THE GREAT AND ONLY BIRTHDAY GIFT
Thanksgiving that year proved memorable enough to the Sanford girls.
They had cheerfully decided against going home for the holidays and
devoting themselves to the entertainment of the dormitory girls. Pending
the completion of the dormitory the Hamilton College Bulletin had
already announced the glad tidings of its advantages. As a result twice
as many young women had applied for admission to the college that year
and had arrived at Hamilton campus to be numbered with the colony of
off-campus students who were living in the town of Hamilton at dormitory
rates until the Brooke Hamilton Dormitory should be ready for occupancy.
On the day before Thanksgiving the Sanford girls had been ordered by
Miss Susanna Hamilton to be ready to go to the station with her when she
should stop for them at the western gates of the campus in her car at
precisely one o’clock in the afternoon.
They had obeyed her mandate and gone with her to the station there to
behold Mr. and Mrs. Dean, Mr. and Mrs. Macy, and Hal, Mr. and Mrs.
Harding, Mrs. Warner, and the two Misses Archer, Ronny’s aunts, step
beaming off the one-five train from the north. Leila, Vera, Kathie,
Doris Monroe, Robin, Phil and Barbara and Leslie Cairns had also been
invited to the largest house party that Hamilton Arms had ever seen
invade its stately doors. Leslie’s joy had soared to dizzy heights when
the first person she had spied at the Arms was her father, standing
bare-headed on the veranda, waiting for her.
Following Thanksgiving and the delightful season of merry-making at the
Arms the Travelers found December flying and Christmas approaching with
astonishing rapidity. This time the Sanford girls went to Sanford for
Christmas, taking Miss Susanna and their six Traveler chums with them.
Leslie and Doris spent Christmas in New York with Peter Cairns, a vastly
merrier and happier Christmas than they had spent in the metropolis the
previous year.
There had been no need for any of the original chapter of Travelers to
remain on the campus, there to oversee the making of a merry Christmas
for the dormitory students. The senior “dorms” had become thoroughly
competent in the matter of providing Christmas amusement for the
off-campus dormitory colony. During the month of December, Leila,
Kathie, Robin and Phillys Moore had applied themselves zealously to the
pleasant task of arranging a couple of one-act plays and various other
interesting entertainments. They had, as a consequence, embarked on
their trip to Sanford with a pleasant sense of work well done.
Leslie Cairns, of all the Travelers, had perhaps felt most sincerely the
true spirit of Christmas. Never before in her life had she quite
understood the meaning of “Peace on earth, good will toward men.” Even
as a child she had not enjoyed the ineffably beautiful comradeship that
now existed between herself and her father. He in turn was fondly proud
of her fine spirit of resolution. She confided to him her determination
to try to do her part toward keeping up the spirit of democracy which
the original Travelers had fought so gallantly to establish and
maintain.
“There’s only one drawback to it all, Peter the Great,” she had said to
her father during one of their firelight confabs. “If this crowd of
snobs at the Hall should start on me for anything I may feel it right to
do, contrary to their ideas, it would be bound to reflect upon you. That
is, if these girls should drag up that hazing business against me. You’d
be criticized, maybe, for not bringing me up with a stern hand, and all
that sort of talk. But I’ve struck a certain gait, Peter, and I’m going
to keep it. Maybe I’m borrowing trouble. Maybe the blow I’m always
dreading may never fall.”
It was in such spirit that Leslie returned to the campus after the
holidays. On the afternoon of her return to Wayland Hall she was
notified by Leila that a hope chest party which the Travelers had
planned as a surprise for Marjorie was to take place that night at
Hamilton Arms. Since early in the fall the hope chest party had been in
the offing.
During the previous summer each of Marjorie’s Traveler chums had picked
out a gift which was to go in a special carved rosewood chest which Miss
Susanna had been hoarding for her favorite. Leila had brought Marjorie a
wonderful package of fine Irish table linen. Vera had selected a frock
of rose-pattern Irish lace. Ronny’s gift was an amethyst necklace in an
old Peruvian setting. Each of the others had searched faithfully to find
a gift which she considered worthy of the girl who had long been their
leader.
It had been left to Miss Susanna to name the date of the party. She had
named the fifth of January as the date, though none of the Travelers
knew why.
“It’s a case of hustle off the train, flee for the campus, gobble one’s
dinner and be off again merry-making,” Muriel declared animatedly as the
hope chest partly stepped out into the starlight after dinner that
evening and set buoyantly off across the campus for a jolly hike.
Jerry and Leila had been intrusted with the combined offerings of the
surprise party and had preceded the others to the Arms in Leila’s car.
They had been instructed by their companions to park the car just inside
the gates in the shadow where Miss Susanna had ordered George, the
stable man, to be on hand to look after the car and its precious
contents. According to a mysterious plan of Leila’s, which she
laughingly refused to divulge, the presents were to make an appearance
considerably later in the evening.
After dinner at the Arms that evening Jonas had managed to disappear and
Miss Susanna had innocently requested, “Go to the door, child. Will you
please?” when the clang of the old-time knocker rang out resonantly.
