Jane Allen: Center Part 8

"Can't we go to the rest room for a few moments?" asked Jane. "I think we will have a better chance to get acquainted sitting down," she declared.

Quick to catch the possible humor of this remark Helka smiled broadly, and the set of teeth she exposed caused the girls again to exchange knowing glances. Now, Judith had wonderful teeth. In fact, she might claim champions.h.i.+p in the tooth beauty contest, did Wellington carry such a sport, but Helka's! They were so small, so even and so white, matched pearls indeed. Thoughts of the pure grain foods of Poland filtered through Jane's mind, while Judith wondered about Polish dentifrice.

All this time it never occurred to either of the Wellington girls, that the stranger might be having an equally interesting time a.n.a.lyzing and cataloging them, and their characteristics. Egotism has various methods of taking care of her own.

In the big, leathered rest room, a comfortable corner was available, and here our quartette soon ensconced themselves. Mrs. Weatherbee really looked quite human, Judith was deciding, her Oxford tailored suit being sufficiently de luxe to be spelled "tailleur." It was n.o.bby, to take up a word from the English allies, and not give all the credit to the French.

"Now, my dears," spoke the model, "I have a plan to unfold to you.

Helka wishes to stay in some private place, that is, she does not wish to get into any very public place."

She stopped, for Helka was silently inferring so much that her att.i.tude demanded attention. She was sort of shaking her head and biting her red lips and flas.h.i.+ng her uncla.s.sified eyes.

"Not a lovely hotel?" asked Jane in surprise. She had really counted on showing this little stranger life in a big New York hotel.

"Oh, no, please not. No hotel. I would not like that. There are so many-men and women." Helka was almost shuddering, and Judith instantly sensed the mystery promised about the Polish girl's antecedents. Jane, acting in the capacity of hostess, immediately agreed to shun all hotels.

"I wanted to tell you," said Mrs. Weatherbee, "that for the present I have arranged with a former member of the staff of Wellington, a retired chaperon, to take you young ladies in her charge in New York.

As Miss Allen had informed me she wished to stay in the city for some days, I thought it my duty to see that you were all safely-chaperoned."

She smiled humanly, Judith admitted, but visions of a retired chaperon did not exactly forecast a very jolly good time. Even a working "nurse maid," as the attendants were sometimes facetiously styled, would be better than one who was old enough to be retired. Jane was struggling with similar fears.

"She has quite an apartment," went on the matron. "In fact, she has been entertaining some social service students who take care of themselves in her apartment, and I thought that would be just the thing for you three little girls."

"I am sure it will be!" Jane exclaimed, now seeing light through the clouds. "I have always longed to try housekeeping as the college settlement girls do, and it may give us valuable experience."

"Oh, glorious!" exclaimed Judith. "I vote to be-parlor maid."

"It would be very nice," ventured Helka, "if we could have a very small house and our own-piano."

"Oh, of course, Helka, dear," Mrs. Weatherbee hurried to inject. "You must have access to a piano. You cannot be deprived of your music."

The luminous eyes flashed their appreciation at this, and Jane felt as if even a rest room was quite inadequately furnished, with no piano, at that moment, in sight. This little artist should have some sort of pocket edition to carry around with her. She was different and artistic and her moods should be humored. Of a certainty they would go at once to the apartment with the home cured piano, as Judith called any instrument not installed in a school room.

"Miss Jordan expects us," said Mrs. Weatherbee, "I was sure a good cup of real tea would refresh you both after your journey." She picked up the flat brief case Judith always carried in lieu of a suit case. Jane adjusted her own club bag, preparatory for the start. Helka insisted on taking the brace of umbrellas. So the little party wended their way to the surface car, Jane naturally falling in step with Helka and Judith trotting along with Mrs. Weatherbee.

"Adorable!" Judith at last had a chance to exclaim.

"I knew you would like her," smiled Mrs. Weatherbee. "She is a wonderful girl. And she has such an interesting history."

Just as it had all been planned!

"Jane's luck," commented Judith. "Mrs. Weatherbee, we are going to make Jane Allen, Center, this year. And we are going to make our team known all over the college circuit. Basketball is an American sport, and we are back from the war now with reconstruction energy."

"I believe you," a.s.sented the matron, and her tone implied satisfaction.

Jane was meanwhile becoming agreeably acquainted with Helka.

CHAPTER IX-GIRLS' LIFE A LA MODE

Housekeeping, however irksome when a positive duty, is always a delight when "tried on" in miniature.

So it was when the Wellington girls installed themselves in Miss Jordan's apartment, they had no idea of the novelty in store for them.

