Peggy Stewart at School Part 8

Within a few moments two girls appeared in the doorway, the taller one asking:

"Did you wish to see us, Mother?"

Introductions followed, whereupon the Princ.i.p.al said:

"Natalie, please take Miss Stewart and Miss Howland for a walk through the grounds. It is recreation period and they will like to meet the other girls and see the buildings also, I think. And remember, you are to picture everything in such glowing colors, and be so entertaining that they will think there is no other place in all the land half so lovely, for I have fully decided that we must have sweet P's in our posy bed. We have a Rose, a Violet, a Lily, Myrtle, Hazel, Marguerites,--oh, a whole flower garden already--but thus far no sweet-peas."

"We will, Mrs. Vincent. Please come with us," said Marjorie cheerily, no trace of self-consciousness or the indefinable restraint so much oftener the rule than the exception between teacher and pupil. Mrs. Harold had been observing every word and action as it was a part of her nature to observe--yes, intuitively _feel_--every word and action of the young people with whom she came in touch, and the older ones who were likely to bring any influence to bear upon their lives, and this little scene did more to confirm her in the belief that she had not been amiss when she selected Columbia Heights School for Peggy than anything else could have done. Next to her husband, her sister and her nieces, Peggy was the dearest thing in the world to her, and the past year had shown her what tremendous possibilities the future held for the young girl if wisely shaped for her. The two ensuing hours were pleasant and profitable for all concerned and when they ended and Captain Stewart and his party re-entered the taxicab to return to their hotel in Was.h.i.+ngton, it was decided that Peggy should come to Columbia Heights School on October fifteenth, but Polly's decision was still in abeyance. She wished to have one of her long, quiet talks with her aunt before "s.h.i.+fting her holding ground," she said, and that could only be up in Middie's Haven, cuddled upon a ha.s.sock beside Mrs. Harold's easy chair, with the logs lazily flickering upon the bra.s.s andirons. So the ensuing two days in Was.h.i.+ngton were given over to sightseeing and "a general blow-out," as Captain Stewart termed it, insisting that he could not have another for months and meant to make this one "an A-1 affair." Then back they went to Severndale where Mrs. Stewart, to their surprise, had returned the previous day, having failed to find her friend in Baltimore. As she had already overstayed the length of time for which her invitation to Severndale had been extended, she had no possible excuse for prolonging it, and deciding that her schemes had met with defeat largely owing to her own impolitic precipitation in forcing the situation, she did not mean to make an ignominious retreat. So, with well a.s.sumed suavity she told her brother-in-law that some urgent business matters claimed her attention in New York, and asked if he could complete his arrangements for Peggy's departure without her aid, as she really ought to go North without delay.

If Neil Stewart was amused by this sudden change in the lady's tactics, to his credit be it said that he did not betray any sign of it. He thanked her for her kind interest in Peggy and his home, for all she had done for them, and left nothing lacking for her comfort upon her homeward journey, even s.h.i.+pping to the apartment in New York enough fruit, game and various other good things from Severndale to keep her larder well supplied for weeks, and supplementing all these with a gift which would be the envy of all her friends. But when he returned to Severndale after bidding the lady farewell at the station, he breathed one mighty sigh of relief. He had escaped a situation of which the outcome was a good deal more than problematical for everyone concerned, and most vital for Peggy.

Then came busy days of preparation for Peggy and Polly, for the outcome of that fireside powwow had been a decision in favor of Columbia Heights School for Polly also, for that winter at least, and when the fifteenth dawned bright and frosty, Mrs. Harold accompanied the girls to Was.h.i.+ngton, Captain Stewart's leave having meantime expired. But he had gone back to his s.h.i.+p in a very different frame of mind from that in which he had returned to it in July, and with a comforting sense of security in the outcome of his present plans for Peggy. The longer he knew Mrs. Harold the greater became his confidence in her judgment, and she had a.s.sured him that Peggy should be her charge that winter exactly as Polly was. Moreover, Mrs. Harold had persuaded Mrs. Howland to close her house in Montgentian for the winter and come to Annapolis, bringing Gail with her, for Constance had decided to follow the _Rhode Island_ whenever it was possible for her to do so, and this decision left Mrs.

Howland and Gail alone in their home. So to Wilmot Hall came Polly's mother and pretty sister, the former to spend a delightfully restful winter with her sister and the latter to take her first taste of the good times possible for a girl of twenty-one at the Naval Academy.

The first breaking away from Severndale was harder for Peggy than anyone but Mrs. Harold guessed. Somehow intuition supplied to her what actual words could never have conveyed, even had they been spoken, but Peggy, once her resolution had been taken to go away to school, was not a girl to bewail her decision. And now she was a duly registered pupil at Columbia Heights with Polly for her room-mate in number 67, her next-door neighbor Natalie Vincent, Mrs. Vincent's daughter, a jolly, honest, happy-go-lucky girl, who looked exactly as her mother must have looked at fifteen. A long line of rooms extended up and down, both sides of the corridor, the end one, No. 70, with its pretty bay-window overlooking the lawn and Stony Brook beyond, was occupied by Stella Drummond, a tall, striking brunette of eighteen. To the hundred-fifty girls in Columbia Heights School this story can only allude in a brief way but of those who figure most prominently in Polly's and Peggy's new world we'll let Polly give the general "sizing-up." These girls were all about the same age, and, excepting Stella, juniors, as were Peggy and Polly, whose previous work under tutors and in high school had qualified them to enter that grade at Columbia Heights.

