VISITORS' DAY
The afternoon preceding the closing exercises of Central High was
Visitors' Day at the girls' gymnasium. This was an entirely different
affair from the recent Field Day when Laura Belding and her particular
friends had so well distinguished themselves.
On _that_ occasion the general public had been invited. Visitors' Day
might better have been called "Mothers' Day." Mrs. Case personally
invited all those mothers who had shown little interest, or positive
objection, to their daughters' athletic activities.
For to the Centerport ladies the fact that their daughters were being
trained "like prize-ring fighters," as one good but misled mother had
said in a letter to the newspaper, was not only a novel course but was
considered of doubtful value.
"And you must come, Mother," begged Laura, when Mrs. Belding seemed
inclined to make excuses. Mrs. Belding was one of the mothers who
could not approve of her daughter's interest in athletics.
"Really, Laura, I am not sure that I should enjoy myself seeing you
crawl about those ladders like a spider--or climbing ropes like a
sailor--or turning on a trapeze like a monkey--or otherwise making
yourself ridiculous."
"Oh, Mother!" half-laughed Laura. Yet she was a little hurt, too.
"Aw, Mother, don't sidestep your plain duty," said Chet, his eyes
twinkling.
"Chetwood! You know very well that I do not approve of many of these
modern dances. I certainly do not 'sidestep'"----
"That isn't a dance, Mother," giggled Laura.
Her husband chuckled at the other end of the table. "My dear," he
said, suavely, "you should keep up with the times----"
"No, thank you. I have no desire to. Keeping up with the times, as you
call it, has made my son speak a language entirely unintelligible to
_my_ ear, and has made my daughter an exponent of muscular exercises
of which I cannot approve."
"Pshaw!" said her husband, easily. "Basketball, and running, and
rowing, and the exercise she gets at that gymnasium, aren't going to
hurt Mother Wit."
"There you go!" exclaimed his wife. "You have begun to apply to Laura
an appellation which she has gained since all this disturbance over
athletics among the girls, has arisen.
"I can no more than expect," went on Mrs. Belding, seriously, "that,
dissatisfied with basketball and the like, the girls will become
baseball and football--what do you call them, Chetwood? Fans?"
"Quite right, mother," Laura hastened to answer instead of her
brother. "And all we girls of Central High are fans already when it
comes to baseball and football. I'd like to belong to a baseball team,
myself, for one----"
"Laura!" gasped her mother, while her father and Chet burst out
laughing.
"It's the finest game in the world," declared Laura, stoutly.
"Hear! hear!" from Chet.
"I've been to see the games a lot with father Saturday afternoons,"
began Laura, when her mother interposed:
"Indeed? _That_ is why you are so eager always to spend your forenoons
with your father on Saturday?"
"Oh, Mother! I really _do_ help father in the jewelry-store--don't I,
Dad?"
"Couldn't get along without you, daughter," said Mr. Belding,
stoutly.
"And he always takes me for a nice bite in a restaurant," pursued the
girl, "and then if there's a game, we go to see it."
"Runaways!" said Mrs. Belding, shaking an admonishing finger at them.
"So you encourage her in these escapades, do you, Mr. Belding?"
"Quite so, Mother," he returned. "You're behind the times. Girls are
different nowadays--in open practise, at least--from what they were in
our day. Of course, I remember when I first saw you----"
"That will do!" exclaimed Mrs. Belding, flushing very prettily, while
the children laughed. "We will not rake up old stories, if you
please."
Any reference to the occasion at which her husband hinted, usually
brought his wife "to time," as Chet slangily expressed it. She agreed
to be present at the girls' gymnasium on that last day when the girls
used the paraphernalia as they pleased, with Mrs. Case standing by to
direct, or admonish, or advise.
Mrs. Belding found in the gallery overlooking the big gymnasium floor
many of her neighbors, church friends, or fellow club-members.
"I've been trying to get here for months," one stout lady confided to
the Market Street jeweler's wife; "but it does seem to me I never have
a minute to spare. But Lluella says that I _must_ come now, for the
term is ending. That's Lluella over yonder jumping on that mat. Isn't
she quick on her feet?"
"Grace is such a reckless child," complained the lady on Mrs.
Belding's other side. "She's her father all over again--and he's got
the quickest temper of any man I ever saw. Gets over it right away,
you know; but it's a trial to have a man get mad because the coffee's
muddy of a morning."
"Oh, I know all about _that_," sighed the fleshy lady, windily.
"I don't suppose there's really any danger of the children getting
hurt here, Mrs. Belding?" proceeded the thin mother.
