The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted Part 8

"They are worse than ever this year," sighed Dr. Helen, "and, really, I think they are harder to bear when we all know that a little public-spirited co-operation would rid us of them. Can't you get the people who draw books at the new library to agree to sprinkle the breeding-places with oil?"

Polly suddenly chuckled. "I beg your pardon, Dr. Helen, for being rude, but I just remembered a woman who addressed an open air meeting on the campus this spring. She was a missionary returned from somewhere and she appeared at one of the houses and wanted to talk, so we got a few girls together on the lawn to hear her. The mosquitoes were simply unbearable.

We all sat there slapping ourselves and making grabs at the air, and trying to look interested, and then she opened her Bible and read about being encompa.s.sed about with a cloud of witnesses: That was bad enough, when you could see them settling all about us like a great dotted veil, but n.o.body cracked a smile until she gave out the hymn. And that, if you please, was 'My soul be on thy guard, ten thousand foes arise!' You know how it goes." And Polly sang:

"'Ne'er think the vict'ry won, Nor once at ease sit down, Thy arduous work will not be done Till thou obtain thy crown.'"

"She might have asked for 'Christian, up and smite them,'" said Dr.

Helen. "Now, children, I should like nothing better than to sit and hear college yarns all the morning, but I have an office hour to keep.

Catherine, did you tell Inga to order peas for dinner?"

"That reminds me," said Polly, springing up. "Mamma wanted me to do some marketing before I came home, and I was forgetting it entirely. And I haven't found out yet what you think of the opening!"

"I should think it would be a good way to advertise it and get people interested. We ought to get a lot of books, too, though they wouldn't all be worth much. Are you going to work to-day? I decided I'd have to take a day off."

"I don't believe any one will go down. Win won't, because Max has gone up to Madison to take a re in Trig and she won't bother about anything when he's not around. Dorcas said she'd see to the card-pockets at home--her Sunday-school cla.s.s will do it, poor infants! And Bertha and Agnes have to help their mother because she's going to have the Ladies'

Aid this afternoon. They are the best pair of workers I ever saw."

"Aren't they? Bess was fine about the curtains, too. She is so changeable, though, that I don't know what to think of her."

"Only a question of whether there's a man body about, my dear," said Polly oracularly. "Many a girl is all right and sensible when there are just girls around, but let a lad heave in sight, and the whole situation is altered. I've known Bess since she came to Winsted in a ruffled white ap.r.o.n, and no one can teach me anything about her. Now, having dissected all my friends, I think I really must do my marketing."

"We haven't said anything about Dot, the dear," said Catherine, following Polly to the door.

"Dot, the dear," echoed Polly. "That's all there is to say about her.

Good-by, honey. To-morrow we'll go at it for a grand finale. That was the name of the last piece in my first music book, and I always like to say it. It sounds so complete, someway. You don't know, Catherine," and Polly stopped on the last step to look up at her tall friend, "how pleasant it makes things to have you in them. I'm just loving this library work, and so are the rest of us. Playing with you is like having one's Sunday doll all the week, or as if the princess in the fairy stories had turned into a real mortal. Good-by this time for truly true!"

Humming a Wellesley song, Polly was off down the walk at a brisk pace, and Catherine, who had answered her last words with a look more expressive than speech, stood watching her a minute, and then went happily back to her mending.

The grocer's boy, who arrived with the peas a little later, also brought the mail. He was devoted to Inga and enjoyed doing gratuitous favors for the doctor's family for her sake. Inga brought in two letters to Catherine, who joyfully dropped her darning and tore them open.

"_Belovedest Goldilocks;_" the first began, in Hannah Eldred's writing, not much improved in the two years she and Catherine had been corresponding.

"We are here at the sh.o.r.e for the summer, or that part of it which must pa.s.s before I come flying out to you with Frieda. Mamma and I are here all the time and Dad and Herr Karl come out for Sundays.

"People are so puzzled about Karl. I say over and over: 'No, not my tutor. No, not a cousin. Not even a ward of my father's. Just a German boy we learned to know in Berlin, and now a student at Harvard. Yes, we met him quite simply. He lived in the apartment under us, and he had hurt his leg and couldn't walk, and we used to entertain him. Frieda Lange and I did. It was at her house we were staying. His father is Herr Director Von Arndtheim, and they are very respectable!' People at a summer resort, even a little one, are the curiousest in the world, _I_ think!

"Who do you think is coming to spend a few days with us next week? Nice old Inez! I'm awfully glad she is coming, but honestly I do hope she has learned to put her clothes on straight and to keep her room tidy. She's so good, and so faithful that I love her anyhow, but Mother does like neat guests dreadfully well! She would love you for a guest, Catherine.

But there! You always are just ex-actly right, without the tiniest drawback,--unless Dexter has changed you. Has it?

"I feel as though I were having my second childhood. It was so nice to be at college that term with the grown-up girls, and now I have to go with infants like little Hilda and Gertrude, only not so nice. I had first year Math in High School, you know, last year, and my German Prof regarded me as a babe and wouldn't let me read things because I wasn't old enough--things that weren't suitable for children. Frieda's mother has never let her read a love story, you know, and this man has the same idea! He talked to me, the stiffest conversation lessons you ever heard.

It was like the dialogues in Ruskin. I wonder what he would think if he should hear Karl and me sometimes. We jabber it all the time, he and Mamma and I. Dad won't let us when he's around, so we talk English then, and that instructs Karl. He's good except for his p.r.o.nunciation. You should hear him do the Harvard yell! He rolls the 'r's' so far he almost loses them. They are even worse than you-ers, my western de-ar.

