The Story Book Girls Part 19

Mr. Leighton shook his head over the pretty gift.

"Bribery and corruption," said he.

But by that time Elma's soul had soared far above the heights or depths of triumph or pettiness in connection with the sojourn of Miss Grace.

Life had been moving swiftly and wonderfully. Jean indeed came home from hotel life, full of stories of its inimitable attractions; and n.o.body, although longing to be, had really been much impressed. Jean served to mark the milestone of their own development, that was all.

She had left at one stage and come back at another. Where she had imagined their standing quite still, they had been travelling new roads, looking back on their childish selves with interest.

Mabel and Elma had been thrown much together, and Mabel had grown to depend on the silent loyalty with which Elma invariably supported her in the trying time now experienced in connection with Mr. Meredith. Where Jean, bolt outright, complained that already Mabel had known him for a month or two, and yet no hint of an engagement could be discovered, Elma sympathized with Mabel's horror of any engagement whatever.

"It would be lovely to have a ring, and all that kind of thing," Mabel had confided. "But fancy having to talk to papa and mamma about it!"

It did not impede her friends.h.i.+p with Mr. Meredith however. He had found a flower which he intended to pluck, and he guarded it to all intents and purposes as one from which he would warn off intruders. But the reserve which made Mabel sensitive in regard to anything definite, her extreme youth, above all the constant espionage of her parents and sisters, led him to a tacit understanding of his privileges, a situation appalling to the business-like Jean.

"If I had had my hair up, I should have had two proposals at Buxton,"

said she, and the remark became historic.

Cuthbert put it in his notebook. Whenever he wanted to overcome the authority of Jean he produced and read it. She found her family a trifle trying on her arrival. She wanted to be able to inform them how they should dress, and had a score of other things ready to retail to them. Yet most of them fell quite flat, just as though she had had no special advantages in being at Buxton.

Mr. and Mrs. Leighton talked this over together.

"It makes me think," said Mrs. Leighton, "that you are not altogether wrong in crowding them up at home here. Jean got variety, but she seems to have lost a little in balance."

"Still, that is just where experience teaches its lesson," said Mr.

Leighton. "To get balance, one must have the experience. Yet Mabel, in an unaccountable manner, seems to be perfectly balanced before she has received any experience at all."

"Ah! I expect she will still have her experiences," said Mrs. Leighton in her pessimistic way. "No girl gets along without some unpleasant surprise. Betty is longing for one. Betty complains that in story books something tragic or something wonderful happens to girls whenever they begin to grow up, but that nothing happens in this place. n.o.body loses money--if you please--and n.o.body gets thrown out on the world in a pathetic manner to work for a living, for instance."

"Do they want to work for their living?"

"They do want to be sensational," said Mrs. Leighton with a sigh, "and as Elma says, 'We are neither rich enough nor poor enough for that.'"

"Thank providence," said Mr. Leighton.

His girls were much more of a problem to him than the direct Cuthbert, who had shown a capacity for going his own way rather magnificently from the moment he had left school. Mr. Leighton was determined to give his girls an object in life, besides the ordinary one of getting married.

"There is great solace in the arts," he had often affirmed, making it seem impossible that a girl should look on the arts as ends in themselves, as a man would. "A girl must be trained to interruptions,"

he used to declare. He made rather a drudge of their music in consequence of these theories in connection with a career, but the hard taskmaster in that direction opened a willing indulgence in almost any other. It alarmed him when Mr. Meredith appeared so conspicuously on the scene, when Mr. Meredith's sister called and invited Mabel to dine, when invitations crossed, until the Merediths and themselves became very very intimate. Elma had the wonderful pleasure of being allowed to accompany Mabel. In the absence of Jean, she fulfilled that sisterly position in a loyal way, loving the exaltation of going out with Mabel, becoming very fond of the Merediths in the process. They had only recently come from town to live near the Gardiners, and the whole place did its duty in calling on them. There were only Mr. Meredith and his sister, and both were of the intensely interesting order rather than of the frank and lively nature of the like of the Leightons. Mr. Meredith sang, and Miss Meredith's first words to Mabel were to the effect that he no longer wanted his sister to play for him after having had the experience of Mabel as an accompanist.

"Aren't you glad papa made us musical?" asked Betty of Mabel after that compliment.

Mabel was glad in more ways than one. But it seemed a little hard that just then Mr. Leighton should insist on her going in for a trying examination in the spring.

"When she ought to be getting the 'bottom drawer' ready," complained poor Jean.

Nothing moved for Jean in the family just as she expected. She began to wonder whether she shouldn't go out as a governess. _Jane Eyre_ had always enthralled her. It was one way of seeing life, to be very down-trodden, and then marry the magnificent over-bearing hero.

