“AND, SAVE HIS GOOD BROADSWORD, HE WEAPONS HAD NONE”
“Fine feathers” may not make “fine birds”; it is generally conceded
that true fineness lies somewhat deeper than the plumage, but fine
feathers have a marked effect on the minds of ordinary little birds
regarding the wearer of them; they have to be birds of considerable
experience or native refinement not to judge their fellow bipeds by
their plumage.
When the results of Nurse Hummel’s many shopping expeditions with Janet
came home, and “Miss Lochinvar” appeared in the tasteful and well-made
apparel they had chosen, Gladys treated her cousin with new, if not
lasting, respect, and even Sydney showed by several surreptitious
glances at her, which keen-eyed Gwen intercepted, that he was realizing
for the first time that his quiet Western cousin was worth looking at.
Gwen felt something of the pride of an architect in the building he has
created as she wheeled Jan around to view her from every point, and as
she saw that the others were newly inclined to admire the girl of whom
she was beginning to grow fond, and whom she would have loved dearly if
she had not been too self-centered just then to give any one very much
affection.
Janet was ashamed to discover that she shrank with no little terror
from the ordeal of her first day at school. She felt quite sure
that the accomplished young ladies, of whom she had seen examples
and who were to be substituted for the girlish girls who had been
her classmates in Crescendo, would know so much more than she that
they would shame her in learning, as they outstripped her in worldly
knowledge. She saw from the first instant that she entered the door
that this school was to differ from her previous experiences in more
than its pupils.
The Misses Larned, who were its principals--Gwen said that this did
not necessarily make them the girls’ _princibles_--did not teach;
they were at the head of the school by virtue of proprietorship,
and they were the final, awful tribunal before which transgressors
were haled, though, it must be confessed, without any more awful
consequences, usually, than a severe lecture. But the girls said “they
would rather die” than go up before the dignified sisters, “who were
so solemn they took the starch out of a body before they opened their
lips.” The same irreverent pupils called the school “the Hydra,”
because it had two of that monster’s many heads. No one would ever
know--none but the boldest dared speculate--what was the extent of
the Misses Larned’s own learning. They walked into the class-rooms at
intervals, and inquired of the presiding teachers as to the progress
of the day’s work with such Minerva-like air that one felt convinced
that the wisdom of the ancients and moderns sat enthroned behind their
sapient eyeglasses.
They were wise in the selection of their teachers. “The Hydra” was
really a very good school in that respect, and the girl who desired
knowledge could obtain it there, and an excellent preparation for
college beyond. But she who had not this desire could slip through
with marvelously little instruction sticking to her brain, for it was
a school frequented chiefly by the children of wealthy and fashionable
people, and vigorous discipline would have been resented by the
majority of the parents.
The school occupied an entire house on a cross-street, near the Park,
and Janet passed under its portals with trepidation on her first
morning. Gwen sustained her; Gladys had preceded them, and bore herself
with a little air of aloofness, in spite of Jan’s better appearance,
as if to provide herself against deeper disgrace than was absolutely
necessary, in case “Miss Lochinvar” fulfilled her apprehensions.
It was not an easy matter to grade the new pupil. In arithmetic,
history, geography, spelling, and in general information her teachers
soon discovered that she far surpassed their old pupils, but she
was guiltless of French, though, on the other hand, she could speak
German--a point no girl in school ever aspired to reach. The extent of
the universal ambition in regard to that tongue was to avoid so many
mistakes in the gender and cases of nouns as should lead to a serious
lowering of averages in marking percentage at the end of the year. On
the whole, Janet passed her entrance examination with honor, and was
placed in the class with Gwen for everything but French, which she “had
to begin with the babies,” as Gladys disdainfully remarked. She was
uncertain whether to be relieved or annoyed that “Miss Lochinvar” had
been ranked with the best scholars, though Gladys’s ambition did not
lead studyward.
A sudden rain prevented the customary brief walk in the Park at recess,
and the girls gathered in the large room on the upper floor, formed
by joining two rooms together, which was their refuge under such
circumstances.
