Jane Allen: Right Guard Part 31

Two evenings before Christmas, Jane and Judith invited their particular chums to their room for a good-bye spread. The party spent a jubilant evening, feasting and exchanging gifts and good wishes. On the next day, Jane and Judith bade each other an affectionate farewell and departed for their respective destinations.

Adrienne and Norma accompanied Jane to New York, there to spend the holidays with the Duprees. Adrienne's distinguished mother was filling a long engagement at a theater there, and the Duprees had opened their home in New York for the time being. Norma expected to fill a two-weeks'

engagement in a stock company, obtained for her by Mr. Dupree, and was to be the guest of the kindly Frenchman and his little family.

The three girls were delighted at this state of affairs, as Jane looked forward to meeting the Duprees and Adrienne was equally eager to know Jane's father and aunt. In consequence, the trio had made countless holiday plans which they purposed to carry out.

All in all, it was a red-letter three weeks for the three Wellington girls. Jane found New York a vastly different city when peopled by those dear to her. During her brief shopping trip there the previous winter she had not liked New York. Now she discovered that it was a most wonderful place in which to spend a holiday.

In spite of the constant round of theaters, dinners, luncheons and sight-seeing into which she was whirled, she took time to look sharply about her for those to whom Christmas meant only a name. Accompanied by Mrs. Dupree, she and Adrienne made several visits to poverty-stricken sections of the great city, leaving substantial good cheer behind them.

She also discovered a special protege in a meek-faced young girl who occupied the position of public stenographer in the hotel where the Allens were staying. Dressed in deep mourning, the girl at once enlisted Jane's sympathy. She promptly made her acquaintance and the two girls became instantly friendly. It needed but the information that Eleanor Lane had recently, lost her mother to strengthen the bond of acquaintance to actual friends.h.i.+p.

Democratic Henry Allen and his sister quite approved of Jane's interest in the lonely little stranger, and Eleanor was invited frequently to dine or lunch with them.

"It seems odd," she said to Jane one afternoon near the end of the blissful holiday as Jane lingered beside her desk, "but your name has sounded familiar to me from the first. I've heard it before but I can't think when or where. I only know it's familiar. It bothers me not to be able to place it."

"It's awfully aggravating to have a dim recollection of something and not be able to make it come clear," Jane agreed. "My name isn't an uncommon one. There may be dozens of Jane Allens in the world, for all I know."

"Yes, there may be. I hear and see so many names, I wonder that I can ever keep any of them straight in my mind," smiled Eleanor. "Perhaps it will come to me all of a sudden some day. If it does, I'll write you about it."

"Yes, do. You know we are going to correspond. When I come to New York again I shall surely look you up," declared Jane. "And you must come and spend a week-end with me at Wellington."

Girl-fas.h.i.+on, the two had advanced to the "visiting" stage of friends.h.i.+p. Sad little Eleanor regarded Jane as a bright and wonderful star that had suddenly dawned upon her gray horizon.

Jane liked Eleanor for her sweet amiability and pleasant, una.s.suming manner. She also admired her intensely, because Eleanor was actually engaged in successfully earning her own living. This, in itself, seemed quite marvelous to Jane, who had never earned a penny in her life.

"Girls are really wonderful, after all, Dad," she confided to her father, as the two sat side by side on a big leather davenport in the sitting room of the Allens' private suite, indulging in a confidential talk.

It was the last night of Jane's stay in New York. The next day would find her saying fond farewells to her father and aunt. They intended to remain in New York for a few days after Jane's departure for Wellington College, then make a brief tour of the larger eastern cities before returning to the West.

"It seems queer to me now that I used to dislike them so much," Jane continued, shaking a deprecating head at her former adverse opinion of girls in general. "I wouldn't know what to do now without my girl friends. I seem to be making new ones all the time, too. There's Eleanor, for instance. I've grown ever so fond of her. I think it would be fine to have her make me a visit next summer. She never goes anywhere in particular. She just works hard all the time. Dorothy thinks she can't come to Capitan until August, so I could have Eleanor there in July."

"Invite whom you please, Janie. The more the merrier. All I want is to see my girl happy," was the affectionate response.

"And I _am_ happy, Dad," Jane ardently a.s.sured. "You and Aunt Mary have given me the finest Christmas I could possibly have. I'll go back to Wellington feeling as if I owned the earth. After such a glorious vacation as this has been, I'll have every reason in the world to be a good pioneer. I'll re-tackle my bit of college land for all I'm worth, and improve it as much as I can through the rest of my soph.o.m.ore year.

It looks a lot better already than it did last year."

Jane spoke with the glowing enthusiasm of perfect happiness. The joy of Christmas had temporarily driven from her mind even the vexatious memory of Marian Seaton and her petty spite.

Quite the contrary, Christmas had not reduced Marian to any such beatific state. She accepted it as a mere matter of course, and spent it in Buffalo, as the guest of Maizie Gilbert. Privately, she wished it over and done with. For once, she was impatient to return to Wellington, there to further a certain enterprise of her own from which she expected to gain decided results.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE LISTENER

Returned to Wellington, Jane and Judith both agreed that in spite of their holiday fun, each had missed the other dreadfully. They had plenty to talk about and much to show each other in the way of beautiful gifts which had fallen to their lot.

