The Story Book Girls Part 56

Elma's voice was a tragedy.

"It was not fair, it was not fair to him or to you. He didn't want to marry the others. What did it matter what they thought?"

"If he could have married me then, it wouldn't have mattered," said Miss Grace. "I knew that he was good and true, you see; so that I never doubted him. But he was poor, and they worried me nearly to my grave.

I was very weak," said Miss Grace.

"And I suppose he went and married some one else in a fit of hopelessness," said Elma tragically. "What a nice wife you would have made, Miss Grace!"

Miss Grace started a trifle, and looked anxiously at Elma. She did not seem to hear the compliment.

"Oh, we all have our little stories," she said. "But don't be extravagant of your beautiful youth, my dear."

"I don't feel youthful or beautiful in any way," said Elma. "I think it's the fever. I feel as though I had been born a hundred years ago.

I wish I could keep from s.h.i.+vering whenever anything either exciting or lovely happens. Now, I never was so happy in my life as I was yesterday over Cuthbert and Adelaide Maud, and I was so shaky that I simply burst into tears. What's the good of being youthful if one feels like that?"

"Wait till you have a holiday, dear, you will soon get over that."

Miss Grace did her best to cheer her up. Elma's thoughts ran back to the story she had heard.

"Miss Grace," she asked, "this man that you were engaged to, was he----"

The door opened and Saunders appeared.

"Dr. Merryweather," said he.

Miss Grace rose in a direct manner. She controlled her voice with a little nervous cough.

"This is just the person to tell you that you ought to be off for a change," she said as they shook hands with Dr. Merryweather.

Miss Grace told him about Elma's shakiness as though it were a real disease. Mrs. Leighton had never looked upon it as anything more than "just a mannerism," as Miss Grace put it. Dr. Merryweather ran his keen eye over Elma's flushed face.

"You mustn't have too many engagements in your family," he said, "while you remain a convalescent."

He had been only then arranging with Mrs. Leighton that she should take Elma off for a trip.

"Mr. Leighton will go too," he said kindly. "I don't think any of you realize how much your parents have suffered recently."

"Oh, but when?" asked Elma in a most disappointed voice. "Not at once, I hope."

"Almost at once," said Dr. Merryweather. "Before this first wedding at least."

Elma's face fell a trifle.

"Oh, well, I suppose I must," she said. "But so much depends on my being just on the spot--up to Isobel's wedding, you know."

"I said, 'No more engagements,'" said Dr. Merryweather with his eye still on her flushed face.

"This isn't exactly an engagement," said Elma with a sigh. "I wish it were."

There was no explaining to Dr. Merryweather of course. There was even not much chance of enlightening Miss Grace. One could only remain a kind of petted invalid and await developments. Now that Adelaide Maud was really one of them and Cuthbert in such a blissful state, it would seem as though nothing were required to make Elma perfectly happy. But there was this one trouble of Mabel's which only she could share. For of course one couldn't go about telling people that Mabel had set great store by the one man who had run away.

"If only George Maclean would play up," sighed Elma.

But almost every one played up except George Maclean.

CHAPTER XXIX

Mr. Symington

Mabel and Jean were to be bridesmaids at Isobel's wedding. Ridgetown had only one opinion for that proceeding. "It was just like the Leightons."

Aunt Katharine was more explicit.

"It's hardly decent," she said. "Do you want the man to show how many wives he could have had."

"To show one he couldn't have, more likely," said Mrs. Leighton shortly.

She herself could not reconcile it to her ideas of what should have been. Mr. Leighton was adamant on the question, however. Isobel had set her heart on this marriage and the marriage was to be carried out.

She was their guest and their responsibility. It would be scandalous if they did not uphold her as they would have done had there been none of this former acquaintance with Robin. It would seem as though they had attached unnecessary importance to what now was termed "nothing more than a flirtation." It was a pity they could not all like Robin as they ought to, or have been extremely fond of Isobel; but under the circ.u.mstances, they at least must all "play the game."

Isobel took the information tranquilly. It seemed to her that she might have been allowed to arrange her own bridesmaids, then she recognized where the wisdom of Mr. Leighton a.s.serted itself on her side. There was much less chance of conjecture where she and Mabel showed up in friendly manner together with one another. She had one friend from London as her first bridesmaid, and after this the question of dresses obliterated everything.

Jean, it is true, had still a soul for other things. She moaned for her Slavska on every occasion. She rushed to mirrors in agony lest her chin or throat muscles were getting into disrepair, and she talked already of having to renew her lessons.

"You are just like a cheap motor," said Betty at last, "always having to be done up. Why don't you keep on being a credit to your method like the expensive machines? They don't rattle themselves to bits in a week."

Betty was getting a little out of patience with life.

"I've had a ghastly time of it," she admitted to Mabel. "All the s.p.u.n.k is out of Elma, you know, and what with her being ill and Isobel engaged, I've led a lonely life. And now Jean can't talk of anything but her Slavska. I hate the man."

When Jean was not talking about Slavska, she was sending boxes of flowers to the club girls. Reams of thanks in long letters came by the morning posts. There was no doubt of the popularity of Jean.

"I should never be in deadly fear now of having to get on alone in life," she said. "There's such comfort in girls, you can't think."

Mabel had always remained a little more outside that radiantly friendly crowd, yet had quite as admiring a following. Mr. Leighton unendingly congratulated himself for letting them both have the experience. "Though never again," he declared, "never again, will I allow one of you away from home."

Then occurred Cuthbert's engagement. In a curious way it comforted Mr.

Leighton. He was acquiring another daughter. Adelaide Maud loved that view of it best of all.

"If Mr. Leighton had been against me, I should have refused you," she explained to Cuthbert.

"You mean that I should," he corrected her. "Now what I am about to propose----"

"Are you really going to propose, dear?" asked Adelaide Maud innocently.

Cuthbert grinned.