the
thunder in the distance.  It seemed the picture of
what life might be, beautiful and safe in one's own
home, thunder only in the distance.  The threatening
did not alarm her, but the remembrance of it always
remained with her.  When thunder really began to
peal for the Leighton family, she tried to be thankful
for the picture of gold.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`The Split Infinitive`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XI


.. class:: center large

   The Split Infinitive

.. vspace:: 2

Guests at the Leightons' were divided into two classes.
There were those who were friends of Mr. Leighton,
and who therefore were interested in art, or literature,
or science, or public enterprise, but were not expected
to go further; and there were those who came in a
general way and who might be expected to be interested
in anything from a game of tennis to a tea party.  Of
the first might be reckoned the like of Mr. Sturgis, who
painted pictures in a magnificent manner, and who,
at the end of a large cigar, would breathe the heresies
on the teaching of art which for ever paralyzed the
artistic abilities of Elma.  Mr. Sturgis was quite young
enough for an Aunt Katharine public to quote his
eligibility on all occasions.

"You don't understand, Aunt Katharine," Mabel
told her once.  "Nobody seems to understand that
a man, even a young man, may adore papa without
having to adore us at the same time.  Mr. Sturgis is
quite different from your kind of young man."

"Different from Robin, I suppose," sighed Aunt
Katharine.

"Yes, quite different from Robin," said Mabel
sedately.  Robin had certainly from the first put
Mr. Leighton into the position of being his daughter's
father.  Mr. Sturgis, on the other hand, found his first
friend in Mr. Leighton because he had such a nice
discriminating and most sympathetic enthusiasm for
Art.  Besides which Mr. Leighton had the attributes
of an exceptional man in various respects.

The girls put Mr. Sturgis on the same high plane
as their father and admired him openly accordingly.
But there were others whom they put on this plane by
reason of their accomplishments and yet did not admire
at all.

Amongst these was the "Split Infinitive."

The first call on the part of Professor Theo. Clutterbuck
was one never to be forgotten.  He found a roomful
of people who, so far as his own attitude to them
was concerned, might have been so many pieces of
furniture.  Mr. Sturgis had at least the artist's
discrimination which made him observe one's appearance,
and he also allowed one to converse occasionally;
but Dr. Clutterbuck rushed his one subject at
Mr. Leighton from the moment of his entrance, and after
that no one else existed.

"What more or less could you expect from the father
of the Serpent?" asked Betty.

Lance was responsible for the nickname.

The Serpent, the elf-like daughter of the Professor,
staying next to the Turbervilles, had introduced
herself in a violent manner long ago to Betty and Elma.
Sitting one day, hidden high in the maple tree, she
cajoled her cat silently over the Turberville wall and
from a wide branch sent him sprawling on a tea table.
From the moment that the black cat drew a white
paw from the cream jug, and a withering giggle from
the maple tree disclosed the wicked little visage of the
Serpent, war had been declared between the Clutterbucks
and the Turbervilles.  Lance occasionally
removed the barrier and met the Professor in company
with his own father.

"An awful crew," his verdict ran.  "The Past
Participle (Mrs. Clutterbuck) can't open her poor
little timid mouth but the Split Infinitive is roaring
at her.  Consequently she keeps as silent as the grave."

"Will you kindly explain?" said Mrs. Leighton
patiently.  "It's a long time since I studied grammar
in that intimate way.  What is the Split Infinitive
and why the Past Participle?"

"It's like this, Mrs. Leighton, simple when you
know--or when you are married to a brute like Clutterbuck,"
said Lance mischievously.  "I beg your pardon.
I know I ought to say that he is a genius and all that
sort of thing.  But 'brute' seems more explicit."

"Go on with your story," said Mrs. Leighton.

"Well--Clutterbuck married Mrs. Clutterbuck."

"That's generally the end of a story, isn't it?" asked Jean.

Lance was not to be interrupted.

"Trust a boy for gossip," exclaimed Betty.  "Fire
away, Lance."

"My aunt knew them," said Lance.  "She, Mrs. C.,
was a little dear, awfully pink and pretty you
know, and Clutterbuck, a big raw thin thing with wild
sort of hair and dreamy manners.  Well, they were
awfully proud and pleased with themselves, and started
off for their honeymoon like two happy babies."

"Will you kindly tell me how you knew this?" asked
Mrs. Leighton helplessly.

"I heard my aunt telling my mother," said Lance.

"There's a gleam in your eye which I don't quite
trust," Elma remarked sedately.  "Go on."

"Everything went well," exclaimed Lance, "until
one morning when Mrs. C., all rosy and chiffony
you know, said 'My dear Theo, I don't remember
to ever have been so happy.'  Clutterbuck rose from
the table, as pale as death.  She cried, 'Theo, Theo,
tell me, what is wrong?'  'Wrong,' cried Professor
Clutterbuck, 'you have used the Split Infinitive!'
Gospel, Mrs. Leighton," said Lance as a wind-up.
"She's been the Past Participle ever since."

There was this amount of truth in Lance's story:
that Dr. Clutterbuck was distinguished in his own
career as Professor of Geology, that his English was
irreproachable; and that Mrs. Clutterbuck had
practically no English, since she was hardly ever known to
speak at all.  She shunned society; and the same
introspective gaze of the Professor, which had skimmed
the Leighton drawing-room and found there only the
striking personality of Mr. Leighton, skimmed his
own home in a like abstracted manner, and took no
notice of the most striking personality in
Ridgetown--Elsie, his daughter.

It was the black cat episode which precipitated
the nickname of "The Serpent."  Lance had always
declared that this girl had an understanding with
animals which was nothing short of uncanny.  He
happened to read *Elsie Venner*, and the names being
alike, and temperament on similar lines, he
immediately christened her the Serpent.  He caught her
out at numberless pranks which were never reported
to the diligent ears of Betty and May.  One was that
she had climbed to his bedroom and purloined a suit
of clothes.

There was no end to what might be expected of
this lonely little person.

Years ago, Betty and May had turned their backs
on her in the cruel haphazard manner of two friends
who might easily dispose of an outsider.  Betty and
May despised the Serpent because she "had a cheap
governess," "couldn't afford to go to school," and
"wore her hair in one plait."

The lonely little Serpent never properly forgave
these insults.

Mrs. Leighton did not wholly encourage Lance in
his tale.

"I do not think I approve of your being so down
on these people," she said: "and if there is any truth
in what you say, it is very tragic about poor
Mrs. Clutterbuck, though she does not strike me as being
a very capable person."

"Capable," asked Lance.  "Who could remain
capable, Mrs. Leighton, with a cold tap continually
running freezing remarks down one's back.  Don't
you think it's a miracle she's alive?"

Mrs. Leighton preferred to remain on her smooth
course of counsel.

"It never does to judge people like that," she
exclaimed.  "You do not know.  To put it in a selfish
manner, one day you may find the Clutterbucks being
of more service to you than any one on earth."

She pulled at her knitting ball.

"You girls talk a great deal of romance and
nonsense about people like the Dudgeons.  Why don't
you think something nice about that poor little
Serpent for a change?"

The girls remembered not very long afterwards the
prophetic nature of these remarks.  That they should
cultivate the Clutterbucks for any reason at all,
however, seemed at that moment impossible.

Dr. Merryweather called the same afternoon.

It was one of the coincidences of life that he should
immediately talk of the Clutterbucks.

"Know them?" he asked.  "I think your husband
does, doesn't he?  Do you call on the wife at all?"

"No," answered Mrs. Leighton.  "I never feel
that I could get on with her very well either.
Mr. Leighton meets the Professor and they talk a lot
together, but it's quite away from domestic matters."

"It would be a bit of a kindness, I think," said the
old Doctor, "your calling, I mean.  There's too little
public spirit amongst women, don't you think?"

"Oh, wouldn't it be a little impertinent perhaps
to call, in that spirit?" asked Mrs. Leighton.

"Well, I don't know.  The child is running wild.
The parents are a pair of babies where healthy
education is concerned.  Result, the child has no friends,
and expends her affection, she has stores of it, on her
animals.  A dog gets run over and dies.  What do
you get then?  She never squeaks.  Not a moan,
you observe.  But she sits up in that tree of hers
with a cat to do any comforting she may want--and
her hair begins to come out in patches."

Mrs. Leighton's knitting fell to her lap.

"Her hair is coming out in patches?" she asked in
a horrified voice.

"Yes.  What else would you have when a child
is allowed to mope.  Something is bound to happen.
Clergymen are of use when a child's naughty.  But
when it mopes itself ill, we are called in.  Yet it's a
clergyman's task after all.  This child, on the way
to being a woman, has never had one friend.  Her
mother is too timid to be really friendly with any one,
and the husband is wrapped in his dry-as-dust
philosophy--and where are you with a tender child like
that?"

"But if Mrs. Clutterbuck can't be friendly with
any one, why should I call?" asked Mrs. Leighton
hopelessly.

"Your girls might become friendly with the child,"
said he.  "I'm afraid I don't make a very good clergyman."

"They call her the Serpent, you know," said
Mrs. Leighton, "very naughty of them.  I shall do my
best, Doctor.  I didn't know her hair was coming
out in patches."

Dr. Merryweather might be complimented on his
new profession after all.  It had been a master stroke
to refer to the patches.  Mrs. Leighton had known
of its happening after illness or great worry.  That
a child should suffer in this quiet moping manner
seemed pathetic.

"Yet, I don't think I'm the person to do a thing
of this sort," Mrs. Leighton said hopelessly to Miss
Meredith later in the day.  "I do so object to intrude
on people.  I should imagine it indelicate of any one
else to do the same to myself, you know."

"Very awkward, certainly," replied Miss Meredith
primly.

"Oh, mummy," said Elma, "you know how kind
Miss Grace is or Miss Annie.  They say 'Isn't Betty
a little pale at present?' and you get her a tonic.
You think nothing of that.  It's just the same with
the Clutterbucks.  Betty ought to behave herself
and go and call with you, and get the Serpent to come.
I think she looks a jolly little thing."

Elma was quite alone in that opinion.

"Jolly!" said Jean, "you might as well talk of a
toadstool's being jolly.  Still, Betty isn't a child.
She shouldn't be squabbling.  Betty ought to call."

"You know Dr. Clutterbuck, wouldn't you call
on his wife?" asked Mrs. Leighton of Miss Meredith.

"Oh, I'm afraid I don't know him well enough.
Robin rather dislikes him--and, well, we have no
young people, you see."

Miss Meredith was lame but definite.

"Then the sooner the better.  Betty and I call
to-morrow," said Mrs. Leighton.

They did, and to their astonishment found Mrs. Clutterbuck
dimly but surely pleased.  Nobody remained
timid very long in Mrs. Leighton's kind presence, and
the mutual subject of days long ago when it was no
crime to talk of babies, broke the ice of years of
reserve in Ridgetown with Mrs. Clutterbuck.  The
Serpent, after many pilgrimages on the part of the
one maid to the garden, finally appeared.  Mrs. Clutterbuck's
restraint returned with the evident unwillingness
of Elsie's attitude.  Both retreated to the dumb
condition so trying to onlookers.

The Serpent indeed paid Betty out for many months
of torture.  Her calm, disconcerting gaze never wavered,
as she watched every movement of that ready enemy.
Mrs. Leighton made her only mistake in showing
definitely that she wanted to be kind to Elsie.  That
little lady's pale visage looked fiercely out at her and
chilled the words that were intended to come.

It was as Betty described it a most "terrifying
interview."

In the midst of it came a telegram to Mrs. Clutterbuck.

"Oh, you will excuse me," said she nervously.  "We
are expecting a friend."

During the interval of opening the envelope Elsie
disappeared.  It had the effect of warming
Mrs. Clutterbuck to confidences once more.

"It is a great pleasure to me," said she.  "My
young cousin is coming.  He is quite a distinguished,
man.  All Dr. Clutterbuck's people are distinguished,
but my family are different.  Except Arthur, whom
Dr. Clutterbuck is quite pleased to meet.  He is
coming to-night."

She called the maid.

"Tell Miss Elsie it is the 5.40 train.  Mr. Symington
comes then."

She had a halting, staccato way of picking her small
sentences, as though insecure of their effect.

"People enjoy coming to Ridgetown," said Mrs. Leighton
lamely, in the endeavour to keep the wheels
of conversation oiled more securely.

"Do they," asked the Professor's wife.  Then she
stammered a trifle.  "A--a--that is--I have never
had a visitor in Ridgetown till now.  Dr. Clutterbuck
does not care for visitors.  Arthur is different
from what others have been, I hope."

She seemed full of anxiety.

"Oh, I gave up long ago trying to please Mr. Leighton
with my visitors," said Mrs. Leighton heartily
and quite untruthfully.  "Husbands must take their
chance of that, you know."  She rose to go.

"Please tell Dr. Clutterbuck he is never again to
come to see us without you," she said, "and won't
Elsie come to tea one day?"

On their departure Mrs. Clutterbuck turned to find
a blazing little fury in the doorway.

"Mother," cried Elsie, "Mother!  How could you!
I shall never go to tea with Betty Leighton."

Her mother turned two eyes full of light on her.
The light slowly died to dull patience again.

"We shall go down together to meet cousin
Arthur," she said quietly.  It seemed as though her
bright thoughts must turn to drab colour
automatically where either her husband or child was
concerned.

It was characteristic of Elsie that, although blazing
with wild anger and wicked little intentions, she should
be unable to give voice to them at that moment.  The
inevitable obstinacy of her mother where the routine
of the house was concerned, the drab colour of the
one day which was invariably like the other, the cruel,
cruel sameness of it all!  It was impossible that
Cousin Arthur should not be drab colour also.

"I'd rather remain here," she said at last.  There
was even some pleading in her tone.

"Your father said we had better meet Cousin Arthur,"
said her mother.

That was the remorseless end and beginning to
everything.  "Your father said" meant days and
weeks and years of drab colour.

"Oh, let us go then," said Elsie.  There was a
drowning hopelessness in her voice, so great an
emptiness that it was hard to believe she had merely used
the words--"Let us go then."

Her mother accepted the answer without the sigh
which burned in her heart because it had no outlet.

They proceeded to get ready to go out.

Mrs. Leighton and Betty by this time were chatting
easily enough at the Merediths'.  Mrs. Leighton had
the feeling of an inexperienced general after a very
indefinite victory.

"I do not possess the talent of inflicting myself
gracefully on people," she said, "and the child is quite
extraordinary.  However, I liked the mother; she
is a dear little woman."

Miss Meredith was only partially interested.

She arranged to walk home with them, and they set
out in rather a slow manner.

"I can quite believe the child would be different in
other surroundings," said Mrs. Leighton.  "What a
fine-looking man!"  The one remark ran into the
other automatically.  In later days it seemed
prophetic that the two people should be mentioned in one
breath.

Mrs. Leighton was passing the station where arrivals
from the train occurred.  A cab was drawn up, and
into this a sunburned, athletic-looking young man
put some traps.  Then he handed in Mrs. Clutterbuck
and Elsie.

Betty was greatly impressed.

"It must be Mr. Symington," said she.

"Well, for a timid lady, she has a very man-like
cousin," exclaimed Mrs. Leighton.  "I don't wonder
she was allowed that one visitor at least."

Miss Meredith turned her head carefully to a more
slanting angle, when she clearly saw the carriage drive
past.

"Do you know, Mrs. Leighton," she said quite
nimbly and happily, "it seems very hard that she
should not have all the visitors she wants.  Dr. Merryweather
is quite right.  None of us have any public
spirit.  I think I shall call on her to-morrow."

So Miss Meredith also called on Mrs. Clutterbuck.





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.. _`The Burglar`:

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   CHAPTER XII


.. class:: center large

   The Burglar

.. vspace:: 2

That Miss Meredith should turn in a moment from
being freezingly uninterested in the Professor's wife,
to being more friendly than any one else, seemed from
one point of view very noble and distinguished, from
another puzzling and peculiar.

"It's a little dis-disconcerting," said Elma at Miss
Grace's.  "We were so pleased at first when Miss
Meredith pointed out our talents to us.  Now she is
pointing out Mrs. Clutterbuck's.  And you know,
last week, we didn't think Mrs. Clutterbuck had any
talents at all."

"Ah--that is one of our little tragedies," said Miss
Grace simply.  "That we are obliged to outlive the
extravagance of new friends."

"Do you think Miss Meredith won't keep it up
where we are concerned?" asked Elma anxiously.  "It
would be a little sad if she didn't, wouldn't it?  Like
deceiving us to begin with; and now she may be
deceiving Mrs. Clutterbuck."

"Oh, I don't know.  She may work wonders with
the Professor.  It must be pure goodness that prompts
her, dear."

"She must be used to being taken coldly," said
Elma.  "The Professor glares at her, and Elsie charges
straight out to the back garden every time she calls."

"Is Mr. Symington there now?" asked Miss Grace.

"No, he left in two days.  Papa was charmed with
him.  He and the Professor and papa had an evening
together when we were all at the Gardiners, and
Mrs. Clutterbuck came too.  Papa says Mr. Symington
will make a name for himself one day.  He is coming
back to Ridgetown for a summer, some time soon, he
liked it so much."

If only for the sudden interest taken by the
Merediths in the Clutterbucks, it seemed necessary that
they should become very much a part of the Leightons'
life just then.  But nothing could thaw the demeanour
of Elsie.  Dr. Merryweather found her improved slightly,
but there were signs that she fretted inordinately.
Nothing she did was what other girls did, and she
was quite beyond the abstracted influences of her
parents.

Adelaide Maud met the Professor.

"I hear you have a perfect little duck of a daughter,"
said she airily.

"Ha, hm," exclaimed the Professor, quite irresponsible
in the matter of English for the moment.  He
had no real words for such a situation.

"Aren't you awfully proud of her?" asked Adelaide Maud.

The Professor recovered.  That word "awfully!"  It
made him forget this new version of his daughter.

"So you are also in this conspiracy," whispered
Lance afterwards to Adelaide Maud.  "It's no good.
A bomb under that fanatic is all that will move him."

But in the meantime Elsie made some moves for herself.

The Leightons were interested in their own affairs.
Cuthbert was away, and Mr. Leighton had to make
a run to London.  He took Mabel with him and that
occurrence was exciting enough in itself.  As though
to show up the helplessness of a family left without
a man in the house, however, one night the maids
roused every one in alarm.  A burglar, it seems, was
trying to get in at the pantry window.  The girls,
who were getting ready for bed, went quaking to
their mother's room.  Very frightened and most
carefully they made their way to the vicinity of
the pantry.  There was certainly to be heard a faint
shuffling.

"See'd him as plain as day, Miss, leaning up against
the window.  He moved some flower pots, and stood
on 'em."

"Lock the kitchen door, telephone for the police,
and light the gas," said Jean in a strained whisper.

She immediately obeyed her own orders by telephoning
herself in a quick deep undertone, "Man at the pantry
window trying to get in."

Then she took the taper from the shaking hands of Betty.

"I've read in *Home Notes* or somewhere that when
burglars appear, if you light up they get frightened and
go away."

They had roused Aunt Katharine who had come as
company for a night or two and had gone to bed at
half-past nine.

"What's the good of frightening them if you've
sent for the police?" asked Aunt Katharine.  "Better
let them get caught red-handed."  She invariably
objected to being roused from her first sleep.

"Oh goodness," wailed Betty.  "It sounds like
murder."  She felt quite thrilled.

The maids cowered shivering in the passage.

"I heard them flower pots again, Miss.  'E's either
got in or--'e's----"

They distinctly heard the pantry window move.

"Well, the door between is locked," said the quiet
voice of Mrs. Leighton, "and the police ought to be
here very soon now."

Jean took the curlers out of her hair.

"I wish they would hurry up," said she.

Elma got under Aunt Katharine's eiderdown.

"I may as well die warm," she remarked with her
teeth chattering.

There was not much inclination to jokes however,
and Elma's speech was touched with a certain abandonment
of fear.  The situation was very trying.  When
the police did arrive and ran at a quick, stealthy run
to the pantry window, they waited in terror for the
expected shuffle and outcry.

"It's really awful," whispered Betty, clinging in
despair to her mother.

"I can't think why they are so quiet," said
Mrs. Leighton.  "I think I must open the kitchen
door."

"Oh, ma'am, please, ma'am."  Cook at last became
hysterical.  "Don't move that door, ma'am; we've
had scare enough.  Let 'em catch 'em themselves."

Betty sat down on the stairs and leant her head on
her hands.

"They must be arresting them," she said, "with
handcuffs.  And papa said they always have to read
over the charge.  They must be reading over the charge
now, I think."

"In the dark!" said Aunt Katharine with a certain
eloquent sniff.

"They have lanterns, dark lanterns.  Isn't it
beautiful?" said Betty.

She rose in her white dressing-gown.

"Listen," said she.

The door-bell suddenly clanged.  Every one screamed
except Mrs. Leighton.

"I do wish you would keep quiet," said she.  "The
police will think we are being murdered."  She moved
to the door.  But again she was arrested by piercing
directions.

"Talk to them at the window, mummy.  They
might be the burglars themselves.  How are we to
know?  Do talk at the window."

"I'm extremely cold," said Mrs. Leighton, "and
I'd rather ask them in whoever they are, than talk to
them at an open window."

By the time she had finished, however, Jean, the
valiant, had the window open and had discovered a
policeman.  They had "scoured the premises," he
said, and no thief was to be found.  Mrs. Leighton
wrapped herself in an eiderdown quilt.

"Will you come in, please, and open my kitchen
door?  Cook thinks they may be there," she said.

With deep thankfulness they let in the policeman.
A sergeant appeared.  He was very sympathetic and
reassuring.  "Best not to proceed too quickly," he
said in a fat, slow way.  "I have a man still outside
watching.  So if 'e's 'ere, Miss, we'll catch 'im either
way.  A grand thing the telephone."

He unlocked the door, and thoroughly investigated
the kitchen.

"No signs," said he, "no signs."

The Leightons recovered some of their lost dignity
and crowded in.  Only Jean however had the satisfaction
of hair in order and curlers discarded.  How
brave of Jean to remember at that dreadful moment of
burglars in the house!

The sergeant had gas lighted and looked extremely
puzzled.

"'E 's been 'ere right enough," said he.  "Window
open right enough.  Was it fastened?"

He turned about, but the chief evidence had departed.
With the advent of the policeman, cook and retinue
had suddenly remembered their costumes.  Like
rabbits they had scuttled, first into the larder for
cover, then into their own rooms, where they donned
costumes more suitable for such impressive visitors.
Mrs. Leighton's eye twinkled when she found cook
appear in hastily found dress.

"Did you leave the window unfastened, cook?"
she asked.

Cook was sure.  "It was a thing as 'ow I never
forgot, ma'am, but this one night----"

Well, there seemed to be some uncertainty.

Elma's eyes during this were straying continually
to a piece of notepaper lying on a table.  First she
thought, "It is some letter belonging to the maids."  Then
an impelling idea that the white paper had some
other meaning forced her to pick it up.  Every other
person was engaged in watching the search of the
sergeant and listening to his words.

"Some one has been right in this 'ere kitchen.  It's
the doors and windows unlatched that do it.  Many
a time since I've been here as sergeant, I've said to
myself, 'We'll 'ave trouble yet over these unlatched
windows.'"

"We have been so safe," complained Mrs. Leighton.
"The poor people here too--so respectable and hard-working!"

"Drink, ma'am, drink," said the sergeant dismally,
"you never know what it will do to a man."

He turned his lantern in his fat fingers.

"Oh," said Aunt Katharine with a sudden gasp,
"I could stand a plain thief, hungry, may be, but
master of himself.  But a drunk man--it's dreadful."

She shivered and looked into corners as though one
of the thieves might be asleep there.  The sergeant
and his companion made a thorough search of the house.

None of them noticed Elma who sat as though cast
in an eternal shiver and who surreptitiously read the
scrap of notepaper.

"The Trail."  That was all that was written in words
but nimbly drawn on a turned back corner was a snaky,
sinuous serpent.  It had the eyes and the accusing
glare of the expression of Elsie.

Elma wondered how far she might be right in
keeping that document while the fat sergeant followed
up his cues, and described the burglar.  He was
six feet at least it seemed, to have got in at the
window where he did.  "Flower pots or no flower
pots, no smaller man could have done it."  "Fool,"
thought Elma.  "Elsie, who can climb a drain pipe,
drop from a balcony, skim walls.  Elsie had a way of
which he doesn't know."

One thought that ran through her mind was the
wickedness of any one's having called Elsie by such a
name as the Serpent, and the tragedy of her having
found it out.  There was some excuse for this latest
wickedest prank of all.  The daring of Elsie
confused her.  What girl would be so devoid of fear as
to move out at eleven at night and act the burglar?
None of their set had the pluck for it, to put it in the
baldest way.  The idea that she might have been
caught by the fat sergeant appalled Elma.  She saw
the scornful, wilful eyes of the Serpent dancing.  Would
she care?  Yet she was the girl who had moped for
the death of her dog till "her hair came out in patches."

She was still staring at the trail of the Serpent when
the sergeant had finished his "tour of safety."  After
all, it might not have been a prank of Elsie's.  It
might have been a six-foot burglar.  This accusing
serpent--well, one couldn't go on a thing of that sort.
It would be so amusing too that they were had practically
out of bed in such a panic.  Aunt Katharine looked
very worn and disturbed.  She would never forgive a
practical joke.  Elma held the paper tight, and down
in her sympathetic, plaintive little soul felt she could
never accuse a fly, far less a sensitive wicked little
mischief like Elsie Clutterbuck.

She could not help laughing at themselves.  But
after all, who was looking after that wild child now?
She nearly asked the sergeant to make his way home
by the side lane by which she now knew Elsie had come.
Then the certainty that this self-satisfied person with
his six-foot burglar would never make anything of this
slippery fearless little elf burglar kept her silent.

The sergeant finished his tour with great impressiveness.
They were informed they might safely go to bed.
A man or two would be about to see that no one was
hanging round at all.  It was very ridiculous to Elma.
"After all," remarked the sergeant, "you are very
early people.  It is only eleven o'clock now.  Hardly
the dead of night, ma'am!"

"We are generally less early of course," said
Mrs. Leighton, "but we were alone to-night.  Mr. Leighton
and my son are away."

"Ah, bad," remarked the sergeant.  "It looks as
though our friend had an inkling to that effect."

Elma thought the interview would never be over.

It was best to say nothing, or Mrs. Leighton would
have had the town searched for Elsie.  It was best in
every way to crumple tight that incriminating paper
and wonder why in the wide world Elsie had done it.

She met the Serpent the following day.  There was
an impish, happy look of mischief on that usually savage
little face.  Miss Meredith had been retailing to her
mamma the terrific alarm which the Leightons had
experienced on the previous evening.  She met Elma
full face and the smile on her lips died.

"Why did you do it?" asked Elma bluntly as though
she had known the Serpent all her life.  The Serpent
glared blandly at Elma, then fiercely resumed her
ordinary pose.

"You came to my house, or your mother did, to
take me out of myself--charity-child sort of visit, you
know.  I heard of that, never mind how.  I came to
you to take you out of yourselves.  I rather fancy I
did it--didn't I?"

The ice of reserve had been broken at last and the
Serpent was stinging in earnest.

Elma could only gaze at her.

"You think I'm a kind of 'case,' I suppose.  Some
one to feel good and generous over.  Just because my
hair is coming out in patches.  Well, it's stopped
coming out in patches but I still have a few calls
to pay."

"Weren't you afraid last night?" asked Elma in
complete wonder.

They had moved into a shadow against the wall.

"Afraid," blazed the Serpent, and then she trembled
as though she would fall.

"Don't," cried Elma sharply, "don't faint."

"I nearly did--last night.  I nearly did.  It was
dreadful going home.  Who knows that it was I who
was there?"

"I do," said Elma, "that's all."

"Don't tell a soul," wailed the burglar.  "You
won't, will you?  I know it was awful of me, but
such fun up to the moment, when--when I heard them
moving inside.  Then my legs grew so weak and it
was like a dream where you can't get away.  You
shouldn't have called me the Serpent."

"We didn't," said Elma.  "Not in the way you
mean.  But because you seemed to know about animals
in a queer way--like Elsie Venner.  Lance said she
was half a snake, but just because she knew about
snakes.  It's difficult to explain."

"Lance?" asked the Serpent.

"Yes, why don't you speak to Lance now and then?"

"I pay him a higher compliment," said the queer
little Serpent.  "I wore his clothes last night."

"Oh," said Elma.  "Oh! yet you could faint to-day--or
nearly so."

"Isn't it wicked," said the Serpent.  "A boy wouldn't
have given in.  They do much worse, and don't give
way at the knees, you know.  I only opened the window
and threw in the note.  It was nothing.  I meant you
just to be puzzled.  I was there early and couldn't
find a suitable window or a door, so I waited till the
maids went to bed.  They left a little window half open."

"Mamma ought to dismiss cook," said Elma primly.

It was a streak of the sunlight of confidence which
did not illuminate the Serpent again for many days
to come.  Elma, however, at the time, and until she once
more met the scornful glare of reserve habitual to that
person, felt as though she had found a friend.  They
said good-bye in fairly jocular spirits, and Elma
rushed home to give at least her "all-to-be-depended-upon"
mother the news.

When she entered the drawing-room, however, Jean
was describing the burglary to a company of people.
Little shrieks and "Ohs" and "Oh, however did you
do it?"  "I should have died, really I should," were
to be heard.

Jean's burglar was six feet two by this time and he
had an "accomplice."

Elma thought she would choose another occasion on
which to give her news to Mrs. Leighton.





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.. _`A Reconciliation`:

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   CHAPTER XIII


.. class:: center large

   A Reconciliation

.. vspace:: 2

Mr. Leighton was very sympathetic over the burglar.
He heard of the occurrence in two ways, first in the
fiery excited recital of Jean, and then in confidence
from Elma.  Mrs. Leighton was there also.

"Well, I never!" she said.  "That poor little lonely
soul stealing about at night! it's dreadful."  She never
thought for a moment of how foolish it made the rest
of them seem.

"She isn't at all afraid of the dark, or the woods, or
storms, or anything of that kind," said Elma.  "She
loves being out with her black cat when it's pitch dark.
But she's terrified now of policemen, and I don't think
she will ever call properly on us all her life.  She's
perfectly savage with us."

Mr. Leighton stroked his hair in a preoccupied manner.

"One has to beware of what I should call professional
goodness," he said mildly.  "It's pleasant,
of course, to feel that one does a nice action in being
kind to the like of that stormy little person.  But
when she detects the effort at kindliness!  Well, one
ought sometimes to think that it must be humiliating
to the needy to be palpably helped by the prosperous.
There are various kinds of wealth, not all of them
meaning money.  This child has had no affection.  Naturally
she scorns a charitable gift of it.  It's almost a slight
on her own parents, you know."

"There," said Mrs. Leighton in a dismal way, "I
told Dr. Merryweather I disliked intruding.  It was
an intrusion."

"Oh, it will be all right," replied Mr. Leighton.
"Don't plague the child over this romp of being a
burglar, that's all.  And don't patronize her," he said
to Elma.  "Give her a chance of conferring something
herself.  It's sometimes a more dignified way of
finding a friend."

Elma felt some of her high ideas of reclaiming the
serpent topple.  Miss Grace had advised differently.
"Be kind and helpful," she had declared.  Now her
father seemed to think that it was the serpent's task
to be the generous supporting figure.  It made Elma
just a little wild with that blazing little serpent Elsie.

For a year and a half their friendship with the serpent
existed over crossed swords.  She recovered in health,
but the routine of her life never wavered.  The force
of habit in connection with her mother, that the
Professor's tempestuous irritable habits should rule the
house and that she should be kept quaking in a silence
which must not be broken, could not be dispelled even
by the diligent visits of Miss Meredith.  Adelaide
Maud drew off after the first encounter with the Professor.
"I'm afraid that there will just have to be a tragic
outburst every time Mrs. Clutterbuck says 'a new pair
of shoes' instead of 'a pair of new shoes,'" said she,
"nothing can save her now."

Soon the efforts of Dr. Merryweather were forgotten
in the impenetrable attitude of the whole family.

At the end of eighteen months, most of Ridgetown
was collected one day for a river regatta at a reach
a few miles up from the town.  Every one of any
consequence except Lance, as Betty put it, was present.
They rowed in boats and watched the races, picnicked
and walked on the banks.  One wonderful occurrence
was the presence of Mrs. Clutterbuck and the Serpent.
Mr. Symington had appeared once more and done something
this time to penetrate the aloofness of their existence.
He had come once or twice to the Leightons'
with the Professor.

The girls put this friend of their father's on a new
plane.

He could be engrossed in talk with their father and
the Professor, and yet not gaze past the rest of the family
as though they were "guinea pigs."

They now knew Mr. Sturgis well enough to tell him
that he thought nothing more of them than that they
were a land of decorative guinea pig.  Mr. Symington,
however, who had not seen them grow out of the childish
stage, but had come on them one memorable evening
when the picture of them, for a new person, was really
something rather delightful to remember--Mr. Symington
was immediately put on a pedestal of a new order.
The difference was explained to Robin, who growled
darkly.  "It's perfectly charming to be received with
deference by the man who is splendid enough to be
received with deference by our own father," explained
Jean.  "Don't you see?"

Robin saw in a savage manner.  He had never been
on this particular pedestal.  With all his sister's
enthusiasm for Mr. Symington, he could see little to like in
that person.

Mr. Symington studied in lonely parts of the world
the wild life an ordinary sportsman would bring down
with his gun.  He was manly, yet learned.  Delightfully
young, yet stamped with the dignity of experience.
Robin in his presence felt a middle-aged oppression
in himself, which could not be explained by years.

He was particularly galled by his sister's persistence
in keeping near the Clutterbuck party on the Saturday
of the river regatta.

There were exciting moments of boat races, duck
races, swimming competitions, and so forth.  Then
came the afternoon when everybody picnicked.

The Leightons had a crowd of friends with them,
and took tea near the pool by the weir.

May undertook to teach Betty how to scull in an
outrigger, which one of the racers had left in their care
for the moment.  Betty was daring and rather skilful
to begin with.  It seemed lamentable that with so
many looking on, she should suddenly catch a real
crab.  May, standing on the bank, screamed to her, as
Betty's frail little boat went swinging rather wildly
under the trees of an island.

"Look here," cried Jean to May sharply.  "What
made you two begin playing in such a dangerous part?
Sit still," she shouted wildly to Betty.

It seemed as if no one had understood that there was
any danger in these little pranks of Betty's, till her
boat was swept into mid-stream, and ran hard into
certain collision on the island.  Jean called for some
one to take a boat out to Betty.  Then the full danger
of the situation flashed on them.  Just a few minutes
before, a detachment had gone up to the starting point,
and no boat was left in which one might reach Betty.

"Sit still," shouted Jean again, "hold on to the
trees or something."

It had occurred in a flash.  Betty in the quiet water
was all very well, but Betty, the timid, out alone on a
swirling river with a weir in the very near distance,
this Betty lost her head.

Jean's scream, "Sit still," had the effect of frightening
her more than anything.  "It was what one was advised
to do when horses were running off, or something
particularly dreadful was about to happen," thought Betty.

