In their weekly chats over her tea-table (from which the Major early
excused himself, possibly under wifely suggestion), Joan got into the
way of being quite confidential with Archibald. She told him one day how
lonely she was for women's companionship.
"At school I had too many chums, and here I haven't any," she
complained. "I really don't know why!"
"Maybe they're sort of jealous," was his suggestion.
"Why, Archie! You're getting positively subtle with your compliments,"
she laughed. "No, it can't be that. I'm no 'man's woman!'--I'm done with
that forever! They're welcome to every beau in town for all of me, and I
_never_ flirt with other people's property. I'm really the ideal
companion nowadays--no family complete without me.... Of course I see a
lot of girls around at parties, and they're friendly enough, even make
rather a fuss over me. But--that's all! Somehow we don't seem to be
playing the same game."
"Ish ga bibble," murmured Archie, consolingly if cryptically. "What do
_you_ care, when you've got 'em all nailed to the mast? But I know just
what you mean, Miss Darcy. Used to feel sort of that way myself when I
went with Miss Gracie or Miss Ella, or any of them from the office.
Before I knew your sort."
"So you think," said Joan, amused, "it's the sort that's wrong, not me?"
"Nothing wrong with _you_!" he declared, with a comforting finality.
Being a person with whom sympathy was always active rather than passive,
however, he took her case earnestly under consideration; with rather
surprising results.
Some days later--it was one of the still February mornings that come to
Kentucky as an earnest that spring is on the way, with cardinals fluting
from the evergreens and a rusty bluebird or two on the lookout for
summer quarters--Joan was called to the telephone to speak to no less a
personage than Miss Emily Carmichael.
"I hear you've been riding all winter, Miss Darcy," she said. "I'm so
sorry not to have known it before, so that we might have gone out
together. So much pleasanter than riding with a groom, don't you think!"
Joan agreed that it would have been.
"Why shouldn't we make up for lost time at once--this morning, for
instance? Shall I come by for you at eleven o'clock? Very well."
Joan hung up the telephone, mortified by her own pusillanimous behavior.
Here was a golden opportunity to snub the girl who had found her
"mixed," and instead of doing so she had meekly consented to be
patronized. But at the word her head went up with something of the
Major's dignity. Miss Carmichael would find it rather difficult to
patronize Miss Darcy!
Miss Carmichael, however, seemed to have no intention of trying. She
exclaimed with delight over the pretty Peggy, sleek as satin despite her
winter coat, and dancing with pleasure to be out once more in equine
society. (With the first approach of winter, the class in equestrianism
had disbanded).
"Mr. Blair was telling me the other day about your father's wonderful
Christmas present to you," she said. "It must be pleasant to be able to
afford a real saddle-horse! My good old Dobbin has to pull Mother's
station-wagon, too, you know, which is bad for his gaits. It's _horrid_
to have only one horse in the stables!"
"You speak as if you were poverty-stricken," smiled Joan, thinking of
the great Carmichael house, with its walled court and double galleries
and outbuildings sufficient to house a retinue of servants.
"Oh, we are," sighed the other. "Absolutely! Why, do you know, I've
never been to Europe in my life?"
Joan wondered what this girl would think of real poverty, which yearned
in terms, not of trips to Europe, but of new shoes and unattainable
spring bonnets!--And then she happened to notice, standing at the curb
as they passed, a girl of about her age with a shawl over her head, a
baby on one arm and a child dragging at the other, gazing listlessly at
the fortunate ones who had time to be young.
Joan hastily abandoned comparisons.
"If you've only one horse, what does your groom ride?" she asked, having
been rather impressed by the mention of a groom.
"A bicycle," smiled Emily. "Of course he's not a real groom, only our
houseboy, Joe. It's terribly mortifying to his pride. 'Miss Em'ly,
s'posin' we was to meet some one what knows us?' is his constant plea;
so I ride in out-of-the-way roads to spare his feelings. If we do meet
acquaintances, he drops far behind and pretends he isn't with me. When
old Dob feels his oats, poor Joe has a fearful time keeping up. I hear
him panting and gasping behind me, 'Woa thar, woa thar, Dobbin! Gawd
sakes, Miss Em'ly, don' you know a bicycle wa'n't never _meant_ to
gallop?'"
Joan was both astonished and amused. She could not fit the picture into
her conception of the Carmichael elegance. "_I_ shouldn't bother with a
groom at all," she murmured.