As a companion to Miss Grace, she had been a great success. Indeed, even Adelaide Maud was bound to confess that Jean had been just the person to go with Miss Grace. Jean, in spite of her Jane Eyre theories, was so down on self-effacement. Her frank direct ways were the best tonic for a lady who had never at any time been courageous. Miss Grace wrote continually to Elma, "Jean has been very good in doing this--or that," until Elma, swallowing hard lumps of mortification, had at last to believe that she never could have done these determined, cool-hearted things for Miss Grace in the same capable manner. She often wondered besides whether, even to have had the delight of being at Buxton, she could have dropped the glamour of finding a new sister in Mabel, and of being the daily companion of Adelaide Maud. For the time had now come, when, on being shown into Miss Annie's drawing-room, her duke, clean-shaven and of modern manners, had ceased to be really diverting, and in fact often forgot to attend to her in the pause when she awaited the coming of Adelaide Maud.

Adelaide Maud kept her word. She reigned as vice-queen over Miss Annie's household, indulging that lady in all her little whims, for Miss Grace's sake, and never omitted a single day for calling and seeing that Miss Annie was comfortable. Adelaide Maud had theories of her own. She said that every one in Ridgetown attended to the poor, but that she believed in attending to the rich.

"Now who would ever have looked after Miss Grace if we hadn't?" she asked Elma.

Mrs. Dudgeon imagined she had other reasons for being so devoted to Miss Annie, and considered that Helen wasted her time in applying so much of it to a bedridden invalid.

"Whom do you see there?" she asked stonily.

"Princ.i.p.ally Saunders," said Helen, whose good temper was una.s.sailable.

"Saunders is a duck."

The "duck," however, was a trifle worried with these changes, "not having been accustomed to sich for nigh on twenty-five years, mum," as he explained to Mrs. Leighton.

But the great boon lay in the restored health of Miss Grace. She came home shyly as ever, but with a fresh bloom on her face. What withered hopes that trip recalled to life, what memories of sacrificial days gone by, what fears laid past--who knows! She was very gentle with Miss Annie, and boasted of none of her late advantages as Jean did. Indeed, one might have thought that the events of the world had as usual taken place in Miss Annie's bedroom. But, with a courage born of new health and better spirits. Miss Grace called one day on Dr. Merryweather. In a graceful manner, as though the event had only occurred, she apologized to him for the slight offered by Miss Annie.

"I hope you know that you still have our supreme confidence," she said.

"It was your kind interest which persuaded me to go to Buxton."

Dr. Merryweather seemed much affected. He shook her hand several times, but his voice remained gruff as she had always remembered and slightly feared it.

"You must be exceedingly careful of yourself, Miss Grace," he said bluntly, "Miss Annie has had too much of you."

Too much of her. Ah, well, she could never reproach herself for having spared an inch of her patience, an atom of her slender strength.

"Remember," said Dr. Merryweather, "courage does not all lie in self-sacrifice, though"--and he looked long at the kind beautiful eyes of Miss Grace--"a great deal of it is invested there."

He held her hand warmly for a second again, and that was the end of it.

Miss Grace went home fortified to a second edition of her life with Miss Annie.

Adelaide Maud gave up her semi-suzerainty over the masterful Saunders with some real regret. It was fun for her to be engaged in anything which did not entail mere social engagements. Miss Annie liked her thoroughly, liked the swirl of her tweed skirts, the daintiness of her silk blouses, the gleam of her golden hair. Adelaide Maud had straight fine features, pretty mauve eyes ("They are mauve, my dear, no other word describes them," she declared), very clearly arched eyebrows, and "far too determined a chin." "Where did you get your chin?" asked Miss Annie continually.

"My father had the face of an angel. It wasn't from him," said Adelaide Maud. "I have my mother to thank for my chin."

"Well, Heaven help the man who tries to cross you, my dear," said Miss Annie, who had a very capable chin of her own, as it happened. The tired petulant look of the invalid only showed at the droop to the corners of her mouth.

Elma could no longer interest Adelaide Maud in Cuthbert. It seemed as though he had no further existence. Until one day when she told her that Cuthbert had an appointment which would last throughout the summer, and keep him tied to town. Then the chin of Adelaide Maud seemed to resolve itself into less chilly lines.

"Oh, won't you miss him?" she suddenly asked.

Adelaide Maud was the most comprehending person. She pulled Elma to her and kissed her when Elma said that it wasn't "missing," it simply wasn't "living" without Cuthbert.

"I'm so sorry you quarrelled with him," she said to Adelaide Maud.

Adelaide Maud grew stonily angry.

"Quarrel with him?" she asked.

It reminded Elma of the Dudgeon's first call

"Oh, please don't," she cried in alarm.