She first lost an oar, then splashed herself wildly in
the attempt to recover it.  The sudden rocking of her
"shining little cockle shell," as she had called it only
a minute before, alarmed her more than anything.
She was being swept on the island, deep water everywhere
around it.  With a gasp of fear she rose to catch
the tree branches, missed, upset the cockle shell at last,
and fell into the river.

Those on the bank, for a swift moment, "or was it
for centuries," stood paralysed.

"Oh!" cried Jean, "oh!"

There was a swift sudden rush behind them, "like a
swallow diving through a cornfield," said May later.
A tense, victorious little figure, flinging off hat and a
garment of sorts; a splash; a dark head driving in an
incredibly swift way through water impatiently
almost trodden upon by two little wildly skimming
hands, then a voice when Betty rose: "Lie on your
back, I'll be with you in a minute," and the valiant little
Serpent was off to the saving of Betty.  It was
sufficiently terrifying on account of the weir.  If Elsie
reached Betty, would she have the strength to bring
her back.  If Elsie did not reach Betty, Betty could
not swim.  It was dreadful.  Jean, second-rate swimmer
as she was, would have been in herself by this time, but
that Elma held her.

"She's got her," she whispered with a grey face.
They shouted when the Serpent turned slightly with
Betty.  She was like a fierce little schoolmistress.
"Don't interfere with me, he on your back.  Keep lying
on your back," and Betty obeyed.  At the supreme
moment the Serpent had come into her own, and
displayed at last the talent which till then had only been
expended on her cats and dogs.  "Lie still," she growled,
and obediently, almost trustingly, Betty lay like a
little white-faced drowned Ophelia.  Then "Come along
with that boat," sang out the Serpent cheerily.

Round the bend of the river above, at sound of their
cries had come "Hereward the Wake, oh how
magnificent," sobbed Jean.  It was Mr. Symington.

The Serpent, with hard serviceable little strokes,
piloted Betty lightly out of the strength of the current.
Mr. Symington was past and gently back to them
before a minute had elapsed.

"Grip the gunwale," he said cheerily to Elsie.  It
was the tone of a man addressing his compatriot.

(Oh! how magnificent of the Serpent.)

"Now," he said.  "Keep a tight hold on her still.
I must get you into quiet water."  He pulled hard.
Immediately he had them into the backwater.  It
was rather splendid to see him get hold of a tree, tie
the boat, and be at the side of the Serpent before one
could breathe.  He had rowed in with the full strength
of a strong man, and in a minute he was as tenderly
raising Betty.  He had never properly removed his
eyes from her face.  "She was just faulting.  You
held on well," he said approvingly.  "Don't let her
sisters see her at present."  He lifted Betty to the bank.

"Quick, open your eyes," he said commandingly.

"Look here," called the Serpent.  She had scrambled
neatly out by herself, "Betty, Betty Leighton, oh!
Betty, open your eyes."  There was an answering quiver.
"Quick, Betty, before your sisters come.  Don't frighten
them.  Open your eyes, Betty."

Mr. Symington rubbed Betty's hands smoothly in
a quick experienced manner.

Betty opened her eyes and looked at the Serpent.

"Oh, Elsie," she said, "Elsie, you sweet little
Serpent!"  It was an end to the crossed swords feud.
Elsie took her in her arms and cried.

When the girls arrived panic-stricken they found
Mr. Symington trying to get a coherent answer to
his orders from two bedraggled girls, who could do
nothing but weep over each other.  The brave little
Serpent had lost her nerve once more.

"Oh!" she said, "it's very wicked to be a girl.  Boys
wouldn't give way like this."

Jean looked at her narrowly, "Do you always go
about in gymnasium dress, ready to save people?"
she asked, with the remains of fear in her voice.

The brave little Serpent looked down on her costume,
and the red which glowed in her cheeks only from
mortification ran slowly up and dyed her pale face crimson.
"Oh!" she said, "oh!" and sat speechless.

Betty sat up shivering.  "I do call that presence of
mind, don't you?  She flung off her skirt, didn't you,
dear?"

The Serpent would have answered except that the
"dear" unnerved her.  She faded to tears once more.

"Come, come," said Mr. Symington.

And at that, as they afterwards remembered, Mabel "came."

She came through the trees in a white dress, and
the sunshine threw patches of beautiful colour on her
hair.

"Oh, little Betty!" she cried.

Then she saw the Serpent.

She took Elsie right up against the beautiful white
dress and kissed her.  Mabel could not speak at all.
But her eyes glowed.  She turned them full on
Mr. Symington.  "We must take these children home at
once," she said.

Mr. Symington looked as though he had been rescuing
an army.  "Yes," said he gravely.

Robin had trailed in looking somewhat dissatisfied.

"Jean would go, wouldn't she?" he asked.

"Oh no, I don't want mummy to know," said Mabel.
"She is up there with Mrs. Clutterbuck.  These two
must go home, and get hot baths, and be put to bed and
sat upon, or they won't stay there.  Where can we
get a cab, I wonder?"

"Here," said a voice.

Adelaide Maud now came through that beautiful
pathway of sun-patched trees with Elma.  "I've heard
all about it," said she, "and we have the carriage.
Borrow wraps from every one and tuck them in.  We
shall keep Mrs. Clutterbuck employed till Mr. Symington
comes back."

It seemed that they all took it for granted that
Mr. Symington would go.

Robin showed signs of losing his temper.  Mabel
as a rule, when these imperious fits descended on him
began to investigate her conduct and wonder where
she might alter it in order that he might be appeased.
This time, however, she was too anxious and concerned
over Betty, and while Jean might be quite
whole-hearted in her manner of looking after people, one
could not depend on her for knowing the best ways
in which to set about it.  In any case, the two could
not be kept there shivering.

Adelaide Maud was a trifle indignant at the
interruption.  "Quick," she said to Mr. Symington, "get
them in and off."

"Oh you are the fairy princess, always, somehow,
aren't you," sighed Betty, happily, as on their being
tucked in rugs and waterproofs, Adelaide Maud gave
quick decided orders to the coachman.

"Isn't she just like a story book," she sighed
rapturously.  They drove swirling homewards, in a damp
quick exciting way until they pulled up at the door of
the White House.

"Oh, mine was nearer," said the Serpent nervously.
She had never entered the portals of the White House
in this intimate manner, and suddenly longed for
loneliness once more.

"Well," said Mabel sweetly and nicely, "you will
just have to imagine that this is as near for to-day
at least.  Because I am going to put you to bed."

They laughed very happily because they were being
put to bed like babies.

"If only Cuthbert were here," said Mabel anxiously
and in a motherly little way to Mr. Symington, afterwards,
"he would tell me whether they oughtn't to have a hot
drink, and a number of other things they say they won't
have."

"I should give them a hot drink," said Mr. Symington
with his grave eyes dancing a trifle.  "And keep
them in blankets for an hour or two."

It was he who found Mr. Leighton and told him a
little of what had happened.  ("Oh the conspiracies
which shield a parent!")  For days Mr. and
Mrs. Leighton, the Professor and Mrs. Clutterbuck, had an
idea that the two girls had merely fallen in and got very
wet.  In any case, Elsie often came home in considerable
disrepair.  When one found, however, that neither
was the worse for the fright, Elsie was made a real
heroine.  It changed her attitude completely.  The
Leightons liked her now whether they felt charitable
or not.  It was a great relief.  And one day her own
father focussed his far-away gaze on her, as though he
had only then considered that there was anything on
which to look at her particular place at table.

"They tell me--ahem--that you can swim," he
exclaimed.  "Very excellent exercise, very."

To an outsider it did not sound like praise, but his
sentence set Elsie's heart jumping in a joyous manner.

"Oh, papa," she said.  "I was very frightened
afterwards."

"Hem," said he, "an excellent time in which to be
frightened."

Mrs. Clutterbuck congratulated herself on his having
said it (she would have made it "time to be frightened
in," and the Professor in such good humour, too!)

Happier days had really dawned in that grim household however.

The growing up of the courage of Elsie became a
wonderful thing.

Meanwhile other events had occurred than the saving
of Betty.  Robin had had to go home alone, and Lance
had the benefit of some of his ill-humour on meeting
him on the way.

"Who shot cock Robin to-day?" reflected Lance
with speculative eyes on that retreating person.  He
nearly ran into a very athletic figure coming
swinging round on him from the Leightons'.

Hereward the Wake was in his most magnificent
mood and his eyes shone with the light of achievement.
He was speaking when he turned, and the words dropped
automatically even before the impish gaze of Lance.

"Knew you and named a star," quoted Mr. Symington.

"Now what on earth has that to do with the boat
race?" asked Lance.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`The First Peal`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XIV


.. class:: center large

   The First Peal

.. vspace:: 2

Mabel was twenty-one when her cousin Isobel Leighton
came to make her home at the White House.  Isobel's
mother had died ten years before, and since the more
recent death of her father, she had stayed for a year
or two with her mother's relations.  Now, suddenly,
it seemed imperative that Mr. Leighton should offer
her a place in his own family, since various changes
elsewhere left her without a home.  It was the most
natural thing in the world that everybody should be
pleased.  The girls got a room ready for her, and
took pains towards having it specially attractive.
They even made plans amongst their friends for Isobel
to be suitably entertained.  "Though how we are
to manage about dance invitations and that sort of
thing, I can't think," said Jean.  "It's bad enough
with two girls, and sometimes no man at all.  It will
be awful with three."

Elma herself was on the verge of being eligible for
invitations.  Mabel looked as though she did not
mind much.  Worrying thoughts of her own were
perplexing her, thoughts which she could not share
with any one just then.  The spring of her life had
been one to delight in.  Tendrils of friendship had
kept her safely planted where Jean, the revolutionist,
tore everything by the roots.  What was not good
enough for Jean immediately was had up and cast
away.  What had not been good enough for Jean
had been their own silly enthusiasm for the Story
Books.  Jean in her own mind had disposed of the
whole romance of this by beating Theodora at golf.
She now patronized Theodora, and ignored the
others.  Adelaide Maud she already considered entirely
*passé*.

The confidences of long ago were shaken into an
unromantic present.  The Dudgeons called
ceremoniously twice a year, and invited the girls to their
dances.  Mabel and Jean went, occasionally with
Cuthbert "cut in marble," and were inexpressibly
bored in that large establishment.

"It doesn't seem to make up for other things that
one sits on velvet pile and has a different footman for
each sauce," Mabel declared.  "We have to face the
fact that the Dudgeon establishment is appallingly ugly."

So much for Mrs. Dudgeon's beaded work cushion effect.

"It's only a woman who would make you leave
an early Victorian drawing-room for a Georgian hall,
and get you on an ottoman of the third Empire, and
expect you to admire the mixture," growled Cuthbert.
It was this sort of talk that was to be had
out of him after he had been to the Dudgeons' balls.

Elma still prized her meetings with Adelaide Maud
at Miss Grace's, but recognized where her friendship
ceased there.  There seemed no getting further into
the affections of Adelaide Maud than through that
warm comradeship at Miss Grace's, or through her
outspoken admiration for Mr. Leighton.  And
"Adelaide Maud had grown *passé*" Jean had declared.

The world seemed very cold and unreal at this juncture.

Mabel came into Elma's room one day looking very
disturbed.  There was a fleeting questioning look
of "Are you to be trusted?" in her eye.

"You know I'm to be trusted, Mabs," said Elma,
as though they had been discussing the iniquity of
anything else.  "You aren't vexed at Isobel's coming
are you?"

"Oh, no," said Mabel quickly, "it isn't that, it's
other things."  She threw herself languidly on a
couch.

"Haven't you noticed that the Merediths haven't
been here for a fortnight?"

Elma brushed diligently at fair, very wavy hair.
It fell in layers of soft brown, and shone a little with
gold where the light touched the ripples, diligently
created with over-night plaiting.  She had grown,
but in a slender manner, and was admittedly the
*petite* member of the family.  There was a wealth
of comprehension in the glance she let fall on Mabel.

"Mabel, you don't mean to quarrel with them do you?"

It seemed that the worst would happen if that happened.

"I don't suppose I shall have the chance," said
Mabel.  She took a rose out of a vase of flowers, and
began to pluck absently at the petals.

"I think I should love to have the chance."

"Oh, Mabel," said Elma distractedly, "how dreadful
of you!  And how fatal it might be!  I shouldn't mind
quarrelling a little.  I think indeed it would be lovely,
if one were quite sure, perfectly convinced, that one
could make it up again.  That's why I enjoy a play
so much.  Every one may be simply disgusting, but
they are bound to make it up.  If only one could be
absolutely safe in real life!  But you can't.  I don't
believe Mr. Meredith would make it up."

"I am sure he wouldn't."  Mabel plucked at a pink
leaf stormily.  "That's why I should like to quarrel
with him."

"Mabs, don't you care for him now?"  Elma's
eyes grew wide with trouble.  It was not so much that
Mabel had given any definite idea of having cared for
Mr. Meredith.  It had been a situation accepted long
ago as the proper situation for Mabel, that there should
be an "understanding" in connexion with Mr. Meredith.
It established limitless seas of uncertainty if
anything happened to this "understanding" except
the most desirable happening.  Mabel leaned her head
on her hand.

"You see, dear," she exclaimed, "this is how it is.
Long ago, papa so much disliked our talking about
getting married, any of us, even in fun you know, that
it was much easier, when Mr. Meredith came, just to
be friends--very great friends, you know, but
still--friends.  Papa always said he wouldn't let one of
us marry till we were twenty-three.  That was definite
enough.  And he has been quite pleased that we haven't
badgered him into getting engaged.  Still, I always
think that Robin ought to have said to him, once at
least, that sometime he wanted to marry me.  He
didn't, I just went on playing his accompaniments,
and being complimented by his sister.  Now--now,
what do you think?  He has grown annoyed with
papa for being so kind to Mr. Symington.  Fancy
his dictating about papa!"  Mabel's eyes grew round
and innocent.

"But that's because Mr. Symington is nice to you,
perhaps," said Elma, as though this burst of
comprehension was a great discovery on her part.

"Exactly," said Mabel calmly.  "But if you leave
unprotected a cake from which any one may take a
slice, you can't blame people when they try to help
themselves.  Robin should be able to say to Mr. Symington,
'Hands off--this is my property,' and then
there would be no trouble.  As it is, he wants me to
do the ordering off, papa's friend too!"

"What did you say to him, Mabel?"  Elma asked
the question in despair.

"I said that when Mr. Symington had really got
on--then would be the time to order him off."

Mabel fanned herself gently.  Then her lip quivered.

"I don't think papa ever meant to let me in for an
ignominious position of this sort--but here I am.  If
Robin won't champion me, who will?"

"Oh, but surely," said Elma, "surely Robin
Meredith would never----"

"That's the trouble.  He would," said Mabel.
"And once you've found that out about a man--you
simply can't--you can't believe in him, that's all."

Elma sat in a wretched heap on her bed.

"I think it's horrid of him to let you feel like that,"
she said.  "Other men wouldn't.  Cuthbert wouldn't
to any one he cared for."

"Lots wouldn't," said Mabel.  "That's why it's
so ignominious, to have thought so much of this
one all these years!"

"Mr. Maclean wouldn't," said Elma.  She had
always wondered why Mabel had ignored him in her
matrimonial plans.

"No, I don't believe he would," said Mabel.  "But
that's no good to me, is it?"

"Mr. Symington wouldn't," said Elma.

"Oh, Elma!"

Mabel's eyes grew frightened.  "That's what scares
me.  I sit and sit and say, Mr. Symington never would.
It makes Robin seems so thin and insignificant.  He
simply crumples up.  And Mr. Symington grows
large and honourable, and such a man!  And I'm
supposed in some way to be dedicated to Robin.  It's
like having your tombstone cut before you are dead.
Oh, Elma, whatever shall I do!"

Elma was quite pale.  The lines of thought had
long ago disappeared with the puckerings of wonder
on her face.  Here indeed was thunder booming with
a vengeance, and near, not far off like that golden
picture of years ago.  Mabs was in deep trouble.

"You see what would happen if I told papa?  He
would order off Mr. Symington in a great fright, because
he has never thought somehow that any of us were
thinking of him except that he is an awfully clever
man!  I think also that papa would turn Robin out
of the house."

"I believe he would," said Elma in a whisper.

"And then--how awful!  All our friends, their
friends!  Everywhere we go, we should meet Sarah
Meredith!  What a life for us!  I should like to
quarrel--just because I'm being so badly treated, but the
consequences would be perfectly awful," said Mabel.
She took it as though none of it could be helped.

Elma was quite crumpled with the agitation of her
feelings.

"You must tell papa, Mabel," she said gently.

"Oh, Elma, I can't--about Mr. Symington.  Imagine
Mr. Symington's ever knowing and thinking--'What
do I care for any of these chits of girls!'  Robin has
always got wild--if I smiled to my drawing master
even.  What I hate, is being dictated to now.  And
his sulking--instead of standing by me if there is any
trouble.  He isn't a man."

A sharp ring at the bell, and rat-tat of the postman
might be heard.  Somebody called up that a letter had
come for Mabel.

Elma went for it and produced it with quaking heart.
The writing seemed something very different to any
of the letters which came to Mabel.

It was from Mr. Symington.

It explained in the gentlest possible way that he
had learned from Miss Meredith that his presence in
Ridgetown caused some difficulty of which he had
never even dreamed.  He wrote as a great friend of
her dear father's, and a most loyal admirer of her family,
to say the easiest matter in the world was being effected,
and that his visit to Ridgetown had come to an end.

The paper shook gently in Mabel's fingers, and fell
quivering and uncertain to the floor.  She looked up
piteously and quite helplessly at Elma, like a child
seeking shelter, and then buried her head on the couch.
She cried in long, strangled sobs, while Elma stood
staring at her.

Elma pulled herself together at last.

"Mabel dear, I'm going to read it."

Mabel nodded into her bent arms.

"Oh but," said Elma after shakingly perusing that
document, "but he can't--he can't do this.  It's
dreadful.  It's like blaming you!  What can Miss
Meredith have said?  Oh!  Mabel!  Mabel, I shall cut
that woman dead wherever and however I meet her.
Oh, Mabel--what a creature!  Don't you cry.  Papa
will explain to Mr. Symington.  He will believe papa.
Papa will explain that you had nothing to do with
it, that you don't mind whether he goes or stays--that----"

"But I do mind," said Mabel in cold, awe-struck
tones.  "That's the awful part.  And it's nothing
but the smallness of Robin that has taught me,
Mr. Symington is the only man worth knowing in the whole
earth."

She clasped her hands in a hopeless way.

"And he has been sent away, banished, by the very
man who should have made it impossible for me
to see any good quality in any one else except himself."

"Who will play Mr. Meredith's accompaniments
now?" Elma asked.  "Why they can't get on without
you, dear."  She still believed that just as plays
were arranged, so should the affairs of Mabel come
back to their original placidity.

"I shall never play another note for Robin Meredith,"
said Mabel.

Elma could not yet doubt but that Robin would come
directly he knew how satisfactorily he had disposed
of his rival.  One hoped that Mr. Symington had only
explained so far to Mabel.  That afternoon they were
to meet Isobel, so that every one was more or less
occupied, and always on this same evening of the
week, Friday, the Merediths were at an open "at
home" which the friends of the Leightons attended
at the White House.  The question was, would the
Merediths come?

Mabel did not seem to care whether they came or
not.  She sat, crushing the letter and not looking at
Elma.

"Elma dear," she said at last, "I can't stand this.
I shall tell papa.  Mamma will only say 'I told you
so' for our having been such friends with the
Merediths.  But I can't bear that she shouldn't know
I'm not ashamed of anything," she caught her
breath with a slight sob.  "But I'm done with Robin."

It seemed magnificent to Elma that for her own
honour she should jeopardize so much.  Men like
Mr. Meredith were so rare in Ridgetown.  Yet when
she asked her, couldn't she still admire Robin, Mabel
said very truthfully then "No."

Elma would have liked to say that it didn't matter
about Mr. Symington.

"Robin will never enter this house again," Mabel
said with quivering lip.

But he came--several times.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`The Arrival`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XV


.. class:: center large

   The Arrival

.. vspace:: 2

The 4.50 train hammered and pounded in a jerkily
driven manner to Ridgetown.  It was hot, and most
of the windows lay open in the endeavour to catch any
air that had escaped being stifled in smoke and the
dust of iron.  Miss Meredith occupied a first-class
carriage together with two people.  One, an old
gentleman who travelled daily and who did not count,
the other a dark-eyed girl of pale complexion.  She
wore irreproachably fitting tweeds, and as though to
contradict the severity of their trim appearance, a
very flamboyant red hat.  It was tip-tilted in a smart
way over her nose, and had an air of seeming to make
every other hat within eyeshot scream dejectedly, "I
come from the country."

The red hat came from the town, London presumably.
The dark girl seemed in a petulant mood, as though the
atmosphere of the carriage stifled her in more ways
than by its being uncontrollably hot.  It was out of
gear with the smooth, madonna-like appearance of her
features, that she should be petulant at all.  There
was an indescribable placidity about her carriage and
expression which contradicted her movements at this
moment of nearing Ridgetown.  She caught Miss
Meredith's eye on her, and seemed annoyed at the
interest it displayed.  Miss Meredith was much
impressed by her appearance.  As a rule, she confined
her ideas of people in Ridgetown either to their being
"refined" or "rather vulgar."  This girl had not
the air of being either of those two.  She was a type
which had never been dissected in Ridgetown.  It
was as evident that one would neither say of her that
she was the complete lady, nor yet that she was
un-ladylike.  One could say that she was good-looking,
adorably good-looking.  Calm, lucid eyes, containing
a calculating challenge in their expression, milky
complexion framing their mysterious depths of
darkness, red lips parting occasionally with her breathing
over startlingly white teeth, this was all very different
to the rosebud complexions, the rather shy demeanour
of Ridgetown.

Miss Meredith could act as a very capable little
policeman when she became interested in any one.
She determined to act the policeman now that she
was aware this must be a visitor to Ridgetown.  They
had passed the last slow stopping-place, and were
nearing what must be her destination.  Each station
without the name of Ridgetown had evidently annoyed
the dark girl.

"The next station is Ridgetown," said Miss Meredith
pleasantly.

The dark girl stared.

"Oh, ah, is it?" she asked negligently.

An old gentleman rose from the corner and began
collecting his belongings.

"May I help you?" he asked, and lifted down her
dressing case.

She became radiant.

"Thank you so much," she said very gracefully.

Miss Meredith felt in an annoyed manner that her
own overtures had been unrecognized in favour of
these.  She could be an abject person, however,
wherever she intended to make an impression, and
decided not to be non-plussed too soon.  Doubtless
the dark girl was about to visit some friend of her
own.  She rose at her end of the carriage to get a
parasol from the rack.  It allowed the new arrival to
swing out on the platform even before the train was
stopped.

Miss Meredith saw Isobel being received by the
Leightons.

This was enough to allow of Miss Meredith's slipping
away unnoticed before a porter came to find the
neglected dressing bag.  But she went unwillingly, and
in a new riot of opinion.  The truth came forcibly
that the new cousin would be a great sensation in
Ridgetown.  It was strange that she had never dreamed
that the dark girl might be the Leightons' cousin.  No
occasion would be complete without her.  A few weeks
ago, and she might have had her first reception at the
Merediths', where they should have had the distinction
of introducing her.  Now, owing to late events,
relations might be rather strained between themselves
and the Leightons.

Miss Meredith had grown more ambitious each year
with regard to her brother.  She was the ladder by
which he had climbed into social prominence in
Ridgetown.  Her diligence overcame all obstacles.  At first,
she had deemed it delightful that he should be attached
to Mabel, now it seemed much more appropriate that
he should make the most of the Dudgeons.  Through
the Leightons they had formed a slight acquaintance
there, which had lately shown signs of development.
It became necessary to sow seeds of disaffection in
the mind of Robin where the Leightons were
concerned.  He had become too much of their world.
He was a man not easily influenced, and he had had
a great affection for Mabel.  But the constant wearing
of the stone had invariably been the treatment for
Robin, and lately a good deal of wearing had been
necessary on account of Mr. Symington.

She began to recall just how much she had said to
Mr. Symington.  Her face burned with the recollection
that he had shown how much he thought of Mabel.
She had put the matter from Mabel's point of view.
While Mr. Symington was there, Mabel's happiness
with Robin was interfered with.  Miss Meredith had
intended to infer that it was his constant attendance at
the White House which was being called in question.
Whereas, he had already, unknown to her, settled
on it as meaning Ridgetown.  He had interrupted her
abruptly, with stern lips, "Pardon me, but will you
let me know distinctly,--is Miss Leighton engaged to
your brother?"  Miss Meredith saw her chance and
took it at a run.  "Yes," she said.  It was hardly a
lie, considering how Robin and Mabel had been linked
for so many years in a tacit sort of manner.

"That--I had not understood," said Mr. Symington.
Whereupon he immediately wrote his letter to Mabel.

Miss Meredith had always had her own ideas of
Mr. Symington.  He was not the companion for these very
young girls.  He was not old, on the other hand, but
he possessed a temperament which put him on another
plane than that of the rather boisterous Leighton family.
On the Meredith plane, if one would have the words
spoken.

"Robin," she said that evening, after the arrival
of Isobel, "let us go down to the Leightons' as though
nothing had happened."

Robin turned a reserved mask of a countenance in
her direction.

"You women can do anything," he said.

The weariness of being without these kaleidoscopic
friends of theirs had already beset him.  They were
still in time to find the old level again.  It would
certainly be a freezing world without the Leightons.
Everybody knew that one might get social advantages
with the Dudgeons, but one had always a ripping
time with the Leightons.

Miss Meredith, on her part, began to wonder, now that
Mr. Symington was warned and would keep Robin
from feeling the desirability of the girl whom two men
were after, whether Robin himself might be more gently
weaned than by thus being borne away on an open
rupture.  Robin was in the position of a man who
had been brought up by mother and sister.  Practically,
whatever he had touched all his life had remained
his own, sacred and inviolate.  It seemed that Mabel
ought to have remained his own merely because he had
once stretched out his hand in her direction.  Then,
he began to find that he reckoned with a family
which had been taught unselfishness.

Isobel, to do her justice, always imagined that Mabel
from the reserve of her welcome on the occasion of
her arrival, resented her presence at the White House.
She noticed that of all the girls to welcome her,
Mabel kept a constrained silence.  This she immediately
put down to a personal distaste of herself, and
controlled her actions accordingly.  From the first
moment of greeting her aunt and uncle, and sitting
down to table, she upheld a sweetness of character
which was unassailable, and which put Mabel's
distrait manner into rather wicked relief.  Isobel's was
a nature, formed and articulate, entirely independent
of the feelings and sympathies of others, a nature
which could thrive and blossom on any trouble and
disappointment, so long as these were not her own.
She had learned in the mixed teaching of her rather
stranded life, that very little trouble or disappointment
came in the way of those who could see what
they wanted and grab with both hands accordingly.
She determined to grab with both hands every benefit
to be derived from being leader in the Leighton family.
She had come there with the intention of being leader.
Before the meal was over, she had gained the good
opinion of all except Mabel, an intentional exclusion
on her part.  Mabel had received her without effusion.
Here was rivalry.  In the most methodical and
determined manner, she began a long siege of those rights
and privileges which Mabel, as head of the Leighton
girls, had never had really questioned before.  She
supplied a link in their musical circle, incomplete
before.  She could sing.  Her methods were purely
technical and so highly controlled, that the rather
soulful playing of the Leighton girls shrank a little into a
background of their own making.  Isobel's voice was
like a clear photograph, developed to the last shred of
minuteness.  One heard her notes working with the
precision of a musical box.  The tiring nature of her
accomplishments was never evident at a first performance.
These only appeared to be ripplingly brilliant.
She had the finished air and mechanical mannerisms
of the operatic artist, and they became startlingly
effective in a room where music only in its natural and
most picturesque aspect had been indulged.  Mr. Leighton
endeavoured to reconcile himself to a person
who was invariably at top notes, and Isobel deceived
herself into thinking that she charmed him.  She
charmed the others however, and Jean especially was
at her feet.  It struck her that probably she would
be able to get more of the fat of life out of Jean than
out of any one.  She noted that Jean ordered a good
deal where others consulted or merely suggested.
Ordering was more in her line.

Of Mrs. Leighton she took no account whatever,
except that she was invariably sweet in her presence.

It dawned on no one that a very dangerous element
had been introduced into the clear heaven of the
wise rule of the White House.

Mabel's mind at the start, it is true, was in a
subconscious condition of warning.  The particular kind of
warning she could not recognize, but, long after, attached
it to the attitude of Isobel.  In a month or two, she
found that while her family still remained outwardly
at one with her, a subtle disrespect of any opinion
of hers, a discontent at some of her mildest plans, seemed
to invade the others.  It came upon her that her ideas
were very young and crude with Isobel there to give
finer ones.

Ah! that was it.  Isobel was so much better equipped
for deciding things than she was.  It affected Mabel's
playing when she imagined that her family found it
at last not good enough.  She never could play for Isobel.
On the first night of arrival, Mabel was most
concerned, however, on how she was to give certain news
to her father and mother.  Mr. Leighton had heard
from Mr. Symington--only that he had been called away.
Mabel took the news in public with a great shrinking
Her heart cried out in rebellion, and instead of indulging
that wild cry, she had to be interested in the arrival
of Isobel.  She caught Isobel's keen darkness of gaze
on her, and shifted weakly under its influence to
apparent unconcern and laughter.

At the worst of it, when they were taking tea in the
drawing-room after dinner, Robin and his sister came
in.  Miss Meredith's *coup* was worth her fear and
distrust in experimenting with it.  Robin became
genuinely interested in Isobel.  This made him almost
kind to Mabel.

It concentrated all Mabel's wild rush of feelings to a
triumph of pride.  Where she would willingly have
gone to her room and had it out with herself, she waited
calmly in the drawing-room and heard Isobel's first song.

Miss Meredith's heart glowed feebly.  She had won
her point.  But Mabel's face heralded disaster.

Elma too would not look at her.

Elma trembled with the weight of what she would
like to say to Sarah Meredith, and could not.  Feebly
she determined not to shake hands with her, then found
herself as having done it.

Mr. Leighton talked quite unconcernedly about the
departure of Mr. Symington.  "Can you tell me why
he leaves us so suddenly?" he asked of Miss Meredith.

She had always made a point of liking to be asked
about Mr. Symington.  This time she seemed afraid
of the subject, certainly of Mr. Leighton's airy manner
of handling it.  Robin's face flushed hotly in an enraged
sort of manner.  Mabel's grew cold.

With all their experience of each other, and their
knowledge of what had been going on, none in the room
knew the nature of the crisis at hand, except the actors
in it, and Elma.  But, by the intuition of a nature that
scented disaster easily and wilfully, Isobel, without a
word from one of them, saw some of these hearts laid bare.

Miss Meredith, ill at ease, interested her immensely.

Miss Meredith at last answered that she knew
nothing of the reason why Mr. Symington had left
so abruptly.

Elma rose shaking in every limb.

"That is not true," she said.  Her voice, more that
her words carried effect.

She could go no further, she could only say, "That
is not true."

Mrs. Leighton looked very surprised, and then
helplessly bewildered.  Miss Meredith had a talent for
seeing her chance.  She saw it here.  She turned in a
rather foolish way, as though they intended some
compliment.

"Indeed," said she, "you all over-rate my influence
with Mr. Symington.  It is nothing to me whether
he goes or stays."

Mabel pulled Elma into a corner.

"Oh shut up dear, for Heaven's sake shut up!" she
whispered, and that incident was closed.

But Isobel began to play with a loud triumphant
accompaniment and sang in a manner which might
have shown every one the thing which she thought
she had just discovered.

Instead, they all declared they had never heard such
clear top notes.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`The Thin Edge of the Wedge`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XVI


.. class:: center large

   The Thin Edge of the Wedge

.. vspace:: 2

It seemed to Mabel that Isobel's proposals, kindly
worded and prettily mentioned, were always impossible
of acceptance.  She did nothing but refuse these
overtures to friendship for the next week or so.  This
was the more awkward since she was particularly
anxious to make everything nice for Isobel.  But the
proposals and the overtures seemed continually to
occur in connexion with the Merediths.  It was a
ridiculous thing of course that Isobel should be proposing
anything in connexion with the Merediths.

Jean had now found some one after her own heart,
one who did not wait for invitations, but thought
immediately on a plan for making one's self known to
people.  Isobel had already called on the Dudgeons.
Her progress was a royal one, and Mabel hated herself
for the way she alone, though often with the backing
up of Elma's companionship, kept out of things.  She
ventured to tell Jean why Robin no longer was a friend
of hers.  Jean seemed then to think him all the more
eligible for Isobel.  This hurt more than one dared to
believe.  But Jean always had been for a direct way
of dealing with people, sentiment not being in her
nature at all.  She considered it stupid of Mabel to
bother about a man to whom she had not even been
engaged.

Mabel, rather morbidly clung to her pride after this,
and refused Elma's repeated pleadings to tell her mother
and father.  If one's own sister called one a donkey,
it wasn't much encouragement to go on to more criticism.
Mabel would rather see Isobel married to Robin than
say a word more on her own account.  Elma worried
about it as much as Mabel did, and nothing would
induce her to go near the Merediths.  Mr. and
Mrs. Leighton noted the difference, but had to confess that
changes of a sort must come.  Above all, Mabel was very
young, and they did not want to press anything serious
upon her just then.  Robin's behaviour remained so
gentlemanly that no one could convict him of
anything except a sudden partiality for Isobel.

"They are all children of a sort," said Mr. Leighton,
"and children settle their own differences best."

Isobel felt the difficulty of the number of girls in the
place.  It appalled her to think of Elma's creeping
up next, and making the string lengthen.  She looked
with positive disapproval on Elma with her hair up.
In a forlorn way, Elma felt the great difference between
her seventeenth birthday, and that glorious day when
Mabel entered into her kingdom.

Mabel was in trouble, Jean engrossed with her own
affairs, and Isobel sweetly disdainful when Elma turned
up her hair.  She put it down again for three weeks,
and nobody seemed to be the least pained at the difference.

At every visit to Miss Grace, she wondered whether
or not it would be quite loyal to tell her about Mabel.
Miss Annie and she were, however, so uncomprehending
about anything having gone wrong, so interested
in the new cousin, that invariably Elma's confidences
were checked by such a remark as, "How very sweet
Isobel looked in that pink gown to-day," and so on.
Then one had to run on and be complimentary about
Isobel.  It seemed to Elma that her heart would break
if Miss Grace, along with every one else, went over to
Isobel.

She was not to know that Adelaide Maud had been
there before her.

"I can't quite explain," said Adelaide Maud to Miss
Grace one day, "I can't explain why I feel it, but this
new cousin isn't on the same plane with the Leightons.
There's something more--more developed, it's true, but
there's also something missing."

"Something that has to do with being a lady?"
asked Miss Grace in her timid way.

"Exactly.  I know my London types, and this isn't
one I should fasten on to admire, although she makes
rather a dashing brilliant appearance in her present
surroundings."

