The Story Book Girls Part 47

He teased her unmercifully about the wig.

"So long as I look respectable when Mabel and Jean come home! Oh! Dr.

Merryweather, please have me looking respectable when Mabel and Jean come home."

Dr. Merryweather promised to have her as fat as a pumpkin.

CHAPTER XXV

The Wild Anemone

Mabel and Jean had been successfully deceived up to a certain point in regard to Elma's illness. They were told the facts when the danger was past. It was made clear to them then that the fewer people at home in an illness of that sort the better, while skilled nurses were so conveniently to be had. Mabel pined a little over not having been there to nurse Elma, as though she had landed her sensitive little sister into an illness by leaving too much on her shoulders. The independent vitality of Jean constantly rea.s.sured her however.

"She would just have been worse with that scared face of yours at her bedside," Jean would declare. "Every time you think of Elma you get as white as though you were just about to perform in the Queen's Hall.

You'll have angina pectoris if you don't look out."

Jean had made a great friend of a nurse who never talked of common things like heart disease or toothache. "Angina pectoris" and "periost.i.tis" were used instead. When Jean wrote home in an airy manner in the midst of Elma's illness to say that she was suffering from an attack of "periost.i.tis," Mrs. Leighton immediately wired, "Get a nurse for Jean if required."

"What in the wide world have you been telling mother?" asked Mabel with that alarming communication in her hand.

Jean was trying to learn fencing from an enthusiast in the corridor.

"Oh, well." Her face fell a trifle at the consideration of the telegram. "I did have toothache," said Jean.

Mabel stared at the telegram. "Mummy can't be losing her reason over Elma's being ill," she said. "She couldn't possibly suppose you would want a nurse for toothache. That's going a little too far, isn't it?"

Mabel was really quite anxious about her mother.

"Oh, well," said Jean lamely, "Nurse Shaw said it was periost.i.tis."

"And you--"--Mabel's eyes grew round and indignant--"you really wrote and told poor mummy that you had perios--os----"

"t.i.tis," said Jean. "Of course, I did--why not?"

She was a trifle ashamed of herself, but the dancing eyes of the fencing enthusiast held her to the point.

"That's the worst of early Victorian parents," said this girl with a bright cheerful giggle. "One can't even talk the vernacular nowadays."

She made an unexpected lunge at Jean.

"Oh," cried Jean, "I must answer that telegram. Say I'm an idiot, Mabel, and that I've only had toothache."

Mabel for once performed the duties of an elder sister in a grim manner.

"Am an idiot," she wrote, "only had toothache an hour. Fencing match on, forgive hurry. Jean."

She read it out to the fencers.

"Oh, I say," said Jean with visible chagrin, "you are a little beggar, Mabel."

"Send it," cried the fencing girl. "One must be laughed at now and again--it's good for one. Besides, you can't be both a semi-neurotic invalid and a good fencer. Better give up the neurotic habit."

Jean stepped back in derision.

"I'm not neurotic," she affirmed.

"You wouldn't have sent that message about your perio--pierrot--what's the gentleman's name? if you hadn't been neurotic."

Mabel had scribbled off another message.

"Well," said Jean gratefully, "my own family don't talk to me like that."

"Oh, no," said the fencing girl coolly, "they run round you with hot bottles, and mustard blisters. All families do. They make you think about your toothache until you aren't pleased when you haven't got it.

That's the benefit of being here. Here it's a bore to be ill."

She went suddenly on guard.

"Oh," said Jean, in willing imitation of that att.i.tude, "if you only teach me to fence, you may say what you like."

It was more the importance of Jean's estimate of herself than any real leanings towards being an invalid which made her look on an hour's depression as a serious thing, and an attack of toothache as an item of news which ought immediately to be communicated to her family. She criticized life entirely through her own feelings and experiences.

Mabel and Elma had enough of the sympathetic understanding of the nature of others, to tune their own characters accordingly. But Jean, unless terrified, or hurt, or joyous herself never allowed these feelings to be transmitted from any one, or because of any one, she happened to love.