Gwen honestly meant to do her duty by Jan during this first recess,
when she was to meet her future mates, but she began to talk to Azucena
North, and quite forgot her cousin. Cena North was the daughter of a
lady who had been steeped in admiration for Verdi and Trovatore when
Cena was born; consequently she had named her baby after the gipsy
in that opera, and Cena pathetically said that “if she _must_
be named out of Trovatore she didn’t see why she couldn’t have been
called Leonora.” Gwen didn’t see either; she privately pitied her
friend deeply for being burdened with such a name as Azucena. But there
were compensations, as there are in most misfortunes. Cena was one of
the best scholars at the Misses Larned’s, and her father was Mr. North,
the head of the great publishing house of North & Co., which Gwen felt
accounted for Cena’s thoroughness, as well as partly made up for her
name. Cena and Gwen were deep in a plan to lay before Mr. North Gwen’s
novel--when it should be finished, of course--without telling him that
it was the work of Cena’s classmate, a girl of fifteen. After he had
accepted it, and he and his house had exhausted themselves in praise of
its many brilliant qualities, Cena was to say demurely that she knew
the author, and would bring her to her father’s office. And Gwen was
to go with her--wearing her most simple and girlish gown, to increase
the dramatic effect--down to the great establishment of North & Co.,
and Cena was to say, “Behold the new Charlotte Brontë!” or something
to that effect. It is no wonder with such a project in hand that Jan
slipped from Gwen’s mind when she and Cena collided in the “campus,”
as they classically called the playroom. They straightway became
oblivious to all but the discussion of ways and means for fulfilling
the great plan, which really lacked but the novel to be successful.
Janet wandered on alone, feeling very shy and strange, among the
chattering crowd eating cake and candy instead of better luncheons, and
all eying her curiously as she passed.
She was bearing down toward the younger children--her refuge here, as
at her uncle’s--when the Hammonds and Flossie Gilsey stopped her.
“Have you forgotten us already, Miss Howe?” called Daisy Hammond.
“No, indeed,” responded Janet, trying to speak easily and cordially.
“But please don’t say Miss Howe. It seems so funny among girls like us;
my name is Janet.”
“Thanks; it is awfully good of you to let us be intimate right away,
and waive all ceremony. Generally we have to wait to use first names,”
said Daisy, with an inflection that told Jan, unused as she was to
polite disagreeables, that the speech was not meant at its face value.
“I heard that your cousin Syd--isn’t he too handsome?--had given you
such a nice, funny nickname.”
“Yes; Miss Lochinvar. That’s because I ‘came out of the West,’ you
see,” said Janet, instinctively seizing her foe by the horns, so to
speak. “It was bright of him, but only too flattering. I don’t expect
to make a clean sweep of everything, like Young Lochinvar.” But as she
laughed Jan’s heart sank. She was not used to this sort of bad temper,
and she hated herself for meeting it while she felt forced to do so;
she understood “getting mad,” but not petty spite. And all the while
she was saying to herself, “Gladys told them; Gladys has been making
game of me.”
But she had crippled her adversary; Daisy did not know how to meet this
view of the case, and she glanced slyly at Gladys, who shrugged her
shoulders.
“How well you speak German, Miss--Janet!” said Flossie Gilsey. “Isn’t
it queer you know it so well, and don’t know French?”
“Not at all queer,” said Janet simply. “I hadn’t much chance to learn
French, but there are lots of Germans in Crescendo. Besides, I like it
better than French, I’m certain. But the real reason why I know it is
because I worked hard to learn it. I meant to be able to speak it; I
wanted to be fit to help papa in his office.”
A short silence fell on the little group at this shocking remark,
during which Gladys turned a succession of alarming colors, and longed
to go into hysterics or choke her cousin--probably both in rapid
sequence. Janet Howe, her father’s sister’s child, staying at her house
that winter, and brought by her and Gwen to this exclusive school, to
announce--shamelessly, brazenly, to announce--that her ambition was to
be a clerk in her father’s office, and that for this purpose she had
learned German!