"I'm a little concerned about that," said Miss Grace.

In spite of her uniform courtesy where Isobel was
concerned she had quite a talk with Adelaide Maud
regarding her.

"I should fancy it's this," said Miss Grace finally,
"that while she stays with the Leightons she has all
the more income on which to look beautiful.  I can't
help seeing an ulterior motive, you observe.  I sometimes
wonder, however, what she will do to my little girls
before she is done with them."

The first thing Isobel did was to inflame Jean with a
desire to sing.  There was no use trying to inflame
Mabel about anything.  After Jean had discovered that
she might have a voice there was nothing for it but that
she should go to London.  She begged and implored
her father and mother to let her go to London.  She
was the only member of the family who had ever had
the pluck to suggest such a thing.  They had a familiar
disease of home-sickness which prevented any daring
in such a direction.  Mabel had twice come home a
wreck before she was expected home at all, and
invariably vowing never to leave again.

And now Jean, the valiant, asked to be allowed to
go alone to London in order to study.

"It's Isobel who has done it," wailed Betty.  "She's
so equipped.  We seem such duffers.  And it will be
the first break."

Mr. Leighton groaned.

"Why can't you be happy at home," he asked Jean.

"Oh, it will be so lovely to come back," said Jean,
"with it all--what to do and how to do it--at one's
fingers' ends."

"You don't keep your voice at your fingers' ends,
do you?" asked Mrs. Leighton.

It seemed superb nonsense to her that Jean should
not take lessons at home.  Isobel marvelled to find that
the real difficulty in the way of Jean's getting was
this mild obstinacy of Mrs. Leighton's.

"I can tell Jean of such a nice place to live--with
girls," said Isobel.  "And I know the master she
ought to have."

"And we can't all vegetate here for ever," said
poor Jean.

Nothing ever cost Mr. Leighton the wrench that
this cost him, but he prepared to let Jean go.

Mabel and Elma would rather anything than that
had happened just then.  It had the effect of making
Isobel more particular in being with Mabel rather
than with Jean.  Had she sounded the fact that with
all Jean's protestations, Mabel was the much desired--that
people were more keen on having the Leighton's
when Mabel was of the party!  Elma began to
speculate on this until she was ashamed of herself.

They played up for Jean at this juncture as though
she were going away for ever.  One would have thought
there was nothing to be had in London from the manner
in which they provided for her.  Even Lance appeared
with a kettle and spirit lamp for making tea.

"You meet in each other's rooms and talk politics
and mend your stockings," said he, "and you take turns
to make tea.  I know all about it."

Maud Hartley gave her a traveller's pincushion, and
May Turberville a neat hold-all for jewellery.

Jean stuck in her two brooches, one bangle, a pendant
and a finger ring.

Then she sighed in a longing manner.

"If I use your case, I shall have no jewellery to wear,"
she said to May.

At that moment a package was handed to her.  It was
small, and of the exciting nature of the package that is
first sealed, and then discloses a white box with a rubber
strap round it.

"Oh, and it's from Bulstrode's," cried Jean in great
excitement.  "The loveliest place in town," she
explained to Isobel.  "What can it be?"

It was a charming little watch on a brooch clasp,
and it was accompanied by a card, "With love to dear
Jean, to keep time for her when she is far away.
From Miss Annie and Miss Grace."

"Well," said Jean, with her eyes filling, "aren't
they ducks!  And I've so often laughed at Miss Grace."

"They are just like fairy godmothers," said Elma.
"Jean!  It's lovely."

She turned and turned the "little love" in her hand.

Where so many were being kind to Jean, it appeared
necessary to Aunt Katharine that she also must make
her little gift.  She gave Jean a linen bag for her boots,
with "My boots and shoes" sewn in red across it.

"I don't approve of your trip at all," she said to
Jean, "but then I never do approve of what your
mother lets you do.  In my young days we were making
jam at your age, and learning how to cure hams.  The
stores are upsetting everything."

"I want to sing," said Jean, "and your bag is
lovely, Aunt Kathie.  Didn't you want very badly
to learn the right way to sing when you were my age?"

Aunt Katharine sang one Scotch song about Prince
Charlie, and it was worth hearing for the accompaniment
alone, if not for the wonderful energy with which
Aunt Katharine declaimed the words.  Dr. Merryweather,
in an abstracted moment, once thanked her
for her recitation, and this had had the unfortunate
result of preventing her from performing so often as
she used to.

"No, my dear," she said in answer to Jean's remark,
"I had no desire to find out how they sang at one
end of the country, when my friends considered that I
performed so well at the other end.  The best masters
of singing are not all removed from one's home.  Nature
and talent may do wonders."

Then she sighed heavily.

"The claims of home ought to come first in any case.
Your mother and father have given you a comfortable
one.  It is your duty to stay in it."

"Well, papa has inflamed us with a desire to excel
in music.  It isn't our fault," said Jean.  "And one
can't get short cuts to technique in Ridgetown."

"I quite see that your father places many things
first which ought to come last," said Aunt Katharine
dismally.  "Oh, I beg your pardon," she exclaimed,
for four girls, even including Jean with her boot bag,
had risen at her, "I forgot that I am not allowed free
expression in regard to my own brother-in-law."

Aunt Katharine could always be expected to give in
at this point, but up to it, one was anxious.

Cuthbert came down to bid farewell to Jean.

"You are a queer old thing," he said to her.  "Living
in rooms is a mucky business, you know."

"Oh, I shall be with twenty other girls," said Jean;
"a kind of club, you know.  Isobel says it's lovely.
And then we get so *stuck* here!"

Cuthbert admitted that it wasn't the thing for them
all to be cooped up in Ridgetown.

"Couldn't stand it myself, without work," said he.
"And then, it's ripping, of course."

It was lovely to have Cuthbert back, and he made
a new acquaintance in Isobel.  She had been a queer
little half-grown thing when he had last seen her.

In an indefinite way he did not approve of her, but
finding her on terms of such intimacy with every one, he
only gave signs of pleasure at meeting her.

Elma was in dismay because there were heaps and
heaps of things for which she wanted Cuthbert, and
he only stayed two days.  An idea that he could put
a number of crooked things straight, if he remained,
made her plead with him to come again.

Cuthbert promised in an abstracted manner.

"Give me one more year, Elma, and then you may
have to kick me out of Ridgetown," he said.  "Who
knows?  At least, I shall make such a try for it, that
you may have to kick me out."

Everybody nice seemed to be leaving, and Adelaide
Maud was away.

It was rather trying to Elma that Isobel should about
this period insist on visiting at Miss Annie's.  Isobel
seemed to be with them on every occasion, from the
moment that Jean arranged to go to London.

Jean got everything ready to start.  With Isobel's
help she engaged her room from particulars sent to
her.  It was the tiniest in a large house of small rooms,
but Jean, rather horrified at a detached sum of money
being singled out by her father from the family funds,
was determined to make that sum as small as possible.
Mr. Leighton saw these preparations being made and
was helpful but dismal about them.  Mrs. Leighton
presented her with a travelling trunk which would
cover up and be made a window-seat, no doubt, in
that room where the tea parties were to occur.
Everything was ready the night before her departure, and
exactly at 7.15, when the second dressing bell rang
for dinner, as Betty explained afterwards, Jean broke
down.

This was an extraordinary exhibition to Isobel, who
had travelled, and packed, and always moved to a new
place with avidity.  She said now that she would give
anything she was worth at that moment to be flying
off to London like Jean.

"Oh," said Jean, "it's like a knife that has cut
to-day away from to-morrow, and all of you from that
crowd I'm going to.  Do you know," she said, as though
it were quite an interesting thing for them to hear
about, "I feel quite queer--and sick.  Do you think
that perhaps there is something wrong with me?"  She
even mentioned appendicitis as a possible ailment.

"You are getting home-sick," said Mabel, who knew
the signs.

Jean was much annoyed.

"You don't understand," she said.  "I'm not silly
in that way.  I don't feel as though I could shed a tear
at going away.  I'm just over-joyed at the prospect.
But I'm so wobbly in other ways.  I'm really terrified
that I'm going to be ill."

Poor Jean ate no dinner.  Jean didn't sleep.  Jean
perambulated the corridors, and thought of the night
when Cuthbert got hurt.  She wished that she were
enough of a baby to go and knock at her mother's
door, as they had done then, and get her to come and
comfort her.  She hoped her father wasn't vexed that
she had asked to go, and hadn't minded leaving him.
Then she remembered how she intended coming home--a
full-blown prima donna sort of person--one of whom
he should really be proud.  This ought to have set her
up for the night, but the thought of it failed in its
usual exhilarating effect.

The sick feeling returned, with innumerable horrors
of imaginary pain, and a real headache.

Jean saw the dawn come in and sincerely prayed that
already she had not appendicitis.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`A Reprieve`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XVII


.. class:: center large

   A Reprieve

.. vspace:: 2

The first two letters from Jean were so long, that one
imagined she must have sat up most of the night to
get them off.

"I don't mind telling you that I felt very miserable
when I got to my rooms," she said among other things.
"I drove here all right, and the door was opened by a
servant who didn't seem to know who I was.  Then
she produced a secretary who looked at me very closely
as though to see whether I was respectable or not.  She
took me up to my room, and it's like a little state-room,
without the fun of a bunk.  There's one little slippy
window which looks out on the gardens, and across
the gardens there are high houses, with occasionally
people at the windows.  One girl with a pink bow in
her hair sits at a window all day long.  Sometimes
she leans out with her elbows on the sill, and looks
down, and then she draws them in again and sits looking
straight over at me.  She's quite pretty.  But what
a life!  It must be dreadful only having one room and
nothing to do in it.  My piano hasn't come, and until
it arrives, it's like being the girl with the pink bow.
At home it's different, we can always pull flowers, or fix
our blouses or do something of that sort.  The girls
here don't seem to mind whether one is alive or dead.
I think they are cross at new arrivals.  I sat last night
at dinner at a little table all by myself, on a slippery
linoleum floor, and thought it horrid.  Then it would
have been fun to go to the drawing-room ('to play to
papa,' how nice that sounds), but the girls melted off
by themselves.  I looked into the drawing-room and
thought it awful, so I ran up to my room and stayed
there.  The girl with the pink bow was at her window
again, and I really could have slain her, I don't know why."

Then "I'm to have my first lesson to-morrow.  I'm
so glad.  Because I can't practise, even although my
piano has come.  A girl who writes made the others
stop playing last night in the drawing-room because it
gave her a headache.  It makes me think that no one
will want to hear me sing.  I suppose they think I'm
very countrified.

"I think the real reason why I can't practise is because
I'm not very well.  London food doesn't seem so nice as
ours, and I still have that funny feeling that I had when
I started.  I suppose you are all having jolly times.
You would know that girls lived in this house.  It's
all wicker furniture, and little green curtains, and vases
of flowers.  I've only gone out to see about my lesson,
except to the post and quite near here.  I don't like
going out much yet.  Isobel's directions were a great help."

This letter stopped rather abruptly.  So much so
that Mr. Leighton was far from happy about Jean.
He bothered unceasingly as to whether he should have
allowed her to go.  Mrs. Leighton enlarged his anxiety
by her own fears.  Jean's growing so much faster and
taller than any one else had been a point in her favour
with her mother a few years before, and Mrs. Leighton
had never got over the certainty that Jean must be
delicate in consequence.

"I hope she won't have appendicitis," said she mournfully.

"Oh, mummy," said Mabel, "Jean is only home-sick."

Jean wrote another desponding letter.

"Home-sick or not home-sick, if Jean is ill, she has
got to be nursed," said Mrs. Leighton.

"Jean has never been ill in her life," Mabel pointed
out.  "She hasn't even felt very home-sick.  It will
pass off, mummy dear."

But it didn't.

Jean sat, in dismal solitude, in the room looking over
to the girl with the pink bow, and she thought she should
die.  She did not like the words of encouragement
which came from home.  Every one was trying to
"buck her up" as though she were a kid.  No one
seemed to understand that she was ill.

At the fifth day of taking no food to speak of and
not sleeping properly, and with the most lamentable
distaste of everything and every one around possessing
her, she detected at last an acute little pain which she
thought must be appendicitis.

She went out, wired home "I am in bed," and came
back to get into it.

Once the girls in the house heard that she was ill,
they crowded into her room with the kindest expressions
of help and sympathy.  They brought her flowers
and fruit, and one provided her with books.  Then
they came in, as Lance had promised, and made tea for
her.  Jean took the tea and a good many slices of
bread and butter, and felt some of the weight lifted.
It might not be appendicitis after all.

And she never dreamed of the havoc which her
telegram might create.  Towards the evening, she got
one of her effusive visitors to send off another telegram.
"Feeling better," this one declared.

She did not know that just before this point, Mr. Leighton
had determined to fetch her home from London.
The whole household was in despair.  Mrs. Leighton
wanted to start with him in the morning.  Mr. Leighton
was not only anxious, he was in a passion
with himself for ever having let Jean go.

"Madness," he said, "madness.  I cannot stand
this any longer."

Isobel hated to see people display feeling, and this
excitement about a girl with a headache annoyed her
infinitely.  She was invited out to dinner with Mabel,
and Mabel would not go.

"Papa is in such a state," Mabel said, "I could not
possibly go out and leave him like this.  Let us
telephone that we cannot come."

Isobel checked the protest that rose to her calm lips.
She was ready in a filmy black chiffon gown, and her
clear complexion looked startlingly radiant in that
framing.  She had quite determined to go to the dinner
party.

"Let me telephone for you, Mabel," she said with
rather a nice concern in her voice.  "Then it won't
take you away from your father."

Mabel abstractedly thanked her.

"Say Jean is ill please, and that papa is in fits about
her.  The Gardiners will understand."

Isobel telephoned.

She came back to Mabel with her skirts trailing in
little flaunting waves of delicate black.

"They beg me to come.  It's so disorganizing for a
dinner party.  What shall I do?" she asked in an
interrogative manner.

Mrs. Leighton said, "Oh, do go, Isobel," politely.
"Why should anybody stay at home just because we
were so foolish as to let Jean go off to London alone?"

"Oh, well," said Isobel lightly, "when you put it like
that, I must."

She went to telephone her decision.

It was nearly four weeks afterwards when, in quite
an unexpected manner, Betty discovered that she never
telephoned that second time at all.  Isobel had arranged
her going from the start, adequately.

Mabel was left alone with the anxious parents when
Jean's second telegram came in.  It opened Mabel's eyes
to the fact that perhaps for once Jean was really
homesick.  It was so much like the way she herself would
have liked to have acted on some occasions and dared
not.  Jean had never been ill or been affected by nerves
before, and had therefore no confidence in recoveries.
No doubt her interest in the new experience had made
her imagination run away with her.  She disliked London
and wanted to get out of it--that was clear enough.
But after just six days of it--with everybody laughing
at her giving in!  The thing was not to be thought of.

It seemed to Mabel that her own difficult experiences
lately, all the hard things she had had to bear,
culminated in this sudden act of duty which lay before
her.  She must clear out--go to Jean and help her
through.

"Oh, papa," she said, "please let me go."

Mr. Leighton jumped as though she had exploded a bomb.

"What, another," asked he; "isn't one enough!  No,
indeed!  I've had quite enough of the independence
of girls by this time.  There's to be no more of it.  Jean
is coming home, and you will all stay at home--for ever."

He never spoke with more decision.  Mrs. Leighton
had reached the point where she could only stare.

Mabel sat down to her task of convincing them.
She looked very dainty--almost fragile in the delicate
gown of the particular colour of heliotrope which she
had at last dared to assume.  A slight pallor which
Mrs. Leighton had noticed once or twice of late in Mabel
had erased the bright colour which was usual with her.
She spoke with a certain kind of maturity which her
mother found a little pathetic.

"You see, papa, it's like this.  If you go to Jean
now, in all probability whenever she sees you she will
be as right as the mail, just as the rest of us are when
we've been home-sick.  Then she will be awfully
disgusted that she made so much of it when she finds
out what it is, and it won't be coming home like a
triumphant prima donna for her to come now, will it?
She will fall awfully flat, don't you think?  And
Cuthbert and Lance and you, papa, will go on saying that
girls are no good for anything.  You will take all the
spirit out of us at last."

"She mustn't go on being ill in London," said
Mrs. Leighton.  "We can't stand the anxiety."

"Let me go up for a week or two, and see her started,"
pleaded Mabel.  "I've been there, you know, and know
a little about it, and she would have time to feel at
home.  If I find her really ill, I could send for you.
Jean wouldn't feel an idiot about it if I went up just to
see her started."

Then Mabel fired her last shot.

"It would be good for me, mummy.  I've been so
stuck lately.  Won't you let me go?"

Something in Mabel's voice touched her mother very much.

"Won't Robin miss you?" she asked in a teasing,
but anxious way.  "You don't tell us, Mabel, whether
you want Robin to miss you or not.  And that's one
of the main things, isn't it?"

Mabel started, and her eyes grew wide with a fear of
what they might say next.

"It's all right, Mabs!  Don't you worry if you don't
want to talk about it," said her father cheerily.  There
was a reserve in all of them except Jean which kept
them from expressing easily what they were not always
willing to hide.

"Oh," said Mabel, "I think I did want to, but
n-never could.  I don't think I want to be c-coupled
with Robin any more.  It was fun when I was rather
s-silly and young, but it's different now."

She looked at her father quite sedately and
quietly.

"I think Robin thinks a good deal more of Isobel
and I'm glad," she said quite determinedly.  "The fact
is, I was sure I would be glad if something like that
happened.  I was sure before Isobel came."

Mr. Leighton patted her shoulder.

"Thank you, my dear, for telling us.  You're just to
do as you like about these things.  Difficult to talk
about, aren't they?  Remember, I don't think much
of Robin now, or that sister of his.  They could have
arranged it better, I think.  Never mind.  I shall be
glad to have you find worthier friends."  He patted
her shoulder again, and looked over at Mrs. Leighton.
She was surreptitiously wiping her eyes.  Mabel sat
strong and straight and rather radiant as though a
weight were lifted.

"I don't think," said Mr. Leighton to his wife in a
clear voice, "I don't think that either you or I would
be of greater service to Jean than Mabel could be!
Now, do you, my dear, seriously, do you?"  He kept an
eye on her to claim the answer for which he hoped.

"I don't think so, John," said Mrs. Leighton.

"Then could you get ready for the 8.50 to-morrow
morning?" asked Mr. Leighton of Mabel.

Mabel hugged him radiantly for answer.

"I don't know how I can live without two of you,
even for a week," he said.  "But then, I won't be
selfish.  Make the most of it and a success of it, and
I shall always be glad afterwards that you went."

It was no joke to have to prepare in one evening for a
visit to London.  Elma's heart stopped beating when
she heard of the arrangement.

"Oh, Mabs, and I shall be left with that--bounder!"

The word was out.

Never had Elma felt so horrified.  Years she had
spent in listening to refinements in language, only to
come to this.  Of her own cousin too!

"Oh, Mabs, it's shameful of me.  And it will be so
jolly for Jean.  And you too!  Oh, Mabs, shall I ever
go to London, do you think?"

"You go and ask that duck of a father of ours--now--at
present--this instant, and he will promise you
anything in the world.  No, don't, dear.  On second thoughts
he needs every bit of you here.  Elma!  Play up now.
Play up like the little brick you are.  You and Betty
play up, and I'll bless you for ever.  Don't you know
I'm skipping all that racketing crowd.  I'm skipping
Robin.  I'm skipping Sarah!  Think of skipping the
delectable Sarah!"  She shook her fist in the direction
of the Merediths' house.  "And what is more, dear
Elma, I am skipping Isobel."

She said that in a whisper.

They had all the feeling that Isobel was a presence,
not always a mere physical reality.

Elma had not seen Mabel in such a joyous mood for
weeks.

"And it's also because I feel I can soon square up
Jean, and make her fit," said Mabel; "so that I'm of
some use, you see, in going.  I'm quite sure Jean is only
home-sick after all."

She trilled and sang as she packed.

"Won't you be home-sick yourself, Mabel?" asked
Elma anxiously.

"I have to get over that sooner or later.  I shall
begin now," said Mabel.

"Won't it be beastly in that girls' club?" wailed
Betty.

"Oh, I'm sure it will," quivered Mabel.  She sank
in a heap on the floor.

"Whatever possessed Jean to go off on that wild
chase, I can't think," cried Betty.

"I know," said Elma.

"What?"

"Isobel."

The gate clicked outside and there were voices.
Betty crept to the window-sill and looked over.  Mabel
and Elma stood silent in the room.  Crunching
footsteps and then Isobel's voice, then Robin's, then
"Good-night."

Mabel, with a smothered little laugh, flung a blouse
into her trunk.

"Isn't it ripping, I'm going to London," said she.





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   CHAPTER XVIII


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   "Love of our Lives"

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Elma in the privacy of her best confidences had called
Isobel a bounder.  The iniquity, viewed even only in
the light of a discourtesy, alarmed her, and made her
more than anything "buck up" to being "nice"
to her cousin.

Isobel had been quite taken aback by the news of
Mabel's departure.  She had bargained for almost
anything rather than that.  Jean had continually
rubbed it in that Mabel was no use for going anywhere
away from home.  And now she was being sent to
succour Jean.  Isobel had gone out with the news
for everybody that Mr. and Mrs. Leighton would be
leaving in the morning.  She had even made some
plans.  Now, what she looked upon as the tutelage
of Mr. and Mrs. Leighton remained, and Mabel, whom
she already regarded as the most useful companion
where her own interests were concerned, was going
off to London.

She could not avoid looking very black about it.
To be left there with two children, Elma and Betty,
chained hand and foot to that kindergarten!  One
could hardly believe that so dark a cloud could sit on
so clearly calm, so immobile a countenance.  Mabel
detected the storm, and it had the effect of making
her the more relieved and willing to be off.

She had many thoughts for Elma.

"Don't be hustled out of your rights, dear," she
whispered.  "Remember, you are the head."

Elma had to remember almost every hour of the
day.  The rule of Isobel was subtle, and it was most
exceedingly sure.  She did not take the pains to hide
her methods from Elma and Betty, as she had done
from Mabel and Jean.  She openly used the telephone,
not always with the door shut.  It brought her plenty
of engagements.  When a dull day offered itself, Isobel
invariably was called up by telephone to go out.  She
never dreamed of inviting Elma.  Mrs. Leighton she
looked after in a protecting way which was very nice
and consoling to that lady stranded of her Jean.  Many
plans were made for Mrs. Leighton's sake, which Elma
considered must have often surprised her.  It did not
seem necessary that Mrs. Leighton should attend tea
at the golf club for instance, but Isobel insisted on
seeing her go there.  Everybody congratulated the
Leightons on having such a charming girl to keep them
company while Mabel and Jean were away.  Isobel
had certainly found a vocation.

She came in to Mrs. Leighton and Elma in the
drawing-room one day in her prettiest tweeds with rather
fine furs at her throat.

"Hetty Dudgeon has just rung me up, asking me
to go to see her this afternoon," she said calmly.  "I
don't suppose you care for the walk," she asked
Mrs. Leighton.

Mrs. Leighton roused herself from the mental somnolence
of some weeks.

"Miss Hetty!  Why, I was speaking to her half
an hour ago.  She wanted to send an introduction
to Jean.  She--she, why, it's very strange that she
didn't tell me she wanted you to come.  And you've
dressed since.  In fact, she said----"

Mrs. Leighton got no further.

"She must have changed her mind," said Isobel in
a careless manner.  "Well, good-bye, everybody, I'm off."

Mrs. Leighton sat a little speechless for the moment.

"I don't think I quite like that of Isobel," she said.
"Miss Hetty did not want any one this afternoon.
She told me why--she's so frank.  Vincent is coming."

Elma sat debating in her mind, should she tell her
mother or should she not.  It was hardly right that
Isobel should drag in the telephone, anything, under
her mother's unsuspecting eyes, for her own ends.
It was wildly impertinent to her mother.

"Mummy, Isobel knew that Vincent was going
and she made up her mind to go too!"

"Made up her mind!"

"Yes--she almost half arranged it with Vincent at
the golf club the other day."

"Then--then what about telephoning!"

"She never telephoned at all," said Elma.

Mrs. Leighton would willingly have had that unsaid.

"It is dreadful to think that any one would take
the trouble to do such a thing for the sake of going
to the Dudgeons," she said.  "Are you sure you are
not mistaken?"

"Oh, Miss Meredith is happy for a week if she can
squeeze in an excuse for going to the Dudgeons,"
replied Elma.  "The Dudgeons are such 'high steppers,'
you know."

"I don't like it," said Mrs. Leighton, "I really don't.
None of you were brought up to go your own way
like that, and I don't admire it in other people."

"Isobel believes in grabbing for everything one wants
with both hands.  She doesn't mean to do anything
wicked.  She simply means to be on the spot," said
Elma.

"But what about loyalty, and friendship, and--and
honour?" said poor Mrs. Leighton.

"Oh, when you are grabbing with both hands for
other things you haven't time for these."

"My precious child!  What in the wide world
are you saying!"  Mrs. Leighton was quite horrified.

"Nothing that I mean, or believe in, mummy.  Only
what Isobel believes in.  She thinks we are fools to
bother about loyalty and that kind of thing.  She
hasn't had any one, I think, who cared whether she
was honourable or not.  And it must be distracting
to know that all the time she can be perfectly beautiful.
It must make you think that everything ought to come
to you, no matter how."

Elma was really scourging herself now for that
iniquity of "the bounder."

"Why didn't you tell me before?" said Mrs. Leighton.

"Oh, mummy, I'm almost sorry I told you now.
Except that it lifts the most awful weight from my mind.
I've been so afraid that while Isobel went on being so
sweet and graceful that we should all get bad-tempered
if you believed in her very much.  She countermands
my orders to the servants often and often, and they
never think of disobeying her.  That's one thing I
want to ask you about.  If I insist on their obeying
me, will you back me up?  I simply crinkle before
Isobel, I hate so to appear to be against her in any way.
But Mabel told me I'm to play up as head of the house,
and I'm not doing it while Isobel upsets any order of
mine with a turn of her little finger.  It's awfully weak
of me, but I've always said I was made to be bullied,
I do so hate having rows with people."

The murder was out then.

Mabel had been gone four weeks, and the housekeeping
which had gradually drifted into her hands was now
of course in the command of Elma, or ought to be.
Mrs. Leighton saw at last where Isobel had been getting
hold of the reins of government.

"You must not be jealous of Isobel's attractions,"
she said.  "And you know, Elma, any little squabble
with your cousin would be a rather dreadful thing."

"Awful," said Elma.

"Your father would never forgive us."

"He would understand, though," said Elma.  There
was always such a magnificence of justice about her
father.

"He is feeling being without the girls so much,"
said Mrs. Leighton.

"Yes," said Elma.  "But, oh! mother, he is so
pleased now that they are getting on.  And isn't it
magnificent of Mabel!  That's what makes me think
I must play up here.  Miss Grace says it's very weak
to give in on a matter of principle.  She says that
whether I'm wrong or right, the servants ought to
obey me."

Mrs. Leighton debated for a long time.

"I quite see your difficulty," she said.  "But above
all things, we must never let Isobel think she hasn't her
first home with us.  You understand that, don't you?"

"Yes, mummy," said Elma.  "If only you will back
me upon the servant question once.  Then I don't
believe we shall have any more trouble with Isobel.  I
don't mind about whom she telephones to or whom she
doesn't, but I do mind about the housekeeping.  She
thinks I'm such a kid, you know.  And I mustn't for
the credit of the family remain a kid all my days."

There was a far stronger motive to account for Elma's
determination than any mere slight to herself.  It was
that Isobel had known about Robin and yet
appropriated him as though he were a person whom one
might make much of.  The treatment of Mabel turned
her from a child into a woman blazing for justice.

As they sat down to dinner that night, she noticed
that her own little scheme for table decoration had been
changed.  At dessert she asked, with her knees trembling
in the old manner, "Who changed my table centre?"

Nobody answered till Isobel, finding the silence
holding conspicuously, said in a careless way, "Oh, I found
Bertha putting down that green thing."  Elma flushed
dismally.  (If she could only keep pale.)

She simulated a careless tone, however.

"Oh, Isobel," she said, "I wish you wouldn't.  When
I give directions to the servants, it's very difficult for
me if some one else gives them others."  It was lame,
but it was there, the information that she was in control.

"Very distracting for the servants, too," said
Mrs. Leighton calmly, and ratified Elma's venture with
her approval.

She ate a grape with extreme care.

Isobel did not answer.  She froze in her pink gown
however, and a storm gathered kindling to black anger
in her eyes.

She looked Elma over, her whole bearing carrying
a threat.  It was a pose which generally produced
some effect.

But Elma was fighting for something more than her
own paltry little authority.  She was bucking up "for
Mabel's sake."

She pretended to treat it as a joke now that Isobel
"knew."

"So after this I'm in undisputed authority," she
exclaimed, and wondered at herself for her miraculous
calmness.  "And if you, Betty, endeavour to get
more salt in the soup or try on any other of your
favourite dodges, I shall--"--she also ate a grape quite
serenely--"I shall half kill you."

"Oh, Betty," she said afterwards, "I feel as though
I had gone in for a bathe in mid-winter.  Did you
see her eye!"

"I did," said Betty.  "So did papa.  You'll find
it will be easier for us now.  How calm you were!
I should have fainted."

"My knees were knocking like castanets," said Elma.
"If I had had them japanned, you would have heard
quite a row.  But it's very stimulating."  It occurred to
her that now she could write in a self-respecting manner
to Mabel.

Isobel after this entirely blocked off Elma from
any of her excursions.  Even the visits to Miss Grace
were over so far as Isobel was concerned, and Elma
once more had that dear lady to herself.

She would not tell Miss Grace how it had happened
that her cousin no longer accompanied her.  Occasionally,
however, Isobel stepped in herself and found her
former audience in Miss Annie.

None of it affected Elma as it might have done.
Isobel hardly spoke to her, certainly never when they
were alone.  It alarmed Elma how she could light up
when anybody was present, any one who counted,
and be quite companionable to Elma.

This all faded before the success of Mabel and Jean,
who were now writing in the best of spirits.

And oh!  "Love of our lives," Adelaide Maud,
who was now in London, had called on them.  It
opened up a fairyland to both, for she took them to
her uncle's house, and fêted them generally.
Good old Adelaide Maud.

There was no one like her for bringing relief to the
rich, and helping the moderately poor.

So Elma described her.

It seemed odd that it should be difficult to know
Adelaide Maud except in an emergency.  Elma, on
the advice of Miss Grace, merely had to send her
one little note when in London, with Mabel's address,
and Adelaide Maud had called.

There were great consolations to the life she now led
with Isobel.  Cuthbert vowed he would come down to
Elma's first dance.  How different it was to what
she had anticipated!  She would go with Isobel and
Isobel would be sweetly magnificent, and Elma would
feel like a babe of ten.  She longed to refuse all
invitations until Mabel came home.  Then the unrighteousness
of this aloofness from Isobel beset her, and they
accepted an invitation jointly.

Isobel ordered a dream of a dress from London.
Elma was in white.  Mabel and Jean sent her white
roses for her hair, the daintiest things.  Cuthbert played
up, and George Maclean found her plenty of partners.
Isobel was quite kind.  Mr. Leighton had looked sadly
on Elma on seeing her off.

"Another bird spreading its wings," said he.

She looked very small and delicately dainty.  Whereas
Isobel, "Isobel was like a double begonia in full
bloom," said Betty.

The begonia bloomed till a late hour effulgently.

Elma simply longed all the time for Mabel and Jean,
and oh! "Love of our Lives," Adelaide Maud.

It was Lance who christened her "Love of our Lives."

"What's that idiot going on about," asked Cuthbert,
as he swung Elma off on the double hop of a polka.

"He is talking about Adelaide Maud.  I'm so dull
because she isn't here."

"You are?" asked Cuthbert.

There was a curious inflection on the "you" as
though he had said, "You also?"

"Yes," said Elma, "though it's so often 'so near
and yet so far' with Adelaide Maud, she is really my
greatest friend."

Cuthbert seemed impressed.

"She doesn't need to make so much of the 'so far'
pose," he said gruffly.

"Oh yes, she does," replied Elma.  "It's her
mother.  She withers poor Adelaide Maud to a stick.
It's a wonder she's such a duck.  Adelaide Maud, I
mean.  Cuthbert, when are you coming home for a
long visit?" she asked.

"Next summer.  I shall tell you a great secret.
I think I am to get a lectureship, quite a good thing.
Can you keep it from the pater until I'm sure?"

"Rather," said Elma.

"Then," he said, "if it isn't all roses here next
summer, you'll only have one person to blame."

"One?" asked Elma.

Visions of Isobel cut everything from her mind.

"Is it Isobel?" she asked mildly.

"Isobel!"  Cuthbert looked so disgusted that she
could have kissed him.

She saw Isobel at that moment.  She was swaying
round the room in the perfection of rhythm with
no less an old loyalist than George Maclean.  Ah, well--all
their good friends might drift over there, but she
still had Cuthbert.  The joy of it lent wings to her little
figure.  It always had been and always remained
difficult for her to adapt her small stride to men of
Cuthbert's build.  This night she suddenly acquired the
strength and ease--the knowledge which really having
him gave her, to make dancing with him become a
facile affair.

"Oh, Cuthbert, this is ripping," she sighed at last.
"If it isn't Isobel, who is it?" she asked him.

"Why, Elma, you are a little donkey!  Who could
it be, but 'Love of our Lives,' Adelaide Maud?"

He swung her far into the middle:--where the floor
became as melted wax, and life opened out to Elma
like a flower.

"Oh, Cuthbert dear, how ripping," said little Elma.





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.. _`Herr Slavska`:

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   CHAPTER XIX


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   Herr Slavska

.. vspace:: 2

Mabel had discovered that a woman with a mission
hasn't such a bad time of it.  She set out on her journey
to Jean without one of her usual misgivings.  It was
jolly to think that she might be able to be of some
use in the world.  The tediousness of a long journey
of changes till she reached the main-line and thundered
direct to London did not pall on her as it had done
before.  Throughout she thought, "I'm getting nearer
to Jean, and I shall put her on her feet."

She prepared to hate the girls' club, but to be quite
uninfluenced by it.  She would take Jean out, till
neither of them cared what the club was like at all.
She forgot Robin and Isobel and everything except one
thing which she would never forget, and Jean.

She drove up to the door of the club in the most
energetic and independent mood she had ever experienced.
She didn't care whether the secretary looked
her up and down or not.  She merely went straight
to Jean's room.  Jean didn't at all pretend that it
was a downcome.  She simply wept with delight at
the sight of Mabel.

"And I never shed a tear, not one, till you came,"
said she.  "I'm so glad you came just when I began
to get better."

Mabel did not dare to tell her that she had only been
home-sick.

"If I tell her that, she will lie in bed to convince me
that she is really ill," she thought.

Girls' voices were heard screaming volubly.

"What's that?" asked Mabel, thinking that some
accident had occurred.

