Brenda's Ward Part 5

Lucian and Robert, slightly bored by the girls' interest in the inscriptions, walked to the door, where they almost ran into Brenda, Fritz, and the rest of the party, who had been strolling through the Yard.

"Your vehicles are here!" cried Fritz. "They are just around the corner--"

"Good enough," responded Lucian. "It's rather boresome taking visitors around Memorial--Oh, they won't hear!" he concluded, as Brenda raised a warning finger. "Come, Martine," he cried in a louder voice, "we are all waiting."

Reluctantly Elinor and Martine turned toward the others. Each had just made the discovery that her companion was a very entertaining girl.

"Who's going in the auto?" asked Lucian.

"Oh, Elinor and I, certainly."

Martine was some distance ahead of Elinor.

"But I thought that was why you scorned the auto coming out to Cambridge--because you didn't wish to ride with Elinor."

"Oh, everything is changed now. She is one of the most charming girls."

"Then she has forgiven you for knocking her down and hitting her with your umbrella?"

"Why, we haven't even spoken of it, though she knows that I know that she--"

"Come, girls, tumble in!" cried Lucian, and Lucian had so many remarkable Harvard tales to tell as they speeded along that neither had time to refer to the rainy-day episode and their first strange meeting.

CHAPTER III

PRISCILLA'S PRIDE

"Why, I never lose my temper! What do you mean?"

"That _is_ what I mean. You seldom lose your temper; I should hardly say 'never.' Neither does Priscilla."

"Well, then, why won't she let me pay for the photographs?" Martine looked keenly at Amy, who had been spending an hour with her that afternoon, as if she expected to read the answer in her friend's eyes.

"I cannot tell you Priscilla's reasons, but her spirit of independence."

"Spirit of independence! Boys of '76! How tired I am of American history! Priscilla is just like one of her own Pilgrim Fathers--only more so. Probably any one of them would have let a friend pay for one of those neat silhouettes, especially if the friend had insisted on having it made, or taken, or cut, or whatever it was that they did to make silhouettes; but Priscilla is a great deal harder than Plymouth Rock, and that is saying no little."

"All the same, you and Priscilla will have to settle this affair for yourselves," and rising from her seat, after a few words of farewell, Amy left Martine to reflect on the matter they had been discussing.

Now the dispute between Priscilla and Martine, if worth dignifying by so serious a name, was not of a kind likely to make lasting trouble between friends. For some time Martine had been teasing Priscilla to have her photograph taken, and Priscilla had never given a decided answer. At last one day, as they pa.s.sed a fas.h.i.+onable gallery, Martine had insisted that the two should go in merely to look at samples of the photographer's work. On the impulse Martine decided that it would be great fun for them to be taken together. Vainly Priscilla protested that her costume was not suitable, that she didn't feel in the mood for sitting; Martine carried her point and two or three negatives were made of Priscilla and Martine sitting or standing, side by side. Then two or three were made of the two girls, each by herself. When the proofs were sent home, the photographs of Priscilla were exceedingly good. But Priscilla hesitating about ordering the finished pictures, she did not give the whole reason to Martine. Her hesitation came from the fact that the artist was expensive and that she had already exceeded her allowance for Christmas presents.

"I do not think that I can really afford them," she said at last to Martine one day, when the latter asked her if she had made her choice among the negatives. "I should simply love," she added, "to have some for my mother and a few of my relations Christmas, but I shall have to wait a little before deciding."

Yet while she spoke she retained in her hand one proof that seemed to meet her approval.

"Then this is the one you prefer?" said Martine, taking it gently in her own hand.

"Yes, I haven't had a photograph since I was a small girl, but I am sure that mother would be delighted with this one."

A week later a box came by mail to Priscilla. Opening it she found not only a half dozen of the photographs in which she and Martine were taken together, but also a dozen of the single heads, finished in the most expensive style. For a moment she was rather upset by the packet. "Of course there's some mistake," she said. "The man must have thought that I meant to give an order like Martine's, but I can never in the world afford these, and mother would be displeased with me for ordering them.

