SENTIMENTAL SALLY
Sally MacLean entered Barbara’s room almost shyly on the following
Saturday evening. She was pleased because Betsy had invited her to
attend The Adventure Club’s first gathering, but remembering her
humiliation of the year before, she was not sure how she would be
received.
But the old pupils acted just as though nothing had ever happened and
Virginia welcomed Sally, whom she had not chanced to meet since her
arrival, in her friendliest manner.
“Shall we begin the review at once?” the older girl asked. “Oh, dear me,
no!” Betsy protested. “If this is going to be a club, let’s elect
officers and frame rules, if that’s what it’s called, and choose a motto
an’ everything.”
“I choose to be committee on refreshments,” Babs sang out.
“I choose to be club detective,” Betsy put in.
“I vote for Virginia for president,” Margaret said.
“Second it! Third it! Fourth it!” came a succession of merry voices.
“Winona you may be secretary and I’ll be treasurer if there is to be
anything to treasure.” Margaret happened to glance at the slight girl
who sat somewhat in the shadow.
“Draw your chair into the firelight, Sallykins,” she called pleasantly.
“How can you expect to be elected to an office if you’re out of sight.”
The youngest member drew her chair forward, and when the flood of light
from the student lamp fell upon her doll pretty face and her long yellow
curls that hung to her waist, Virginia, for the first time, had a real
opportunity to observe her.
“Poor girl!” she thought. “She has been too much petted and pampered by
a rich mother, I guess, to develop any real character. How pretty she
would be, with those dark blue eyes and long curling lashes, if her face
wasn’t so weak. Perhaps the club will be able to help her.”
Virginia’s meditations were interrupted by Margaret, who was asking,
“Every one of us is holding an office except Sally. What can she be?”
“I choose her for my assistant,” Virg said.
“Whizzle! What an honor! Sal, think of that for dizzy soaring. Up from
the common ranks all in a jiff to vice president.”
Sally flushed, looking prettier than before. “I never do know, Betsy,”
she said feebly, “whether you’re making fun or not.”
Margaret intervened. “Just decide that she always is,” she suggested. “I
never knew Betsy Clossen to be solemn.”
“Then Mistress Megsy, you’re going to have a brand new experience, for I
am going to be solemn five minutes by the clock.” Turning to Virginia
she asked, her expression as big-eyed and serious as she could make it,
“Madame President, we have two objects for this club, one to study and
one to eat. We have each been appointed to an office of honor. It merely
remains now for us to select a fitting motto.”
Virginia smiled and the other girls laughed, but Betsy looked
reproachfully from one to the other and they could not make her change
her solemn expression. “Everybody think a moment,” Virg suggested, but
almost at once Babs sprang up and clapped her hands. “I know where there
are steens and steens of mottos, any one of them would do.”
“Where?” Megsy inquired.
“On my motto calendar. I’ll tell you what, Virg. You select a date and
I’ll read the motto that’s under it.”
“Well, then, January fifteenth, which is today.”
Barbara skipped to her bird’s-eye maple writing desk and read from the
small pad calendar.
“Do the work that’s nearest,
Though it’s dull at whiles.
Helping when you meet them,
Lame dogs over stiles.”
Virginia smiled. “That’s excellent,” she said, “and let’s begin to put
it into effect. To do the work that’s nearest, Babs, please hand me that
pile of books yonder and I’ll begin the weekly review.”
“Ooh!” Betsy sank far down in her chair and looked so despondent that
the others laughed. “Let’s get this part over as quickly as ever we
can,” Barbara begged. “I’m almost famished for fudge.”
The review that evening proved two things to the president of the club.
One was that Barbara had really studied during the week that had just
ended and her pretty flushed face and eager way of answering showed that
at last she was really interested in learning.
But when Sally was asked to repeat William Cullen Bryant’s
“Thanatopsis,” the poem that all of the girls in Miss Torrence classes
were required to memorize soon or late, that doll-like little maid
became so confused that Virginia quickly realized that she had no
understanding of what the lines meant.
“Girls,” Virginia said, looking at the others rather than at the
embarrassed newcomer, “there is only one real way to learn poetry, I
think, and that is to first picture what it means. When we thoroughly
understand the sentiment, we can far more easily memorize the words of
the poem.” Then very kindly, “Sally, what picture came to you when you
recited the lines
“To him who in the love of nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language; for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness and a smile
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides
Into his darker musings with a mild
And healing sympathy that steals away
Their sharpness ere he is aware.”
There was an almost startled expression in the baby-blue eyes that
turned toward the speaker. “Why, I don’t believe I saw any picture. I
was just trying to remember how the words came.”
Margaret spoke. “Virginia,” she said, “those lines always mean one thing
to me. When father died, I felt as though I could not stay in the house.
The very walls oppressed me and so I ran away to a little woods that we
owned and where father and I had often walked after mother left us. I
had been sobbing for hours in my room and it was late afternoon when I
reached the wood. I threw myself down on the moss near a little fern
edged stream and though I cried at first, the gentle murmur of those
great old trees seemed to soothe me and brought a peace and somehow I
felt, that, though I could not see him, my dear father was still with
me. Ever since then I have loved Thanatopsis and have better understood
its meaning.”
“Too, it is true that nature companions our happier moods with gladness
and song,” Virginia said. “Many a time when I have felt joyous and have
galloped on Comrade across the shining desert; the shout of the wind;
the frolicking of the rabbits; the very mountain peaks seemed to be
rejoicing with me. Nature truly is a wonderful companion.”
Sally was listening with intelligent interest. “Oh, I believe I could
recite it now, Virginia. I think I understand better what it means.”
And she did, no longer afraid.
That ended the review for the evening and Betsy leaped up to pass the
fudge and this time she generously turned the plate so that Babs would
be obliged to take the piece that was nuttiest, it being nearest her.
That night when Virginia and Winona had returned to their room, they
stood for a few moments, after the lights had been put out, to gaze
toward the ocean, over which hung one burning star that was much larger
than any of the others.
Its path of quivering gold led toward the shore. They had opened the
window and they could hear the murmurous plash of the waves on the sand,
for the tide was out, and the surf was not crashing against the cliffs.
These two, who so loved and understood nature, were quiet for a time.
Then Winona spoke. “Virg,” she said, “I have felt a strange stirring
within of late. It isn’t discontent, but a soul-voice is urging me to do
something really worthwhile.”
The light had been turned on again and the girls were preparing for bed.
“What are you planning to do, Winona, that will be more worthwhile?”
Virginia was sure that her Indian friend had not spoken without giving
the matter long and earnest contemplation.
“I do not feel that this school is just the place that I should be.”
Then she hastily continued when she saw an expression of concern in the
face of her dearly loved companion, “I’m not unhappy here, white Lily,
but I seem to know that something else is waiting for me to do. I shall
be ready when it comes.”
They said no more that night as the last “lights-out” bell was ringing
and after that, silence in the rooms was the rule.
Virginia lay awake a long time watching the star that hung like a
lantern in the bit of dark blue of the sky that was framed in her
window. Her thoughts were of Winona. How calm and strong she was. She
would indeed be ready when the call came to do the worthwhile thing,
whatever sacrifice might be required of her.