It kept her from maturing as Mabel and even Elma had done. She would always be more or less of the self-centred person. It was a useful trait in connexion with singing for instance, and it seemed also as though it might make her a good fencer. But the flippant merry fencing enthusiast in front of her was right when she saw the pitfall ready for the Jean who should one day dedicate herself to her ailments. In the case of Mabel this very lack of sympathy in Jean helped her in a lonely manner to regain some of her lost confidence in herself. It never dawned once on Jean that Mabel was fighting down a trouble of her own.

Mabel had bad nights and ghostly dreams, and a headache occasionally, which seemed as though it would put an end to any enthusiasm she might ever have had for such an occupation as piano playing. But in the morning one got up, and there were always the interests, the joys or troubles, or the quaint little oddities of other girls, to knock this introspection and worry into the background, and make Mabel her companionable self once more. It was better, after all, than the scrutiny of one's own family, even a kind one. Jean was merely conscious of change in any one when they refused a match or a drive or a walk with her. The world was of a piece when that happened--"stodgy"--and the interests of Jean were being neglected--a great crime.

Mabel despatched the telegram, and the fencing was resumed with vigour.

The corridor at this end of the house contained a bay window, seated and cus.h.i.+oned, and more comfortable as a tea-room than many of the little bedrooms. They had arranged tea-cups, and were preparing that fascinating and delightful meal when a girl advanced from the far end of the corridor, in a lithe swinging manner. The fencing girl drew back her foil abruptly. "Who is that?" she asked, staring. The girls were conscious of a most refres.h.i.+ng and invigorating surprise. Elsie Clutterbuck stood there, with the wild sweetness of the open air in her bearing, her hair ruffled gently, her eyes s.h.i.+ning in a pale setting.

"You beautiful wild anemone!" breathed the fencing girl in a whisper.

Mabel and Jean heard the soft words with surprise. It was a new light through which to look on Elsie. They had never quite dropped the pose of the benignant girls who had taken Elsie "out of herself." To them she was rather a protege than a friend; much as Mabel at least would have despised herself for that att.i.tude had she detected it in herself. She acknowledged an immediate drop in her calculations, when the fencing girl did not ask as most people did, "Who is that queer little thing?"

It was difficult in one sudden moment to adjust oneself to introducing Elsie as "You beautiful wild anemone!"

Jean, however, merely summed up the fencing girl as rather ignorant.

"Why," she said frankly, "I declare it's Elsie!" and in a whisper declared, "There's nothing beautiful about Elsie."

They welcomed her heartily, curiously, and wondered if Lance's latest news of the family was true.

"Mother b.u.t.tercluck," he had written, "has come in for a little legacy.

It's she who clucks now (grammar or no grammar) and the Professor chimes in as the b.u.t.ter portion merely. May heard about it. Can you imagine Mrs. C. saying, 'I'd love to have some one to lean on,' and the b.u.t.tercluck, who would have declared before--'On whom to lean. Pray do be more careful of your English,' not having a cluck left! Though I do think Elsie had knocked a little of the cluck out before the legacy arrived."

Elsie did not seem to be bursting with news. She sat in rather a grown-up, reliable way, opening her furry coat at their orders, and drawing off her gloves. Her hair was up in loose, heavy coils on her neck, and it parted in front with that restless rippling appearance which made one think of the open air. The tip-tilted nose, which had seemed the princ.i.p.al fault in the face which had always been termed plain in childhood, seemed now to lend a piquancy to her features.

These were delicately irregular, and her eyebrows were too high, if one might rely on the a.n.a.lysis of Jean.

The fencing girl sat and stared at her with her foil balanced on a crossed knee. If one wanted to do the fencing girl a real kindness, to make her radiantly happy, then one introduced her to some one in whom she might be interested. Life was a garden to her, and the friends she made the flowers. She was not particular about plucking them either.

"Oh, no indeed," she would say, "I've seen some one in the park to-day who is more sweet and lovely than any one human ought to be. I should love to know her, of course, but she was just as great a joy to look at.

Why should you want to have everything that's beautiful? It's merely a form of selfishness."