Grace Harlowe's Problem Part 3

"Mine, too," echoed Arline. "Really, girls, you haven't any idea of how busy settlement work keeps one. I spend several hours each day at the rooms which Father let me have fitted up for a Girls' Club, and I visit the very poor people, and almost every evening I have a cla.s.s or a meeting. One evening I go to a little chapel on the East Side to tell stories to children, and I teach cla.s.ses two other nights. There's always something extra coming up, too. Father isn't exactly pleased over it. He thinks I work too hard. Now that Ruth is going to spend the winter with me I'll make her help. She is the laziest person. She hasn't accomplished a single thing since she found her father."

"He wouldn't let me," defended Ruth. "It has been hard labor to persuade him to allow me to stay in New York this winter. Besides I believe that my business of life, for the present, at least, is to try to make up for some of the years we spent apart."

"Good for you, Ruth," applauded Miriam. "You and I are of the same mind.

Only I'm enlisted in the cause of a mother instead of a father. But all this leads up to what I intended to tell you girls before we separated.

We are going to New York City for the winter. David is going into business there."

"To New York!" came simultaneously from Arline and Grace. There were murmurs of surprise from the other girls. J. Elfreda Briggs alone smiled knowingly.

"What are we to do in Oakdale without you, at Christmas time, Miriam?"

asked Grace mournfully. "The Eight Originals Plus Two can't celebrate unless you are with them. Somehow every year we've all managed to gather home at Christmas. Now if you go to New York to live next winter perhaps David won't be able to leave his business, and your mother will need you and----"

"And do I live to hear Grace Harlowe borrowing trouble?" broke in Emma Dean. "Our intrepid, dauntless, invincible Grace!"

"I'm afraid you do," admitted Grace. "I couldn't help mourning a little.

It was all so sudden. Anne, aren't you astonished?"

"Anne looks as though she'd known it a long while," observed Elfreda shrewdly.

"I knew David was going into business in New York," confessed Anne, her face flus.h.i.+ng, "but I didn't know the rest."

"Neither did I, until this morning," smiled Miriam.

"It seems as though we are the only persons in this august body that haven't any plans," declared Julia Emerson wistfully. "Here are Grace, Anne and Emma, regular salaried individuals. Arline is a busy little worker. Miriam and Ruth are at least useful members of society, and Elfreda is an aspiring professional. Sara and I are just the Emerson twins, with no lofty aims in view, or deeds of glory to perform."

"You and Sara are not quite useless," comforted Emma. "Just think what a continual source of inspiration you are to me. Some of my finest observations on life have been prompted by my acquaintance with you."

"I'm glad we are of some account in the world," grinned Sara. "I'd really quite forgotten about you, Emma. Thank you so much for reminding me."

"Oh, not at all," Emma beamed patronizingly upon her. "No matter how much others may malign you, I am still your friend."

"Emma Dean, you ridiculous creature, why won't you take us seriously?"

laughed Julia, but her voice still held an undercurrent of wistfulness.

"Does the fact that we are twins have this hilarious effect upon you?"

"I wonder if that's the reason," murmured Emma. Then dropping her usual bantering tone, she fixed earnest eyes on the black-eyed twins.

"Seriously, Julia and Sara, I know just the way you feel about having no particular life work picked out. When I went home after I was graduated from Overton I hadn't the least idea of where I'd fit in in life. Then I found that Father needed my help, and I've been head over ears in work ever since. One never knows what may happen, or how quickly one's work may find one. It may not be what one would like it to be, but it will undoubtedly be the best thing in life for one, and one is likely to see it coming around the corner at almost any minute."

"That's very, very true." It was Grace who spoke. "Don't you remember how I worried about finding my work, and it walked directly up to me and introduced itself on Commencement day?"

"I never dreamed that the stage would put me through college and be my work afterward," broke in Anne. "When first I went to Oakdale I supposed I had left it behind forever. But it must have been my destiny after all."

"I guess it's just about as well in the long run not to worry about what your work is going to be until it knocks at your door," observed Elfreda. "Children are always planning and talking about what they're going to do and be when they grow up; then they always do something different. What do you suppose I used to say I was going to be when I grew up?"

"Some perfectly absurd thing," antic.i.p.ated Miriam. Eight pairs of amused eyes fixed themselves expectantly on Elfreda.

"Well," Elfreda chuckled reminiscently, "my aim and ambition was to be a cook. Not because I was so deeply in love with cooking, but because I liked to eat. No wonder I was fat. I used to haunt the kitchen on baking days and shriek with an outraged stomach afterward. The shrieking occurred most frequently in the middle of the night. Then Ma would come to my rescue, and I'd be forbidden to sample the baking again. So to console myself in my banishment I'd resolve that when I grew up I'd be a cook and live in a kitchen all the time. I reasoned that if I _was_ a cook I'd know how to make everything in the world to eat and could have what I pleased. Besides no one would dare tell me I couldn't have this or that. This was all very consoling during the times I had to keep out of the kitchen. Generally in about a week's time Ma would relent, and, as our cook was fond of me, I'd be reinstated in my beloved realm of eats. But it was during these periods of exile that my ambition always rose to fever heat. Then our old cook got married, and I didn't like our new one. She didn't appreciate my companions.h.i.+p on baking days. Our old cook had always encouraged me in my ambition. She used to tell me long tales about the places where she had worked and the cooking feats she had performed. The new cook said I was a nuisance, and complained to Ma.