The house was one of the old mansions now falling into the shadow of the Village. The Village, we recall, is that part of New York City where artists of various sorts congregate, and live the life they term Bohemian. Incidentally, there are many within the village who will never have any claim to the t.i.tle artist-other than to have possessed the ambition to be so cla.s.sified, but like half the aspirants for honors, they may aspire, but not conspire, as they do not work honestly to achieve the place they pretend to appropriate. But our girls did not go within the village limits; they were just at its "gates" and so had an opportunity of observing the interesting types of girls and young women pa.s.sing in and out, affecting the Bohemian.

Long-haired men and short-haired women. Velvet-jacketed men and cloth-upholstered women-such persistent contradictions lending a peculiar picturesqueness to the otherwise prosaic Metropolis.

A kitchenette and two sleeping rooms had been a.s.signed to the Wellingtons by Miss Jordan, the larger dining room being shared by two groups. Miss Jordan explained she had found the individual kitchen indispensable, for all girls had their own ideas about kitchen work, while a dining room might be made communal, many persons having similar table habits, obviously. The living room was delightful. A long, high ceiled drawing room originally. Miss Jordan had preserved the splendor of the crystal chandelier, and the glory of the hand carved marble mantel. Here all the girls were wont to congregate in their evenings, and those of them who had the opportunity came together around the square piano or curled themselves up with books in the bay window's cus.h.i.+ons in the late afternoons.

The clientele was sufficiently varied to be interesting, at the same time Miss Jordan personally vouched for the general standing of each of her paying guests. In fact, the rendezvous for young girls who might be in New York temporarily, and without personal chaperons, was a real innovation, and it did fill a perfectly legitimate long-felt want.

"Home was never like this," declared Judith, pa.s.sing the chocolates to a little dark-haired art student, who had just come in from a morning's work in a co-operative studio. The art student called herself Anaa Kole, and just why she insisted on the second "a" to her otherwise plain Ana had not yet been discovered by Judith. It looked to her like a waste of type, that could not be vocally made use of.

"Miss Jordan is so motherly," admitted Anaa. "I sometimes wonder what I should have done if I had not found her apartment. I came here because my college directed me to."

"That is just what happened to me," Judith declared. "I came here because Wellington actually toted me to the doorstep. Have some more chocolates, do!"

"Oh, thank you, I do like sweets when I am tired. What are you studying?"

"Here? Nothing especially. We are just getting ready for our junior year. All but Miss Podonsky. She is just beginning."

"Isn't she dear? But why does she run every time the bell rings?"

"Does she? I hadn't noticed," prevaricated Judith. "She is a little shy, being a stranger, I suppose."

"And she never practices when anyone is around. I have so wished to hear her play her violin. I am sure she is a wonder at it. But every time I do have the good luck to come in while she is playing she stops instantly as I enter."

"Don't you think most geniuses are peculiar?" parried Judith. "Helen will not play for us unless-well, unless Miss Allen especially requests it. She adores Jane."

"I don't blame her," admitted Anaa. "I am charmed with her myself. She is one of the girls with rare character who is not forever advertising it. When I came in with wet feet the other night she did not insist on me draining her chocolate pot. Most girls do, and I abhor hot drinks for wet feet."

Judith laughed. Anaa was naive, if a trifle conspicuous with her bobbed hair. Of course bobbed hair was so comfy, and so becoming, too bad it was not the general style, mused Judith, patting her own heavy coil, that would slip down her neck every time she attempted to relax outside of bed quilts.

"I shall almost hate to leave for school," Judith supplied. "It has been so jolly here."

"I do not find New York exactly a playground," Miss Kole followed, "but, then, I am studying."

"Of course that's different. We are shopping, shopping and after meals shopping again. I wonder if there are any bargains left? I adore buying pretty underlies, but I am not so keen on the practicals. But my friend Jane has set up enough stuff to make a hope chest for all Wellington."

"She is from the West, you said?"

"Yes, from Montana. But that does not mean that she has never seen pretty things before and is overdoing it," Judith hurried to qualify in justice to Jane.

"Oh, of course not. I did not mean to infer that," Miss Kole apologized. "But I do think Westerners, as a rule, are so much more generous, and so much more enthusiastic than the cold Easterners. I am from New England, and all I can remember of holidays around home is that the rag rugs were taken off the carpets, and the powdered sugar sprinkled over the doughnuts. Life in my home was always a question of rivalry in economy. When I came here I set out for days to buy every imaginable sort of food I had been reading labels of all my life. Of course at college I had all I wanted, but even there it was not on my own initiative. I longed to find out how it felt to be free to buy without a pencil, and paper and premium list."

"Oh, don't call your home town such hard names," Judith put in kindly.