We all missed Aunt Olivia greatly; she had been so merry and
companionable, and had possessed such a knack of understanding small
fry. But youth quickly adapts itself to changed conditions; in a few
weeks it seemed as if the Story Girl had always been living at Uncle
Alec’s, and as if Uncle Roger had always had a fat, jolly housekeeper
with a double chin and little, twinkling blue eyes. I don’t think Aunt
Janet ever quite got over missing Aunt Olivia, or looked upon Mrs.
Hawkins as anything but a necessary evil; but life resumed its even
tenor on the King farm, broken only by the ripples of excitement over
the school concert and letters from Aunt Olivia describing her trip
through the land of Evangeline. We incorporated the letters in Our
Magazine under the heading “From Our Special Correspondent” and were
very proud of them.
At the end of June our school concert came off and was a great event
in our young lives. It was the first appearance of most of us on any
platform, and some of us were very nervous. We all had recitations,
except Dan, who had refused flatly to take any part and was consequently
care-free.
“I’m sure I shall die when I find myself up on that platform, facing
people,” sighed Sara Ray, as we talked the affair over in Uncle
Stephen’s Walk the night before the concert.
“I’m afraid I’ll faint,” was Cecily’s more moderate foreboding.
“I’m not one single bit nervous,” said Felicity complacently.
“I’m not nervous this time,” said the Story Girl, “but the first time I
recited I was.”
“My Aunt Jane,” remarked Peter, “used to say that an old teacher of hers
told her that when she was going to recite or speak in public she must
just get it firmly into her mind that it was only a lot of cabbage heads
she had before her, and she wouldn’t be nervous.”
“One mightn’t be nervous, but I don’t think there would be much
inspiration in reciting to cabbage heads,” said the Story Girl
decidedly. “I want to recite to PEOPLE, and see them looking interested
and thrilled.”
“If I can only get through my piece without breaking down I don’t care
whether I thrill people or not,” said Sara Ray.
“I’m afraid I’ll forget mine and get stuck,” foreboded Felix. “Some of
you fellows be sure and prompt me if I do--and do it quick, so’s I won’t
get worse rattled.”
“I know one thing,” said Cecily resolutely, “and that is, I’m going
to curl my hair for to-morrow night. I’ve never curled it since Peter
almost died, but I simply must tomorrow night, for all the other girls
are going to have theirs in curls.”
“The dew and heat will take all the curl out of yours and then you’ll
look like a scarecrow,” warned Felicity.
“No, I won’t. I’m going to put my hair up in paper tonight and wet it
with a curling-fluid that Judy Pineau uses. Sara brought me up a bottle
of it. Judy says it is great stuff--your hair will keep in curl for
days, no matter how damp the weather is. I’ll leave my hair in the
papers till tomorrow evening, and then I’ll have beautiful curls.”
“You’d better leave your hair alone,” said Dan gruffly. “Smooth hair is
better than a lot of fly-away curls.”
But Cecily was not to be persuaded. Curls she craved and curls she meant
to have.
“I’m thankful my warts have all gone, any-way,” said Sara Ray.
“So they have,” exclaimed Felicity. “Did you try Peg’s recipe?”
“Yes. I didn’t believe in it but I tried it. For the first few days
afterwards I kept watching my warts, but they didn’t go away, and then
I gave up and forgot them. But one day last week I just happened to look
at my hands and there wasn’t a wart to be seen. It was the most amazing
thing.”
“And yet you’ll say Peg Bowen isn’t a witch,” said Peter.
“Pshaw, it was just the potato juice,” scoffed Dan.
“It was a dry old potato I had, and there wasn’t much juice in it,”
said Sara Ray. “One hardly knows what to believe. But one thing is
certain--my warts are gone.”
Cecily put her hair up in curl-papers that night, thoroughly soaked in
Judy Pineau’s curling-fluid. It was a nasty job, for the fluid was very
sticky, but Cecily persevered and got it done. Then she went to bed with
a towel tied over her head to protect the pillow. She did not sleep
well and had uncanny dreams, but she came down to breakfast with an
expression of triumph. The Story Girl examined her head critically and
said,
“Cecily, if I were you I’d take those papers out this morning.”
“Oh, no; if I do my hair will be straight again by night. I mean to
leave them in till the last minute.”
“I wouldn’t do that--I really wouldn’t,” persisted the Story Girl. “If
you do your hair will be too curly and all bushy and fuzzy.”
Cecily finally yielded and went upstairs with the Story Girl. Presently
we heard a little shriek--then two little shrieks--then three. Then
Felicity came flying down and called her mother. Aunt Janet went up and
presently came down again with a grim mouth. She filled a large pan with
warm water and carried it upstairs. We dared ask her no questions, but
when Felicity came down to wash the dishes we bombarded her.