So my ambition died for lack of encouragement, but my appet.i.te didn't. I became an outlaw instead and made raids on the baking. So that particular cook and I were always at war. About that time Ma began giving me a regular allowance, so I haunted the baker and candy shops instead of the kitchen, and the cook idea declined. In fact all I know about cooking now, I learned at Wayne Hall, in the interest of my friends," she finished.

Elfreda's reminiscence awoke a train of sleeping memories in the minds of the others, and for the next hour the quiet woodland echoed with their mirth over the curious, quaint and ridiculous aims and fancies of their childhood. The talk gradually drifted back to serious things and went on so earnestly that it was well after four o'clock before the party began to make reluctant preparations to return to the cottage.

"It has been a perfect day and a perfect picnic," declared Grace as she smiled lovingly at her friends. "We'll never forget Elfreda's house party."

"I'm going to have you with me at this time every year if it is possible," planned Elfreda. "So when September comes next year just mark off the last two weeks on the calendar as set aside for the Briggs'

reunion and arrange your affairs accordingly. Is it a go?"

"Hurrah for the Briggs' reunion," cheered Arline.

The cheers were given and the picnickers started up the hill to where their automobiles were stationed. Grace and Elfreda brought up the rear with the luncheon hamper.

"That's dear in you to ask us here every year, Elfreda," said Grace.

"It's a splendid way for us always to keep in touch with one another.

You are forever doing nice things for others."

"Others," retorted Elfreda, gruffly. "I'm the most selfish person that ever lived. I'm not planning half so much to make you girls happy as I am to be happy myself. Every time I think that I might have gone to some other college and never have known you and Miriam and Anne, it nearly gives me nervous prostration. By the way, Grace, I have an idea Miriam is going to find her work pretty suddenly. I could see at commencement that Mr. Southard was in love with her. She didn't know it then. She knows it now though, and she likes him."

"You certainly _can_ see what is hidden from the eyes of the rest of us.

How do you know she knows it?"

"Oh, she was talking to me the other day about Anne, and she mentioned Mr. Southard's name in a kind of self-conscious way, not in the least like her usual self. I could almost swear she blushed, but I couldn't quite see that," grinned Elfreda.

"I'm surprised," laughed Grace; then she added slowly, "I've known for a long time that Mr. Southard was in love with Miriam. Anne discovered it at commencement, too. I hope Miriam _does_ love him. Somehow they seem so perfectly suited to each other. I never could quite fancy she and Arnold Evans as being in love."

"It looks as though you'd soon be the only unengaged member of the Originals," remarked Elfreda innocently.

Grace's face clouded. Elfreda had touched upon a sore subject. Just before leaving Oakdale on her visit to Elfreda she had seen Tom. He had not renewed his old plea, but Grace knew that he was still waiting and hoping for the words that would make him happy.

"Elfreda," her voice trembled a little, "you know, I think, that Tom wishes me to marry him. I'm sorry, but I can't. I just can't. I suppose I'll be the odd member of the feminine half of the Originals, but I can't help it. My work still means more to me than life with Tom, and I'm never going to give it up. So there."

Elfreda nodded. Her nod expressed more than words, but secretly she had a curious presentiment that Grace would one day wake up to the fact that she had make a mistake. Still there was no use in telling her so. It might make her still more stubborn in her resolve. Elfreda greatly admired Tom, and, with her usually quick perception, had estimated him at his true worth. "He's worthy of her, and she's worthy of him," was her mental summing up, "and it strikes me that '_never_' is a pretty long time. Whether she can shut love out of her life forever, just for the sake of her work, is a problem that n.o.body but Grace Harlowe can solve."

CHAPTER IV

MILESTONES

"Sh-h-h! No giggles. If you don't creep along as still as mice she'll hear you," warned a sibilant whisper.

Five young women, headed by Emma Dean, smoothed the laughter from their faces and stole, cat-like, up the green lawn to the wide veranda at the rear of Harlowe House. One by one they noiselessly mounted the steps.

Emma, finger on her lips, cast a comical glance at the maid, who t.i.ttered faintly; then the stealthy procession crept down the hall in the direction of Grace Harlowe's little office. There was an instant's silent rallying of forces of which the young woman at the desk, who sat writing busily, was totally unconscious, then, of a sudden, she heard a ringing call of "Three cheers for Loyalheart!" and sprang to her feet only to be completely hemmed in by friendly arms.

"You wicked girls! I mean, you dear things," she laughed. "How nice of you to descend upon me in a body. I must kiss every one of you. Patience and Kathleen, when did you set foot in Overton? I've been watching and waiting for you. Mary Reynolds, this _is_ a surprise. I didn't expect you until next week, and Evelyn, too, looking lovelier than ever. As for Emma, she's a continual surprise and pleasure." Grace embraced one after another of the five girls.

"I'm so glad I thought of this nice surprise," beamed Emma, craning her neck, and pluming herself vaingloriously. "I have another beautiful thought, too, seething in my fertile brain. Let's go down to Vinton's and celebrate."

"I knew some one was sure to propose that," laughed Patience. "I intended to be that some one, but Emma forestalled me."