"Oh nothing.  They call out for each other from
their different rooms.  I thought it was a parrot house
when I came, but I'm getting accustomed to it.  They've
been so decent, you can't think, Mabel.  I never knew
girls could be so comforting."

"Poor Jean," said Mabel.

"You'll stay, won't you," said Jean.

"Of course I shall.  Just imagine, papa wanted
to come and take you home.  It would have been so
stale for you after you got there, with those little
presents people gave you and all that kind of thing, if you
had gone right back home again, wouldn't it?"

"Imagine Aunt Katharine alone," said Jean solemnly.

"So, if you possibly can, Jean, get up as soon as
you feel able to crawl.  So that I can say you are all
right.  Papa says I may stay for a week or two if you
are."

"Oh, Mabs, I wish you would stay right on!"

"Where's my room?" asked Mabel.  "What rickety
furniture!"

"The room is next door, isn't it nice?  And the
furniture's bought for girls.  They think we like
rickets."

"Wickets," corrected Mabel.  "You could use that
chair at a match."

"Oh, Mabs, how jolly it is to have you here to laugh
at it.  Mabs, I do feel better."

Mabel saw her up in three-quarters of an hour.

Jean had still to be treated seriously however.

"You know, Mabs, I had the most dreadful feeling.
I could quite understand how poor girls without friends
go and drown themselves."

"That's more like depression than appendicitis,"
Mabel ventured.

"I hadn't been sleeping," explained Jean with dignity.

Mabel thought of some sleepless nights.

"The best cure is always to believe that it can't last,"
said she.  "Do you remember papa's telling us how
Carlyle comforted Mrs. Carlyle when she had
toothache?  He said it wouldn't be permanent."

"What a brute," said Jean.

"Well, it sent me to sleep once or twice when I
remembered that," said Mabel.  "But you never were ill
like this before.  You couldn't believe in getting well,
could you?"

"I was sure I was going to die," said Jean in a hushed
voice.

Mabel's heart had ached.  Could she tell Jean of
that ache and how she had been obliged to cover it up
by making herself believe that it could not possibly be
permanent.

"Jean, do you know, I think it's so jolly being here,
getting to know the best way of doing things, and all
that sort of thing, I think I shall ask papa to let me
stay longer.  Do you think they would let me?"

"Well, they let me--and then I didn't want to,"
said Jean.

"And I didn't want to and now I do," said Mabel.
"Let's try it for a week or two anyhow."

A great depression had been lifted from her shoulders.
She found herself in the midst of girls who had all
something to do in the world.  They got up in the morning
and came tearing down to breakfast and made off to
various definite occupations, as though they had nineteen
parties in one day to attend.  Some were studying,
others "arrived" and working, only a few playing.
Yet even the last had some excuse in the way of a
problematical career in front of them.  Here one saw
where the desire to be something has quite as hygienic
an effect on one, as the faculty of attainment.  Mabel
had not been three days in the house till she was as
feverish as any to be getting on.  Going with Jean for
her first lesson finished her.  Jean was still of the
opinion that she was an invalid, and she certainly was
overwrought and nervous.  She would have backed
out of her lesson, except that Mabel accompanied her.

They found a magnificent man, well groomed and
of fierce but courtly manners.  He shook hands with
the air of an arch-duke.

"And which is the fortunate mademoiselle?" he
asked.  "Not that I prefer 'fortunate' because that
she happens to be about to be taught by myself, but
she has a voice?  Hn?"  It was a sound that had
only the effect of asking a question, but how efficiently!

He glared at Mabel, who produced Jean, as it were,
by a motion of the hand.

"It is my sister who wants lessons," she said.
This sounded like something out of a grammar book,
and both girls saw the humour of it.  But timidly,
because Herr Slavska then invited them to sit, while
he turned to the piano.  He threw some music aside
from the desk and cleared a place at the side for his
elbow, as he sat down for a moment.

"They do not all have voices!  No.  But som, they
have the sōll.  You have the sōll?  Hn?"

It did not seem necessary to inform Herr Slavska.
He was walking up and down now, flinging out more
sentences before they had time to answer the last.

"For myself.  I had the voice and I had the sōll.
That is why I ask 'and who is the mademoiselle who is
so fortunate?'  I am a voice, and look at me!  I am
a drudge to the great public.  I gif lessons to stupids
who do not love music.  For what!  For money to
keep the stomach alive!  Yes, that is it.  And yet I
say--which is the mademoiselle which is fortunate?
For vit a voice and vit the sōll, and vit the art which I
shall gif her, what does it matter about the stupid
public? or the stomach?"

Herr Slavska waited for no answers.

"For years I was wrong.  I had no art.  None.  I
sang to the stupids and they applauded.  At last I
make great discovery, I find the art.  Now I sing to
the few."

Herr Slavska paused for a moment.

"My sister has had no training at all, except as a
pianist," said Mabel.

"Hn?  Then I haf her, a flower, a bud unplucked!"

Herr Slavska grew excited.

"No nasty finger mark, no petal fallen.  Ah! it
is luck, it is luck for mademoiselle.  Come, mademoiselle."

He struck a note.

"Will you sing ze!"

Jean sang "ze."  She sang "zo."  Then he ran
her voice into the top and bottom registers.

"You have the comprehension.  It is the great
matter," said Herr Slavska.

Then he blazed at her.

His "the," quite English when he remained polished
and firm, degenerated into a "ze" at times such as these.

"You haf not ze breath, none," said he, as though
Jean had committed an outrage.

Jean, however, had begun to glow with the ardour
of future accomplishment.

"That's what I came to learn," she said promptly.

"Aha, she has charac*tere*."

Herr Slavska was delighted, but Jean found this
constant dissection of herself trying.

Then the real work began.  Herr Slavska breathed,
made Jean breathe, hammered at her, expostulated,
showed his own ribs rising and falling while his voice
remained even, tender, beautiful.

Mabel sat clasping her hands over one another.

"Oh, Herr Slavska, what a beautiful voice you have,"
she burst out at last.

He looked at her with the greatest surprise.

"Ah!  You are her sister?  Hn?  And you sit
there listening to us?"

He had forgotten her existence.

"And you are not of the stupids, no!  You say I
haf a beautiful voice?  Hn?  It is ze art, mademoiselle,
zat you hear now.  Sixty-five, I am zat age!  And I
still fight for ze stomach wit my beautiful voice.  But
you are of ze few, is it not?  I vil sing to you,
mademoiselle, just once.  Your sister goes.  Ten minutes,
mademoiselle--only ten minutes.  Zen a rest.  And
every day to me for two weeks!  Hn?  Is it not so?"

Then he cast up his arms in despair.

"Helas!  It is my accompaniste.  He *is* not!"

Jean the direct stepped in.

"Oh, Mabel will play," she said.

Herr Slavska took one of his deepest breaths.

"I say I shall sing to you--I Herr Slavska.  Ant
you say 'Mabel will play.'  Hn?  Mabel?  Who is
dis grand Mademoiselle Mabel?"

The humour of it suddenly appeared to come upper-most,
and Herr Slavska became wickedly, cunningly suave.

"Ah yes, then if mademoiselle will," he said blandly.

He produced music.

Mabel was rooted with fear to the couch.  Never in
her life before had she been nervous.

"Jean, how could you," whispered she.

Oh, fortune and the best of luck!  He turned to a
song of Brahms'.  How often had Mabel tried to drum
that song into the willing but uncultured Robin!  That
Robin in his lame way should help her now seemed
the funniest freak of fate.  She played the first bars
hopefully, joyfully.  She *knew* she couldn't do
anything silly there.

"But what!"

Herr Slavska had caught her by the shoulders, and
looked in her eyes.

"Mademoiselle Mabel!  From ze country!  Mademoiselle
plays like zat!  Hn?"

He bowed grandly.

"My apologies, Mees Mademoiselle Mabel.  We vill
haf a rehearsal."

He sang through part of his programme for a concert.
Mabel energetically remarked afterwards to Jean
that she had never really felt heavenly in her life
before.

"Oh, Jean," she said, "*Jean.*"

"What would you," said Herr Slavska.  "You
must also study a little Mees Mademoiselle Mabel.  You
have great talent.  Ah, if you could study in ze Bohemian
school, Mees Mademoiselle.  Hav I not said for years
to these stupids stupids public, there is no school like
to that of Prague?  Now all ze violinists tumble tumble
over ze one another to Sevcik to go.  See, it is ze fate.
If you could go to Prague, mademoiselle.  Prague would
make a great artiste of you."

Here was living, wonderful life for Mabel!  If Herr
Slavska thought so much of her, why should she not
have lessons in London?

Mr. Leighton never received such a letter as he had
from her next day.  If was full of thanks for his having
made her play so much and go to concerts when she was
young.  "Now I really know the literature of music.
It's the little slippy bits of technique that I'm not up
in.  I saw every one of them come out and hit me in
the eye when I played for Herr Slavska.  Do you think
I could really stay and take lessons, dear papa?  It
would prime me for such a lot.  I've often thought
about Cuthbert for instance, that it must be so jolly
for him to feel primed.  And after knowing life here,
I'd only be more contented at home.  It isn't that one
can't be bored in London.  I think you can far far more
than anywhere.  If you saw that girl with the pink
bow!  She only dresses and dresses, one costume for
the morning, another for the afternoon and so on.  I
suppose she has been taught to be a perfect lady.  The
girls in our house aren't the crowd that believe in being
like men or anything of that sort.  They want to get
married if they meet a nice enough husband.  But
nobody wants to get left, and it's so nice to be primed
for that.  I've sometimes felt I might one day be 'left,'
and it's awful.  I shouldn't mind so much if I had a
profession.  Jean is like a new girl.  She's full of
breathings and 'my method' and all that kind of thing.  And
she has to have an egg flip every morning at eleven if
you please.  I'm longing to have a master who orders
me egg flip, but they don't do that for piano, do they?

"Oh, please, papa, say you don't care for us for six
months, and let us do you some credit at last.  We were
just little *potty* players at Ridgetown...."

Mr. Leighton took a mild attack of influenza on the
strength of this, but he was infinitely pleased at the
enthusiasm of Mabel.  Mrs. Leighton got into the Aunt
Katharine mood, where such "goings on" seemed
iniquitous.

"I don't see why you should pay so much money to
keep them out of their own home," said she.

By next post, she sent a hamper of cakes to the girls.

Then came a letter from Mr. Leighton, which Mabel
locked in a little morocco case along with some other
treasures, "to keep for ever."

"I am to stay, and I'm to have lessons from any
Vollendollenvallejowski I like to name," she cried to
Jean.  The two rocked on a bamboo chair in happy
abandonment till some explosive crackling sounds
warned them that joy had its limits.

Every girl in the house was invited into the tea "with
cakes from home."

"What a love of a father and a duck of a mother
we've got," said the convalescent homesick Jean.





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.. _`The Shilling Seats`:

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   CHAPTER XX


.. class:: center large

   The Shilling Seats

.. vspace:: 2

Jean owed a great debt to Isobel for having told her
of Slavska, and acknowledged it extravagantly in every
letter.  Now there was the difficulty of finding a piano
teacher; but here Mabel explained to Jean as nearly
as she could why she could not seek the advice of Isobel.
Isobel, if they knew, already lamented that she had given
away Slavska, it was such an opening to the girls for
being independent of her experience.  Herr Slavska
would recommend no one in London.

"They all play for the stupids," he declared.  At
last in a better mood, he remembered a certain
"Monsieur, Monsieur--Green."

Mabel laughed at the drop to a plain English name.

"Ah no!  Smile not," said Herr Slavska.  "His
mother, of the Latin race, and his father, mark you, a
Kelt!  What wonder of a result!  I will introduce
you to the Sir, Herr, Monsieur Green.  He is young,
but of Leschetitzky.  I recommend him."

There seemed nothing more to be said, except that
two girls in the club knew Mr. Green's playing and said
that no one else really existed in London.  A great deal
underlay Herr Slavska's "I recommend him."

Mabel met one of the keenest enthusiasts of her life
when she met Mr. Green.

"Isn't it queer," said Jean afterwards, who, in spite
of egg flips and methods, was in a dejected mood that
day, "isn't it queer that an old boy like Herr Slavska
and a young one like Mr. Green should both have the
same delusions.  About music, I mean, being so keen
on it."

"You can't call that voice of Herr Slavska's a
delusion."

Mabel had been much impressed by what Mr. Green
had said.

"Mark you, at such an age, there is no voice like
Slavska's in existence.  Your sister is fortunate in
learning his method."

"That's what Mr. Slavska said," Jean had answered
amiably, and it had started Mr. Green off on his lessons
with Mabel in a cheerful mood.

"The Herr is not sparing of his compliments when
it is himself that is concerned," he said, laughing loudly.
"But he can afford to tell the truth."

It seemed lovely to Mabel, this tribute from one man
to another.

"More than your old Slavska said of my man," she
told Jean.

Mr. Green was a distracting teacher.  He pulled
Mabel's playing down to decimals.  Where she had
formerly found her effects by merely feeling them, he
subtracted feeling until she imagined she could not
play piano at all.  Then he began to build up her
technique like a builder adding bricks to a wall.

"You must imagine that you have eaten of the good
things of life until you are a little ill, so that good or
bad taste very much alike.  Then you come to me for
the cure.  I diet you with uninteresting things, which
you do not like, and you imagine I am hard because I
do not allow you to eat.  Then one day I give you a
little tea and toast.  Now, Miss Leighton, you have
worked to curve the third finger a trifle more than you
did.  Will you play that study of Chopin which you
once performed to me."

Mabel had practised dry technique and had kept
cheerfully away from all "pieces" as directed.  She
played the study.

"Bravo," said Mr. Green.  It was his first encouragement.

"Why," said Mabel, "how nice it is to be able to
play it like that."

"It is your tea and toast," said Mr. Green.

Into their hard-working life came delightfully Adelaide
Maud.  Their enthusiasm carried her into scenes she
had never visited.  She attended concerts in the shilling
seats, and took tea once at an A.B.C.  The shilling
seats fascinated Adelaide Maud.  The composite crowd
of girls, with excited interest; of budding men musicians,
groomed and ungroomed, the latter disporting hair
which fell on the forehead in Beethoven negligence, the
dark, lowering musician's scowl beneath--what pets
they all were!  Pets in the zoological sense some of
them, but yet what pets!  She caught the infection of
their ardour when a great or a new performer appeared.
Had any crowd ever paid such homage to one of her set,
never!  Fancy inflaming hearts to that extent.  Adelaide
Maud could feel her pulses responding.

"Oh," she said after one of these experiences when
they were in Fuller's and ate extravagantly of walnut
cream cake, "it's as much fun to me to go to these
concerts, as it would be for you to--to.----"  It dawned
on her that any comparison might not be polite.

"To go to court," said Mabel.

"Oh, *have* you ever been presented?" asked Jean
of Adelaide Maud.

Mabel stared at her.  All their life they had followed
Adelaide Maud's career, and Jean forgot that she had
been presented.  Adelaide Maud herself might have
been a little hurt, but she was only amused.

"I was--in Queen Victoria's time.  I'm an old stager,
you know," she said.

"Wasn't it lovely," asked Jean, who had once called
her past.

"I don't think so," said Adelaide Maud.  "At least
I happened to enjoy the wrong part, that was all.  I
loved going out with the sunshine pouring into the
carriage and everybody staring at us.  It was very hot
and the windows had to be down, and I heard things.
One girl said 'Oh, lollipops, look at 'er 'air.  Dyed that
is.'  Another quite gratified me by ejaculating in an
Irish voice, 'Oh, the darlint.'  'You mustn't,' said her
friend, 'she'll 'ear you.'  'I mean the horses, stupid,'
said the girl.  She had her eye on the Life Guards.
Mamma was disgusted.  But in the palace it was not
nearly so distinguished.  Nobody admired one at all,
just hustled one by.  I think we were cross all the
time."

"I think it would be lovely to be cross in Buckingham
Palace," sighed Jean.

They all laughed.  Adelaide Maud in particular
seemed to be thinking about something which
interested her.

"Would it be fun for you to see some of the people
who are going to the great ball," she asked.  "I don't
mean to go to the ball, but Lady Emily is to be at home
for the early part of that evening and some people are
coming in on the way.  I asked her if I might have
you to dinner--and she's quite pleased about it."

Mabel and Jean sat in a blissful state of rapture.
("Lady Emily!  The gorgeous and far-away Lady Emily!")

"Oh," said Jean, "Elma would say, 'I should be
terrified.'"

"And I should say we'll be perfectly delighted,"
said Mabel.

It cost her no tremor at all to think of going.  This
reminded Adelaide Maud of Miss Grace's prophecy
that there was no sphere in life which Mabel could
not enter becomingly.

"Put on that pretty pink thing you wore in
Ridgetown, lately," she said.

The name of Ridgetown brought them closer to
realities.  This was Miss Dudgeon of The Oaks with
whom they ate cream cake.  Jean said, "I'm sure
to give the wrong titles.  You don't mind I hope."

"No," said Adelaide Maud.  At the same time she
was dying with the desire that they should do her
infinite credit.  Carefully she thought over the matter
and then spoke.  "In any case it's so much a matter
of one's manner in doing it.  I remember when Lady
Emily was ill once, she had a very domineering nurse,
who tossed her head one time and said to me, 'I
suppose she wants me to be humble and "my lady" her,
but not a bit of me.'  Then one of the most
distinguished surgeons in England was called in, and his
first words were, 'And how d'ye do, my lady.'  He
called her 'my lady' throughout, quite unusual you
know, and yet in so dignified and kind a manner,
as though he were saying, 'I know, but I prefer my
own way in the matter.'"

"What a drop to the nurse," said Mabel.

Jean looked reflective.

"Do you know, you've told me something I didn't
know," she said.  "I never quite knew how one ought to
address Lady Emily.  It's so different at Ridgetown,"
she exclaimed.

Adelaide Maud seemed a little confused, but
answered heartily.

"Oh, none of it's a trouble when you really meet
people.  They are so much simpler than one would
think."

Mabel saw that Adelaide Maud had given them her
first tip.  It was sweetly done, but then----!  Anyhow,
they had given Adelaide Maud plenty of tips about
getting in early to seats in the Queen's Hall and minor
affairs of that sort.  Why shouldn't the benefits work
both ways?

It was about the time of Elma's ball, when they
sent the white roses, and Adelaide Maud said she would
help them to choose.

"I should like to send little Elma a crown of pearls,
but I daren't," said she with a sigh.  "She's such a
pet, isn't she!"

"Timorous, but a pet," said Jean with a broad smile.

"She is holding the fort just now at any rate,"
responded Mabel.

They thought it would be all right to tell Adelaide
Maud something of what Elma had written.

"I trembled, of course," Elma had said; "but the
thing had to be done.  I wouldn't for a moment let
you think that you couldn't come home and slip in
to the places that belong to you.  Isobel would have
possessed the whole house if I hadn't played up.  I
don't know why she wants to.  It must be so much
nicer not to have to bother about servants and table
centres.  But she has never squeaked since I spoke
about it.  In fact, she won't even speak to me unless
some one is about, passes me without a word."

"Poor darling," said Adelaide Maud; "what a
worm your cousin must be."

"No, I don't think she's that," said Mabel; "it's
just that she simply must rule, you know.  She must
have everything good that is going."

"H'm," answered Adelaide Maud.  "Why doesn't
that brother of yours go slashing about a little, and
keep her from bullying Elma."

"Oh, Elma would never tell Cuthbert.  Don't you
see it mightn't be fair to prejudice him against Isobel.
Isobel thinks such a lot of Cuthbert."

"Oh."

A long clinging silence depreciated the conversational
prowess of Adelaide Maud.

"Well," she said, in a conventional voice, "We've
had a lovely day.  Let me know when you are going
to another concert.  And I shall send you full
particulars about Lady Emily."

They were walking along Regent Street to find
their shop for the flowers.  It seemed that Adelaide
Maud was about to desert them.  She beckoned for
a hansom and got inside.  Mabel and Jean felt that
they said good-bye to Miss Dudgeon of The Oaks.  In
another second they had gone on and Adelaide Maud
had had her hansom pulled up beside them again.

"Jean, Jean," she called, quite radiant again.  "I
forgot the most important thing.  It's about lessons.
Do you think that your Splashkaspitskoff would
condescend to give me some?"

It was rather mad of Adelaide Maud, but she got
out and paid off the hansom.

"It isn't so late as I thought it was," she said lamely.
But Mabel knew that she came to make up.

Jean only thought of the lessons.

"You will find him so splendid," she said, "and such
a gentleman."

"I like that," said Mabel.  "Why--he talks about
the most revolting things."

"It's his manners that are so wonderful," said Jean
in a championing manner.  They had found their
shop by this time and were looking at white roses.
When Mabel said, "Do you think these are nice?" Jean
might be heard explaining, "It's the method you
know that is so wonderful."

And when at last they had decided about roses and
arranged about the lessons, Adelaide Maud thought
she must immediately buy a hat.

"I quite forgot that I wanted a hat," she said
gravely.

They went to one of the best shops, and sat in three
chairs, with Adelaide Maud surrounded by mirrors.
Tall girls sailed up like swans and laid a hat on her
bright hair and walked away again.  Adelaide Maud
turned and twisted and looked lovely in about a dozen
different hats.  After looking specially superb in one,
she would say.  "Take that one away, I don't like it
at all."

Occasionally the swans would put on a hat and sail
about in order to show the effect.  Then Adelaide
Maud would look specially languid and appear more
dissatisfied than ever.  At last she fixed on one which
contained what she called "a dead seagull."

"Why you spoil that pretty hat with a dead bird,
I can't think," she exclaimed to the attendant.  "Look
at its little feet turned up."

Then, "You must take this bird out, and give me
flowers."

She began pinning on her own hat again.  In a
second the bird was gone, and the swanlike personages
sailing over the grey white carpet, brought charming
bunches of which they tried the effect "for modom."

"Oh, do get heliotrope," said Mabel.  "It's so
gorgeous with your hair."

Adelaide Maud swung round.

"And I've been making up my mind to white for
the last half-hour.  How can you, Mabel!"

She chose a mass of white roses, "dreaming in velvet."

Adelaide Maud rose, gave directions about sending,
and prepared to leave.

"Don't you want to know the price?" asked Mabel
in great amazement.

"Oh, of course."

Adelaide Maud asked the price.

The total took Mabel's breath away.

"You must never marry a poor man," said she as
they passed out.  Adelaide Maud stopped humbly in
a passage of grey velvet and silver gilt.

"Well, I never," she said.  Then walking on, she
asked in a very humble, mocking tone, "Will you
teach me, Mabs, how to shop so that I may marry a
poor man."

Mabel laughed gaily.

"Thank you," said she.  "That sounds as though
you think that I ought to know.  Am I to marry a
poor man?"

Adelaide Maud laughed outright, and took her
briskly by the arm.

"I didn't mean that.  I believe you will marry a
duke.  But you see--you think me so extravagant, and
I might have to be poor."

"That dead seagull going cost you a guinea alone,"
said Mabel accusingly.

"And they kept the seagull," said Adelaide Maud.
"How wanton of me!"

"I've had a very nice hat for a guinea," said Mabel,
with a smirk of suppressed laughter.

"And yet you won't marry a poor man," said
Adelaide Maud.  "How unjust the world is."

They parted in better form than they had done an
hour earlier.

"Wasn't she queer," said Jean, "to go off like that?"

"Queerer that she came back," said Mabel.  "Do
you know what I think?  I believe Adelaide Maud
bought that hat simply--simply----"

"To kill time," said Jean.

"No.  To stay with us a little longer," said Mabel.

"It's more than any of the Dudgeons ever thought
of doing before--if it's true!" said blunt, robust Jean.

"But I don't believe it is," said she.  "Let's scoot
for that bus or we'll lose it."

So they scooted for the bus.





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.. _`At Lady Emily's`:

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   CHAPTER XXI


.. class:: center large

   At Lady Emily's

.. vspace:: 2

Adelaide Maud found herself possessed of quite a
fervid longing.  She wanted to see Mabel and Jean
disport themselves with dignity at Lady Emily's.
What had always remained difficult in Ridgetown
seemed to become curiously possible at Lady Emily's,
where indeed the highest in the land might be met.
That she might make real friends of the two girls at
last seemed to become a possibility.  It was not merely
the fact of Lady Emily's being a "complete dear"
that constituted the difference.  It was more the
absence of the Ridgetown standards.  There were
never upstarts to be found at Lady Emily's.  Her
own character sifted her circle in an automatic manner.
That which was vulgar or self-seeking had no response
from her.  Racy people found her dull, would-be
smart persons quite inanimate.  She could no more
help being unresponsive to them than she could help
being interested in others whom she respected.  It
was a distinguished circle which surrounded her, and
those who never pierced it, never understood how
easily it was formed, how inviolately kept.  Occasionally
Lady Emily's "tact" was upheld as the secret
of her power.

"And I have absolutely no tact at all," she would
moan.  "I simply follow my impulses as a child would."

It was the unerring correctness of her impulses which
made Adelaide Maud believe that she would welcome
the Leightons.

Lady Emily had married a brother of Mr. Dudgeon's.
Adelaide Maud's devotion to her father's memory put
her uncle into the position of a kind of patron saint
of her own existence.  She sometimes thought that
his character supplied a number of these impulses
which made Lady Emily the dear she was.  Lady
Emily was the daughter of a Duke, and had none of the
aspirations of a climber, her family having climbed
so long ago, that any little beatings about a modern
ladder seemed ridiculous.  Her brother was the present
duke of course, and "made laws in London," as Miss
Grace used to describe it.  This phantom of a duke,
intermarried in a way into her family, had prevented
Mrs. Dudgeon from knowing any of the Ridgetown
people--intimately that is.  Yet the duke never called,
and Lady Emily wore her dull coat of reserve when
in Mrs. Dudgeon's company.  Lady Emily's heart
went out, however, to the "golden-haired girls" who
spent their seasons with her in London.

She was perfectly sweet about the Leightons, and
called at the girls' club in state.  What an honour!

The girls found their ideas tumbling.  Lady Emily
was much more "easy" than any one they had met.

They prepared for the dinner quite light-heartedly.

After all, it could only be a dream.  London was a
dream.  London in the early winter with mellow air,
only occasionally touched with frost, glittering lights
in the evenings, and crowds of animated people.  So
different from the dew dripping avenues of streets at
Ridgetown.

They "skimmed" along in a hansom to Lady
Emily's and thought they were the most dashing
persons in London.

"But it's only a dream, remember," said Jean.

They went in radiantly through wide portals.  Footmen
moved out of adjacent corners and bowed them
on automatically.

Mabel loved it, but Jean for a few agonizing seconds
felt over-weighted.

Then "it's only a dream!"

They dreamed through a mile of corridor and ran
into Adelaide Maud.

The dream passed and they were chatting gaily at
shilling seat gossip, and that sort of thing.

Adelaide Maud made the maids skim about.  They
liked her, that was evident.  Mabel and Jean were
prinked up and complimented.

"You are ducks, you know," said Adelaide Maud.

They proceeded to the drawing-room.

Here the point was marked between the time when
the girls had never known Mr. Dudgeon and the time
when they did.  Mabel never forgot that fine, spare
figure, standing in a glitter of gilt panelled walls, of
warm light from a fire and glimmering electric brackets,
of pale colour from the rugs on the floor.  He had
the grey ascetic face of the scholarly man brought
up in refinement, and his expression contained a great
amount of placidity.  He had dark, scrutinizing eyes,
and a kind mouth, where lines of laughter came and
went.  Jean approached tremblingly, for now it
suddenly dawned on her that she had never been informed
why the husband of Lady Emily should only be plain
"Mr. Dudgeon."  Was this right, or had she not listened
properly?  Then Adelaide Maud said distinctly,
"Mr. Dudgeon."  Jean concluded that it was their puzzle,
not hers, and shook hands with him radiantly.  Mabel
only thought that at last she had met one more man
who might be compared to her father.

They sat down on couches of curved legs and high
backs, "the kind of couches that make one manage to
look as magnificent as possible," as Jean described it.
Mr. Dudgeon said Lady Emily was being indulged
with a few moments' grace.

"It's the one thing we have always to do for Lady
Emily," said he, "to give her a few minutes' grace."  He
began to talk to them in a quick, grave manner.

Jean again informed herself, "It is a dream."

One would have thought that Mr. Dudgeon was
really interested in them both.  And how could he
be--he--the husband of the daughter of a duke!  He
asked all about how long they had known Adelaide
Maud and so on.

Mabel was not dreaming, however.  She sat daintily
on the high-backed couch and told Mr. Dudgeon about
the Story Books.

There they were, only ten minutes in the room, and
Mr. Dudgeon, who had never seen Mabel or Jean before,
was hearing all about the Story Books.

And Adelaide Maud, who had begun to imagine
she knew the Leightons, heard this great fable for the
first time in her life.

"Uncle," she said, "uncle, isn't this sweet, isn't
this fame?"

"It is," said he.

"Do you wonder that I don't go to the ball?" she
asked.  "And you've done this ever since you were
children?" she asked.  "Made fairies of us!  And I'm
'Adelaide Maud,' am I?  Who once called me
Adelaide?" She looked puzzled.  "Dear me, if only we
had known.  And not even Miss Grace to tell me!"

"Oh, we bound them over," said Mabel, "and no
one else ever heard of it."

"She doesn't tell you all," said wicked Jean.  "She
doesn't tell you that we sat behind you once at a
concert, and Mabel saw, properly you know, how your
blue dress was made."

"Oh, Jean, Jean," said Mabel.

"Yes, and had hers made just like it," said Jean.
She spread her hands a little.

"Rucked down the front, you remember."

"Oh, I remember," laughed Adelaide Maud.

"And when you came to call--Mabel couldn't put
on her prettiest gown, because it was just like yours."

"Oh, Jean," cried Mabel.

In the midst of some laughter came in Lady Emily.

"Well," she said in a gentle way, "you people are
enjoying yourselves, aren't you?"

Adelaide Maud knew then that the day was won
for Mabel and Jean.  Mr. Dudgeon was always a
certain quality, but Lady Emily--well, she had seen Lady
Emily when people called her "dull."  It was wonderful
with what grace Lady Emily adapted herself to
the interests of two girls almost unknown to her.  The
effect might be gleaned from what Jean said afterwards.

"Lady Emily was so sweet, I never bothered about
forks or anything.  There was such a love of a
footman!  I believe he shoved things into my hands just
when I ought to use them.  It always worries me to
remember--when I'm talking--just like the figures
at lancers, you know, but here they did everything for
one except eat."

Lady Emily had on a beautiful diamond ornament
at her throat, and another in her hair, and they scintillated
in splendour.  She wore a dress of white chiffon
for the ball.

"You insist on dragging me there?" Mr. Dudgeon
asked several times.  Whenever a pause occurred
in the conversation he said, "You insist on carrying
me off to this ball, don't you?"

Lady Emily also pretended that she had to go very
much against her will.  Mabel and Jean had never
seen people set out to balls in this way before.  They
themselves had always their mad rush of dressing
and their wild rush in the cloakroom for programmes,
and a most enervating pause for partners and then
the thing was done.  But Lady Emily and Mr. Dudgeon
tried to pan out the quiet part of the evening as far
as it would pan out.

Then came a trying time.

In the drawing-room, quite late, very gorgeous people
arrived.  Jean was endeavouring to remember whether or
not she took sugar with tea when the first of them came
in.  The spectacle made her seize three lumps one after
another, to gain time, when as a fact she never took
more than one.  They fell in a very flat small cup of
tea and splashed it slightly in various directions.  She
was always very pleased to remember that she didn't
apologize to the footman.

The gorgeous people seemed only to see Lady Emily
and to talk to the electric light brackets.  They said
the ball was a bore.

A rather magnificent and very stout personage settled
himself near Mabel.  He wore shining spectacles which
magnified his eyes in a curious manner.

"Hey, what, what," he said to Mabel.  "And you
aren't a Dudgeon!  Hey!  Thought you were one.
Quite a lot of 'em, you know.  Always croppin' up.
Golden hair, I remember.  And yours is brownish.
Ah, well.  You're a friend, you say.  Quite as good,
quite as good.  Not going to the ball.  Consider
yourself in luck.  Not a manjack but says the same.  Why
they make it a ball, Heaven knows.  Never dance, you
know.  Hey what!  None of us able for it.  Not so
bad as levees though.  There, imagine Slowbeetle
in white calves.  There he is, that old totterer.  Yet
he does it.  Honour of his country, calls of etiquette
and that sort of thing.  You're young, missed a lot
of this, eh!  Well, it's mostly farce, y'know.  We
prance a lot.  Not always amusin'.  Relief to know
Lady Emily.  No prance about her.  Hey, what!"

Adelaide Maud approached.

"Ah, here we are.  Thought you had dyed it.  Golden
as ever, my dear.  Pleasant to see you again.  Why
aren't you and this lady goin'?  We could stay.
Instead of prancin', eh!"

The ill humour of having to go to the ball was on
all of them evidently.  But this spectacled benignity
fascinated Mabel.  He again was a "complete dear."

"I'm going to steal her," said Adelaide Maud,
indicating Mabel, darkly; "you wait."

"Hey, what!  I'll report.  Report to Lady Emily,
y'know.  Ye've taken my first partner.  Hey, what!
Piano?  Ah, well.  Not in my line, but I'm with you."

He actually accompanied them to a long alcove where
a piano stood half shrouded in flowers.  Here Adelaide
Maud had withdrawn the little party of Jean, Mabel
and herself, that they might look and play a little
and enjoy themselves.

"Simpkins, more tea," she whispered.  "We didn't
have half enough."

It was an admirable picnic.  Mabel played "any
old thing," as Adelaide Maud called it, ran on from
one to another while they joked and talked and watched
the "diplomatic circles" gathering force in the
drawing-room.  The spectacled gentleman sat himself down in
complete enjoyment.

"D'ye know," he said to Jean in the same detached
manner and without any kind of introduction, "no
use at that kind of thing," indicating the piano, "but
the girl can play.  Fills me with content.  Content's
the word.  Difficult to find nowadays.  She doesn't
strain.  Not a bit.  She smooths one down.  A real
talent.  And a child!  Hey, what, quite remarkable."

Lady Emily came slowly in.  Two people talked to her.

The spectacled gentleman rose, and they listened to him.

"Don't interrupt, Lady Emily.  She's got the floor,
y'know.  I've heard prima donnas.  Here too.  And
they didn't smooth me down.  Catch a note or two of
this.  It gives its effect, hey?  Gets your ear.  Hey,
what--if we had her in the House there might be hope
for the country, hey, what!"

Lady Emily was pleased.

She laid her hand on Mabel's shoulder.

"Are you liking this?"

"Oh, it's such a dream, and you are so lovely, Lady
Emily, and it doesn't seem real.  So it's very easy to
play, you know."

"I should make them stop talking, but they came
for that, you know.  And you are playing so well, it's too
pretty an interlude.  Helen didn't tell me that you
could play like this."

"And my new master makes me believe I can't play
a note," said Mabel.  "I shall tell him he is quite
wrong, because you said so."

Aunt Katharine's words came to her mind--playing
at one end of the country no better than the other!
Ah, well, it was newer, fresher, or something--taking
it either way!