There is only one thing--I'm sure to have some money given me at Christmas, and I can use some, or all of it, to pay this bill."

No bill was contained in the package, and after a few days, when Priscilla went to the photographer's to ask for it, she was told that it was already paid. Then she sought Martine, who did not deny that she had paid the bill.

"Why, it was the proper thing for me to do," she said. "It was I who had the photographs taken, and I who ordered them finished. I can't see that you have much to do with the matter now, except to send the photographs as Christmas cards. I can tell you they'll go like hot cakes, for they are just as good as they can be."

But Priscilla was firm, and though Martine tried to be firmer, she could not get her friend to promise to accept the pictures as a gift.

"They are really not a gift, either," urged Martine, "for I myself wanted to be in a group with you, and you stood there only to oblige me; so certainly you've earned something for your trouble, and as to the single heads, I wanted a separate picture of you, and while the photographer was about it, it didn't cost much more for a dozen than for one."

Again Priscilla presented her side, adding only that she must ask Martine to wait until after Christmas for the sum she had spent.

"If I didn't like the photographs," she concluded, "the whole thing would be different; but I do like them, and I can send them away as Christmas gifts, and so I must pay the bill."

"But it came to me."

"For my photographs?"

"No, for mine; I had them taken. They wouldn't have been printed if I hadn't ordered them."

"Oh, but mine are mine."

"Why, of course they are yours--at least all that were sent to your house."

"I can't bear to be obliged to anyone else for them."

"That's one of your greatest faults, Priscilla; you hate to be obliged to anybody for anything."

So for the present the discussion was dropped, though each friend was determined that in the end she would carry her own point.

This steadfast holding to her purpose was what Martine called Priscilla's "ill-temper," in describing the affair to Amy. Though she inwardly approved of her friend's independence, she felt that after she had approved of it Priscilla ought then to be ready to yield to her.

"It is strange," she said, "that I can never get Priscilla to accept anything from me. 'Pride goeth before destruction,' and that will be the way with Priscilla. Something will surely happen to her if she keeps on like this."

In the early summer, a few months before, Priscilla and Martine had first become really acquainted, when as travelling companions they made a journey with Amy and her mother. For some time the two seemed far from congenial; each looked at life from a very different standpoint.

Priscilla, brought up rather strictly and economically, prided herself, perhaps unduly, on her unworldliness, and found it hard to understand the extravagant, fun-loving Martine. But each girl at last accepted the other's good qualities, and before they had left Canadian soil the two had begun to be good friends. When Martine's plans were finally settled, Priscilla was delighted that she and the young Chicagoan were to be at the same school.

Now Priscilla, although for a long time she had spent several weeks of each year in Boston with her aunt, Mrs. Tilworth, had made few friends among the girls of her own age whose parents her mother or her aunt knew. Her natural shyness stood in her way when they came to call on her, and when she returned their calls she progressed no further.

Often she was invited to their parties, and when she could not escape it, she accepted their invitations. Though she took part in their games in a quiet way, no one paid much attention to the pale little girl who always seemed ill at ease.

One awful day Mrs. Tilworth decided that she must give a party for Priscilla; in vain Priscilla protested that she hated parties. The invitations were written and sent out, and on the appointed afternoon Priscilla, in a ruffled muslin gown, had to stand beside her aunt to receive her guests. When she had safely pa.s.sed through this ordeal she slipped away to a corner, where she sat for a while looking on. When she found that no one tried to draw her out, she managed to slip still farther away. "They don't need me," she murmured. Later, when they looked for her, that she might take her place at the head of the table--for it was a children's party, with a sit-down supper at six o'clock--there was a great uproar when she could not be found. At last two or three of the children went to Priscilla's room, and entering without knocking, they saw her seated in an easy-chair by the droplight on the little centre table. She was so engrossed in the book she was reading that at first she did not hear them, and when one of them s.n.a.t.c.hed the volume out of her hand to read the t.i.tle, they discovered that it was a little history of Mary Queen of Scots.

"Those children tired me," she explained later to her aunt. "They played so hard, and I just thought I'd go upstairs and read for a while."