Willingly constituting herself doorkeeper in Jonas’s absence Marjorie
opened the door and was immediately swept into the great reception hall
on a buoyant tide of youthfully exhilarated chums.
“Why, whatever is the matter?” Miss Susanna appeared in the open door of
the library trying hard to look shocked by the noise. Her small face was
full of gleeful mischief over having thus taken Marjorie quite off her
guard.
“Yes, whatever is the matter?” Marjorie made one of her open-armed
rushes at the old lady. “You can see for yourself now. You dear
Goldendede.” She hugged Miss Susanna. “How did you know I needed a
surprise party more than anything else?”
“Oh, this isn’t your party,” chuckled Miss Hamilton. “I only allowed you
to be surprised. This is my party. Today,” she tilted her head sideways
at a bird-like angle, “is my birthday. Now don’t smother—”
Her warning was lost in the jolly concerted shout that went up from the
surprise guests. They surrounded her, hemmed her in; kissed her until
her face was rosy. Jerry even threatened to administer a birthday
whipping. It was the one thing which the girls had long been curious to
find out. Miss Susanna had steadily refused to divulge her birth date
even to Marjorie.
“And we haven’t a single present for you,” wailed Vera regretfully.
“So much the better. There’s nothing I need except more love. I’m rich
in that, by the Grace of God.” Miss Susanna had emerged from the
affectionate wooling she had received, radiantly smiling.
Then began one of the delightful evenings, which, instead of being few
and far between, were now frequent occurrences in the contented life of
the once pessimistic mistress of the Arms. As it neared nine o’clock
Leila announced that she had a fine stirring song to sing and invited
Robin to vacate the piano stool.
“Miss Susanna may have heard this gem. I am sure the rest of you have
not,” she declared with beaming smiles. “It is called ‘Wait for the
Wagon.’ It is a deeply significant song.” She turned to the piano and
began a jerky little prelude which Phil said sounded exactly like the
jolting of a wagon. Leila then lifted up her voice in a creaky
old-fashioned tune which convulsed her listeners.
She sang two verses amid ripples of laughter. Nothing dismayed by the
laughing derision accorded her vocal efforts she vigorously began a
third. Then something happened. Down the hall outside came the
approaching squeak of wheels. The laughter rose to a mild shout as Jonas
appeared in the doorway, pulling after him a good-sized toy express
wagon piled high with fancy-wrapped, be-ribboned bundles. Strangely
enough each package was tied with pale violet satin ribbon. He trundled
the wagon into the room and to where Marjorie sat, winsome and laughing,
saying: “Miss Susanna says that she has the birthday, but you may have
the presents.”
“Oh! Why! I don’t need any!” Marjorie exclaimed, looking abashed. “It’s
not my birthday.”
“No, but you’ve a wedding day coming,” Miss Susanna said, matter-of-fact
and smiling, “and a hope chest, too. Go and bring it, Jonas. Open your
hope gifts, child, and be glad your friends aren’t stingy.” In spite of
her prosaic tone there was a tender gleam in her bright brown eyes.
She lost it immediately and began to laugh at Jonas who turned solemnly
and trundled the wagon into the hall and out of sight. He came creaking
back again soon with the beautiful rosewood chest.
Surrounded by a love knot of friends, Marjorie opened package after
package, smiling at first, but tenderly tearful toward the last. She was
especially touched by Jonas’s gift to her of a gorgeous Chinese vase
which Brooke Hamilton had given him and which had been one of his few
treasures. She also dropped two or three tears on an exquisite jade
figure which Leslie Cairns had given her. She understood it to be a
reminder of the momentous afternoon when she had worn the jade frock and
they had gone together to President Matthews’ office.
When she had opened, loved and exclaimed over the last gift, a
hand-embroidered lunch cloth from Kathie, every stitch of which had been
taken by her patient fingers, she turned from the library table, now
gaily blossoming with her riches, and opened both arms in a gesture of
endearment.
“I haven’t any words dear enough to tell you in how much I love you, and
thank you,” she said. “I only know I do. It seems to me my life has been
nothing but a succession of glorious surprises. I think I’ve been given
so much more than my share of love and happiness.”
A chorus of fond dissent greeted her earnestly humble words.
“Sh-h. That’s only half of my speech.” She held up a playfully
admonishing finger. “The other half is about Miss Susanna. It’s
something I’ve been wishing to ask her a long time. Because she has
loved me in the same way Captain and General have loved me I have the
courage to ask this great favor. Captain and General know I am going to
ask it. So does Hal. Please, Goldendede, dear Goldendede, may Hal and I
be married at the Arms on Mr. Brooke’s birthday?”
“_May you?_” Miss Susanna got up from her chair and came straight to
Marjorie. On her small, keen face shone the light of a great devotion.
“May you?” she repeated. “How could you know, child, that this was what
I wished for most. I never dared mention it to you. It seemed so selfish
in me. You’ve given me the great and only birthday present.”
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