"Of course you wouldn't! But you see I've got old-fashioned parents who
can't imagine a young girl being able to go about alone in safety. They
suspect a bandit of lurking behind every bush for the purpose of
carrying off their precious Emily. So far no bandit has had the courage
to attempt it!" she sighed. "Do you know, what I envy you most is your
independence?"
"My independence? But that's just what I wish I had!" cried Joan, and
presently found herself confiding in this stranger something that she
had hitherto kept to herself--her determination to earn her own living.
The other girl listened with sympathy, too well-bred to ask questions,
but quick to understand.
"It doesn't seem fair," she sighed. "We girls haven't a chance at all.
If you were a boy you would have been prepared in some way, of course.
In our family, for instance, my brother Johnny, who isn't half as
intelligent as I am (and that's not bragging, either), was put most
unwillingly through college, and given three extra years at law, and
sent around the world--all to prepare him for a career of horse-racing
and wild oats generally. He's a dear, you know, but he must have his
little wild oats.... And what did I get? Two years of an Eastern
finishing school, where I learned to dress better than we can afford, to
sing and play a little, and to speak French with a fair accent! I wasn't
even prepared for--the thing that's expected of us," she added,
flushing. "I've never cooked a meal nor made a bed in my life, Mother
proceeding on the theory that if you learn how to do such things you'll
have to do them--No fear! No sensible, practical, poor young man would
ever have the courage to ask such a useless thing as me to share his
humble lot!"
Joan looked at her curiously. She was a tall, rather statuesque type, as
so many Kentucky women are; not beautiful, but with a splendid figure, a
gallant poise of the head, an air of race and elegance that associated
oddly with the idea of cooking and bedmaking.
"You'll simply have to choose the sort of husband that hasn't a humble
lot," Joan suggested.
"Choose?" the other shrugged. "Where am I to find him? Not in this part
of the world, evidently. You see I've been out several years, my dear.
And Mother's far too well-bred to take me about husband hunting, even if
she were able to afford it--No, no, I shall simply subside gracefully
into old maidhood, as so many of us do nowadays. Haven't you noticed the
numbers of old maids about here--charming, cultivated women who have
waited too long for a possible partner to come and discover them?
Filling their lives with Bridge and charity and committee work! Useful,
I suppose, and contented enough, but--It isn't what one dreams of! Mere
_pis aller_.... And I don't see how the ballot's going to help, do you?"
"Except by changing the fashion in female education," mused Joan.
"Meanwhile we've just got to help ourselves. Pull ourselves up by our
own boot-straps."
"And we haven't even got the boot-straps!" laughed the other,
ruefully....
This was not the last of their rides together. The unexpected
understanding of this girl, whose lot in life Joan had long secretly
envied, broke down the artificial barriers between them, and paved the
way for a real and lasting friendship. Between them they settled many
problems of the universe, while Dobbin and Pegasus respectively trotted
and singlefooted about the parks or along a road where the Ohio swept,
swollen with the winter's snows, almost on a level with them, overlooked
by splendid cliffs where the city's rich have been wise enough to build
homes that would do credit to the chateau country of France.
Sometimes Emily took her into one of these houses for a cup of tea,
occasions which filled Effie May with a candid gratification; for
hitherto the Carmichael circle had remained impregnable to her siege.
"It certainly was a good idea of yours, getting the child that horse!"
she commented to her husband. "There's something genteel about a
riding-horse--more so than a limousine, though I'm sure I can't see why.
Heaven knows it's cheaper! But even that old plug the Carmichael girl
rides has a kind of air about it."
"Horses," replied the Major sententiously, "are the only aristocrats
left in the modern world."
Effie May presently suggested to Archie that he purchase himself a horse
and try riding, since he was so fond of exercise. But Archie put the
tempting idea away from him. What time had he for the diversions of the
idle? Business before pleasure! He had recently, and for reasons that
were a little vague in his own mind, decided to become rich.
Joan was so preoccupied with her new friendship that she had rather
neglected the boxing matches of late, which presently languished. The
Major missed the stimulating presence of a young feminine audience. So
that Archie spent no more glorious half-hours over a tea-table.
But he did not complain. It was something to know that he had presented
his lady with the thing her heart most craved. He could, had he so
chosen, have tagged the unconscious Miss Carmichael with a card such as
sometimes came to Joan in modest boxes of flowers, bearing the
inscription: "From a Friend."