“What on earth is the matter with Cecily?” demanded Dan. “Is she sick?”
“No, she isn’t. I warned her not to put her hair in curls but she
wouldn’t listen to me. I guess she wishes she had now. When people
haven’t natural curly hair they shouldn’t try to make it curly. They get
punished if they do.”
“Look here, Felicity, never mind all that. Just tell us what has
happened Sis.”
“Well, this is what has happened her. That ninny of a Sara Ray brought
up a bottle of mucilage instead of Judy’s curling-fluid, and Cecily put
her hair up with THAT. It’s in an awful state.”
“Good gracious!” exclaimed Dan. “Look here, will she ever get it out?”
“Goodness knows. She’s got her head in soak now. Her hair is just matted
together hard as a board. That’s what comes of vanity,” said Felicity,
than whom no vainer girl existed.
Poor Cecily paid dearly enough for HER vanity. She spent a bad forenoon,
made no easier by her mother’s severe rebukes. For an hour she “soaked”
her head; that is, she stood over a panful of warm water and kept
dipping her head in with tightly shut eyes. Finally her hair softened
sufficiently to be disentangled from the curl papers; and then Aunt
Janet subjected it to a merciless shampoo. Eventually they got all the
mucilage washed out of it and Cecily spent the remainder of the forenoon
sitting before the open oven door in the hot kitchen drying her ill-used
tresses. She felt very down-hearted; her hair was of that order which,
glossy and smooth normally, is dry and harsh and lustreless for several
days after being shampooed.
“I’ll look like a fright tonight,” said the poor child to me with
trembling voice. “The ends will be sticking out all over my head.”
“Sara Ray is a perfect idiot,” I said wrathfully
“Oh, don’t be hard on poor Sara. She didn’t mean to bring me mucilage.
It’s really all my own fault, I know. I made a solemn vow when Peter was
dying that I would never curl my hair again, and I should have kept it.
It isn’t right to break solemn vows. But my hair will look like dried
hay tonight.”
Poor Sara Ray was quite overwhelmed when she came up and found what
she had done. Felicity was very hard on her, and Aunt Janet was coldly
disapproving, but sweet Cecily forgave her unreservedly, and they walked
to the school that night with their arms about each other’s waists as
usual.
The school-room was crowded with friends and neighbours. Mr. Perkins was
flying about, getting things into readiness, and Miss Reade, who was
the organist of the evening, was sitting on the platform, looking her
sweetest and prettiest. She wore a delightful white lace hat with a
fetching little wreath of tiny forget-me-nots around the brim, a white
muslin dress with sprays of blue violets scattered over it, and a black
lace scarf.
“Doesn’t she look angelic?” said Cecily rapturously.
“Mind you,” said Sara Ray, “the Awkward Man is here--in the corner
behind the door. I never remember seeing him at a concert before.”
“I suppose he came to hear the Story Girl recite,” said Felicity. “He is
such a friend of hers.”
The concert went off very well. Dialogues, choruses and recitations
followed each other in rapid succession. Felix got through his without
“getting stuck,” and Peter did excellently, though he stuffed his hands
in his trousers pockets--a habit of which Mr. Perkins had vainly tried
to break him. Peter’s recitation was one greatly in vogue at that time,
beginning,
“My name is Norval; on the Grampian hills
My father feeds his flocks.”
At our first practice Peter had started gaily in, rushing through the
first line with no thought whatever of punctuation--“My name is Norval
on the Grampian Hills.”
“Stop, stop, Peter,” quoth Mr. Perkins, sarcastically, “your name might
be Norval if you were never on the Grampian Hills. There’s a semi-colon
in that line, I wish you to remember.”
Peter did remember it. Cecily neither fainted nor failed when it came
her turn. She recited her little piece very well, though somewhat
mechanically. I think she really did much better than if she had had her
desired curls. The miserable conviction that her hair, alone among
that glossy-tressed bevy, was looking badly, quite blotted out all
nervousness and self-consciousness from her mind. Her hair apart, she
looked very pretty. The prevailing excitement had made bright her eye
and flushed her cheeks rosily--too rosily, perhaps. I heard a Carlisle
woman behind me whisper that Cecily King looked consumptive, just like
her Aunt Felicity; and I hated her fiercely for it.
Sara Ray also managed to get through respectably, although she was
pitiably nervous. Her bow was naught but a short nod--“as if her head
worked on wires,” whispered Felicity uncharitably--and the wave of her
lily-white hand more nearly resembled an agonized jerk than a wave. We
all felt relieved when she finished. She was, in a sense, one of “our
crowd,” and we had been afraid she would disgrace us by breaking down.