Of course it came to an end.  The girls slipped out
with Adelaide Maud and found the long corridor with
the white room containing their wraps and two attentive
maids.  They were covered up in their cloaks, and
watched one or two leave before them, as they stood
looking down on them from the staircase.

"Nobody will miss us," said Adelaide Maud.  "They
are 'going on,' you know."

There was something rather sad in her voice.

"They all go on to something or somebody, even
that dear old Earl Knuptford, he will pick you
at the same place next year that he found you at
to-night, and say, 'Hey, what,' and never think that
both he and you have dropped twelve months out of
your lives.  It's different at Ridgetown, isn't it?"

"Yes, there's nothing to go on to at Ridgetown, is
there?" said Jean grimly.  "And nobody to forget
or to say, 'Hey, what,' even if they had never met you
before."

Her world was full of shining diplomats and she had
chatted with an earl.

Adelaide Maud looked softly after them.

"Nothing to go on to at Ridgetown," she murmured.
"And no one to forget."

She smiled softly.

"Ah! well, it's nice that there's no one to forget."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`The Engagement`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XXII


.. class:: center large

   The Engagement

.. vspace:: 2

The night at Lady Emily's was by no means a first
step into a new and fashionable world.  Mabel and
Jean never doubted for a moment that they were
anything but spectators of that brilliant gathering.  Even
Adelaide Maud was only a spectator.  Lady Emily
and her husband were different from the world in
which they moved because they had hobbies and minor
interests which they occasionally allowed to interfere
with the usual routine.  Mr. Dudgeon had been known
to skip a state banquet for a book which he has just
received.  And Lady Emily would make such calls
and give such invitations as resulted in that wonderful
little dinner party.  But as for any of her set being
interested, why, there was no time for that.  Place
something in their way, like Mabel sitting on a couch,
part of which Earl Knuptford desired to make use
and one met a "belted Earl."  He became interested
and dropped sentences pell-mell on Mabel's astonished
head.  For days, Jean dreamed of large envelopes
arriving--"The Earl and Countess of Knuptford
request," etc.

("You donkey, there's no countess," interjected
Mabel.)  The Earl would as soon have thought of
inviting the lamp post which brought his motor to a
full stop and his Lordship's gaze on it correspondingly.
Bring these people to a pause in front of something,
and they might delay themselves to interview it.  But
while one is not part of the machinery which takes
them on, there is no chance of continuing the acquaintance.

Adelaide Maud told them as much.  It seemed to
Mabel that Adelaide Maud wanted them to know that
though she lived in this world, she was by no means
of it.  She enjoyed herself often quite as much in the
shilling seats.  Her view of things did not prevent
Mabel and Jean from participating in benefits to be
derived from the acquaintance of Lady Emily.  There
ensued a happy time when they had seats at the Opera,
of which an autumn season was in full swing, of
occasional concerts and drives, and once they went with
Lady Emily and Mr. Dudgeon far into the country on
a motor.  For the rest, friends of their own looked
them up, and they had hardly a moment unfilled
with practising which was not devoted to going about
and seeing the world of London.  The Club improved
with acquaintance, and it was wonderful how the very
girls who annoyed Jean so much on her arrival became
part of their very existence.  "We are so dull," she
would write home, "because Violet has gone off for the
week end," or "We didn't go out because Ethel and
Gertrude wanted us to have tea with them."

Adelaide Maud left for home.  That was the
tragic note of their visit.  Then Cousin Harry turned up
with his sister and her husband and offered to run them
over to Paris for Christmas.  Here the cup overflowed.
Paris!

It was a new wrench for Mr. Leighton, who meant to
get them home for Christmas and if possible keep them
there.  But he knew that a trip with Mrs. Boyne would
be of another "seventh heaven" order, and once more
he gave way.

"Can you hold the fort a little longer?" wrote Mabel
to Elma.

Elma held the fort.

She held it, wondering often what would come of it
all.  She was in the position of a younger sister to one
she did not love.  Isobel chaperoned her everywhere.
They had reached a calm stage where they took each
other in quite a polite manner, but never were
confidential at all.  Mr. and Mrs. Leighton saw the
politeness and were relieved.  They saw further, and lamented
Isobel's great friendship with the Merediths.  It seemed
to Mr. Leighton that although he would much rather
leave the affair alone, that Isobel was in his care, that
she was a handsome, magnificent girl, and that she
ought not to be offered calmly as a sort of second sacrifice
to the caprices of Robin.  He spoke to her one evening
very gently about it when they were alone.

"I thought I ought to tell you," said Mr. Leighton,
"that in a tacit sort of manner, Mr. Meredith attached
himself very closely to Mabel.  She was so young that
I did not interfere, as now I am very much afraid I
ought to have done.  It is a little difficult, you see, for
your Aunt in particular, who is asked on every side,
'I had understood that Mabel was to marry Mr. Meredith.'  I
want you to know of course that Mabel never
will marry him now.  I should see to that myself, if
she had not already told me that she had no desire to.
He is not tied in any way, except, as I consider, in
the matter of honour.  I did not interfere before, but
at present I am almost compelled to.  I'm before
everything your guardian, my dear.  I should like you to
find a man worthy of yourself."

He had done it as kindly as he knew how.

Isobel sat calmly gazing past him into the fire.  There
was no ruffling of her features.  Only a faint suggestion
of power against which it seemed luckless to fight.

"I knew a good deal of this, of course," she said.

"Oh."  Mr. Leighton started slightly.

"Yes.  But of course there is a similar tale of every
man, and every girl--wherever they are boxed up in
a place of this size.  Somebody has to make love to
somebody.  I don't suppose Mr. Meredith thought of
marriage."

It seemed as though Mr. Leighton were the young,
inexperienced person, and that Isobel was the one to
impart knowledge.

"In justice to Mr. Meredith, I do not know in the
slightest what he thought.  That is where my case
loses its point.  I ought to have known.  I certainly,
of course, think that I ought to know now."

"Oh," said Isobel.  She rose very simply and looked
as placid as a lake on a calm morning.  "That is very
simple.  Mr. Meredith intends to marry me whenever
I give him the opportunity."

Mr. Leighton was thunderstruck.  At the bottom
of his mind, he was thankful now that "his girls" were
away.  Memories of the stumbling block which the
existence of Robin's sister had before occasioned made
him ask first, "Does Miss Meredith know?"

He spoke in quite a calm manner.  It frustrated
Isobel for the moment, who had expected an outburst.
She wavered slightly in her answer.

"I don't know," she said.

Mr. Leighton moved impatiently.

"That is just it," he said.  "This young man makes
tentative arrangements and leaves out the important
parties to it.  Miss Meredith is quite capable of upsetting
her brother's plans.  Do you know it?"

It seemed that Isobel did.  It seemed that Miss
Meredith was the one person who could ruffle her.
From that day of negligently answering and partly
snubbing her in the train, Isobel had showed a side
of cool indifference to Miss Meredith.

"I want you to know, Uncle, that I shall not consider
Miss Meredith in the slightest."

Could this be a young girl?

"Do you know what Mabel, what all of you did?
You considered Miss Meredith.  What were the
consequences?  She gave Mabel away with both hands.
She wants her brother to marry Miss Dudgeon.  He
won't marry Miss Dudgeon.  He will marry me."

She rose slightly.

"And Miss Meredith won't have the slightest possible
say in the matter."

Mr. Leighton looked rather pale.  He flicked quietly
the ash from his cigar before answering her.

"It's a different way of dealing with people than
I am accustomed to.  Will you keep your decision open
for a little yet?"

"I shall, till summer, when we mean to be married."

There seemed to be no altering the fact that she was
to be married.

"I should be so sorry if, while here with me--with
all of us, you did not find a man worthy of you."

"I won't change my mind," she said.

"And Robin?"

He had returned to the old term.

"He didn't change his mind before.  Miss Meredith
did it for him.  I am quite alive to the fact that if
Miss Meredith hadn't interfered, and I hadn't come,
he would now be engaged to Mabel."

Mr. Leighton appeared dumbfoundered.

"Do you care very much for him?" he asked.

"Oh, yes."  Isobel looked almost helplessly at him.
"He isn't the man I dreamed of, but he is mine, you
know.  It has come to that."

She sank on her knees beside him, her eyes blazing.

"Isn't it an indignity for me, as much as for Mabel,
to take what she didn't want?  You say she doesn't
want him.  At first--oh!  I only desired to show my
power.  I always meant to marry a wealthier man.
But it's no use.  He is a waverer, don't I know it.  I
see him calculating whether I'm worth the racket.  I
see that--I!  Isn't it deplorable!  But I mean to
make a man of him.  He never has been one before.
And I mean to marry him, Uncle."

Mr. Leighton smoked and smoked at his cigar.  He
was beginning at last to fathom the nature that took
what it wanted--with both hands.

"Isobel," he said gently, "let us drop all this
question of Mabel.  It isn't that which comes
upper-most, now.  It's the question of what you lose by
marrying in this way.  Don't you know that this dropping of
Miss Meredith, this way of 'paying her out,' you know,
well, it may give you Robin intact; but have you an
idea what you may lose in the process?  I don't admire
the girl, but--she is his sister.  I have never known"--he
threw away his cigar--"I have never yet known of
a happy, a really happy marriage, where the happiness
of two was built on the discomfiture of others.  Won't
you reconsider the whole position of being down on
Miss Meredith, and paying everybody out who was
concerned in Robin's affairs before you knew him?
Won't you try to make your wedding a happiness to
every one--even to Miss Meredith?"

"Oh," said Isobel, "I don't know that the average
bride thinks much of the happiness of relations.  She
has her trousseaux and the guests to be invited, and
all that sort of thing."  She turned over a book which
was lying near.  "I don't think I should have time
for Miss Meredith," she said coldly.

Mr. Leighton sat quite quietly.

"Will you be married here?" he asked.

A gleam came to Isobel's eyes.

"That would be nice," she said.  There was the
feeling of an answer to an invitation in her voice.

"It's at your disposal," he said, "anything we can
do for your happiness."

"Is that to show that I do nothing for anybody
else's?"  Isobel was really grateful.

"Perhaps."  He said it rather sadly.

"I might make an endeavour over Sarah," she said.

"You know, from the first, the day you came in the
train, you told us you had ignored her, hadn't you?
She nursed Robin through a long illness.  Saw him
grow up and all that kind of thing.  Never spared
herself in the matter of looking after him!"

"Well?" asked Isobel.

"Well," said Mr. Leighton, "it's rather pathetic,
isn't it?"

The day was won in a partial manner; for Isobel
promised she would try to "ingratiate Sarah."

"It's the wrong way of putting it, but it may make
a beginning," said Mr. Leighton.

He further insisted on seeing Robin.  That was a
bad half-hour for every one, but for no one so
particularly as for Robin.  He had evaded so many things
with Mr. Leighton, and for once he found that gentler
nature adamant.

Nothing went quite so much against this gentler
nature as having to arrange matters for Isobel.  So
Robin discovered.  Yet already it made what Isobel
called "a man of him."  He was a man to be ruled,
and Mabel had placed herself under his ruling.  Here
was the real mischief.  Isobel would take him firmly
in hand.

The girls were greatly mystified, Elma horrified.
They had orders to take the news of Isobel's
engagement as though it might be an expected event, and
certainly no sign was given that it was in the nature of
a surprise.  Jean could not understand Mabel when
the news arrived.  She laughed and sang and kissed
Jean as though the world had suddenly become happy
throughout.

"I thought you would have been cut up," said Jean
disconsolately.

"Cut up!  Why they are made for one another,"
cried Mabel.  "Isobel, calm and firm, Robin,
wavering and admiring, nothing could be better.  But
oh--oh--I want to see how Sarah takes it."

They had a particular grind just then, for now they
were getting into spring, and it would soon be time for
making that triumphant passage home of which they
had so often dreamed.  They lived for that now, but
none lived for it more devotedly than Elma.

Isobel's engagement cut her further and further
away from enjoying anything very much.  She had
always the feeling of cold critical eyes being on her.
She often congratulated herself on having got over the
stage where she used long words in quite their wrong
sense.  Isobel's proximity in these days would have
been dreadful.

Miss Grace also seemed downhearted.  It had been
a trying winter for her, yet no actual evidence of
ill-health had asserted itself.  She was concerned about
Elma too, who seemed to be losing what the others
were gaining by being away, that just development
which comes from happy experience.  Elma plodded
and played, but her bright little soul only came out
unfledged of fear at Miss Grace's.

At last one day Miss Grace's face lit.

"My dear, your gift is composition."

Nobody ever had thought of it before.  Elma's
expression lightened to a transforming radiance.

"Oh, I wonder if I ever could get lessons," she cried.

They discovered a chance, through correspondence.
So Elma held the fort, and tried to grapple single-handed
with musical composition.

"If only I could compose an anthem before Mabel
and Jean get home," she said one day.

"Heavens, Elma, you aren't going to die?" asked Betty.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`Holding the Fort`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XXIII


.. class:: center large

   Holding the Fort

.. vspace:: 2

Miss Meredith took the news of her brother's engagement
in a dumb manner.  An explosion of wrath would
have helped every one.  Robin might have appeared
aggrieved, and had something of which to complain,
and Isobel's immobility beside some one in a rage was
always effective.  Miss Meredith would not rage
however.  She had met a match for her own
resourceful methods, and at bottom she feared the reserve
of power which prompted Isobel.  Under cover of a
fine frown she accepted the situation as Isobel had
said she would.  What hopes were overthrown by the
engagement, what schemes upturned, no one but Miss
Meredith herself would ever have an inkling.  She
began to regret her manner of ejecting Mabel, especially
since the London reports told of a Mabel many cuts
above Ridgetown.  Miss Dudgeon had opened their
eyes.  She had come back in armour, the old Ridgetown
armour, and talked in the stiffest manner of Mabel
and Lady Emily, as though all were of a piece.  Miss
Meredith ventured to say to her later on that she
understood that Mabel was quite a success in "Society."

"She always was, wasn't she?" asked Adelaide
Maud very simply, as though she imagined society
had really existed in Ridgetown.

Miss Meredith was a trifle overcast.

"Oh yes, yes, of course," she said.  "But Mabel,
of course, Mabel----"

"Mabel would shine anywhere you mean.  That is
true.  She possesses the gift of being always divinely
natural."

Adelaide Maud could play up better than any one.
Miss Dudgeon ran on to congratulate Miss Meredith
on her brother's engagement.

"Ah yes, such a charming girl," said Miss Meredith.
"He is very fortunate.  We both are, since it relates
us to so delightful a family.  We have always been
such friends."

There was a stiff pause.  Adelaide Maud could never
bring herself to fill in the pauses between social
untruthfulnesses.

"She is very courageous, we think," ran on Miss
Meredith.  "Robin will not be able to give her very
much of an establishment, you know.  But that does
not grieve her.  She has a very even and contented
disposition.  I often tell Robin--quite a girl in a
hundred!  Not many would have consented so sweetly
to an immediate marriage under the circumstances."

Ah, then, this might explain to the public the
defection of Mabel.  Mabel had expected an
"establishment."  Miss Dudgeon began to see daylight.

"Oh, on the contrary," she said, rising, "we have
always looked on Mr. Meredith as being so well off in
respect of being able to get married.  Didn't you tell
me once--but then I have such a stupid memory!"

Miss Meredith recognized where a great slip had
taken place.  These had been her words before, "Not
many young men are in so easy a position for marrying!"  And
to Miss Dudgeon of all people she had just
said the reverse.

There is a pit formed by a bad memory wherein social
untruths sometimes tumble in company.  There they
are inclined to raise a laugh at themselves, and occasionally
make more honest people out of their perpetrators.

Miss Meredith knew there was no use in any longer
explaining Robin's position, or want of it, to so
clear-headed a person as Miss Dudgeon.  The best way
was to retire as speedily as possible from so difficult a
subject.

Mrs. Leighton found the whole affair very trying.
She never indulged in any social doctoring where her
own opinions were concerned, and it was really painful
for her to meet all the innuendoes cast at her by curious
people.

"Oh, Mr. Leighton and I always think young people
manage these things best themselves.  They are so
sensitive, you know, and quite apt to make mistakes
if dictated to.  A critical audience must be very trying.
Yes, everybody thought Robin was engaged to Mabel--but
he never was."

"Well then," said Aunt Katharine, with her lips
pursed up to sticking-point, "if they weren't engaged,
they ought to have been.  That's all I've got to say."

It was not all she had got to say, as it turned out.
She talked for quite a long time about the duties of
children to their parents.

Mrs. Leighton at last became really exasperated.

"You know, Katharine," she said, "if you are so
down on these young people, I shall one day--I really
shall, I shall tell them how you nearly ran away with
James Shrimpton."

"My dear," said Aunt Katharine.  She was quite
shocked.  "I was a young unformed thing and father
so overbearing----"  She was so hurt she could
go no further.

"Exactly," said Mrs. Leighton.  "And my girls
are young unformed things, and their father is not
overbearing."

Aunt Katharine grunted.

"Ah well, you keep their confidence.  That's true.
I don't know a more united family.  But this marriage
of Isobel's does not say much for your management."

That was it--"management."  Mrs. Leighton
groaned slightly to herself.  She never would be a
manager, she felt sure.  She offered a passive front to
fate, and her influence stopped there.  As for manoeuvring
fate by holding the reins a trifle and pressing backward
or forward, she had not the inclination at any time
to interfere in such a way at all.  She leaned on what
Emerson had said about things "gravitating."  She
believed that things gravitated in the right direction,
so long as one endeavoured to remain pure and noble,
in the wrong one so long as one was overbearing and
selfish.  She had absolutely no fear as to how things
would gravitate for Mabel after that night when she
talked about Robin and went off to succour Jean.

She placidly returned to her crochet, and to the
complainings of Aunt Katharine.

Cuthbert came down that evening, and Isobel, Elma,
Betty and he went off to be grown-ups at a children's
party at the Turbervilles.  The party progressed into
rather a "larky" dance, where there were as many
grown-ups as children.  All the first friends of the
Leightons were there, including, of course, the
Merediths.  Cuthbert took in Isobel in rather a frigid manner.
He endeavoured not to consider Meredith a cad, but his
feelings in that direction were overweighted for the
evening.  He danced with the children, and "was no
use for anybody else," as May Turberville put it.  But
then Cuthbert was so "ghastly clever and all that sort
of thing," that he could not be put on the level of other
people at all.

Cuthbert had got his summer lectureship.  He told
Elma, and then Mr. and Mrs. Leighton, and then Betty,
and Isobel could not imagine what spark of mischief
had lit their spirits to the point of revelry as they
ambled along in their slow four-wheeler.  Elma had only
one despair in her mind.  Neither Miss Grace nor Miss
Annie were well.  Miss Annie particularly seemed out
of gear, so much so and so definitely, that for the first
time for nearly thirty years Miss Grace spoke of having
in Dr. Merryweather.

Cuthbert asked lots of questions.

"I don't know," Elma generally answered.  "She
just lies and sickens.  As though she didn't care."

She raised her hand to her head at the time.

"Dr. Smith says it's the spring weather which
everybody feels specially trying this year."

Cuthbert grunted.

George Maclean came to Elma for the first dance.
He seemed in very good spirits.  Elma found herself
wondering if it were about Mabel.  Well, one would see.
Mabel had always been tied in a kind of a way, and now
she was free!  Mr. Maclean anyhow was the best,
above all the best.  Even Mr. Symington!  When she
thought of him, her mind always ran off to wondering
what now might happen to Mr. Symington.

She had a long, rollicking waltz with Mr. Maclean.
They rollicked, because children were on the floor
and steering seemed out of fashion.  Yet he carried
her round in a gentle way, because Elma, with
her desire to be the best of dancers, invariably got
knocked out with a robust partner.  He carried her
round in the most gentle way until the music stopped
with the bang, bang of an energetic amateur.  Elma
found the floor suddenly hit her on the cheek in what
seemed to her a most impossible manner.

"Now what could make it do that?" she asked Mr.
Maclean.  He was bending over her with rather a white
face.

Cuthbert came up.

"Why didn't you tell Maclean that you were giddy?"
he said.  "He would have held you up."

"But I wasn't giddy," said Elma.  "I'm not giddy now."

She was standing, but the floor again seemed at a slant.

"Steady," said Cuthbert.  "You're as giddy as the
giddiest.  Don't pretend.  Take her off to get cool,
Maclean."

"Cool!"  Elma's fingers seemed icy.  But there was
a comforting, light-headed glow in her cheeks which
reassured her.

Every one said how well she was looking, and that
kept her from wondering whether she was really going
to be ill.  George Maclean tried to get her to drink tea,
but for the first time in her life she found herself
possessed of a passion for lemonade.

"You will really think that I am one of the children,"
she said, "because I am simply devoured with a longing
for iced lemonade."

"Well, you shall have iced lemonade, and as much
as you want," said George Maclean.  "How I could
let you fall, I can't think."  There was a most ludicrous
look of concern on his face.

"I shall grab all my prospective partners for this
evening at least," said Elma.  "You can't think how
treacherous that floor is."

She did not dance nearly so much as she wanted to.
George Maclean and Lance and Cuthbert, these three,
at least, made her sit out when she wanted to be
"skipping."

Isobel looked her up on hearing that she had fallen.
Cuthbert said, "She doesn't look well, you know."

"Why, Elma--Elma is never ill," said Isobel.  "Look
at her colour too!"

Towards the end of the evening, they began to forget
about it, and Elma danced almost as usual.  Three
times she saw the floor rock, but held on.  What her
partners thought of her when she clung to a strong arm,
she did not stop to think.  It was "talking to Miss
Annie in her stuffy room" that had started it, she
remembered.

She was in an exalted frame of mind about other
things.  The world was turning golden.  Cuthbert
was coming home, Mabel and Jean would soon be
with them, Adelaide Maud was already on the spot.
And Isobel would be gone in the summer.

Robin Meredith came to ask her for a dance.  He
seemed subdued, and had a rather nervous manner of
inviting her.  So that it seemed easy for her to be sedate
and beg him to excuse her because she had turned giddy.
Anything! she could stand anything on that evening
except dance with Robin Meredith.  Her training in
many old ways came back to her, however.

"I shall sit out, if you don't mind," she said.  "Isn't
it silly to have a headache when all this fun is going
on?"  She found herself being quite friendly and
natural with him.  The children were having a great
romp in front of them.

"Have you a headache?" he asked rather kindly.

Oh yes, she had a headache.  Now she knew.  It
seemed to have been going on for years.  She began to
talk about May Turberville's embroidery, and how
Lance had sewn a pincushion in order to outrival her.
When May had run on to sewing daffodils on her gowns,
Lance threatened to embroider sunflowers on his
waistcoats.  Had he seen Lance's pictures?  Well, Lance
was really awfully clever, particularly in drawing
figures.  Mr. Leighton wanted him to say he would
be an artist, but Lance said he couldn't stand the clothes
he would have to wear.  Mr. Leighton said that wearing
a velveteen coat didn't mean nowadays that one was
an artist, and Lance said that it was the only way
of drawing the attention of the public.  He said that
one always required some kind of a showman to call
out "Walk up, gentlemen, this way to the priceless
treasures," and that a velveteen coat did all that for
an artist.  Lance said he would rather be on the Stock
Exchange, where he could do his own shouting.  She
said that frankly, with all the knowledge she had of
Lance and his manner of giving people away, she should
never think of entrusting him with her money to invest.
She said it in a very high voice, since she observed just
at that minute that Lance stood behind her chair.

"Well, you are a little cat, Elma," he said disdainfully.
"Here am I organizing a party in order to let
people know that some day I shall be on the Stock
Exchange, and here are you influencing the gully public
against me."

"I object to the term 'gully,'" said Robin in a
laboured but sporting manner.

"Well--gulled if you like it better," said Lance.
"Only that effect doesn't come on till I'm done with
you.  You are to go and dance lancers, Meredith, while
I take your place with this slanderer."  It was Lance's
way of asking for the next dance.

Elma gave a great sigh of relief after Robin had gone.

"He never heard me say so much in his life before,"
said she.  "He must have been awfully surprised."

"How you can say a word to the fellow--but there,
nobody understands you Leightons.  You ought to have
poisoned him.  Or perhaps Mabel is only a little flirt."

He wisped a thread of the gauze of her fan.

Elma smiled at him.  She was always sure of Lance.

"I say, Elma, what are we to do with Mother Mabel
when she comes back?  Does she mind this business,
or are we allowed to refer to it in a jovial way?"

"Jovial, I think," said Elma.  "I believe Mabs is
awfully relieved."

She bent over and whispered to Lance.

"I should myself you know if I had just got rid of
Robin."

Lance laughed immoderately.

"He's a rum chap," he said, "but he's met a good
match in Isobel.  Great Scott, look at the stride on her.
She could take Robin up and twist him into macaroni
if she wanted to.  I'm sorry for him."

"What are you going to do for Sarah?" he asked
abruptly.

"Sarah?" asked Elma with her eyes wide.

"Yes, you'll have to marry the girl or something.
It's hard nuts on her.  Why don't you get Symington
back and let him make up the quartette?"

"Mr. Symington?"

"Yes.  It would be most appropriate, wouldn't it?
Robin and Isobel, and Symington and Sarah.  It's quite
a neat arrangement.  You've provided one husband,
why not the other."  Several demons of mischief
danced in Lance's eye.

"Oh, Lance, don't say that," said Elma; "it's so
horrid, and--and common."

"Oh, it's common, is it," said Lance, "common.
And I'm going to be your stockbroker one day, and
you talk to me like this."

"Look here, Lance, I'd trust you with all my worldly
wealth on the Stock Exchange, but I won't let you joke
about Mr. Symington."

"Whew," said Lance, and he looked gently and
amiably into the eyes of Elma.

"When you look good like that, I know you are
exceedingly naughty.  What is it this time, Lance?"

"Nothing, Elma, except----"

"Except----"

"That I have found out all I wanted to know about
Symington, thank you."

"You are just a common, low little gossip, Lance,"
said Elma with great severity.  "Will you please get
me a nice cool glass of iced lemonade."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`The Ham Sandwich`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XXIV


.. class:: center large

   The Ham Sandwich

.. vspace:: 2

Elma lay on her bed in the pink and white room.  The
first warm spring sunshine in vain tried to find an
opening to filter through partly closed shutter and
blinds.  A nurse in grey dress and white cap and apron
moved silently in the half-light created by drawn
blinds and an open door She nodded to Mrs. Leighton
who had just come in and who now sat near the
darkened window.  The nurse pointedly referred her to
the bed, as though she had good news for her.

Elma opened her eyes.  Their misty violet seemed
dazed with long sleep.

"Oh, mummy, you there?" she asked.

"Yes," said Mrs. Leighton quietly.

Elma looked at her inquiringly.

"Is there anything you want?" asked Mrs. Leighton
in answer to that expression.  How often had they
asked the same question uselessly within the past
weeks!

Elma looked up at the white walls.

"Yes, mummy, there's one thing.  I should like a
large ham sandwich."

"There," said Nurse emphatically.  "That's it.
Now the fight is really going to begin."

"I should like to have plenty of butter on it and
quite a lot of mustard," said Elma.

"Mustard?" said Mrs. Leighton helplessly.  "Do
you know what's been wrong with you all these weeks?"

Elma moved her eyes curiously, there being not
much else that she could move.  It had never dawned
on her till that moment to wonder what had been
wrong with her.

"No, mummy," she said, "I haven't a notion."

Mrs. Leighton looked for instructions to the nurse.

"She'd better know now, Mrs. Leighton," she said,
"now that she begins to ask for ham sandwiches."

"You've had typhoid fever, Elma," said her mother.

Elma sighed gently.

"Dear me," she said, "how grand.  But you don't
know how hungry I am or you would give me a ham
sandwich.  You ought to be rather glad that I'm so
much better that I want to eat."

Then an expression of great cunning came into her
eyes.

"I ought to be fed up if I've had a fever," she
informed them.

"We shall get the doctor to see to that," said the
nurse.

She came to her and held her hand firmly.

"Do you know," she said, "you have been very ill
and you are ever so much better, but nothing you've
gone through will worry you so much as what you've
got to do now.  You've got to be starved for ten days,
when you are longing to eat.  You will lie dreaming
of food--and----"

"Ham sandwiches?" asked Elma.

"And we shall not be allowed to give them to you,"
said Nurse.

"Isn't she nice, mummy, she's quite sorry.  And
people say that nurses are hard-hearted," said Elma.

"I've had typhoid myself," said Nurse briefly.

Elma looked at her, her own eyelids heavy with sleep
still to be made up.

"Well, barring the sandwich, what about lemon
cheese cakes," she asked.

Mrs. Leighton let her hands fall.

"Oh, Elma," she said, "what a thing to choose
at this stage."

"Or sausages," remarked Elma.  "I'm simply longing
for sausages."

She endeavoured to throw an appealing look towards Nurse.

"This isn't humour on my part, mummy dear,"
she said.  "I just can't help it.  I can't get sausages
out of my mind," she said.

"If you would think of a little steamed fish or a
soaked rusk, you'd be a little nearer it," said Nurse,
"you'll have that in ten days."

Elma looked at her in a determined way.

"I've always been told that a simple lunch, a very
simple lunch might be made out of a ham sandwich.
Why should it be denied to me now?"

"Elma," said Mrs. Leighton, "I never knew you were
so obstinate."

"You know, mummy," said Elma, "I'm not dreaming
now.  I'm wide awake, and I'm awfully hungry.
I'm sorry I ever thought of sausages, because ham
sandwiches were just about as much as I could bear.
Now I've both to think of, and Nurse won't bring
me either."

"Don't mind her, Mrs. Leighton," said the nurse.
"It's always the same, and, without nurses, generally
a relapse to follow.  You aren't going to have a
relapse," she said to Elma.

She gave her some milk in a methodical manner, and
the down-dropping of Elma's eyelids continued till she
fell asleep once more.

So she had slept since the fever had begun to go
down.  Probably she had had the best of the
intervening weeks.

There was the slow stupor of a fever gaining ground.
It began with the headache of the Turberville's dance,
a headache which never lifted until Elma returned to
her own again, weak and prostrate in bed.  The stupor
gradually cut her off from common affairs.  It sent
her to bed first because she could no longer stand up,
and it crowded back her ideas and her memory till at
last she was in the full swing of a delirium.  What
this illness cost Mr. and Mrs. Leighton in anxiety,
probably no one knew.  Elma had always covered up her
claims to sympathy and petting, always been
moderately well.  Here she was with blazing cheeks and
wandering eyes talking largely and at random about
anything or every one.

Mr. Leighton used to sit by her and stroke her hair.
Long years afterwards, she was to feel the touch of
his fingers, hear the tones of his voice as he said, "Poor
little Elma."

She faded gradually into the delirium which seemed
to have cut her illness in two, the one illness where she
lay with dry mouth and an everlasting headache, the
other where she was merely hungry.

Mrs. Leighton was appalled by the worrying of Elma's
mind.  She went through some of her wild dreams with
her, calling her back at places by the mere sound of
her voice to a kind of sub-consciousness in which Elma
grew infinitely relieved.

"Oh, is that you, mummy?  Have I really been dreaming?"

She dreamt of Mabel and she dreamt of Adelaide
Maud.  But more than any one, she dreamt of
Mr. Symington.  Here is where the deceptiveness of a
fever comes in.  Elma pleaded so piteously with her
mother to bring back Mr. Symington that Mrs. Leighton
awoke to an entirely new and wrong idea of the state
of Elma's affections.

"It's quite ridiculous, John," said she, "but that
child, she was only a child, seems to have filled her
head with notions of Mr. Symington."

"What!  More of it?" asked poor Mr. Leighton.

"She begs and begs to have him back," said Mrs. Leighton.

"I've never made out why he left as he did," said
Mr. Leighton.  "There was always the idea with me
that he cleared out for a reason.  But this small child,
why, she hadn't her hair up."

"She will soon be eighteen," said Mrs. Leighton.

He went into her room a little later.  Elma lay
with unseeing eyes staring at him.  He could hardly
bear it.

"Elma," he said vaguely, trying to recall her.

"Oh," she answered promptly, but still staring,
"is that you, Sym--Sym--Symington!"

Her father choked down what he could of the lump
that gathered, and moved quietly away.

These were dark days for every one.  Elma had the
best of it.  She left the Symington groove after a day
or so, and worked on to Isobel.  Isobel invaded her
mind.  It was a blessing that Isobel was barred by
real distaste to the business from going in to help
with the nursing of Elma.  What she said of her pointed
to more than a mere dislike.  It revolved into fear as
the delirium progressed.  Then a second nurse arrived,
and between them the two began really to decrease the
temperature.  The first good news came, "Asleep for
ten minutes," and after that there was no backward
turn in the illness for Elma.

Throughout this time there had been the keenest
inquiries made as to what had caused the illness.
Cuthbert was down and "made things hum" in the matter
of wakening up the sanitary authorities and so on.
But no flaw in the arrangement of the White House
or anything near it could be discovered.  Then
Dr. Merryweather called one day.

"I have another patient in Miss Annie," he said.

Miss Annie!  This gave a clue.

"Typhoid at her age is unusual," he said, "but she
has not developed the power of resisting disease like
ordinary people.  She has been in a good condition
for harbouring every germ that happened to be about.
I'm afraid we cannot save her."  He turned to
Mrs. Leighton.  His kind old face twitched suddenly.

"Oh, dear, dear," she exclaimed.  "What will
Miss Grace do?  What will little Elma do?"

"Miss Grace is all right," said Dr. Merryweather.
"I've seen to that.  Elma must not know, of course."

"This looks like contraction from a common cause,"
said Cuthbert.  "I'll be at it whatever it is.  We
don't want any one else sacrificed."

Dr. Merryweather looked at him gravely.

"I have just been getting at the tactics of the local
government," said he.  "You couldn't believe they
could be so prompt in Ridgetown.  Three weeks ago,
a gardener living near Miss Annie complained of an
atrocious stench coming from over the railway.  It
was so bad that when the local government body at
his demand approached it, they had to turn and run.
An open stream had been used as a common sewer and
run into the railway cutting, where it had stagnated.
Can you imagine the promptness of the local
government?  Evans, the gardener, threatened to report
to you, Mr. Leighton, since your daughter was so ill and
had visited so much at Miss Annie's.  They managed
to keep his mouth shut, and they have removed the
sewer.  Too late for Miss Annie."

"Too late for my little girl," said Mr. Leighton.

It seemed an extraordinary thing that the two
daughters who had gone away, and given them so much
anxiety, should be coming home radiantly independent,
and Elma, sheltered at home, should be lying just lately
rescued from death.

The same thought seemed to strike Dr. Merryweather
in another connection.

"Ah, well," he said, "we would save some gentle
souls a lot of suffering if we could.  It's no use evading
life, you see, and its consequences.  Death has stolen
into Miss Annie's beautiful bedroom, from an ugly
sewer across the way.  Nothing we could do for her
now can save her."

Miss Annie died on a quiet morning when Elma
lay dreaming of ham sandwiches.  Elma never forgot
that, nor how dreadful it seemed that she had never
asked for Miss Annie nor Miss Grace, but just dreamed
of what she would eat.