It was their first night at the school, and "lights-out" bell had rung at ten o'clock, but a glorious October moon flooded the room with a silvery light, almost as bright as day. Peggy in one pretty little white bed and Polly in the one beside it were carrying on a lively whispered conversation.

"Well, we're _here_," was Polly's undisputable statement as she snuggled down under her bed-covers, "and now that we are what do you think of it?"

"I'm glad we've come. It will seem a lot different, and rather queer to do everything by rules and on time, but, after all, we had to do almost everything by rule up home."

"Yes, but they were nearly always our _own_ rules; yours, anyway. Why, Peggy, I don't believe there is a girl in this school who ever had things as much her own way as you have had them."

"Maybe that's the reason I didn't get along with Aunt Katherine,"

answered Peggy whimsically.

"Aunt Katherine!" Polly's whisper suggested italics. "Do you know Miss Sturgis, the math. teacher, makes me think of her a little. Miss Sturgis is strong-minded, I'll bet a cookie. Did you hear what she said when she was giving out our books on sociology--doesn't it seem funny, Peggy, for us to take up sociology?--'She hoped we would become good American citizens and realize woman's true position in the world.' Somehow I've thought Tanta has always had a pretty clear idea of 'woman's position in the world.' At any rate she seems to have plenty to do in her own quiet way and I've an idea that if anyone ever hinted that she ought to go to the polls and vote she'd feel inclined to spell it pole and use it to 'beat 'em up' with, as Ralph and the boys would say. Oh, dear, how we are going to miss 'the bunch,' Peggy."

"We certainly are," was Peggy's sympathetic reply, and for a moment there was silence in the moonlit room as the girls' thoughts flew back to Annapolis. Then Peggy asked: "What do you think of the girls? You've been to school all your life, but it is all new to me."

Polly laughed a low, little laugh, then replied:

"They are about like most school-girls, I reckon. Let's see, which have we had most to do with since we came here twenty-four hours ago? There's Rosalie Breeze. She's named all right, sure enough, and if she doesn't turn out a hurricane we'll be lucky. We had one just like her up at High. And Lily Pearl Montgomery. My gracious, what a name to give a girl! She needs stirring up. She's just like a big, fat, spoiled baby. I feel like saying 'Goo-goo' to her."

"Don't you think Juno Gibson is handsome?" asked Peggy.

"Just as handsome as she can be, but I wish she didn't look so discontented all the time. Why, she hasn't smiled once since we came."

"I wonder why not?" commented Peggy.

"Maybe we'll find out after we've been here a while. But I tell you one thing, I like her better without any smiles than that silly Helen Gwendolyn Doolittle with her everlasting affected giggling at nothing.

She is the kind to do some silly thing and make us all ashamed of her."

"How about Stella Drummond?"

"She is a puzzle to me. Doesn't she seem an awful lot older than the rest of us? Rosalie says she is eighteen and that's not so much older, but she seems about twenty-five. I wonder why?"

"Maybe she has lived in cities all her life and gone out a lot. You know most of the girls we met up at New London seemed so much older too, yet they really were not. They looked upon us as children, though the Little Mother said we were years older in common sense while they were years older in worldly experience,--I wonder what she meant?"

"Tanta meant that we had stayed young girls and could enjoy fun and frolic as much as ever, but those girls were not satisfied with anything but dances and theatres and all sorts of grown-up things. We have our fun with our horses, dogs and the nonsense with the boys up home. We want our skirts short and our hair flying and to romp when we feel like it."

"Picture Helen or Lily Pearl romping," and Peggy dove under the covers to smother her laughter at the thought of the fat, pudgy Lily Pearl attempting anything of the sort. Polly snickered in sympathy and then said in her emphatic way:

"I tell you, Peggy, which girls I _do_ like and I think they will like us: Marjorie Terry and Natalie Vincent. Marjorie is awfully sober and quiet, I know, but _I_ believe she's sort of lonely, or homesick or something. Natalie seems more like our own kind than any girl in the school and I'll wager my tennis racquet she'll be lots of fun if she is the Princ.i.p.al's daughter. But we'd better go to sleep this minute. We've made a sort of hash of seven girls, and if we try to size up the whole school this way it will be broad daylight before we finish. Good-night.

It's sort of nice to be here after all, and nicer still to have you for a room-mate, old Peggoty."

An appreciative little laugh was the only answer to this and five minutes later the moon was looking in upon a picture hard to duplicate in this great world: Two sweet, unspoiled, beautiful girls in the first flush of untroubled slumber.

The following morning being Sat.u.r.day and Peggy's and Polly's belongings having arrived, the girls set about arranging their room, half a dozen others having volunteered a.s.sistance. For convenience in reaching "up aloft" Peggy and Polly had slipped off their waists and were arrayed in kimonos which aroused the envy of their companions. Captain Stewart had given them to his "twins" as he now called the girls. Peggy's was the richest shade of crimson embroidered in all manner of golden G.o.ds and dragons; Polly's pale blue with silver chrysanthemums.

