GUMDROPS
"Not a red gum drop was cast!" cried Laura as she jumped lightly from
the garden wall and joined Alene, who for some time had been pacing the
orchard impatiently with Prince jumping beside her.
Alene's look of pleased anticipation changed to dismay.
"I'm so sorry!"
"What for?"
"Why, Uncle Fred would have given me money to buy some, if I knew you
wanted them!"
Laura's laugh rang out merrily.
"Why, Alene, it's _votes_! We don't buy them like 'lectioneers do--we
get enough to give each member one red and one white gumdrop. Those
who are for a candidate put in a white and those against her a red!"
Alene danced with joy.
"Then I'm elected!"
"You are now a member of the Happy-Go-Luckys and your name is duly
inscribed on the books!" said Laura, in her judicial tone.
"And they all put in the white drops! How lovely of them!"
"Yes, all but Ivy; she put hers in her mouth to taste it, and before
she knew, it was gone!"
"Dear me, and what did she do then?"
"She whispered it to me at the last minute, just after I got out the
little mustard box where we cast our votes, and so I allowed her to put
in a button instead. After it was over, some of us wanted to save the
gumdrops for the first meeting you attended, but those greedy
youngsters had devoured 'em all but two which I managed to keep."
Laura pressed into Alene's hand a small tinsel-paper package.
"You must eat half of each," said Alene, wisely surmising that it was
Laura's own portion that had been saved, and resolving to leave for
another day the blue ribbon-tied box of candy Uncle Fred had given her
that morning, which she had just placed in the grass at the foot of a
tree, awaiting Laura's arrival.
Seated on the green beneath the trees, they ate the gumdrops, whose
scarcity perhaps made them seem the more delicious, and exchanged
confidences concerning themselves and the Happy-Go-Luckys.
Alene, who was an only child, envied Laura's claim to two small sisters
and a baby brother and one brother older than herself.
"Ivy is the only girl in the Bonner family."
"Like me!"
"Not quite--she has six brothers, four of them older than she is!"
"Gracious, I'd be lost in such a crowd of boys!"
As for the Club, it had formal meetings when an excursion to the woods
or an exhibition was in view; then verbal notice was given to assemble
at the home of one of the members. The other meetings were when two or
more members met by chance or appointment for any object, whether
study, play or conversation.
"So you see this is a meeting of two members, and I think I see a
third," concluded the President, Miss Lee, craning her neck in the
direction of the side street.
"Hello, Lol," cried a shrill voice, and Ivy's curly head peeped over
the wall.
"I'll go and help her over," said Laura, rising quickly. As the wall
was not very high, Alene idly wondered why such an active-looking girl
should need assistance in scaling it.
"Why, I never dreamed she was lame," she murmured a moment later,
swallowing something that seemed to choke her, when she saw Ivy coming
forward on a pair of slender crutches. She strove to hide her emotion
as she hurried down the grassy terrace to greet her.
Ivy may have noticed her start of surprise, for she said with a queer,
unchildish laugh, as though she had read her thought:
"You didn't know I used these," with an expressive glance toward the
crutches. "You see I kept 'em on the other side of the wall the other
day. I wanted you to treat me as you would if I were like the rest,
not handled gently and pitied!"
Alene tried to keep the pity from her countenance, for Ivy's words made
her feel worse than ever. She wished she could run away somewhere, for
a while, to have a good cry.
"Don't mind her, Alene! I do believe she talks that way to make us
feel bad," said Laura in what Alene thought a very unfeeling manner;
but she learned later that Laura's seeming harshness toward Ivy was
only a cloak to hide her sympathy, and that it gave her an influence
over the child who would otherwise use her infirmity to tyrannize over
the others.
Ivy threw her crutches on the grass and sank down, saying,
"Horrid things! I hate them--and it makes me feel so mean to have to
beg to get them back when the kids take 'em away from me!"
"Do they do that?" inquired Alene, indignantly.
"They have to do it sometimes, for she beats them with the crutches,"
explained Laura.
"That's the only way I can reach 'em!" said her friend, in self-defense.
Ivy was an elfin-looking creature with sparkling black eyes that seemed
to see right through one; her small head was covered with a thick mop
of curls of a blackness that, in some lights, had blue and green shades
like the plumage of a bird; her wasted cheeks and brown, claw-like
hands told pathetically of weary months on a sick-bed, which indeed she
had only recently quitted, as Alene learned later.
"What a lovely sash you have on," she exclaimed, with a sudden change
of mood, holding up an end of Alene's plaid sash. "It's like a baby
rainbow stolen from a fairy sky and hung 'round your waist."
Alene glanced at her sash with a new interest. She cared little for
pretty clothes and seldom noticed what those around her wore; that she
was dressed finer and more fashionably than Laura and Ivy had not once
occurred to her.
"That sounds like poetry," she observed.
"Yes, she writes poetry, too!" Laura returned proudly. "You must let
Alene see some of it--and she keeps a book where she writes all about
the sky when the sun sets--she sees lovely rivers and golden hills and
ladies riding in skiffs--"
"Now, Lol!" cried Ivy with a hectic color reddening her cheeks. "It's
just silly stuff, you know, that I put down to pass away the time when
I'm laid up," she explained. "I thought of it one evening when the
boarders were at supper; the boys were eating and mother of course too
busy to stay with me. Hugh brought in my supper on a tray and hurried
back to the dining-room and I sat there alone and ate my meal and
watched the sky from my couch, which was drawn up close to the window.
What wonderful things I saw then!"
"Tell me about them, won't you?" implored Alene.
"There were great purple mountains and emerald lakes and wonderful
golden caves--people, too--angels with harps flying through the white
clouds, ladies with crowns and long robes gliding along and little
children swimming the river on the back of great swans like in the
fairy books. Every evening it changed and at last I commenced to write
about the different things I saw each day, and so I called it my Sunset
Book. As for sunrises--" Ivy gave a sudden arch glance at Laura.
"Lazybones, I don't believe you ever saw one!"
"I'd love to see your book!" cried Alene; "and there are some beautiful
sunsets looking from the Tower!"
Ivy glanced up toward the tower of the Big House that rose almost as
high as a church spire from the top of the hill.
"I do believe one could see behind the hills over there in the west, to
the other side of the world from those windows," she exclaimed.
"Well, you and Laura come up this evening and--"
"Won't your folks object?"
"There's no folks there but Uncle Fred and he's no objector. Promise
to come and see how far we can see!"
"'Over the hills and far away.'"
"Yes, we promise," cried Laura.