"You had had a lot to stand," Nurse told her a week
or two afterwards when she heard about Miss Annie
for the first time, "and it's a compensation that's
often given to us when we are ill, just to be peaceful
and not think at all."

Dr. Merryweather had wakened up Miss Grace finally
in a sharp manner.

"There's that poor child been ill all this time and
you've never even seen her.  Take her along some
flowers and let her see that you are not grieving too
much for Miss Annie.  She won't get better if she worries
about you."

Then to Elma.

"Cheer up Miss Grace when she comes.  You have
your life before you, and she has had to put all hers
behind her.  Don't let her be down if you can help it."

In this wise he pitted the two against one another,
so that they met with great fortitude.

"Why, my dear, how pretty your hair is," Miss
Grace had burst out.

Elma was lying on a couch near the window by this
time.  She looked infinitely fragile.

"Oh, Miss Grace, it is a wig," she replied.

Miss Grace laughed in a jerky hysterical sort of
manner.

"Then I wish I wore a wig," said she.

Elma smiled.

"Do you know, that's what they all say.  They
come in and tell me in a most surprised manner, "Why,
how well you are looking!" and say they never saw
me so pretty and all that kind of thing.  And then I
look in my mirror, and I see quite plainly that I'm a
perfect fright.  But I don't care, you know.  Mabel
and Jean know now how ill I've been.  I'm so glad they
didn't before, aren't you?  It would have spoiled Jean's
coming home like a conqueror.  They say she sings
beautifully.  And oh, Miss Grace, I've such a lot to
tell you.  One thing is about Mr. Symington.  You
know I never said why he went away.  It was because
Miss Meredith made him believe that Robin was engaged
to Mabel, and she wasn't at all.  It made her appear
like a flirt, you know.  Didn't it?"

Miss Grace nodded.

"Well, I've been thinking and thinking.  I can't tell
you how I've been dreaming about Mr. Symington.
Well, now, I've been thinking, 'Couldn't we invite him
to Isobel's wedding?'"

Miss Grace's eyes gleamed.

"Fancy Mr. Symington at breakfast at some
outlandish place.  A letter arrives.  He opens it.
'Ha!  The wedding invitation.  Robin Meredith, the
bounder!'  I beg your pardon, Miss Grace.  'Robin
Meredith to Isobel--what--niece of--why what's
this?'  What will he do, Miss Grace?"

"Come to the wedding, sure," said Miss Grace laughingly.

"Well, if I've to send the invitation myself, one is
going to Mr. Symington."

Elma had not passed her dreaming hours in vain.

Besides, Miss Grace had got over the difficult part of
meeting Elma again, and was right back in her old part
of counsellor, evidently without a quiver of the pain
that divided them.  Yet, they both felt the barrier that
was there, the barrier of that presence of Miss Annie
which had always entered first into their conversations,
and now could not be mentioned.

Elma thought of the visits that Miss Grace would
have to make to her.  She saw that Miss Grace had
been warned not to agitate her.  This was enough to
enable her to take the matter entirely in her own hands
with no agitation at all.

"I think you know, Miss Grace, that when one has
been so near dying as I've been, and not minded--I
mean I had no knowledge that I was so ill, and even
didn't care much--since it was myself, you know,
except for the trouble it gave to people----"

Elma was becoming a little long-winded.

"I want to tell you that you must always tell me
about Miss Annie, not mind just because they say I'm
not to be agitated, or anything of that sort.  I won't
be a bit agitated if you tell me about Miss Annie."

"My dear love," Miss Grace stopped abruptly.

"Dr. Merryweather said----" and she stopped again.

"Yes, Dr. Merryweather said the same to me, he
said that on no account was I to speak to you of Miss
Annie.  Dr. Merryweather simply knows nothing about
you and me."

Miss Grace shook her head drearily.

"You are a bad little invalid," said she.

But it broke the ice a little bit, and one day
afterwards Miss Grace told her more than she could bear
herself.  Dr. Merryweather was right, Miss Grace broke
down over the last loving message to Elma.  She had
a little pearl necklace for Elma to wear, and fastened it
on without a word.

Then came Mrs. Leighton looking anxious.

"See, mummy, Miss Grace has given me a beautiful
little necklace from Miss Annie."

All trace of Elma's childish nervousness had departed
with her fever.  She had looked right into other worlds,
and it had made an easier thing of this one.  Besides,
Miss Grace must not be allowed to cry.

Miss Grace did not cry so much as one might have
expected.  Miss Annie's death was a thing she had
feared for twenty-eight years, and Dr. Merryweather
had given her no sympathy.  He had almost made
her think that Annie ought not to consider herself an
invalid.  How she connected typhoid fever with the
neurotic illness which Dr. Merryweather would never
acknowledge as an illness, it was difficult to imagine.
Certainly, she had the feeling that Annie in a pathetic
manner had justified her invalidism at last.  It was a
sad way in which to recover one's self-respect, but in
an unexplained way she felt that with Dr. Merryweather
she had recovered her self-respect.  She could refer to
Miss Annie now, and awaken that twitching of his
sympathies which one could see plainly in that rugged
often inscrutable face, and feel thereby that she had
not misplaced her confidence by giving up all these
years to Annie.  Indeed, the death of Miss Annie
affected Dr. Merryweather far more than one could
imagine.  As also the sight of Elma, thinned down
and fragile, her hair gone and a wig on.

He teased her unmercifully about the wig.

"So long as I look respectable when Mabel and Jean
come home!  Oh!  Dr. Merryweather, please have me
looking respectable when Mabel and Jean come home."

Dr. Merryweather promised to have her as fat as
a pumpkin.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`The Wild Anemone`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XXV


.. class:: center large

   The Wild Anemone

.. vspace:: 2

Mabel and Jean had been successfully deceived up to
a certain point in regard to Elma's illness.  They were
told the facts when the danger was past.  It was made
clear to them then that the fewer people at home in
an illness of that sort the better, while skilled nurses
were so conveniently to be had.  Mabel pined a little
over not having been there to nurse Elma, as though
she had landed her sensitive little sister into an illness
by leaving too much on her shoulders.  The independent
vitality of Jean constantly reassured her however.

"She would just have been worse with that scared
face of yours at her bedside," Jean would declare.
"Every time you think of Elma you get as white as
though you were just about to perform in the Queen's
Hall.  You'll have angina pectoris if you don't look out."

Jean had made a great friend of a nurse who never
talked of common things like heart disease or
toothache.  "Angina pectoris" and "periostitis" were
used instead.  When Jean wrote home in an airy
manner in the midst of Elma's illness to say that she
was suffering from an attack of "periostitis,"
Mrs. Leighton immediately wired, "Get a nurse for Jean if
required."

"What in the wide world have you been telling
mother?" asked Mabel with that alarming communication
in her hand.

Jean was trying to learn fencing from an enthusiast
in the corridor.

"Oh, well."  Her face fell a trifle at the consideration
of the telegram.  "I did have toothache," said Jean.

Mabel stared at the telegram.  "Mummy can't be
losing her reason over Elma's being ill," she said.  "She
couldn't possibly suppose you would want a nurse
for toothache.  That's going a little too far, isn't it?"

Mabel was really quite anxious about her mother.

"Oh, well," said Jean lamely, "Nurse Shaw said it
was periostitis."

"And you--"--Mabel's eyes grew round and
indignant--"you really wrote and told poor mummy
that you had perios--os----"

"Titis," said Jean.  "Of course, I did--why not?"

She was a trifle ashamed of herself, but the dancing
eyes of the fencing enthusiast held her to the point.

"That's the worst of early Victorian parents," said
this girl with a bright cheerful giggle.  "One can't
even talk the vernacular nowadays."

She made an unexpected lunge at Jean.

"Oh," cried Jean, "I must answer that telegram.
Say I'm an idiot, Mabel, and that I've only had
toothache."

Mabel for once performed the duties of an elder sister
in a grim manner.

"Am an idiot," she wrote, "only had toothache
an hour.  Fencing match on, forgive hurry.  Jean."

She read it out to the fencers.

"Oh, I say," said Jean with visible chagrin, "you
are a little beggar, Mabel."

"Send it," cried the fencing girl.  "One must be
laughed at now and again--it's good for one.  Besides,
you can't be both a semi-neurotic invalid and a good
fencer.  Better give up the neurotic habit."

Jean stepped back in derision.

"I'm not neurotic," she affirmed.

"You wouldn't have sent that message about your
perio--piérrot--what's the gentleman's name?  if you
hadn't been neurotic."

Mabel had scribbled off another message.

"Well," said Jean gratefully, "my own family don't
talk to me like that."

"Oh, no," said the fencing girl coolly, "they run
round you with hot bottles, and mustard blisters.  All
families do.  They make you think about your toothache
until you aren't pleased when you haven't got it.
That's the benefit of being here.  Here it's a bore to
be ill."

She went suddenly on guard.

"Oh," said Jean, in willing imitation of that attitude,
"if you only teach me to fence, you may say what you like."

It was more the importance of Jean's estimate of
herself than any real leanings towards being an invalid
which made her look on an hour's depression as a
serious thing, and an attack of toothache as an item
of news which ought immediately to be communicated
to her family.  She criticized life entirely through
her own feelings and experiences.  Mabel and Elma
had enough of the sympathetic understanding of the
nature of others, to tune their own characters
accordingly.  But Jean, unless terrified, or hurt, or joyous
herself never allowed these feelings to be transmitted
from any one, or because of any one, she happened
to love.  It kept her from maturing as Mabel and even
Elma had done.  She would always be more or less
of the self-centred person.  It was a useful trait in
connexion with singing for instance, and it seemed
also as though it might make her a good fencer.  But
the flippant merry fencing enthusiast in front of her
was right when she saw the pitfall ready for the Jean
who should one day dedicate herself to her ailments.
In the case of Mabel this very lack of sympathy in
Jean helped her in a lonely manner to regain some of
her lost confidence in herself.  It never dawned once
on Jean that Mabel was fighting down a trouble of
her own.  Mabel had bad nights and ghostly dreams,
and a headache occasionally, which seemed as though
it would put an end to any enthusiasm she might ever
have had for such an occupation as piano playing.  But
in the morning one got up, and there were always the
interests, the joys or troubles, or the quaint little
oddities of other girls, to knock this introspection and worry
into the background, and make Mabel her companionable
self once more.  It was better, after all, than the
scrutiny of one's own family, even a kind one.  Jean
was merely conscious of change in any one when they
refused a match or a drive or a walk with her.  The
world was of a piece when that happened--"stodgy"--and
the interests of Jean were being neglected--a great
crime.

Mabel despatched the telegram, and the fencing
was resumed with vigour.  The corridor at this end
of the house contained a bay window, seated and
cushioned, and more comfortable as a tea-room than
many of the little bedrooms.  They had arranged
tea-cups, and were preparing that fascinating and
delightful meal when a girl advanced from the far end of
the corridor, in a lithe swinging manner.  The fencing
girl drew back her foil abruptly.  "Who is that?"
she asked, staring.  The girls were conscious of a most
refreshing and invigorating surprise.  Elsie Clutterbuck
stood there, with the wild sweetness of the open
air in her bearing, her hair ruffled gently, her eyes
shining in a pale setting.

"You beautiful wild anemone!" breathed the
fencing girl in a whisper.

Mabel and Jean heard the soft words with surprise.
It was a new light through which to look on Elsie.
They had never quite dropped the pose of the
benignant girls who had taken Elsie "out of herself."  To
them she was rather a protégé than a friend; much
as Mabel at least would have despised herself for that
attitude had she detected it in herself.  She
acknowledged an immediate drop in her calculations, when
the fencing girl did not ask as most people did, "Who
is that queer little thing?"  It was difficult in one
sudden moment to adjust oneself to introducing Elsie
as "You beautiful wild anemone!"

Jean, however, merely summed up the fencing
girl as rather ignorant.  "Why," she said frankly,
"I declare it's Elsie!" and in a whisper declared,
"There's nothing beautiful about Elsie."

They welcomed her heartily, curiously, and wondered
if Lance's latest news of the family was true.

"Mother Buttercluck," he had written, "has come in
for a little legacy.  It's she who clucks now (grammar
or no grammar) and the Professor chimes in as the
butter portion merely.  May heard about it.  Can
you imagine Mrs. C. saying, 'I'd love to have some one
to lean on,' and the Buttercluck, who would have
declared before--'On whom to lean.  Pray do be more
careful of your English,' not having a cluck left!  Though
I do think Elsie had knocked a little of the cluck out
before the legacy arrived."

Elsie did not seem to be bursting with news.  She
sat in rather a grown-up, reliable way, opening her
furry coat at their orders, and drawing off her gloves.
Her hair was up in loose, heavy coils on her neck, and
it parted in front with that restless rippling appearance
which made one think of the open air.  The tip-tilted
nose, which had seemed the principal fault in the face
which had always been termed plain in childhood,
seemed now to lend a piquancy to her features.  These
were delicately irregular, and her eyebrows were too
high, if one might rely on the analysis of Jean.

The fencing girl sat and stared at her with her foil
balanced on a crossed knee.  If one wanted to do the
fencing girl a real kindness, to make her radiantly happy,
then one introduced her to some one in whom she might
be interested.  Life was a garden to her, and the friends
she made the flowers.  She was not particular about
plucking them either.  "Oh, no indeed," she would
say, "I've seen some one in the park to-day who is
more sweet and lovely than any one human ought to
be.  I should love to know her, of course, but she was
just as great a joy to look at.  Why should you want
to have everything that's beautiful?  It's merely a
form of selfishness."

Mabel and Jean imagined that it was more a pose on
the part of the fencing girl than any talent of Elsie's
which immediately impressed her on this afternoon.
They were later to discover that a thrill of expectancy,
of interest, was Elsie's first gift to strangers.

"Oh, no," breathed the fencing girl to herself, "you
are not beautiful, really; you are a personality--that's it."

Elsie sat pulling her gloves through her white hands.

"Lance says Mrs. Clutterbuck has a legacy," said
Jean bluntly.  "I suppose it's true, but we are never
sure of Lance, you know."

She passed a cup and some buttered toast.

"Oh, yes, it's true," said Elsie.  "I do so envy mamma."

"Why?  Doesn't she--haven't you the benefit of
it too?" asked Mabel in surprise.

"Oh, yes.  It isn't that, you know."  Elsie swept
forward, with a little furry cape falling up to her ears
as she recovered a dropped glove.  "It's giving papa
a holiday.  I've thought all my life how I should love
to grow up and become an heiress, and give my papa
a holiday."

"You thought that," asked Jean accusingly.  "Come
now--when you were climbing lamp-posts and skimming
down rain-pipes----"

"Yes, and breaking into other people's houses," said
Elsie slowly.

"Did you do that too?" asked Jean.

"Once," said Elsie dreamily, "only once.  I was a
dreadful trial to my parents," she explained to the
fencing girl.

"You weren't spanked enough," said Mabel, shaking
her head at her.

"My papa was too busy, and mamma too concerned
about him to attend to me," smiled Elsie.  "Poor
mamma!  She knew if I told my father what I did,
it would disturb his thoughts, and if his thoughts
were disturbed he couldn't work, and if he couldn't
work the rent wouldn't be paid."

"Oh," said Mabel with memories heaping on her,
"had you really to worry about the rent?"

The fencing girl began to talk at last.

"It makes me tired," said she vigorously, "the way
in which you people, brought up in provincial and
suburban places, talk.  Because you can't afford to
be there unless your fathers have enough money to
take you there, you think there's no struggle in the world.
You ought to live a bit in towns where people are
obliged to show the working side as well as the
retired and affluent side.  You poor thing, stuck in
suburbia, among those Philistines, and thinking about the
rent!  I suppose they only thought you were bad tempered."

The fencing girl had landed them into a conversation
more intimate than any they had attempted together.

"Oh," said Elsie, and she looked shyly at Mabel
and Jean.  "I was a tiny little thing when I got my
first lesson.  A lady and her daughter called on mamma
the second week we were in Ridgetown.  I came on
them in the garden afterwards.  They were going out
at the gate, and they didn't see me coming in.  This
lady said to her daughter, quite amiably: 'It's no
use, my dear; I suppose you observed they have only
one maid.'  They never called again."

The fencing girl bit her lip with an interrupted laugh.

"Isn't that suburbia?" she asked.  "Now, isn't it?"

"It made me a little wild cat," said Elsie.  "Everybody
in Ridgetown had at least two maids, except
ourselves."

"Do you know," said Jean, "I know the time when
we would have wept at that if it had ever happened
to us.  It isn't a joke," she told the fencing girl.

Elsie gave a long, quiet laugh.  "If I ever have
children," she said, "I hope I may keep them from
being silly about a trifle of that sort."

"That's one of the jokes of life though.  You won't
have children who need any support in that way.

"Won't I?" asked Elsie with round eyes.

"No, they'll all be quite different.  They'll be
giving you points on the simple life, and advising you
to dispense with maids altogether," said the fencing
girl.  "I'm not joking.  It's a fact, you know, that
children are awfully unlike their parents.  Are you
like your mother?" she asked Elsie.

"Not a bit," said Elsie laughing.

"Don't study yourself merely in order to know
about children.  You may just have been a selfish little
prig, you know," said the fencing girl cheerily.  "Study
them by the dozen, be public-spirited about it.  Then
some day you may be able to understand the soul of a
child when you get it all to yourself.  You won't just
sit and say in a blank way, 'In my day children
were different.'"

"Oh," cried Jean.  "Now don't.  If there's anything
I hate, it's when Evelyn begins to preach about
children."

"Oh, well," said the fencing girl with a shrug, "if
Mrs.----, whatever your mother's name is, had known
as much about their little ways as I do, she would never
have let you worry about that one maid.  We are all
wrong with domestic life at present.  The one lot stays
in too much and loses touch with the world, and the
other lot are too busy touching the world to stay in
enough.  We are putting it right, however," she said
amiably.  "We are----"  She spread her hands in
the direction of the company collected.  "We are
getting up our world at present.  After that we may be of
some use in it."

Elsie looked at her rather admiringly.

"My father would love to hear you talk," she said
amiably.

"Talk," said the fencing girl in a fallen voice, "and
I hate the talkers so!"

"Nevertheless," said Mabel, "given a friend of
ours in for tea--who does the talking?"

"Evelyn," said Jean, "and invariably her own
subjects too."

It seems that this girl was not always fencing.

She controlled the collecting of rents and practically
managed the domestic matters in three streets of
tenements of new buildings recently erected in a working
part of London.  She was also engaged to be married.

"Doesn't this sort of independent life unsettle you
for a quiet one?" she was often asked by her friends.

"And it's quite different," she would explain.  "Knowing
the stress and the difficulties of this side of it make
me long for that little haven of a home we are getting
ready at Richmond.  I would bury myself there for ever,
from a selfish point of view that is, and probably
vegetate like the others.  But I've made a pledge never
to forget--never to forget what I've seen in London,
and never to stop working for it somewhere or somehow."

"What about your poor husband?" asked Jean.

"He isn't poor," said the fencing girl with a grin.
"He is getting quite rich.  He fell in love with me at
the tenements.  He built them.  I should think he
would divorce me if I turned narrow-minded."

She gazed in a searching way at Elsie.

"You have the makings of a somebody," she said
gravely, "more than these two, though they are
perfectly charming."

"I want to go to the Balkans," said Elsie.  She turned
to Mabel.  "Cousin Arthur declared he really would
take me."

"Is Mr. Symington there now?" asked Jean.  Mabel
thanked her from the bottom of a heart that couldn't
prompt a single word at that supreme moment.

"No, but he said he was going some day," said Elsie.
That was all.  Mabel had seen a blaze of sunshine and
then blackness again.

"Oh," said the robust, unheeding Jean, "what
do your people say to that?"

"Papa says he won't have me butchered," said Elsie
with a radiant smile.

"Look here," said the fencing girl, with her eyes
still searching that "wild flower of a face" of Elsie's.
"Will your father come and see my tenements?"

The answer of Elsie became historic in the girls' club.

"I think he will," said she.  "He was up the Ferris
wheel last night."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`Under Royal Patronage`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XXVI


.. class:: center large

   Under Royal Patronage

.. vspace:: 2

Mrs. Leighton made use of the fact of the Clutterbuck's
being in London to write to the Professor's wife.

"We have been so anxious about Elma, who now
however is picking up.  But we have the saddest
news of Miss Annie.  It seems as though she would
not live more than a day or two.  If I have bad news
to send to Mabel and Jean, may I send it through
you?  It would be such a kindness to me if I knew
you were there to tell them."

Mrs. Clutterbuck responded in that loving tremulous
way she had of delighting in being useful.  She could
not believe in her good fortune with the Professor.
After all, it had been worry, concern about material
things, which had clouded his affection for a time.
He had never been able to give himself to the world,
as he desired to give himself, because of that grind
at lectures which he so palpably abhorred.  Now
even the lectures were a delight, since he had leisure
besides where he did not need to reflect on the
certainty of "the rainy day."  He was once more the
hero of her girlish dreams.  How magnificent not
to lose one's ideal!  They both rejoiced in the young
ardour of Elsie, whose courage made leaps at each new
unfolding of the "loveliness of life."

It was very delightful now that the two Leightons
should come under those gently stretching wings of
the reinvigorated Professor's wife.

At the time of a call from Mrs. Clutterbuck, Mabel
and Jean had just received tickets from Lady Emily
for a concert at a great house.  The concert, to those
who bought guinea tickets, was not so important as
the fact that royal ears would listen to it.  Herr
Slavska disposed of the affair in a speech which could
not be taken down in words.  His theme was the
rush of the "stupids" to see a royal personage, and
the tragedy of the poor "stars" of artists who could
hardly afford the cab which protected their costumes.
Yet some members of his profession, he averred, would
rather lose a meal or two than lose the chance of seeing
their name in red letters and of bowing to encores
from royalty.

"And why not?" asked Jean.  "I think it would
be lovely to bow to royalty."

"Where is ze art?" he asked as a wind-up.  "Nowhere!"

"That's nonsense, you know," Jean confided
afterwards.  "I think there must be a lot of art in being
able to sing to kings and queens.  Besides, why
shouldn't they wave their royal hands, and produce
us, as it were--like Aladdin, you know."

Jean already saw herself at Windsor.

Mabel merely concerned herself with the fact that
Mr. Green was to play.  He had not the scruples
of Herr Slavska.  "Although it's an abominable practice,"
said he.  "It is the artists who make the sacrifice.
Everybody else gets something for it.  The crowd
gets royalty, royalty gets music, charities get gold.
We get momentary applause--that is all."

"That's what I'm living for," declared Jean, "just
a little, a very little momentary applause.  Then I
would swell like a peacock, Mabel, I really should.
The artists don't get nothing out of it after all.  They
get appreciation."

Mrs. Clutterbuck was intensely interested in the
concert.  "Do you mean to say there's to be a prince
at it?" she asked.

There were to be princesses also, it seemed.

"Oh," said Mabel, "how lovely it would have
been for Elsie and you to go."

She saw the experience that it would be for a little
home bird of the Mrs. Clutterbuck type.  She
considered for a moment--"Couldn't she give up her
ticket for one of them?"

Mrs. Clutterbuck saw the indecision in her face.

"No, my dear, no," said she, "I know the thought
in your mind.  I have a much better plan."

The pleasure of being at last able to dispense
favours--transformed her face.  She turned with an expectant,
delighted look to Elsie.

"If we could go together," said she, "and it wouldn't
be a bore to both of you to sit with two country cousins
like ourselves, I should take two tickets.  It would
be charming."

This plan was received with the greatest acclamation.

"We ought to have a chaperon anyhow," said Jean.

It seemed the funniest thing in the world to Mabel
that they should be about to be chaperoned by
Mrs. Clutterbuck.  In some unaccountable way it drew
her more out of her loneliness than anything she had
experienced in London.  On the other hand, she was
constantly reminding herself how much amused some
people in Ridgetown would be if they only knew.

They drove to the concert on a spring day when the
air had suddenly turned warm.  The streets were
sparkling with a radiance of budding leaves, of
struggling blossom; and all the world seemed to be
turning in at the great gates of the house beyond St. James'.

It was not to be expected that one should know
these people, though, as Jean declared, "Every little
boarding-house keeper in Bayswater could tell you
who was stepping out of the carriage in front of you."

There was a great crowd inside; heated rooms and
a wide vestibule, and a hall where a platform was
arranged with crimson seats facing it and denoting
royalty.

Mrs. Clutterbuck's timidity came on her with a
rush.  She could hardly produce her two tickets.  It
was Mabel who saved the situation and piloted them
in as though she understood exactly where to go.  There
was a hush of expectancy in the beautifully costumed
crowd within.  Everybody looked past one with craning
neck.  Mabel began to laugh.  "It's exactly as though
they were built on a slant," she declared.

In the end they found seats on the stairs beside
the wife of an ambassador.

"My dear," said Mrs. Clutterbuck in rather a breathless
way to Mabel.  "My dear, just think of it."

Mabel immediately regretted having brought her there.

"But everybody is sitting on the stairs," she said
gravely.  "It's quite all right.  Lady Emily told me
she once took a seat in an elevator in somebody's house
because there was no room elsewhere.  She spent an
hour going up and down, not having the courage to get out."

Mrs. Clutterbuck smiled nervously.

"It isn't that, my dear.  It's the gown, that one
in front of you.  Every inch of the lace is hand-made."

Mrs. Clutterbuck was quite enervated by the discovery.

"Oh," said Mabel in quite a relieved way, "was
that it?  I began to blame myself for bringing you
to the stairs."

"Isn't it fun?" said Elsie.  "Much funnier looking
at these people than it will be looking at royalty.  I
never saw so many lorgnettes."

A sudden movement made them rise.  A group of
princesses with bouquets appeared and took their
seats on the red chairs.

"Oh," said Jean with a sigh, as they sat down again.
"Think of the poor artists now."

She had grown quite pale.

"I don't think I shall ever be able to perform,"
she said.  "My heart simply stops beating on an
occasion of this sort."

The crowd parted again, and a singer, radiant in
white chiffon with silver embroidery, and wearing a
black hat with enormous plumes, ascended the platform.
She curtseyed elaborately to the princesses, and casually
bowed in the direction of the applause which reached her
from other sources.  She began to sing, and in that hall of
reserved voices, of deferential attitudes, of eager,
searching glances and general ceremonious curiosity, her voice
rang out a clear, beautiful, alien thing.  It danced into
the shadows of minds merely occupied with staring,
it filled up crevices as though she had appeared in an
empty room.  One moment every one had been girt
with a kind of fashionable melancholy which precluded
anything but polite commonplaces.  The next minute
something living had appeared, a liquid voice sang notes
of joy, mockery and despair; it lit on things which
cannot be touched upon with the speaking voice, and
it brought tears to the eyes of one little princess.

Jean was shrouded in longing.  Nothing so intimately
delicious had ever come near her.  She might as
well shut up her music books and say good-bye to Herr
Slavska.  Elsie sat beside the lady in real lace.  She
was in the woods with the fresh air blowing over her;
buttercups and daisies at her feet.

"Is she not then charming?" asked a voice at her
side.  The real lace had spoken at last.  That was how
they discovered afterwards that she was the wife of an
ambassador.  The lady had her mind distracted first
by the sheer beauty of a famous voice which she loved,
next by the delicate profile of the face beside her--a
type not usual in London.

Elsie turned her eyes with a start.

"It's like summer, the voice," she said simply.

"It's like the best method I've ever heard," said
Jean darkly.  (Oh, how to emulate such a creature!)

"Ah, yes.  But she returns.  And now, while yet
she bows and does not sing--a leetle vulgar is it not?"

The ambassador's wife could discount her favourite
it seemed.  That was just the difficulty in art.  To
remain supreme in one art and yet recognize other forms
of it, that was the fortune of few.  The singer had
enormous jewels at her neck.

"She would wear cabbage as diamonds," said the
lady, "but with her voice one forgives."

Thereafter there was a procession of the most talented
performers at that moment in London.  Magicians
with violins drew melodies in a faultless manner from
smooth strings and a bow which seemed to be playing
on butter.  Technique was evident nowhere, only the
easy lovely result of it.  In an hour it became as facile
a thing to play any instrument, sing any song, as though
practice and discouragement did not exist in any art at all.

"Mr. Green played decorously and magnificently,"
said Elsie.  "They are all a little decorous, aren't
they?" she asked, "except that wonderful thing in
the white and silver gown."

Nothing had touched the daring beauty of that voice.

Mrs. Clutterbuck leant forward to Elsie eagerly.

"I was right, Elsie," said she.  "You know I was right."

"Right?" asked Elsie.  Her eyes shone with a.
dark glamour.  "You mean about it's being so nice
here, romantic and that sort of thing?"

"No," said Mrs. Clutterbuck.  She sometimes had
rather a superb way of treating Elsie's little imaginative
extravagances.  "I mean about mauve--mauve is the
colour this year, don't you see?"

"Mamma," she said radiantly, "I quite forgot.  I
was simply wondering how long all this would last,
or whether they'd suddenly cut us off the way Jean says
they do."

"They do," said Jean, "at these charity concerts.
One after another runs on and makes its little bow.
And some are detained, you know, and then the
programme just comes to an end."

"They seem to be going on all right," said Mrs. Clutterbuck
placidly, "and mauve is the colour, you see."

Another singer appeared, and Jean's heaven was
cleared of clouds by the evidence in this performer of a
bad method.  Now, indeed, it seemed an easy matter
to believe that one could triumph over anything.

That first, victorious, delicious voice had trodden on
every ambition Jean ever possessed.  But the frailty of a
newcomer set her once more on her enthusiastic feet.

"I should say it would be easy enough to get appearing
at a concert like this," she said dimly to Elsie.  Her
eye was on the future, and the platform was cleared.
At the piano sat Mr. Green, grown older a little, and
more companionable as an accompanist; and in the
centre, in radiant silver and white, and--and diamonds,
sang Jean, the prima donna, Jean!

She was startled by the sudden departure of the
ambassador's wife.

"For the leaving of the princess I wait not," said this
lady.  With a cool little nod to Elsie, she descended
the crowded stairs.

Her remarks on the vulgarity of the singer rankled
with Jean.  The costume seemed so appropriate to
that other fair dream.

"I didn't think her vulgar, did you?" she asked Elsie.

"Not on a platform, perhaps," said Elsie vaguely.
Her thoughts invariably strayed from dress.  "But in
a drawing-room she would look, look----"

"Well, what Elsie?" asked Jean impatiently.

Elsie's dreamy eyes came down on her suddenly.  "In
a drawing-room she would look like a lamp shade,"
she blurted.

It really was rather a tragedy for them that the
golden voice should have been framed in so doubtful
a setting.

Elsie's eyes were on the princesses.

"They have eyes like calm lakes," said she.  "How
clever it must be to look out and feel and know, only to
express very often something entirely different.  Don't
you wonder what princesses say to themselves when
they get alone together after an affair of this sort?"

"I know," said Mabel.  "They say, 'I wonder
what girls like these girls on the stairs say of us after
we are gone; do they say we are charming, as the
newspapers do, or do they say----'  But they couldn't
think that, for they are charming, aren't they?" asked
Mabel.

"Yes," said Elsie sadly.  "But I never could keep
a bird in a cage.  It must be like being in a cage
sometimes for them."

There was an abrupt movement among the royal
party.  The last of the illustrious performers had
appeared, and it was time to go.  Everybody rose
once more.  Then there was a hurried fight for a
tea-room where countesses played hostess.

Mrs. Clutterbuck, now finally in the spirit of the thing,
moved along blithely.  She spoke, however, in low
modulated whispers as though she were attending some
serious ceremony.

"I'm sure your mother would have enjoyed this,"
she said, as they sat down to ices served in filagree boats.
"The countesses and, you know, the general air of the
thing--so different to Ridgetown."

"Ridgetown!"  The girl laughed immoderately.
"We couldn't sit on the stairs at Ridgetown, could
we?"  Mrs. Clutterbuck was getting away from her subject.

"Take some tea, my dear," she said to Mabel in the
tone of voice as one who should say, "you will need it."  "It's
invigorating after the ice," said the Professor's wife.

Mabel took tea.

Now that the great event of the concert was over,
they were a little tired, and glad of the idea of fresh air.

"Miss Grace, dear--have you heard from Miss Grace
lately?" asked Mrs. Clutterbuck.

"No.  It's a funny thing," said Mabel.  "We supposed
it was because of Elma's illness, you know.  Miss
Grace would be in such a state.  Shall we go now?"

They got out and arranged to walk through St. James'
Park together.

"I had a message," said Mrs. Clutterbuck quietly,
"about Miss Grace.  I am to have another when I
get back just now.  Will you come with me?  It's
about Miss Annie.  She has been very ill."

It was impossible for her to tell them that the same
illness as Elma's had done its work there.  They seemed
to have no suspicion of that.

"Oh, poor Miss Annie!" said Mabel.  "If I had
only known!"

"That was just it; they couldn't tell you that too
with all you had to hear about Elma.  Elma is very
well now, you understand, but Miss Annie--well, Miss
Annie is not expected to live over to-night."

The news came to them in an unreal way.  It was
the break-up of their childhood.  That Miss Annie
should not always be there, the charming beautiful
invalid, seemed impossible.

"Oh, but," said Mabel, "she has been so ill before,
won't she get better?"

"She was never ill like this before," said Mrs. Clutterbuck.
"We will see what the message says."

They found a wire at home.  At the end of a sparkling
day, it came to that.  While they had listened to
these golden voices, Miss Annie had----

The telegram lay there to say that Miss Annie had died.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`The Home-Coming`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XXVII


.. class:: center large

   The Home-Coming

.. vspace:: 2

Mr. Leighton departed from his first feelings of hurry
where Mabel and Jean were concerned, and delayed
their home coming till Elma was in a condition not to
be retarded by any extra excitement.

They drove away at last from the club early in the
morning, so that they had the entire house to see them
off.  It was very nearly as bad as leaving Ridgetown.

"I shall not be able to walk past your door for some
days," said one red-haired girl.  "Oh, don't I know that
feeling?"

She was compelled to stay in London, with only a
fortnight's holiday in summer time.

"I shall send you forget-me-nots by every post,"
said Jean.  "You'll be in love with the new girl in a
week."

"I won't," said the red-haired girl.

They had gifts from all of the girls stowed away
somewhere.  What a morning!  Even the hall porter showed
signs of dejection at their going.

"It will never be the same without you, miss," he
said to Mabel.

One's own family were not so complimentary.

Mabel and Jean left in a heaped-up four-wheeler.

"I feel quite sick, you know," said Jean.

It was a historic statement, and Mabel had her own
qualms.  They left a houseful of good little friendly
people, a dazzling, hard-working London, and they
were going back--to the wedding of Isobel.  Mabel had
not got over the feeling that drama only exists in a
brilliant manner in London, and that life in one's own
home, though peaceful, was drab colour.  It wouldn't
be drab colour, it would be radiant of course, if happy
unexpected things happened there.  How it would
lighten to the colour of rose, oh gorgeous life, if such a
thing could ever happen now!  But it wouldn't.  All
that would happen would be that Robin would marry
Isobel and that she should keep on playing piano.  Ah
well, in any case, she could play piano a long way better
than she ever did.  And Jean could sing with a certain
distinction of method.  Not nearly ripe, this method,
as Jean informed every one, but on the way.  Her
voice would be worth hearing at twenty-five.