Felicity followed her and recited her selection without haste, without
rest, and absolutely without any expression whatever. But what mattered
it how she recited? To look at her was sufficient. What with her
splendid fleece of golden curls, her great, brilliant blue eyes, her
exquisitely tinted face, her dimpled hands and arms, every member of the
audience must have felt it was worth the ten cents he had paid merely to
see her.
The Story Girl followed. An expectant silence fell over the room, and
Mr. Perkins’ face lost the look of tense anxiety it had worn all the
evening. Here was a performer who could be depended on. No need to
fear stage fright or forgetfulness on her part. The Story Girl was not
looking her best that night. White never became her, and her face
was pale, though her eyes were splendid. But nobody thought about her
appearance when the power and magic of her voice caught and held her
listeners spellbound.
Her recitation was an old one, figuring in one of the School Readers,
and we scholars all knew it off by heart. Sara Ray alone had not heard
the Story Girl recite it. The latter had not been drilled at practices
as had the other pupils, Mr. Perkins choosing not to waste time teaching
her what she already knew far better than he did. The only time she had
recited it had been at the “dress rehearsal” two nights before, at which
Sara Ray had not been present.
In the poem a Florentine lady of old time, wedded to a cold and cruel
husband, had died, or was supposed to have died, and had been carried to
“the rich, the beautiful, the dreadful tomb” of her proud family. In
the night she wakened from her trance and made her escape. Chilled and
terrified, she had made her way to her husband’s door, only to be driven
away brutally as a restless ghost by the horror-stricken inmates. A
similar reception awaited her at her father’s. Then she had wandered
blindly through the streets of Florence until she had fallen exhausted
at the door of the lover of her girlhood. He, unafraid, had taken her
in and cared for her. On the morrow, the husband and father, having
discovered the empty tomb, came to claim her. She refused to return to
them and the case was carried to the court of law. The verdict given was
that a woman who had been “to burial borne” and left for dead, who had
been driven from her husband’s door and from her childhood home, “must
be adjudged as dead in law and fact,” was no more daughter or wife, but
was set free to form what new ties she would. The climax of the whole
selection came in the line,
“The court pronounces the defendant--DEAD!” and the Story Girl was wont
to render it with such dramatic intensity and power that the veriest
dullard among her listeners could not have missed its force and
significance.
She swept along through the poem royally, playing on the emotions of her
audience as she had so often played on ours in the old orchard. Pity,
terror, indignation, suspense, possessed her hearers in turn. In
the court scene she surpassed herself. She was, in very truth, the
Florentine judge, stern, stately, impassive. Her voice dropped into the
solemnity of the all-important line,
“‘The court pronounces the defendant--’”
She paused for a breathless moment, the better to bring out the tragic
import of the last word.
“DEAD,” piped up Sara Ray in her shrill, plaintive little voice.
The effect, to use a hackneyed but convenient phrase, can better be
imagined than described. Instead of the sigh of relieved tension that
should have swept over the audience at the conclusion of the line,
a burst of laughter greeted it. The Story Girl’s performance was
completely spoiled. She dealt the luckless Sara a glance that would have
slain her on the spot could glances kill, stumbled lamely and impotently
through the few remaining lines of her recitation, and fled with crimson
cheeks to hide her mortification in the little corner that had been
curtained off for a dressing-room. Mr. Perkins looked things not lawful
to be uttered, and the audience tittered at intervals for the rest of
the performance.
Sara Ray alone remained serenely satisfied until the close of the
concert, when we surrounded her with a whirlwind of reproaches.
“Why,” she stammered aghast, “what did I do? I--I thought she was stuck
and that I ought to prompt her quick.”
“You little fool, she just paused for effect,” cried Felicity angrily.
Felicity might be rather jealous of the Story Girl’s gift, but she
was furious at beholding “one of our family” made ridiculous in such a
fashion. “You have less sense than anyone I ever heard of, Sara Ray.”
Poor Sara dissolved in tears.
“I didn’t know. I thought she was stuck,” she wailed again.
She cried all the way home, but we did not try to comfort her. We felt
quite out of patience with her. Even Cecily was seriously annoyed. This
second blunder of Sara’s was too much even for her loyalty. We saw her
turn in at her own gate and go sobbing up her lane with no relenting.
The Story Girl was home before us, having fled from the schoolhouse as
soon as the programme was over. We tried to sympathize with her but she
would not be sympathized with.
“Please don’t ever mention it to me again,” she said, with compressed
lips. “I never want to be reminded of it. Oh, that little IDIOT!”
“She spoiled Peter’s sermon last summer and now she’s spoiled your
recitation,” said Felicity. “I think it’s time we gave up associating
with Sara Ray.”
“Oh, don’t be quite so hard on her,” pleaded Cecily. “Think of the life
the poor child has to live at home. I know she’ll cry all night.”
“Oh, let’s go to bed,” growled Dan. “I’m good and ready for it. I’ve had
enough of school concerts.”