"I believe not. Laura says there is no danger----"
"Oh, your Laura is a regular athlete!" interrupted the fat woman. "My
Lluella says she is just _wonderful_."
"So does my Grace," declared the thin lady on the other side. "She
says there's nobody like 'Mother Wit,' as she calls Laura."
"I think there is no danger," murmured Mrs. Belding, not sure whether
she was glad or sorry that her daughter was so popular.
"Oh, Mrs. Belding! are _you_ here?" broke in rather a shrill voice
from the rear. "I told Lily I would come to-day; but really, I hardly
knew whether it was the thing to approve of this gymnasium
business----"
Mrs. Pendleton's voice trailed off as it usually did before she
completed a sentence. She was a small, extremely vivacious, black-eyed
woman, much overdressed, and carrying a lorgnette with which she eyed
the crowd of girlish figures on the floor below.
"Of course," she murmured to Mrs. Belding, "if _you_ approve----"
"Where is Grace now?" cried the thin lady, suddenly. "Mercy! See where
she has climbed to. Do you suppose they can get her without a
ladder?"
Grace, a thin, wiry child of the wriggling type, had successfully
clambered up the rope almost to the beam overhead and was now
surveying the gallery with lofty compassion, which included a lively
appreciation of her mother's uneasiness.
"Oh, Grace!" shrilled the thin woman. "Get down this instant! Or do
you want me to bring you a ladder?"
An appreciative giggle arose from some of the girls below. Grace
turned rather red around her ears, and began to descend. It was one
thing to make her mother marvel; she did not want her "act" to be
turned to ridicule.
"They look real pretty--now don't they?" admitted Mrs. Pendleton,
loftily, after surveying the gymnasium for some time through her
lorgnette. "Lily's dress cost us a deal of trouble. But she looks well
in it. She's well developed for her age and--thank goodness!--she has
a _chic_ way with her.
"I thought we never would get the suit to fit her. And she changed her
shoes three times," added the society matron. "Finally I told her if
she was going to have nervous prostration getting ready to take
physical culture, she'd better wait and take it when she was
convalescent."
"I hope Lluella will be careful of her hands," said the fleshy lady on
Mrs. Belding's right. "She's always bruising or cutting her fingers.
Just like her aunt. Her aunt always had to wear gloves doing her
housework."
"There! they are going to march," cried the thin lady, as Mrs. Case
blew her whistle and the girl on the rope slid the last few feet to
the floor. "Grace is down, thank goodness!"
"Her music teacher says Grace's ear is a regular gift--she keeps such
good time."
"I'm sure no sensible parent would ever have _bought_ those ears,"
whispered Mrs. Pendleton to Mrs. Belding. "They must have been a
gift," for those organs on the agile Grace were painfully prominent.
"But she had _such_ a pretty smile when she looked up at her mother
just now," whispered the kind-hearted Mrs. Belding.
"That reminds me," said the society matron--though why it should have
reminded her nobody knows! "That reminds me, my Lily is crazy to go
camping--positively crazy!"
"I know," sighed Mrs. Belding. "Laura is determined, too. And her
father approves and has overruled all _my_ objections."
"Oh, it's not that with me at all," said Mrs. Pendleton, briskly. "I'm
glad enough to have the child go. She's too much advanced for her age,
anyway. If she spends this summer at Newport, and Bar Harbor, and one
or two other places where I positively _must_ appear, I'll never be
able to get her back into school this fall.
"It ages a mother so to have a growing daughter--and one that is so
forward as Lily," said this selfish lady, fretfully. "Lily thinks she
is grown up now. No. I approve of her going with a lot of little girls
into camp. And she wants to go with your Laura's crowd, Mrs.
Belding."
"I'm sure--Laura would be pleased," said Mrs Belding, sweetly, without
an idea that she was laying up trouble in store for Mother Wit.
"Oh, then, I can leave it with you, dear Mrs. Belding?" cried Mrs.
Pendleton, with uncanny eagerness. "You will arrange it?"
"Why--er--I presume Laura and her friends would have no objection to
another of their schoolmates joining them. I understand Mrs. Morse
will chaperon them----"
"And quite a proper person for that office, too," agreed Mrs.
Pendleton. "I presume they will take along a maid."
"Oh! I do not know," said Mrs. Belding, beginning to feel somewhat
worried now. "I imagine the girls expect to do for themselves----"
"Oh! I will send a maid with Lily. At least, I will pay the wages of
one who will do for all the girls--in a way."
She bustled away to find Lily after the march. Mrs. Belding waited for
her daughter in more or less trepidation. It had suddenly crossed her
mind that Lily Pendleton was seldom at her house with the friends that
Mother Wit gathered about her.