Much of the effect they would make on Ridgetown
was invested in the boxes piled above them.  All their
spare time lately had been taken up in spending their
allowance in clothes and panning things neatly out to
London standards.  It gave them an amount of reliance
in themselves and in their return which was very
exhilarating.  Though what did it all matter with Miss Annie
gone?

"It terrifies me to think of Ridgetown without Miss
Annie.  What shall we do there?" asked Jean mournfully.

"Yes, that's it," replied Mabel.  "No one dying in
London would make that difference.  I shall think,
as we are driving home, Miss Annie isn't there.  Won't you?"

"And here they would only have a little more time
for somebody else," said Jean.

They drove through the early morning streets with
a tiny relief at their heart.  On their next drive they
would know everybody they passed.

"Oh, how deadly I felt when I came here!" said
Jean.  "Knowing no one, and thinking that if I died
in the cab no one near me would care!"

They reached Ridgetown in the afternoon.  A carriage
was drawn up at the station gates.  In it were
Mrs. Leighton, Miss Grace and Elma.

Mabel stood transfixed.

"Oh, Elma," she said, "Elma!"

Elma knew it.  She wasn't as fat as a pumpkin
after all.  And every one had kept on saying that she
was fatter than any pumpkin.  Mabel was the only one
who had told the truth.  She leaned over the folded
hood of the carriage and hugged her gently.

"I should like to inform you Mabs, I'm as fat as a
pumpkin."

But Mabel hung on to the carriage with her head
down.  No one had told her that Elma had been so
ill as this.

Elma had the look of having been in a far country--why
hadn't some one told her?  Miss Grace, who
had been away for some weeks with Adelaide Maud and
had just got back in fairly good spirits, did some of the
conversing which helped Mabel to recover herself.

Cuthbert and Betty came hurrying up from the
wrong end of the train.

"Oh, and we missed you," wailed Betty, "and I
wanted to be the first."

One could hug indiscriminately at Ridgetown Station.
Jean was the next person to melt into tears.  She had
tried to tell Miss Grace how sorry she was.

Cuthbert began to restore order.

"You'd better take two in that carriage, crowded
or not," said he.  "There are boxes lying on the
platform which will require a cab to themselves."

"It's our music," said Jean importantly and quite
untruthfully.

"It's my new hat," said Mabel, with a return of her
old dash.

She had gone round the carriage seeing each occupant
separately, and there seemed to be no hurry for
anything, merely the pleasure of meeting again.

Just then there was a whirl of wheels in the distance.
A certain familiarity in the sound made four girls look
at each other.  Mrs. Leighton, who had no ear for wheels,
stared in a surprised way at her daughters.

"Well," she said, "what are we all waiting for?
We must get home sometime."

"Yes," asked Cuthbert lustily, "what in the wide
world are we waiting for?"

A high wagonette and pair of horses drove up, and
turned with a fine circle into line behind them.  In
the wagonette sat Adelaide Maud.  Adelaide Maud
was dressed in blue.

"That," said Elma, with a sigh of great contentment.

The three girls dashed at Adelaide Maud.

Elma laid her hand on Cuthbert's.

"Go and say how do you do to Adelaide Maud,"
said she.

For a minute or two she was left with Mrs. Leighton
and Miss Grace.  Then Cuthbert came to her.

"Get up," said he to Elma.  "Get up.  You're to
go with Adelaide Maud."

"Who is this Adelaide Maud who interferes with
every plan in connection with my family?" asked
Mrs. Leighton.  She had a resigned note in her voice.  "Shall
we ever get home," she kept asking.

A voice behind them broke in.

"I didn't tell him to be impolite, Mrs. Leighton,"
said Adelaide Maud.  "I only asked to have Elma in
my carriage."

Elma looked provokingly at Adelaide Maud.

"I'm so sorry," said she, "but I'm driving home
with Cuthbert."

"It's not true," said Cuthbert.  "She's doing nothing
of the kind."

"Then I shall get in here," said Adelaide Maud
calmly, and proceeded to step in.

Several people tried to stop her.

"I want to drive home with mummy," said Jean.

"And I mean to take Elma," said Mabel.

Mrs. Leighton leant back in the carriage.

"I should like to mention," she said, "that this
is not a royal procession, and that we only take about
two and a half minutes to get home in any case.  What
does it matter which carriage we go in?"

"Every second is of value," said Jean.

"Well, here you are, Jean, get in beside your mother,"
said Adelaide Maud.  "And, Elma and Mabel, you
come with me.  And, Mr. Leighton, you look after Miss
Grace.  What could be more admirable?"

They did it because it seemed the simplest way out,
except Cuthbert, who backed into the station and came
up on a cab with the luggage.  He looked vindictively
at Adelaide Maud as he descended, as though he would
say, "This is your doing."

The three conveyances were blocking the wide sweep
of gravel in front of the White House.

Adelaide Maud patted one of the horses' heads in an
unnecessary manner.

"I must congratulate you on your professorship,"
said she.

"Thank you," said Cuthbert.

"So nice for your family too, to have you here all
summer."

"Excellent," said Cuthbert.

"I don't see how you can run a lectureship when
you say so little."  Adelaide Maud spoke very crisply,
and in a nice cool manner.

Cuthbert looked stolidly at the men carrying in luggage.

"The students will respect me probably," he said grimly.

Adelaide Maud laughed a clear ringing laugh.  Then
she looked at Cuthbert once "straight in the eye" and
ran indoors.  Cuthbert began pulling boxes about with
unnecessary violence.

They had tea in the drawing-room amidst the roses,
for the tables were covered with them.  Mabel did
nothing but wander about and say, "Oh, oh, and isn't
it lovely to be home."

But Jean sat right down and in a business-like manner
began to describe London.  Also, she was very sorry for
Elma, because now she, Jean, knew what it was to be
ill.  She began to detail her symptoms to Elma.

"Oh, Jean, you little monkey," said Mabel.  "Don't
listen to her, she wasn't ill a bit."  It was the only
point on which Mabel and Jean really differed.

Isobel came sailing in.  Nothing could have been
nicer than the way she greeted them.

"Oh, Isobel, aren't you dying to hear me sing?"
asked Jean.  It never dawned on her but that Isobel,
who had been so keen to get her off to a good master,
put art first and everything else afterwards.

Mrs. Leighton would never forget the way in which
Mabel received her.  Mabs had developed into a finely
balanced woman.  There was no sign of her wanting
to detract in the slightest from Isobel's happiness.

"Do let me see your ring.  How pretty!  And how
it fits your hand, just a beautiful ring.  Some
engagement rings look as though they had only been made for
fat Jewesses.  Don't they?  I love those tiny diamonds
set round the big ones.  Where are you going for your
honeymoon?"

"I'm going first for my things," said Isobel.  "I've
got no further than that.  Miss Meredith and I are
taking a week in London next week."

That was her triumph, that she had "squared" Miss
Meredith.  Miss Meredith had really a lonely little
heart beating beneath all her paltry ambitions.  Always
she had been stretching for what was very difficult of
attainment.  She had stretched for a wife for Robin,
and she had stretched in vain.  Then suddenly one day
this undesirable Isobel had asked her to go to London
to help with her trousseaux.  No one perhaps knew
what a strange and unlooked-for delight filled her heart,
what gates of starchy reserve were opened to this new
flood of gratitude rising within her.  Robin had always,
although influenced by her in an intangible way, treated
her as though she were a useful piece of furniture.  He
so invariably discounted her services; it had made her
believe that her only chance of keeping him at all was
in imposing on him her hardest, most unlovable traits.
That Isobel, of her own accord, should seek her advice,
out of the crowd who were willing to confer it, really
agitated her.  From that moment she was Isobel's
willing ally.

Isobel saw here the result of incalculable goodness
as encouraged by Mr. Leighton.  His words had stung
her to an exalted notion of what she might do to show
him that she could confer as well as receive.  She should
"ingratiate Sarah" in a thorough manner.  The result
of it surprised her more than she would confess.  There
were other ways of receiving benefits than by grabbing
with both hands it seemed.  Isobel began to think that
unselfish people probably remained unselfish because
they found it a paying business.  Nothing would
ever really relieve her mind of its mercenary element.

The funniest experience of her life was this new
friendship with Sarah.  Mr. Leighton noted it, and she saw
that he noted it.  She went one day to him in almost a
contrite mood.

"I've begun to ingratiate Sarah," said she, "I believe
I'm rather liking the experience."

Mr. Leighton knew better than to lecture her at all.
He thought indeed that signs of relenting would not
readily occur between either of them.

"Goodness is an admirable habit," he said lightly.

She thanked him for having fallen into her mood by
this much.

"Well, anyhow, a little exhibition of it on my part
has evidently been a welcome tonic to Sarah," she said.

Mabel and Jean found her easier than of yore.  Only
Elma carried the reserve formed by what she had gone
through into the present moment of rapture.  They
made Mabel play and Jean sing, and Adelaide Maud
and Jean performed a duet together.

Cuthbert pranced about and applauded heavily, and
Adelaide Maud swung her crisp skirts and bowed low
in a professional manner.

"If I can't sing," said she, "I can bow.  So do you
mind if I do it again?"  So she bowed again.

It was quite different to the old Adelaide Maud,
who aired such starchy manners in their drawing-room.

Lance came in by an early train.

"Heard you were home," said he, "and ran in to
see if you'd take some Broken Hills, or Grand Trunks,
or Consolidated Johnnies, you know."

He produced a note-book.

"Now Mrs. Leighton promised to buy a whole mine
of shares the other day, and she hasn't done it.  How
am I to get on with my admirable firm, if my best clients
fail me in this way?"

Jean exploded into laughter.  Lance as a stockbroker,
what next!

"You needn't laugh," he said.  "I made twenty-five
pounds for the mater last week.  Not your mater, mine!"

"Don't listen to Lance's illegal practices," said Elma.

Lance struck an attitude in front of Mabel.

"Oh, mother," he said, "how you've growed.  I'm
afraid of you.  Wait till you see what Maclean will say!"

"Maclean?"

"Yes.  Now, Elma, don't pretend to look blank about
it.  It was you who told me."

Elma groaned.  (If it only were Mr. Maclean!)

"I told you nothing," she said.  "You are not to
be trusted, I've always known that, in Stock Exchange
or out of it, I'd never tell you a single thing."

"Well, it was Aunt Katharine," said Lance with
conviction.  She had just appeared in the doorway.

"Well, well," she said in a fat, breathless way.  "Well,
you're home, and I am glad.  Dear, how tall you both
are!  And is that the latest?"  She looked at Mabel's
hat.  "Well, well.  We've had enough trouble with
you away.  Elma will be ready for none of that nonsense
for a year or two, that's one comfort.  Jean, you are
quite fat.  Living in other people's houses seems to
agree with you.  Not the life we were accustomed
to.  Young people had to stay at home in my day."

"Now, Aunt Katharine," said Lance, who was a
privileged person, "are they your girls, or Mrs. Leighton's,
that you lecture them so?"

"Look here, Lance," said Elma, "Aunt Katharine
isn't a Broken Hill, or a con--consolidated Johnnie.
You just leave her alone, will you?"

"Elma's become beastly dictatorial since she was
ill," said Lance savagely.  "What's that confab in the
corner?"

Mrs. Leighton was sitting with Adelaide Maud, and
in the pause which ensued, everybody heard her say,
"When Jean was a baby--no, it was when Elma was a
baby, and Cuthbert, you know----" just as the girls
were afraid she would five long years ago.

"Oh," said Cuthbert from the other end of the room,
"my dear mother, if you go on with that----"

"I can't imagine why they never want to know what
they did when they were babies," said Mrs. Leighton,
in an innocent manner.  She disliked being stopped
in any of these reminiscences.  Adelaide Maud's eyes
danced.  "They were so much nicer when they were
babies," sighed Mrs. Leighton.

Then she turned round on them all.

"You two girls have been home for an hour or more,
and you never asked after your dear father."

Mabel giggled.  Jean looked very serious.

Elma said suddenly, "They are hiding something,
mummy," and the secret was out.

Mr. Leighton had met them pretty nearly half way.
He had travelled with them, and in town had seen them
into the train for Ridgetown.

"And he told me," said Mrs. Leighton, "that he
had an important meeting which would keep him
employed for the better part of the day."

"So he had," said Mabel.

"It's just like John," said Mrs. Leighton to Aunt
Katharine.  "One might have known he wouldn't
stay away from these girls."

She smiled largely as she remembered his protestations
of the morning.

"Oh, well," said Aunt Katharine dingily, "it would
have been nicer of him to have told you.  You never
were very firm with John."

Robin Meredith came in the evening when they were
assembled with Mr. Leighton in the drawing-room and
the girls were playing once more.  They played and
sang with a fine new confidence and abandonment which
made up to Mr. Leighton for long weary months of
waiting.  Mabel, mostly on account of her father's
commendation, was quite composed and cheerful as she
shook hands with Robin.  Robin would not have minded
the composure, but the cheerfulness wounded him a
trifle.  Mr. Leighton considered that his future life had
more promise in it now that he saw Robin unnerved.
If it were not for the beautiful ease of Mabel's
manner, he should have felt uncertain as to the
consequences of all that had happened.  But Mabel was
so serenely right in every way that his last fear
melted.

Mabel herself began to wonder at her own placidity.
She looked with thankfulness on the scene before her,
all her family and Elma given back to her, every one
loyal, untouched by the influence which she had so
feared before, Isobel going to be married to a man from
whom she was glad to feel herself freed, her home intact.
Yet a bitter mist gathered in her mind and obliterated
the joyousness.  How wicked of her--to complain with
everything here so lovely before her.

No, not everything.

Mabel, in the darkness that night before falling asleep,
held her hand to her eyes.  No, everything had not
come back to her yet.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`Adelaide Maud`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XXVIII


.. class:: center large

   Adelaide Maud

.. vspace:: 2

The Leighton's had been writing off the invitations
for the wedding, and Elma was in her room with
Adelaide Maud.  This had been converted into a
sitting-room so long as Elma remained a convalescent.

Elma had asked Isobel if she might have just one
invitation for a special friend of her own.  Now who
was this friend, Mrs. Leighton wondered?  She was
surprised when Elma asked her, without any
embarrassment for Mr. Symington's address.

"And don't tell who it is, please, Mummy, because
I have a little plot of my own on hand."

She sealed and addressed this important missive
quite blandly under her mother's eyes.

Mrs. Leighton could not make it out.  She was
inclined to fall into Aunt Katharine's ways and say,
"In my young days, young people were not so blatant."

Mr. Leighton shook his head over her having allowed
the invitation to go.

"You can't tell what net she may become entangled
in," he said, "and Symington cleared out in a very
sudden manner, you know."  He could not get that
out of his mind.

Mrs. Leighton harked back to the old formula.
"Elma is only a child," she said, "with too much of
a superb imagination.  She will have a lot of fancies
before she is done."

Elma saw her letter posted, with only Mrs. Leighton
and Miss Grace in the secret.  She felt completely
relieved and happy.  Nothing had pleased her so
much for a long time.

"Why, Elma, your cheeks are getting pink at last,"
said Adelaide Maud.

She had come in to spend the afternoon with Elma
while the others went to the dressmaker for the
all-important gowns.  Adelaide Maud had said she would
come if Elma were to be quite alone.  And Elma
meant to be quite alone until Cuthbert came down
by an early train.  Then, after Adelaide Maud was
announced, she rather hoped that Cuthbert might appear.

"Are you sure they are pink," she asked Adelaide
Maud, "because I used to be so anxious that I might
look pale."

"You must have thought yourself very good looking
lately then," said Adelaide Maud.  "Elma," she
asked suddenly, "why don't you girls sometimes call
me Helen?  I think you might by this time."

"I would rather call you Adelaide Maud," said Elma.

"But I can't be a Story Book for ever."

"I shouldn't want to call you Helen when you looked
like Miss Dudgeon.  Mrs. Dudgeon wouldn't like it,
would she?"

Ridgetown traditions still hampered their friendship
it seemed.

Adelaide Maud's head fell low.

"Do you know, Elma, in five minutes, if I just had
one chance, in five minutes I could get my mother
to say that it didn't matter whether you called me
Helen or not.  But I never get the chance."

"I did one lovely and glorious thing yesterday,"
said Elma.  "Couldn't I do another to-day?"

"I don't know what you did yesterday, but you
can't do anything for me to-day," said Adelaide Maud
stiffly.

Cuthbert came strolling in.  Adelaide Maud looked
seriously annoyed.

"You told me you would be quite alone," she said
to Elma.

"Oh, you don't mind about Cuthbert, do you?"
asked Elma anxiously.  "Besides, Cuthbert didn't
know you were coming."

"I did," said Cuthbert shortly.

Adelaide Maud had risen a little, and at this she sat
down in a very straight manner, with her head slightly
raised.  She and Elma were on a couch near a
tea-table.  Cuthbert took an easy chair opposite.  Then
Adelaide Maud began to laugh.  She laughed with a
ringing bright laugh that was very amusing to Elma,
but Cuthbert remained quite unmoved.

Adelaide Maud looked at him.

"Oh, please laugh a little," she said humbly.

Cuthbert did not take his eyes away from her.  He
simply looked and said nothing.

"How are the invitations going on?" he asked
Elma as though apparently proving that Adelaide
Maud did not exist.

Elma clasped her hands.

"Beautifully.  I've been allowed to ask all my
'particulars.'"

"Am I to be invited?" asked Adelaide Maud simply.

"Mrs. and Miss Dudgeon," said Elma in a hollow
voice.  "Do you think Mrs. Dudgeon will come?"
she asked in a melancholy manner.

"Not if Mr. Leighton looks like that," said Adelaide
Maud.  She turned in a pettish manner away from
him and gazed at Elma.

Elma burst out laughing.

"Oh, Cuthbert, I do think you are horrid to Adelaide Maud."

Adelaide Maud sat up again looking perfectly delighted.

"Now there," she said, "I have been waiting for
years for some one to say that about Mr. Leighton.
Thank you so much, dear.  It's so perfectly true.  For
years I have been amiable and for years he has been--a----"

"A brute," said Elma placidly.

"Yes," said Adelaide Maud.  "And I've got to
go on pretending to be a girl of spirit with a mamma
who won't understand the situation, and--and--I get
no encouragement at all.  It's a horrid world," said
Adelaide Maud.

Cuthbert rose from the easy chair, with a look in
his eyes which Elma had never seen.

"All I can say is," he pretended to be speaking
jocularly, "will the lady who has just spoken
undertake to repeat these words, in private--in----"

"No, she won't," said Adelaide Maud in a whisper.

Elma sat shaking in every limb.  The one thought
that passed through her mind was that if she didn't
clear out, Cuthbert might kiss Adelaide Maud, and
that would be awful.  She crawled out of the room
somehow or other.  What the others were thinking
of her she did not know.  She wanted to reach something
outside the door, and sank on a chair there.  Oh,
the selfishness of lovers!  Adelaide Maud and
Cuthbert were "making it up" while she sat shaking with
her face in her hands in the long corridor.

Mrs. Leighton found her there some little time afterwards.

"Sh! mummy.  Speak in a whisper, please."

"Well, I never.  Who is ill now, I should like to know?"

"Adelaide Maud and Cuthbert."

She pulled her mother's head down to her and
whispered in her ear.

"I didn't know it was coming, they were so cross
with one another.  And then I knew it was.  And I
just slipped out.  And I'm shaking so that I'm afraid
to get off this chair.  I should never be able to get
engaged myself--it's so--en--enervating."

"Well, I never," said Mrs. Leighton; "well, I
never.  Turned you out of your own room, my pet.
Just like those Dudgeons."

"Oh, mummy, it's lovely.  I don't mind.  It's
just being ill that made me shake.  Aren't you glad
it's Adelaide Maud?"

"Well--it never was anybody else, was it?" asked
Mrs. Leighton blandly.

"Oh, mummy!  You knew!"

Elma's whispers became most accusing.

Mrs. Leighton might have been as dense as possible
in regard to her daughters, but Cuthbert's heart had
always lain bare.

"Know?" asked she.  "What do you think made
Adelaide Maud run after you the way she did?"

"Oh, mummy.  It wasn't only because of Cuthbert, was it?"

"Well, I sometimes thought it was," she said with
a smile at her lips.

She looked at the shut door.

"But I can't have you stuck on a hall chair in the
corridors for the afternoon, all on account of the
Dudgeons," said she.  "Besides, they'll be bringing up tea."

She knocked smartly on the door.

"Mamma, I never saw anything like your nerve,"
said Elma.

Cuthbert opened the door.  He stood with the fine
light of a conqueror shining in his eyes, the triumph
of attainment in his bearing.

Mrs. Leighton's nerve broke down at the sight of
him.  It was true then.

"Oh, Cuthbert, what is this you have been doing?"
wailed she.  Her son was a man and had left her.

Without a word he led her into the arms of Adelaide
Maud.

"And remember, please, Mrs. Leighton," said that
personage finally, "that I would have been here long
before if he had let me, and that I had practically to
propose before he would have me.  Surely that is
humiliating enough for a Dudgeon."

"Cuthbert wanted to give you your proper position
in life, dear, if possible."

"When all I wanted was himself--how silly of him,"
said Adelaide Maud.

"Would you mind my telling you that that poor
child of mine who has just recovered from typhoid
fever is sitting like a hall porter at your door,
trembling like an aspen leaf," said Mrs. Leighton.  "Won't
you get her in?"

They laughed, but it really was no joke to Elma.
She had known something of the sorrows of life lately,
and had borne up under them, even under the great
trial of Miss Annie's death; but because two people
were in love with one another and had said so, she took
to weeping.  Cuthbert carried her in and petted her
on his knee, and Adelaide Maud stood by and said
what a selfish man he was, how thoughtless of others,
and how really wicked it was of him to have allowed
this to happen to Elma.  She stood stroking Elma's
hair and looking at Cuthbert, and Cuthbert patted
Elma and looked at Adelaide Maud.  Then Cuthbert
caught Adelaide Maud's hand and she had to sit
beside them, and then tea came and Elma was thankful.

"I know what it will be," she said.  "You will
never look at any of us again, just at each other."

Mrs. Leighton regarded the tea table.

"It appears," said she, "as if for the first time for
years I might be allowed to pour out tea in my own
house.  You all seem so preoccupied."

"Mrs. Leighton," said Adelaide Maud, "you are
perfectly sweet.  You are the only one who doesn't
reproach me, and I'm taking away your only son."

"May I ask when?" asked Cuthbert sedately,
but his eyes were on fire.

"Don't you tell him, Helen," said Mrs. Leighton.
"It's good for them not to be in too great a hurry."

"She called me Helen," said Adelaide Maud.

"Now, Elma!  Elma--say Helen, or you'll spoil
the happiest day of our lives."

"Say Helen, you monkey!" cried Cuthbert, giving
her a large piece of cake and several lumps of sugar.

Elma took her cup and the cake in a helpless way.

"You just said that to get accustomed to the name
yourself," she declared.  "And if you don't mind, I
would rather have toast to begin with."

Adelaide Maud giggled brightly and her hair shone
like gold.  Cuthbert stood looking, looking at her till
a piece of cake sidled off the plate he was carrying.

"Mummy dear, do you like having tea with me all
alone?" asked Elma.

That was what came of it in many ways.  Cuthbert
and Adelaide Maud had not a word for any one.  But
then they had been so long separated by social ties
and an unfriendly world and "pride," as Helen put
it, and various things.  Mrs. Dudgeon took the news
"carved in stone," and her daughters as something
that merely could not be helped.  Helen had always
been crazy over these Leightons.  Mrs. Dudgeon
unbent to Mr. Leighton however.  He was a man to
whom people invariably offered the best, and for his
own part he could never quite see where the point of
view of other people came in where Mrs. Dudgeon was
concerned.  Cuthbert was already sufficiently
established as rather a brilliant young university man, and
a partnership in a large practice in town was being
arranged for.  Mrs. Dudgeon could unbend with
some graciousness therefore, and, after all, Helen was
the eldest of four, and none were married yet.  "Time
is a great leveller," said Adelaide Maud.

All the love and enthusiasm which had been saved
from the engagement of Isobel were showered on the
unheeding Cuthbert and Adelaide Maud.

"It isn't that I don't appreciate it," said Adelaide
Maud.  "I know how dreadful it would be to be without
it, but oh! somehow there's so little time to attend
to every one who is good to me."

Isobel, in a certain measure, was annoyed at the
interruption to her own arrangements.  In a day
things seemed to change from her being the centre of
interest, to the claims of Adelaide Maud coming
uppermost.  She looked on the engagement as a
complete bore.  Robin seemed depressed with the news.
She often wondered how far she could influence him,
and turned rather a cold side to him for the moment.
Then her ordinary wilfulness upheld her serenely.
After all, once married to Robin, she would be
independent of the domestic enthusiasms of the Leighton
crowd.  She was tired of the pose where she had to
appear as one of them, and longed to assert herself
differently as soon as possible.

As for the girls themselves--what had London or
anything offered equal to this?

They could not believe in their luck in having
Adelaide Maud as a sister.

Elma went in the old way to give the news to Miss Grace.

"Oh, I'm so pleased, my dear, so pleased," said
poor lonely Miss Grace.  "It makes up for so much,
my dear, when one grows old, to see young people
happy.  We are so inclined to be extravagant of
happiness when we are young.  Some one ought always
to be on the spot to pick up the little stray pieces we
let drop and enable us to regain them again."

"Weren't you ever engaged to be married, Miss
Grace?" Elma asked quite simply.

Miss Grace was not at all embarrassed in the usual
way of old maids.  She gazed over the white and gold
drawing-room, and one saw the spark of flint in her eyes.

"Not engaged, dear, but all the inclination to be.
Ah, yes, I had the inclination.  And he invited me, but
affairs at that time made it unsuitable."

"Oh, Miss Grace, only unsuitable?"  Elma's heart
went out to her.  Beneath everything she knew it
must be Miss Annie.

"Yes, dear.  And the others found him different
to what I did.  Selfish and dictatorial, you know.
Nothing he did seemed to fit in to what they expected.
He grew annoyed with them.  I sometimes hardly
wonder at that.  It made him appear to be what they
really thought him.  And in the end I asked him to go."

"Oh, Miss Grace!"

Elma's voice was a tragedy.

"It was not fair, it was not fair to him or to you.
He didn't want to marry the others.  What did it
matter what they thought?"

"If he could have married me then, it wouldn't
have mattered," said Miss Grace.  "I knew that he
was good and true, you see; so that I never doubted
him.  But he was poor, and they worried me nearly
to my grave.  I was very weak," said Miss Grace.

"And I suppose he went and married some one else
in a fit of hopelessness," said Elma tragically.  "What
a nice wife you would have made, Miss Grace!"

Miss Grace started a trifle, and looked anxiously at
Elma.  She did not seem to hear the compliment.

"Oh, we all have our little stories," she said.  "But
don't be extravagant of your beautiful youth, my dear."

"I don't feel youthful or beautiful in any way,"
said Elma.  "I think it's the fever.  I feel as though
I had been born a hundred years ago.  I wish I could
keep from shivering whenever anything either exciting
or lovely happens.  Now, I never was so happy in
my life as I was yesterday over Cuthbert and
Adelaide Maud, and I was so shaky that I simply burst
into tears.  What's the good of being youthful if one
feels like that?"

"Wait till you have a holiday, dear, you will soon
get over that."

Miss Grace did her best to cheer her up.  Elma's
thoughts ran back to the story she had heard.

"Miss Grace," she asked, "this man that you were
engaged to, was he----"

The door opened and Saunders appeared.

"Dr. Merryweather," said he.

Miss Grace rose in a direct manner.  She controlled
her voice with a little nervous cough.

"This is just the person to tell you that you ought
to be off for a change," she said as they shook hands
with Dr. Merryweather.

Miss Grace told him about Elma's shakiness as though
it were a real disease.  Mrs. Leighton had never looked
upon it as anything more than "just a mannerism,"
as Miss Grace put it.  Dr. Merryweather ran his keen
eye over Elma's flushed face.

"You mustn't have too many engagements in your
family," he said, "while you remain a convalescent."

He had been only then arranging with Mrs. Leighton
that she should take Elma off for a trip.

"Mr. Leighton will go too," he said kindly.  "I
don't think any of you realize how much your parents
have suffered recently."

"Oh, but when?" asked Elma in a most disappointed
voice.  "Not at once, I hope."

"Almost at once," said Dr. Merryweather.  "Before
this first wedding at least."

Elma's face fell a trifle.

"Oh, well, I suppose I must," she said.  "But so
much depends on my being just on the spot--up to
Isobel's wedding, you know."

"I said, 'No more engagements,'" said Dr. Merryweather
with his eye still on her flushed face.

"This isn't exactly an engagement," said Elma
with a sigh.  "I wish it were."

There was no explaining to Dr. Merryweather of
course.  There was even not much chance of enlightening
Miss Grace.  One could only remain a kind of petted
invalid and await developments.  Now that Adelaide
Maud was really one of them and Cuthbert in such a
blissful state, it would seem as though nothing were
required to make Elma perfectly happy.  But there
was this one trouble of Mabel's which only she could
share.  For of course one couldn't go about telling
people that Mabel had set great store by the one man
who had run away.

"If only George Maclean would play up," sighed Elma.

But almost every one played up except George Maclean.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`Mr. Symington`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XXIX


.. class:: center large

   Mr. Symington

.. vspace:: 2

Mabel and Jean were to be bridesmaids at Isobel's
wedding.  Ridgetown had only one opinion for that
proceeding.  "It was just like the Leightons."

Aunt Katharine was more explicit.

"It's hardly decent," she said.  "Do you want
the man to show how many wives he could have had."

"To show one he couldn't have, more likely," said
Mrs. Leighton shortly.  She herself could not reconcile
it to her ideas of what should have been.  Mr. Leighton
was adamant on the question, however.  Isobel had
set her heart on this marriage and the marriage was
to be carried out.  She was their guest and their
responsibility.  It would be scandalous if they did not uphold
her as they would have done had there been none of
this former acquaintance with Robin.  It would seem
as though they had attached unnecessary importance
to what now was termed "nothing more than a
flirtation."  It was a pity they could not all like Robin as
they ought to, or have been extremely fond of Isobel;
but under the circumstances, they at least must all
"play the game."

Isobel took the information tranquilly.  It seemed
to her that she might have been allowed to arrange
her own bridesmaids, then she recognized where the
wisdom of Mr. Leighton asserted itself on her side.  There
was much less chance of conjecture where she and
Mabel showed up in friendly manner together with
one another.  She had one friend from London as her
first bridesmaid, and after this the question of dresses
obliterated everything.

Jean, it is true, had still a soul for other things.  She
moaned for her Slavska on every occasion.  She rushed
to mirrors in agony lest her chin or throat muscles
were getting into disrepair, and she talked already
of having to renew her lessons.

"You are just like a cheap motor," said Betty at
last, "always having to be done up.  Why don't
you keep on being a credit to your method like the
expensive machines?  They don't rattle themselves to
bits in a week."

Betty was getting a little out of patience with life.

"I've had a ghastly time of it," she admitted to
Mabel.  "All the spunk is out of Elma, you know, and
what with her being ill and Isobel engaged, I've led a
lonely life.  And now Jean can't talk of anything
but her Slavska.  I hate the man."

When Jean was not talking about Slavska, she was
sending boxes of flowers to the club girls.  Reams of
thanks in long letters came by the morning posts.
There was no doubt of the popularity of Jean.

"I should never be in deadly fear now of having to get
on alone in life," she said.  "There's such comfort in
girls, you can't think."

Mabel had always remained a little more outside that
radiantly friendly crowd, yet had quite as admiring
a following.  Mr. Leighton unendingly congratulated
himself for letting them both have the experience.
"Though never again," he declared, "never again,
will I allow one of you away from home."

Then occurred Cuthbert's engagement.  In a curious
way it comforted Mr. Leighton.  He was acquiring
another daughter.  Adelaide Maud loved that view
of it best of all.

"If Mr. Leighton had been against me, I should
have refused you," she explained to Cuthbert.

"You mean that I should," he corrected her.  "Now
what I am about to propose----"

"Are you really going to propose, dear?" asked
Adelaide Maud innocently.  Cuthbert grinned.

"You are to be married to me in the autumn," said he.

Adelaide Maud cogitated.

"Well, failing a real proposal, a command of this
sort may take its place.  I shall endeavour to be ready
for you in the autumn."

"They are the funniest pair," said Jean; "Helen is
so cool and Cuthbert so domineering!  And I used to
be so stuck on engagements," she sighed.

All the girls were in Elma's room, where Isobel tried
on some of her finery.  Elma lay on the couch at the
window.  She had had her trip with Mr. and
Mrs. Leighton, and had come home with some colour and a
good deal more vitality.  Yet still there was much to
be desired.  Dr. Merryweather thundered out advice
about the wedding.

"She is not to be excited," he kept hammering at
every one.  Elma felt a culprit in this respect.  Nothing
excited her except the one fact which evidently could
not be altered.  She had sent an invitation to
Mr. Symington which he had not acknowledged in any
shape or form.  It seemed so ignominious.  One could
imagine that rather splendid and cultured person
saying, "Oh, these young Leightons again!  Don't
trouble me with their children's weddings," or
something to that effect.  She grew cold as she thought of
what Mabel's disgust would be when she heard of the
flag she had held out (what more definite signal to
"come on" could any one have given;) and of his utter
disregard of that mild overture.  She grew more and
more troubled about it.  So much so that Mrs. Leighton
remarked to her husband as each list of acceptances
came from home, and no word of Mr. Symington, "I
believe that child is moping because he does not answer."

Mr. Leighton was all for the righting that time would
accomplish.  "She may forget this, whatever it is, in
a day," said he.  He said to Elma, however, "I hear
Symington was asked.  Shouldn't wonder if he were
so far away that he hasn't had the letter."

That possibility gladdened her heart immediately.
Perhaps after all he had not yet made his slighting remarks
about the Leighton children.  The Clutterbucks also
were abroad, so that there seemed no chance of any of the
connection being present.

Elma finally came home, and they had reached the
Saturday afternoon before the wedding on the following
Tuesday.  A very finished example of the London girl
had appeared as Isobel's first bridesmaid, and
everybody was chatting incontinently.  Jean ran on with
her own views of things, since she usually found these
of more interest than anything else.

"I feel now as though I wouldn't be engaged for a
ransom," she said.  "I think of all the men we know
and how nice they are, but I don't want to be married to
them."

"I should hope not," said Isobel.  "Why should you!"

"All right, Isobel, I won't poach.  But I'd rather
give a concert than have a wedding."

It was her latest desire to give a concert in the
Bechstein or Eolian Hall, when her voice was "ripe."  She
had even consulted an agent.

"If only papa would see it," she said, "it would cost
£60, but I should get it all back again."

"Oh, one of these private concerts," said the London
girl.