Judith was jubilant over the acquisition of a knitted white silk sweater, which she a.s.sured Jane was an exact counterpart of the one Mrs.

Weatherbee had knitted for her niece.

"My Aunt Jennie made it for me," she explained, as she proudly exhibited it to Jane. "I bought the silk and she did the work. I told her about the one Mrs. Weatherbee made for her niece and dandy Aunt Jennie offered to knit one for me like it. Wasn't that nice in her? I'm going to show it to the girls and then put it away until Spring. It will be sweet with a white wash satin skirt. I'm going to have some made just to wear with it. Let's give a spread, Jane, to the crowd. Then we can show them our Christmas presents. It will give you a chance, too, to get that great secret idea of yours off your mind. You see I haven't forgotten about it."

Jane smilingly agreed that it would be a good opportunity and the spread was accordingly planned for the next evening. Christine, Barbara, Dorothy, Norma, Alicia, Adrienne, Ethel and Mary Ashton were the chosen few to be invited.

It was not until the little feast provided by Judith and Jane had been eaten and the ten girls still sat about the makes.h.i.+ft banqueting board, that Jane, urged by Judith to "Speak up, Janie," began rather diffidently to speak of her cherished new idea.

"I don't know whether you'll agree with me or not," she said. "If you don't, please say so frankly, because if we should decide to do what I'm going to propose we'll all have to be united in thinking it a good idea.

"It's like this," she continued. "We all spend a good deal of money on luncheons and dinners and spreads. We feel, of course, that we have a perfect right to do as we please with our allowance checks. So we have.

Still, when one stops to think about quite a number of girls at Wellington who are straining every nerve to put themselves through college, it seems a little bit selfish to spend so much on one's own pleasures.

"Suppose we agreed to give only two spreads a month. There are ten of us here. We could each put a dollar a month into a common fund. That would give us ten dollars to spend on the two spreads, five dollars on each.

During the month we'd see how much of our allowances we could save.

Whatever we had left at the end of the month would go into the common fund. No one of us would be obliged to give any particular sum. Whatever we gave would be a good-will offering. One of us would be treasurer.

We'd buy a toy-bank and the treasurer would take charge of it. Whenever one of us wanted to give something we'd go to her and drop the money in the bank. Not even she would know what we gave. The first of every new month she'd take the money out, count it and put it in the Chesterford Trust company for us."

"But suppose we save quite a lot, what would we do with it?" asked Barbara Tennant. "We wouldn't need it for ourselves. We'd have to----"

"That's what I'm coming to," interposed Jane. "We'd start a fund to help the poorer Wellington students along. There is no College Aid Society here. I don't know why none has ever been organized. I suppose there haven't been so very many poor girls at Wellington. Until three years ago there were no scholars.h.i.+ps offered. There are only two now. There will be three soon. My father has promised me that."

Jane's lips curved in a tender little smile, as she quietly made this announcement. There was no hint of boastful pride in her tones; nothing save becoming modesty and deep sincerity.

"This money we collected would be open to any student to draw upon who made requisition for it," she explained.

"But would the girls who need it ask for it?" questioned Norma. "You see I know how it feels to be very, very poor. If I hadn't found such a splendid way to earn my tuition fees and board, I'm afraid I could never bring myself to ask for help in that way. It would seem like begging."

"Oh, we'd loan the money; not give it," promptly a.s.sured Jane. "We'd loan it without interest, to be repaid at convenience. You know the 'Beatrice Horton' books. Well, in those stories the girls at Exley College started such a fund. They gave entertainments and shows to help it along. Then they received money contributions from interested persons, too.

"I don't know whether we'd ever do as they did. I like the idea of the self-denial gifts from just the crowd of us. We could let the money pile up this year and if we had enough by next October we could start our Student's Aid Fund."

"We could keep up the good work during our vacations, too,"

enthusiastically suggested Mary Ashton. "A little self-denial then wouldn't hurt us, I guess, I think it would be fun for each of us to pledge ourselves to earn at least ten dollars this summer to put into the fund. Norma and Adrienne are the only ones of us here who ever earned a dollar. Dispute that if you can."

"I dispute it," grinned Judith. "My father once gave me a silver dollar for keeping quiet a whole hour. I was only five at the time I earned that fabulous sum."

"I've earned lots of dollars for churches and hospitals at bazaars,"

declared Christine. "I suppose most of us have. But that's not like earning money for ourselves."

"Well, everybody here is going to earn _ten_ dollars this coming summer," stated Judith positively. "It would be still more fun if we each agreed to write a poem telling how we earned our ten dollars. We'd have a grand reunion as soon as we were all back in college and each of us would read her own poetic gem right out loud, so that we could all appreciate it."

Judith's proposal was greeted with laughter and accepted on the spot.

The girls were no less enthusiastic over Jane's worthy plan and each expressed herself as ready and willing to do her bit toward furthering its success. Before the ten-thirty bell drove the revelers from the scene of revelry, Adrienne had been appointed to act as treasurer. Jane had been unanimously chosen, but declined, suggesting Adrienne in her stead.

Thus from one girl's generous thought was presently to spring an organization that would grow, thrive and endure long after Jane Allen had been graduated from Wellington College to a wider field in life.