"Oh, _where_ did they come from?" cried Natalie.

"Daddy Neil brought them to us," answered Peggy, as she stepped toward the door to take an armful of pictures and pillows from old Jess who had followed his young mistress to Was.h.i.+ngton to care for Shashai and Silver Star, the horses having been sent on also, for Columbia Heights School had large stables for the accommodation of riding or driving horses for the use of its pupils, or they could bring their own if they preferred.

So Shashai and Silver Star had been ridden down by Jess, taking the journey in short, easy stages, and arriving the previous evening.

Tzaritza, to her astonishment had not been allowed to accompany them, and Roy was inconsolable for days. Peggy's departure from Severndale had left many a grieving heart behind.

"What I gwine do wid all dis hyer truck, Missie-honey?" asked Jess, coming in from the corridor with a second armful: riding-crops, silver bits, a fox's brush, books and what not.

"Just plump it down anywhere, Jess. We'll get round to it all in due time," laughed Peggy from her perch upon a small step-ladder where she was fastening up some hat-bands of the _Rhode Island_, _New Hamps.h.i.+re_, _Olympia_ and the s.h.i.+ps which had comprised the summer practice squadron, the girls all gathered about her asking forty questions to the minute and wild with curiosity and excitement. Never before had two "really, truly Navy girls" been inmates of Columbia Heights and it sent a wild flutter through many hearts. What possibilities might lie at the Annapolis end of the W. B. & A. Railroad!

Jess's white woolly head was bent down over the armful of books he was placing upon the floor; Peggy had returned to her decorating; Polly had draped her flag upon the wall and was standing her beloved bugle and a long row of photographs upon book-shelves beneath it, several girls following her with little squeals of rapture, when a pandemonium of shrieks and screams arose down the corridor and the next second a huge creature bounded into the room, tipping Jess and his burden heels over head, and flinging itself upon Peggy. Down came ladder, Peggy, and the white ma.s.s in a heap, the girls scattering in a shrieking panic to whatever shelter seemed to offer, confident that nothing less than a wolf had invaded the fold.

But Tzaritza was no wolf even if her beautiful snowy coat was mud-bedraggled and stuck full of burrs, nor was Peggy being "devoured alive," as Lily Pearl, who had actually _run_ for once in her life, was hysterically sobbing into Mrs. Vincent's arms.

No, Peggy, rather promiscuous as to ladder, hammer, hat-bands and general paraphernalia, was lying flat upon her back, her arms around Tzaritza, half-sobbing, half-laughing her joy into the beautiful creature's silky neck, while Tzaritza whimpered and whined for joy and licked and dabbed her mistress with a moist tongue.

"It is a wolf! A wolf!" shrieked Lily Pearl, who had returned to the scene, "and he is killing her."

"It is a horrid, dirty dog! Why doesn't that man drive him out?"

demanded Miss Sturgis, who had followed Tzaritza hot foot, having been in the main hall when the great hound went tearing through and up the stairs, nose and ears having given her the clue to her mistress'

whereabouts.

"No, it's only a wolf_hound_!" laughed Polly, dropping her pictures to fly across the room and fall upon Tzaritza.

Then explanations followed. Tzaritza had been left in Shelby's care, but finding it impossible to restrain her when Jess was about to leave with the horses, he had tied her in the barn. The rope was bitten through as clean as a thread and Tzaritza's coat told of the long journey on the horses' trail.

After her wild demonstrations of joy had calmed down, Tzaritza stood panting in the middle of the wreck which her cyclonic entrance had brought about, her great eyes pleading eloquently for restored favor.

Polly still clasped her arms about the big s.h.a.ggy neck, while Miss Sturgis alternately protested and commanded Jess to "remove that dirty creature at once." Happily, Mrs. Vincent entered the room at this juncture and it must have been the G.o.d of animals, of which Kipling tells us, which inspired Tzaritza's act at that moment. Or was it something in the fine, strong face which children and animals in common all trust with subtle intuition? At all events, Tzaritza looked at Mrs.

Vincent just one moment and then greeted her exactly as at home she would have greeted Dr. Llewellyn or Captain Stewart; by rising upon her hind legs, placing her forepaws upon Mrs. Vincent's shoulders and nestling her magnificent head into the amazed woman's neck as confidingly as a child would have done. A less self-contained woman would have been frightened half to death. Miss Sturgis came near swooning but Mrs. Vincent just gathered the great dog into her arms as she would have gathered one of her girls and said:

"Without the power of human speech you plead your cause most eloquently, you beautiful creature. Peggy, has she ever been separated from you before, dear?"

"Never, Mrs. Vincent. She has slept at my door since she was a wee puppy."

"She shall be appointed guardian of the West Wing of Columbia Heights, and may turn out a guardian for us all. Now, Jess, take her to the stables and make her presentable to polite society. Poor Tzaritza, your journey must have been a long, hard, dusty one, for your silken fringes have collected many souvenirs of it."