"We are going to have a hop to-night, a really hop, and I am going. They can't put me off with the children because I haven't any nurse or governess, and there aren't any other girls between infants and real young ladies. The hop won't be very big, because there are only a few families (it's not a fas.h.i.+onable place, you know), but we'll have a perfectly good time all the same. I am so pleased to be going as a _Herrschaft_, and I have a darling new frock for this and everything. It's a soft rosy silk with tiny tight rosebuds all over it.

And I have a little wreath of buds to wear in my hair. There are two or three awfully nice people coming over. One of Karl's cla.s.smates at Harvard, and two boys from the Tech and a nice curly-haired freshman from Dartmouth. And there is a Smith girl, perfectly charming, and a rather frumpy one from Wellesley who knows your Polly Osgood, or rather knows who she is. This girl's name is Violet, and I saw a letter addressed to her and her middle initial was E, and I asked if her name was Ethelyn, but she said it was Emma!

"I _wish_ you could see my little hop-gown. And the dear wreath. It makes me think of Ivy-Planting Day at Dexter and the way the seniors sang 'Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.' Wasn't Lilian the sweetest thing? She is studying in Boston this year, you know, and I saw her once. And weren't the little pig-tailed preps dear with their pink doves, I mean pink-ribboned doves? That was your pretty idea, my beautiful Catherine. I never could have thought of anything so lovely.

"I'm almost at the bottom of the inkstand, and I haven't told you yet what I started to write about. But Mamma has written your mother, so it's all right. Frieda is to land the last of July, and I'm going to take her out to you as soon after that as your mother and mine think best. I think she will need a long time to get acquainted, don't you? I know you will love each other, but she must know you thoroughly before college opens. It is tantalizing to think of you and her and Alice all being together. I do think I ought to be there, too, since I was the one who introduced you to each other. I'd like to keep Frieda with me next year, but every one seems to think the best place for her is right in the dormitory with the other girls,--and of course, it will be easier for her out there than in any of the big colleges nearer us. She is so obstinate she wouldn't learn English if she were near any one who could talk anything she would recognize for German. What most of the girls at college talk for that, she wouldn't know from Choctaw.

"Lots of love to the dear doctors, and for yourself bushels and quarts and pecks. I had a card from Miss Lyndesay from the Isle of Wight yesterday.

"Now I must shut, as Frieda said in her last letter!

"Your loving Hannah."

Catherine gathered up the scattered pages of this voluminous letter and then opened the slender one which had accompanied it. This bore a far western postmark, and its neat little pages resembled copperplate.

"_My Dear Roommate:_

"I'm waiting for a youth to whom I am to give a toot lesson. He is very stupid. I have him in Greek and English literature. In Greek he translates the word for Lord, 'Cyrus.' We have been reading the New Testament, and you can think how very oddly that would come in, in some pa.s.sages! And in an English test he a.s.sured me that Milton wrote _Pilgrim's Progress_, and the author of Bacon's _Essays_ was Charles Lamb. He makes me wonder whether I shall have courage enough to tackle teaching as a profession, if tutoring is so difficult. But I like his money very well, and Mother is going away for a real vacation and will take Cora, and that couldn't happen if I hadn't found work this summer.

"I have a Sunday-school cla.s.s, too, and that is entertaining, at least.

It is at a mission, and such queer dirty little chaps as are in it!

"I started in to teach them an alphabet of Christian graces, or desirable qualities. The first week we had A for Attention, and the second, B for Bravery, and the third week I thought they all had the idea, and asked them to guess what C would be. They thought very hard, and then one piped out: 'Cabbages!' The same little boy told me that the priests burned _insects_ in the temple!

"My whole letter seems to be nothing but my pupils' absurdities. But really I have very little else to write about that would interest any one. I'm busy all day, and too tired at night to read or write. I take more pleasure getting acquainted with my darling little brother Jack again, than in anything else I do. He has been Ariel now for a week, and it's very convenient, for there are many errands to be done. He sleeps at night in a cow-slip bell, very romantically, but I have no hope the spell will last. He will be a robber chief or a street-car conductor next week. The poetry in his system is in streaks, not continuous. O!

that reminds me--and it's the last 'bright saying' I shall quote in this letter, I promise you! He asked me rather shyly the other day what poetry was, and after I had attempted to explain, he said: 'It's queer, Allie. I thought it was chickens!'

"Here comes my pupil, looking very sad. I wish he didn't regard me as an old, old woman. I suppose I seem so to him, but I do hate to feel for two hours a day that I have lost all my youth.

"When does Hannah come? And Frieda? I am all eagerness to see her. Did you carry my embroidered waist home with you by any chance? I can't find it, and I really need it.

"My love to your mother, always.

"Faithfully yours,

"Alice Barbara."

CHAPTER SIX

THE OPENING

The opening of the library had been vigorously advertised. Bert and Dot had wheeled the country roads over within a radius of three miles from town, posting bills of announcement. The ministers urged it upon their congregations as a civic duty to attend. At social gatherings the week before nothing else was talked of. And everybody was going to bring books.

"Such a lot of trash as we'll get!" groaned Dorcas.

"I know it," a.s.sented Polly, "but they will all take an interest, and that is what we are after now. Once properly established, we can buy good books, and these old ones will just stand idle or wear out or get lost or something."

"I don't think it's very appropriate to serve refreshments," objected Dorcas once more. "And Algernon doesn't think it is a dignified way to do."

"O, well," put in Catherine, appeasingly. "Mrs. Graham says, you know, that we'll 'have to get people pretty well educated readin' our encyclopedias and dictionaries before they'll think anything's worth goin' to that there ain't somethin' to eat at!' And Mrs. Graham is going to take charge of all that part, anyhow, so I don't feel like finding fault. There won't be any expense, with everything contributed."

"They might have given the money instead of ice-cream and cakes."