"Yes," broke in Mabel.  "Where you pay £60 to
an agent and he looks after everything including the
people with whom you appear.  You fill one part of the
hall with your friends, and they fill up the rest.  Free
tickets, you know.  Then each portion applauds like
mad whatever you do.  It all depends on who has
most friends who gets the most encores.  It is the duty
of the rival crowd to remain silent when their own friend
isn't performing."

"Oh, Mabel," said Jean.

"It's true," said the London girl.  "And if a critic
comes you treasure him, oh! you treasure him!  There
are seats and seats waiting for critics.  This one poor
man puts it as neatly as he can, Miss So-and-So sang
"agreeably," then he rushes off to the most adjacent
hall, and does the same for the next aspirant to musical
honours."

"And you immediately buy a book for press cuttings,"
quoth Isobel.

"And only that poor one goes in."

"You are the most depressing crowd I ever met,"
said Jean despairingly.

"That's not all," said the London girl.  "After
paying for the other performers, you may happen to
find that they have already paid the agent in order to
appear with you."

"Oh, I believe a lot, but I won't believe that," said
Jean.

"You may just as well," said the London girl, "because
it happened to me.  And it's very good business for
the agent."

"Oh dear," cried Jean.  "Do be silent about it then.
With you in the house, do you think my father would
ever allow me to give that concert."

"I sincerely hope he won't," said the London girl
heartily.

Betty sat looking very glum.

"Why we should all be here discussing Jean's career,
when there are far more important things to think about,
I can't imagine.  Jean, you might stop talking of your
own affairs for once and help with Isobel's.  Here's
another box to be opened."

Jean stood pulling at the string.

"Still," she said obstinately, "if you have a voice and
a fine method, and a man behind you like Slavska----"

"Oh, put her out," wailed Betty.

A chorus of "Put her out" ensued.  Cuthbert, coming
in in the midst of this, without asking for particulars, took
Jean in his arms, and carried her off.

"I think it's perfectly miraculous the strength that
comes to engaged people," said Betty simply.
"Cuthbert couldn't have moved Jean a few weeks ago."

They both returned at that moment, looking warm but
satisfied.

"The pater is growling downstairs that he can't get
one of you to play to him nowadays," said Cuthbert.
"There are to be no more weddings he says."

"Oh, there never is to be no more anything," wailed
Betty.  "And I'm only half grown up.  You've
exhausted papa before one of you have done anything."

"Well, let Jean go and rehearse her concert," remarked
Isobel calmly.

"I require a good accompanist," said Jean.

Elma had been looking out at the window.  She
heard the gate open, to four minor notes, containing
the augmented fourth of the opening to the Berlioz
"King of Thule," which they all loved.  Somebody
had said "Oil that gate," and Mr. Leighton had objected
because it reminded him of the "King of Thule."  When
Elma heard the magic notes, and looked out at
the window, she could have dispensed with minor intervals
for the rest of her existence.

Mr. Symington was coming up the drive.

Oh, Love of our Lives, and now this!  She could at
last recover from typhoid fever.

"I don't think any of you need go down to papa,"
said she.  "There's an old johnny come to see him."

The bell rang at that moment.

Cuthbert approached her.

"I should fancy," said he, "that with all the good
training you have had from Miss Grace, you would
have known better than to talk of old johnnies.  Who's
the josser, anyway?"

"Cuthbert, my darling boy, you are just a little
bit vulgar.  Cuthbert, I've never been so happy in my
life as I am at the present moment."

"So long as you don't weep about it, I don't mind,"
said Cuthbert.

Elma got up.  "I think I could dance," said she.

"Do," said Cuthbert, and put his arm round her.

To the dismay of the girls, he swung Elma into the
midst of the wedding trousseaux.  Boxes were snatched
up, tissue paper sent flying in all directions.  Every girl
in the room screamed maledictions on them both.  This
was quite unlike Elma, to be displaying her own feelings
at the risk of anything else in the world.  They stopped
with a wild whirl.

"Elma wanted to dance," said Cuthbert coolly,
"and as she hasn't had any exercise lately, I thought it
would be good for her.  Have some more?" he asked her.

A demon of delight danced in Elma's eyes.

"Why, certainly," she said politely.

There was no holding them in at all.

Elma had her first real lecture, from Mabel of all people.

"I think it's very inconsiderate of you, Elma--just
when we are so busy.  You might arrange to stop fooling
with Cuthbert when these things are lying about.  It
isn't fair of you."

"Oh, Mabs," said Elma, "you don't know!  I've
been under the clouds so long--thunder clouds, with
everything raining down on me, and hardly any sunshine
at all.  And just at the present moment I'm on top
of the clouds, treading on air; I can't describe it.  But
even although you are so solemn, and Isobel is so vexed,
and Jean is so haughty, and Betty is simply vicious, why,
even in spite of that, I'd like another dance with Cuthbert."

Her eyes shone.  (Oh, what--what was taking place
down stairs?)

Cuthbert said "Come on," in a wild way.  These
spirits had been natural with him just lately.

But this time five girls intervened.

"Not if I know it," said Isobel.

And "Get you to your Adelaide Maud," cried
Betty.  So there was no more dancing for Elma just then.

"However," said she, "for the first time in my life, I
think, I'm really looking forward to Tuesday night."  They
were to have a dance in honour of Isobel's wedding.
"I think that whether Dr. Merryweather is alive or
dead, I shall dance the whole evening."  She began to
adopt Jean's manner.  "Do you know," she said to her,
"I feel so inspired.  I think I could go and compose
an anthem!" (What were they saying downstairs?)

"Oh," said Betty.  "She said that just before she
took ill, you know.  And I lay awake at night thinking
she would die.  Because I asked you, you know, just in
fun, were you going to die because you wanted to write
an anthem."

"On the contrary," said Elma, "I now want to
write an anthem because I'm about to live."

"Look here, Elma," said Mabel sedately, "if you don't
sit down and keep yourself quiet, I shall get Dr. Merryweather
to come."

"If he has time," said Isobel drily.

"Time?" asked Mabel.

"Yes, before he gets married to Miss Grace."

That bomb burst itself to silence in the most
complete pause that had fallen on the Leighton family for a
long time.  They began to collect their scattered senses
with difficulty.  Elma thought, "Mr. Symington in the
drawing-room and Miss Grace going to be married!  Am
I alive or dead?"

"Didn't you notice?" said Isobel's calm voice.
"Haven't you seen that Dr. Merryweather's heart is
with Miss Grace?  You could tell that from the colour
of his gloves.  Lemon yellow ever since Miss Annie died."

"Oh, Isobel," said Mabel gravely.

Elma remembered her asking, "And Miss Grace,
this man, was he----" and Saunders opening the door
and announcing, "Dr. Merryweather."  Was this
something more than a coincidence, and was Isobel
right?  Surely Miss Grace would have let her know.
Then the certainty that Miss Grace would far more
easily let an alien like Isobel know, by reason of her
own embarrassment, than a friend like Elma through
frank and easy confidence, began to convince her.  She
heard the gate sing its little song of warning again at
that moment.  Miss Meredith tripped in.

Miss Meredith!

Elma put her head out at the open window.

"Oh, Miss Meredith, do come upstairs, we've such a
lot to show you."

Sarah came safely up.  (Oh the relief!)  What if she
met Mr. Symington, and this new castle of cards came
tumbling down to more interference from that quarter.
Besides, they were soon going to tea, and Mabel was
still unwarned.  Elma discreetly hoped that Mabel
would not faint.  As for herself, her shakiness seemed
gone for ever.  She was a lion, defending Mabel.

Miss Meredith floated about the room.  "Perfectly
sweet," she said one minute, and "Isn't it a dream?"
the next.  (What was Mr. Symington saying in the
drawing-room?)

It came alarmingly near tea-time.  Elma made
everybody prink up a little.  "We are all such frights,"
she said, "and there's some old johnny with papa in
the drawing-room."

"I do believe you know who it is," said Betty, "and
won't tell us."  She was in a suspicious mood with
society in general.

"I do," said Elma simply.  "It's Mr. Symington."

Mabel did not faint.  She was providentially with her
back to the others, packing a tulle dress in tissue paper
just then, and one has to be very particular with tulle.
She was quite collected and calm when she finished.
Miss Meredith was the colour of the Liberty green screen
behind her.  Her energy did not fail her in this crisis
however.

"Why, it's nice Mr. Symington comes back," she said.
"Is he coming to the wedding?"

"He is," said Elma.  "He was my 'particular.'  I
asked Isobel if I might invite him."

"Who is he anyway?" asked Isobel, patting her
hair gently in front of a mirror.

("Oh, Isobel, my friend, if you only knew that,"
Elma conferred with herself, "you wouldn't perhaps
be the centre of attraction to-day.")

"He's a man who's great friends with the pater,"
said Jean unconcernedly.  "He goes abroad a lot and
writes up things and develops photos and has a place
in Wales."

"A place in Wales, how nice!" said the London girl.
"But it isn't the great Mr. Symington, is it?"

"Why, yes, I suppose it must be," said Jean.

"Of course it is," said Miss Meredith, socially active
once more.  "Mr. Symington is a very famous young man."

"Good gracious," said the London girl, "my curling
tongs at once, please.  These surprises are very
demoralizing.  Look at my hair."

They all made themselves beautiful for "the great
Mr. Symington."

Mabel turned a pair of wide eyes on Elma.  Elma
nodded like a little mother, with a wealth of smiles at
her lips.  (Oh, Mabel, play up!)

Cuthbert had found his mother coming out of the
drawing-room.

"Well, you seem in good spirits," said she,

"Who is in there?" he asked.

"Mr. Symington."

"Oh, it's he, is it?"

"Why do you ask?"

"Oh, for no particular reason," said Cuthbert.
"Only Elma saw him coming in and called him an old
johnny.  I knew something was up."

"Elma?" asked Mrs. Leighton anxiously.

"Yes.  And she's in great form about something.
Haven't seen her so gay for an age."

Mrs. Leighton's eyes dropped.  "Poor little girl,"
she said to herself.  She thought it best to proceed
upstairs, and break some of the surprise of
Mr. Symington's arrival.

She found them in a room where boxes were piled in
every direction.  It was like her that in her present
dilemma she should immediately begin to reprove them
for their untidy habits.

"This room is really a disgrace," she said.  "Just
look at all these boxes!  And it's tea-time and not one
of you in the drawing-room with your father, the only
afternoon he has too!  Elma, what have you been doing
to make your hair so untidy?"

"My hair is only a wig, and this is my room," said
Elma firmly.  "For the last ten minutes I have been
trying to get to my own mirror.  We are prinking
ourselves up for the great Mr. Symington."

"Oh," said Mrs. Leighton.  "So you know.  Well,
he only got the invitation a few days ago, when he was
buried in Servia or some outlandish place.  He came
right on."

"For my wedding?" asked Isobel in cool surprise.

Miss Meredith gazed in a rather frightened manner
at every one.

"No," said Elma.  "Not altogether.  There were
others reasons."  She determined to cut all the ground
from under the feet of Sarah.  "I arranged it with
Mr. Symington," she said in an important voice.  Then,
with the airy manner of the London girl, she patted down
the turbulent wig, which had so annoyed Mrs. Leighton.
"He is a perfect duck," she said lightly.





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.. _`"Now here there dawneth----"`:

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   CHAPTER XXX


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   "Now here there dawneth"

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The organ in the Ridgetown church pealed in a stately
manner the wedding music from *Lohengrin*.  Isobel,
the bride, moved with exactitude slowly down the aisle
with her three bridesmaids.  Mr. Leighton, presumably
leading her, was compelled to delay himself several
times.  Who could have known that the arm lying
on his was manipulating matters so conscientiously!
It was inimitably done.  Isobel's *entourage* arranged
itself in perfect order, and knowing that everything
was properly completed, she raised her eyes to those
of Robin just as the last chord sounded.  This had
been rigorously rehearsed, but nothing could have
been better carried out.  The ceremony of marriage
commenced.

There were more dramas played out that day than
what Ridgetown called "the drama" of Mabel's acting
bridesmaid to Isobel.  Ridgetown was delightfully
curious in noting that Robin, for instance, looked
nervous and disturbed.  The darting glances which had
so unnerved the Leighton family long ago, dwelt on
Isobel only occasionally.  Robin would not be at his
happiest till the ceremony was over.

Whether by accident or design, Miss Grace, who
was unable to join the wedding party on account of
her mourning, came in quietly to church with
Dr. Merryweather.  Here was drama enough if one liked
to look further as Isobel had done.  Then Mr. Symington
had been ordered to be an usher.  The groomsman,
a Mr. Clive, a friend of the Merediths, was, of course, out
of the usher part of the business.  So Cuthbert and
George Maclean and Lance and Mr. Symington were
requisitioned.  They had to show in the guests and
give the cue to the organist, and take the bridesmaids
out afterwards.  Miss Meredith had been of opinion
that they did not require so many ushers.  The girls
insisted on four at least.

Elma was not in the seventh heaven which she
had inhabited a few days before.  There was something
still unravelled about Mr. Symington's attitude.

She was not to know, of course, that he had immediately
placed himself in Mr. Leighton's hands in regard
to Mabel.  That much-startled person only thought
of another complication--Mabel, when Elma had set
her heart on him!  In a disturbed manner he had
endeavoured to let Mr. Symington know that he might
find difficulties in the way.  He begged, above all things,
that he might not rush matters.

"Give us time to think a little," he pleaded.  "We
have had so much of this sort of thing lately."

Mr. Symington would have preferred to have had it
out then and there.  "You understand," he said, "that
I left this unsaid before, because I thought, in fact I
was led definitely to understand that she was engaged
to Meredith, and that my presence here was a trouble
to her."

"Ah, that's it--perhaps," said Mr. Leighton.  "It
was not because of Meredith.  There may be other
reasons."

Mr. Symington's hopes went down at a rush.

When the girls crowded into the room for tea, his
greeting and Mabel's consisted of a mere clasp of the
hand on either side with no words spoken at all.  But
Mabel felt suddenly as though she could face the world.
Was it strength he had given her by the mere touch
of his hand?  She could not raise her eyes to let him
or anybody else see what was written there.

The deadlock puzzled the triumphant Elma.  Miss
Grace comforted her a little.  "These things always
come right--sooner or later."

These two good friends had not the firmness to probe
that remark further, though Elma was dying to ask
about Dr. Merryweather.

"I'd like to help them," said Elma instead, "but I
should feel like the 'tactful woman' that Mr. Maclean
was laughing at.  He says that when tactful women
write novels they are always making people drop handkerchiefs
in order to help the heroine, or having a friend
outside or something of that sort at the right moment.
It made me feel so silly over sending the invitation
to Mr. Symington.  Especially," continued she sadly,
"since he doesn't seem to be making much use of it.
It's very enervating to be tactful, especially when your
tact doesn't come off."

Miss Grace looked at her long and kindly.

"Don't bury your sympathies in the cause of others
too much, dear," she said.  "With some of us, with
you and me for instance, it might become more of a
weakness perhaps than a real virtue."

Elma immediately thought, "There is something
in what Isobel said after all."

Instead of giving voice to it, she said, "I have
bothered about Mabs, I know.  But then, I haven't
any affairs of my own, you see."

"Oh, dear child, never be sure, never be too sure
about that," said Miss Grace.

A delightful feeling stole over Elma.  Could it be
possible that anything exciting could ever happen to
herself.  But no--how could it?

"I think it's papa always telling us no woman ought
to be married until she's twenty-three that de--demoralizes
me so," she said.  "And lately, since Mabs is
nearly that age, he is actually running it on to twenty-five."

"Yes, but they never really mean it," said Miss Grace.

"Well, one thing I intend to see to is that Mr. Symington
takes Mabel out of church after the wedding.
Sarah wants him.  And Sarah is not going to have him."

"I think you are quite right there," said Miss Grace.

Elma got hold of Mr. Symington herself.  "I want
you to do me a great favour," she said.  "I want you
to escort Mabel on Tuesday."

"It isn't a favour," he said.  He pulled his big
shoulders together and looked magnificent.  He was
browned and tanned with the sun.  Only a slight frown
between the eyes to be cleared away and then he would
be the old Mr. Symington.

"Well, please do it like this.  Ask Mabel if you may."

"Now?" asked Mr. Symington.

"If you like," said Elma.

They were on the lawn after dinner, and Mr. Symington
in two days had hardly had a glimpse of Mabel,
far less any conversation with her.

She was talking to Isobel.

He walked straight up to her.

"May I escort you out of church on Tuesday?"
he asked.

Mabel looked up in a puzzled way, then her eyes lit
with shyness and something much more brilliant than
had been seen in them for a long time.

"Yes," she said simply.

(Could he know how her heart thumped to that quiet "yes"?)

"Thank you."

(Oh, after all, after all, could the sun shine after all!)

Isobel broke in coldly.

"I had understood from Robin that Mr. Symington
would take Miss Meredith."

Mabel turned cold.  She could not help it, for the
life of her, she could not help it, she turned an
appealing glance on Mr. Symington.  This he had hardly
required, but it helped him to a joyous answer.

"Oh, no, Miss Leighton.  Some mistake.  I'm bound
to Miss Mabel."

Elma strolled up.  "It's all because of Cuthbert's
insisting on taking Helen.  Cuthbert ought to have
taken Mabel.  Mr. Clive takes the first bridesmaid;
Mr. Symington, Mabel; George Maclean, Jean."

"Who takes you?" asked Mr. Symington.

"Oh, I'm not in the procession," said Elma.

"Yes, you are."  Mabel was quite animated now.
"The whole family trails out in pairs with somebody
or another."

George Maclean strolled up.

"I shall take Elma," he said.

"No, you won't!  You take Jean."

"I won't be taken by George Maclean," cried Jean.
"He's always horrid to me."

"Wire for Slavska," interpolated Betty.

"Is this my wedding, or whose is it?" asked Isobel.

They settled everything once more.  The real result
lay in Mr. Symington's determination about Mabel.

He came to Elma afterwards.

"Is there anything under the sun you want, which
you haven't got?" he asked her.  "Because I should
like to present it to you here and now."

That cleared up things incalculably for the wedding.
Elma sitting in front saw only Mabel, and Mabel's face
was the colour of a pink rose.  Mr. Symington took her
out of church after the wedding, next to the first bridesmaid.

Aunt Katharine followed them with her lorgnette.

"They're a fine couple," she said to Elma.  "It's
a pity Mabel spoiled herself with this Meredith man.
Mr. Symington might lead her out in earnest.  I always
told your mother what it would be."

There was no squashing of Aunt Katharine.

Mabel had begun to see land after having tossed on
what had seemed an endless sea.  She had been without
any hope at all, but it was necessary to appear
throughout as though she had some safe anchor holding her in
port.  The joy of delivery was almost more than she
could bear.  She became afraid of looking at Mr. Symington.
After the arrival of the guests at the White
House, she managed to slip out and disappear upstairs.
Her own room had people in it helping to robe Isobel.
She stole into the schoolroom.  Too late of making
up her mind, since Mr. Symington, seeing a trail of
pale silken skirts disappear there, tried the only door
open to him on that landing.  He found Mabel.

"Oh," said she blankly.  "I wanted to get away--away
from downstairs for a little."

He had some difficulty in replying.

"So I noticed," he said.

They lamely waited.  Mabel caught at a window
cord and played with it.

"We ought to go downstairs," she whispered.

Why she spoke in a whisper she could not imagine.

Mr. Symington came close to her.

"Mabs," he said, "just for three minutes I mean to
call you Mabs.  And after that--if you are offended--you
can turn me off to the ends of the earth again.
You know why I left before."

She bent her head a little.

"You didn't want me to go?  You didn't want me
to go!  Say that much, won't you?"

She could not answer.

"I know what it means if you do," he said.  "Oh
don't I know what it means?  Mabs, I'm going to make
you care for me--as I do for you--can you possibly
imagine how much I care for you--why won't you
speak to me?"

Mabel never spoke to him at all.

He happened to take her hand just then, and the same
confidence which had so strangely come to her a few
days ago on his arrival, came to her once more.  He
took her hand, and time stood still.

Somebody outside, a vague time afterwards, called
for Mabel.  It dawned on them both that they were
attending Isobel's wedding.

"We ought to go downstairs," whispered Mabel.

Her conversation was certainly very limited.  They
both smiled as they noticed this, a comprehensive,
understanding, oh! a different smile to any they had
ever allowed themselves.

"We will, when you've just once--Mabs--look up
at me.  Now--once."

Time stood still once more, but it took the last of
the frown from between the eyes of Mr. Symington.

"Now for Isobel's wedding party," cried he.

Mr. Leighton was stunned a little with the news.
"Only one stipulation," said he.  "I want to tell
Elma myself."

Mabel was terribly disappointed.

"Oh, papa--of all people--I wanted to tell Elma."

He was adamant however, even when Mr. Symington
added his requests.

"You've interfered seriously enough between me and
one of my daughters," Mr. Leighton said severely.
"Leave me the other."

So nothing was mentioned until Mr. Leighton should
tell Elma.  Mrs. Leighton was nervous about the
whole thing, yet in an underhand way very proud of
Mabel.

"I can't see that any of you are at all suited to be the
wife of a man like Mr. Symington," she said to Mabel
pessimistically.  "But your father thinks it is all
right."  She had had rather a long day with Aunt Katharine.

Elma saw that the clouds had lifted where Mabel was
concerned, and Mr. Symington was in magnificent spirits.
She thought they might have told her something, but
she was sent to lie down with no news at all until the
dance in the evening.  Isobel left regally.  There was
not much of the usual scrimmage of a wedding-leave-taking
about her departure.  Her toque and costume
were irreproachable.  Miss Meredith attended her
dutifully, as though she were a bridesmaid herself.  But
with Robin she had felt too motherly for that.  Indeed,
some new qualities in Miss Meredith seemed to be
coming uppermost.

Dancing was in full swing in the evening when
Mr. Leighton methodically put on an overcoat and took
Elma to sit out in the verandah.  "It is to prevent your
dancing too much," he told her.

Elma had the feeling of being manipulated as she had
been when she was ill.  What did all this mystery mean?
She tucked in readily enough beside her father.  The
night was warm, with a clear moon, and the lights from
the drawing-room and on the balcony shed pretty patches
of colour on her white dress and cloak.

Mr. Leighton began to talk of Adelaide Maud of all
people.  She was there, with her sisters.  They had at
last dropped the armour of etiquette which had
prevented more than one from ever appearing at the
Leightons.

"I don't suppose any of you really know what that
girl has come through," said Mr. Leighton.  "All these
years it has gone on.  A constant criticism, you know.
Mrs. Dudgeon found out long ago about Cuthbert, and
what Cuthbert calls 'roasted' her continually.  Adelaide
Maud remained the fine magnificently true girl she is
to-day.  That is a difficult matter when one's own family
openly despises the people one has set one's heart on.
She never gave a sign of giving in either way--did she?"

"Not a sign," said Elma.  "Adelaide Maud is a
delicious brick, she always has been.  The Story Books
have come true at last."

"It does not sound like being in battle," said Mr. Leighton,
in a pertinacious way.  "But a battle of that
sort is far more real than many of the fights we back up
in a public manner.  One relieves the poor, and you
girls give concerts for hospitals, but who can give a
concert to relieve the like of the trouble that Adelaide Maud
has gone through?  She never wavered."

Elma thought of another fight--should she tell her father?

"We talk about Ridgetown being a slow place, but
what a drama can be lived through here!" went on
Mr. Leighton.  "Isobel, for instance, thinks there's nothing
in life unless one attends fifty balls a month.  Yet she
lived her little drama in Ridgetown.  And she has learned
to be civil to Miss Meredith.  There's another fight for
you.  It cost her several pangs, let me tell you."

("What did it all lead to?" thought Elma.)

"Oh, there were other fights too, papa, but one I
think is over.  Have you seen Mabel's face to-night?"

Mr. Leighton started.

Elma required some sort of confidant, "or I shall
explode or something," she explained.  She told her
father about Mr. Symington.

"And I've been worrying so because it seemed so sad
about Mabel.  And she never gave it away, did she?
And when you all thought so much of Isobel when she
first came, and Mabel was getting dropped all round,
she never said a word, did she?"

"No," said Mr. Leighton, with a long-drawn impatient
sort of relief in his voice.  "No, but you did.  You
talked so much about the man all through your illness
that your mother thought you were in love with him
yourself.  Ridiculous nonsense," he said testily.  "And
here have I been trying to brace you up to hearing that
Mabel is engaged to him, and the scoundrel wishes to
marry her at once."

Dr. Merryweather, who had said that Elma was not
to be excited, ought to have been on the spot just then.
She sat on her father's knee and hugged him.

"Oh, papa, papa, how glorious," said she.  "Never
mind, I shall always stay with you, I shall, I shall."

"Oh, will you?" said Mr. Leighton dismally.  "Mabel
said the same thing not so long ago."

Mrs. Leighton and Aunt Katharine came on the
balcony, and behind them, Mabel and Mr. Symington.

"Isn't this a midsummer's night's dream?" sighed
Elma, after the congratulations were over.  "I shall
get up in the morning ever afterwards, and I shall say,
'Now here there dawneth another blue day'--even
although it's as black as midnight."

"Well, now that we're rid of Mabel," said Aunt
Katharine placidly, "when will your turn come along?"

"Oh, Elma is going to stay with me," said Mr. Leighton.

"H'm.  Well, she always admired Miss Grace,"
said Aunt Katharine.  "There's nothing like being
an old maid from the beginning."

Elma stirred herself gently, and laughed in the moonlight.

"Miss Grace is to be married to Dr. Merryweather,"
she said with a smile.  It was her piece of news, reserved
till now for a proper audience.

Miss Grace had told her anxiously in the course of
the afternoon.  "Oh," Elma had said, "how nice!
Dr. Merryweather is such a duck!"

"Do you think so?" had asked Miss Grace seriously.
"Miss Annie used to think he was a little loud in his
manners."

Miss Grace would ever be loyal to Miss Annie.
Adelaide Maud came out just then with Cuthbert.
"How much finer to have been loyal to the like of
Cuthbert!"  Elma could not help the thought.
Ah, well, there were fights and fights, and no doubt Miss
Grace had won on her particular battlefield.

A new dance commenced indoors, and some came
searching for partners.

"Mr. Leighton," said the voice of George Maclean,
"won't you spare Elma for this dance?"

They turned round to look at him.

"Elma wants to stay with me," said Mr. Leighton
gravely, putting his arms round her.

"Hph!" said Aunt Katharine in an undertone.
"It's another Miss Grace, sure enough."

"Why don't you go and dance?" asked Adelaide
Maud of Elma.

There were her two ideals, Miss Grace and Adelaide
Maud, crossing swords as it were with one another.
And there was George Maclean waiting at the window
of the drawing-room.  A Strauss waltz struck up inside,
one which she loved.  Ah, well, there were several
kinds of fights in the world.  She felt in some inscrutable
way that it was "weak" to stay with her father.

She went in with George Maclean.

Mr. Leighton pulled up a chair for his wife, as the
others, including even Aunt Katharine, faded from
the balcony.

"I take this as an omen, they are all leaving us,"
he said in a sad manner.

Mrs. Leighton sighed gently.  "We did the same
ourselves, didn't we, John?"

And with a Strauss waltz hammering out its joyous
commanding rhythm, a son and daughter engaged, and
Elma just deserted, Mr. Leighton replied very dismally
indeed, "I suppose so."

"Hush," said Mrs. Leighton.  "Who knows?  This
may be another."

It was Jean with a University acquaintance of Cuthbert's.

He placed her carefully in a chair and bent in a lounging
manner over her.

"You see," said Jean in a high intense voice, "it's
the method that does it."

"Ha," said Mr. Leighton joyously.  "Herr Slavska
may yet save me a daughter."

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   Butler and Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London.

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   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

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   *BOOKS BY*
   *CHRISTINA GOWANS WHYTE*

.. vspace:: 2

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   Nina's Career
   Uncle Hilary's Nieces
   The Five Macleods

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: center medium white-space-pre-line

   ILLUSTRATED IN COLOUR BY
   JAMES DURDEN.

.. class:: center small

   Crown 8vo.  Cloth.  Price 6/- each.

.. vspace:: 1

"We have been so badly in need for writers for girls who
shall be in sympathy with the modern standard of intelligence,
that we are grateful for the advent of Miss Whyte, who has not
inaptly been described as the new Miss Alcott."--*Outlook*.

"The characters are such as one may see and meet almost
any day, and the writer has the happy knack of making them
live in her pages."--*Morning Post*.

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.. class:: center medium white-space-pre-line

   LONDON
   HODDER & STOUGHTON, 20, WARWICK SQUARE, E.C.
   HENRY FROWDE, OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS.


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.. class:: center medium 

   BOOKS FOR GIRLS.


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   By BESSIE MARCHANT

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   A Girl of the Northland

.. vspace:: 1

Illustrated in Colour, by N. TENISON.  Crown 8vo,
cloth, olivine edges.  5s.

The scene of this story is the Stikine country of Western America, and
the contrast between the small mining town at a time of boom, and the same
town when the boom is over, is very vivid.  Mr. Scarth, an inhabitant of
this town, learns of the whereabouts of what is alleged to be a valuable gold
find.  He starts to make his fortune, and in his absence his family have
great difficulty in making ends meet.  One day an empty canoe is brought
down the river, which is quickly recognized as the one in which Mr. Scarth
went away; and in it is a packet of what appears to be gold, but which
an Alaskan miner pronounces to be "false hope."  Finally word is brought
by an Indian runner that Mr. Scarth is in dire straits in the ice and snow;
and it is only after many exciting adventures that one of his daughters
manages to rescue him.



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.. class:: center medium

   By MARJORY ROYCE

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center large

   The Unwilling Schoolgirl

.. vspace:: 1

Illustrated in Colour by JAMES DURDEN.  Large crown
8vo, cloth, olivine edges.  5s.

Ethne St. Ives passes the first dozen years of her life in luxury at the house
of a maiden aunt; but on the death of the latter she is sent to school,
very much against her will.  At school, she rebels against authority, and is
in danger of being universally disliked for her airs and affectations.  She
makes up her mind that she will not learn anything; that she will not
make friends with anybody.  At length, however, she learns to appreciate
the joys of friendship and the value of corporate spirit, and develops into
a very lovable character.

"We enjoyed every word of it."--*Nation*.

"A capital story for girls."--*Manchester Guardian*.



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   By J. M. WHITFELD

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   Gladys and Jack

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An Australian Story for Girls.  Coloured Illustrations
by N. TENISON.  Large Crown 8vo, cloth, olivine edges.  5s.

Gladys and Jack are sister and brother, and, up to the point when the
story opens, they have been the best of friends.  Then, however, Gladys
puts on a superior air, and adopts a severely proper attitude towards Jack.
She goes to spend a holiday up-country, and here, too, her icily-regular line
of conduct seems bound to bring her into conflict with her free-and-easy-going
cousins.  After some trying experiences, Gladys finds herself in a position
which enables her, for the time being, to forget her own troubles, and
exert all her strength on behalf of the rest.  She comes worthily through the
ordeal and earns the affection of her cousins, and Jack rejoices in the
recovery of a lost sister.



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   By J. M. WHITFELD

.. vspace:: 1

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   Tom who was Rachel

A Story of Australian Life.  Illustrated in Colour by
N. TENISON.  Large crown 8vo, cloth, olivine edges,
5s. also cloth, 3s. 6d.

In "Tom who was Rachel" the author has described a large family of
children living on an up-country station; and the story presents a faithful
picture of the everyday life of the bush.  Rachel (otherwise Miss Thompson,
abbreviated to "Miss Tom," afterwards to "Tom ") is the children's step-sister;
and it is her influence for good over the wilder elements in their nature
that provides the real motive of a story for which all English boys and girls
will feel grateful.



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   The Colters

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An Australian Story for Girls.  Illustrated in
Colour by GEORGE SOPER.  Large crown 8vo, cloth,
olivine edges.  5s.

This book deals with a merry family of Australian boys
and girls.  The author seizes upon the everyday occurrences
of domestic life, turning them to good account; and
she draws a charming picture of a family, united in heart,
while differing very much in habit and temperament.




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   By WINIFRED LETTS

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   The Quest of the Blue Rose

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Illustrated in Colour by JAMES BURDEN.
Crown 8vo, cloth, olivine edges.  5s.

After the death of her mother, Sylvia Sherwood has to
make her own way in the world as a telegraph clerk.
The world she finds herself in is a girls' hostel in a big
northern city.  For a while she can only see the
uncongenial side of her surroundings.  In the end, however,
Sylvia, contented at last with her hard-working, hum-drum
life, finds herself the successful writer of a book of
children's poems.



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   Bridget of All Work

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Illustrated in Colour by JAMES BURDEN.
Crown 8vo, cloth, olivine edges.  5s.

The scene of the greater part of this story is laid in
Lancashire, and the author has chosen her heroine from
among those who know what it is to feel the pinch of want
and strive loyally to combat it.  There is a charm about
Bridget Joy, moving about her kitchen, keeping a light
heart under the most depressing surroundings.  Girl though
she is, it is her arm that encircles and protects those who
should in other circumstances have been her guardians,
and her brave heart that enables the word Home to retain
its sweetness for those who are dependent on her.




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   By E. L. HAVERFIELD

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   The Ogilvies' Adventures

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Illustrated in Colour by JAMES DURDEN.  Large
crown 8vo, cloth, olivine edges, 3s. 6d.

Hester Ogilvie and her elder, but less energetic, sister,
daughters of a Canadian who is unable to support the whole
of his family, are invited to spend a few years with their
English uncle, Sir Hubert Campion.  Hester is unable to
please her uncle in any way.  At length she runs away to
London to make her own living, but is taken back, and
through a great service she does her uncle, he agrees to
help her to carry out her original plans.  Finally, he
arranges that the Canadian and English branches of the
family shall live together.

"A most delightful story, which is admirably suited to the average
school-girl of to-day."--*Lady's Pictorial*.



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   Audrey's Awakening

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Illustrated in Colour by JAMES DURDEN.
Crown 8vo, cloth, olivine edges.  3s. 6d.; picture
boards, cloth back, 2s. 6d.

Audrey is a girl without ambitions, unsympathetic, and
with a reputation for exclusiveness.  Therefore, when
Paul Forbes becomes her stepbrother, and brings his free
and easy notions into the Davidson's old home, there begins
to be trouble.  Audrey takes a dislike to Paul at the outset;
and the young people have to get through deep waters and
some exciting times before things come right.  Audrey's
awakening is thorough, if painful.




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   By MRS. HERBERT STRANG

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   The Girl Crusoes

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A Story of Three Girls in the South Seas.  With
Colour Illustrations by N. TENISON.  3s. 6d.;
decorated picture boards, cloth back, 2s. 6d.

In these days of women travellers and explorers there
are countless instances of women displaying a courage and
endurance in all respects equal to that of the other sex.
Recognizing this, Mrs. Herbert Strang has written a story
of adventure in which three English girls of the present
day are the central figures, and in which the girl reader
will find as much excitement and amusement as any boy's
book could furnish.

"For sheer excitement the book is equal to any boys'
volume."--*Black and White*.

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