Poor Gladys really was to be pitied at that moment, for though she was
a little goose to feel so, she really did feel that a disgrace had
fallen upon her which death could hardly wipe out. And then the silence
was broken by a little titter from the three girls, and Ida Hammond
said sarcastically, “How nice!”
Janet looked from Gladys’s party-colored countenance to the amusement
gleaming in the eyes of her friends, and saw that something was wrong,
but what it could be she had not the faintest idea. And before anything
worse could happen a voice behind her said: “Yes, isn’t that nice?
Isn’t it lovely? Please introduce me to your cousin, Gladys.”
Janet turned and saw a girl who was in the class with her and Gwen. She
was tall, not pretty, but distinguished looking, with that air of good
breeding which is so definite, yet so indefinable--the look of one who
for many generations had inherited good principles and right standards
of living and taste.
“My cousin, Janet Howe, Miss Dorothy Schuyler,” murmured Gladys.
Dorothy put out her hand. “I am so glad to have you here, Janet,” she
said. “I was so much interested in what you were saying. There aren’t
many girls with enough affection for their fathers to study that they
may help them, and few clever enough to do it, even if they do want to.
Won’t you tell me about it?”
There was a determined look in the brown eyes that smiled kindly, in
spite of it, on Jan, and she knew, though she did not know why, that
she was being championed.
“There isn’t very much to tell,” she said slowly, responding in a
puzzled way to the other’s cordiality. “My father is in the real-estate
business out in the little place I came from--Crescendo. He has to deal
a good deal with Germans, and he hasn’t as big a business as he would
have in such a growing town if he weren’t working on a patent he wants
to bring out. So he needs me--or I liked to think he did--to help him,
and he needs some one to speak German, so I tried to combine the two.
Like the man in Pickwick who wrote about Chinese metaphysics,” added
Jan, with a sudden laugh, and the dimples that made her so irresistibly
pretty coming in her cheeks.
Dorothy had a sense of humor, too, and she liked Dickens. She laughed,
and put an arm affectionately over the stranger’s shoulder. “I think it
is beautiful to find a girl of our age trying to do something loving
and sensible like that,” she said heartily. “I hope you can teach me
to be brave and unselfish. Wouldn’t you like to come over to that deep
window-seat and see the view--it is fine from there--and tell me more
about Crescendo? If Gladys can lend you to me a while?” she added
interrogatively.
Gladys seemed to think that she could, and the two walked away,
followed by glances by no means pleasant from the group they had left.
In that first encounter were sown the seeds of future enmity, for the
Hammonds and Flossie disliked Janet as much as they would naturally
dislike one to whom they had been unkind, and who had thus been the
means of making them appear badly in the eyes of Dorothy Schuyler.
When Gwen awakened from her day-dream to a consciousness of her neglect
of Janet, she stared in amazement at the sight of her cousin chattering
volubly to Dorothy, whose cheeks were red from laughing. Gwen drew a
sigh of relief; she saw that Jan was happy, and she knew Dorothy was so
innately well-bred that she would never misunderstand any confidences
Jan chose to make, as would the other sort of girls.
Walking home at two o’clock, Janet told Gwen the story of her
adventures at recess--“recreation hour,” she found that she must learn
to call it.
Gwen listened with frowns and smiles. “You will have to learn not to
tell that gang”--it is a melancholy fact that the budding author did
say “gang”--“anything about home, and being poor. They only draw you
out for pure meanness, and they don’t know anything but just money.
But wasn’t it fine of Dorothy Schuyler to squelch them like that?
Dolly Schuyler is the most a real lady of any girl in that school. She
doesn’t put on airs--of course not, if she is a lady--but she makes all
the girls feel that what she says and does is the very last, best thing
to be said or done. And she leads us all; not because she wants to, but
because she is what she is--all the girls look up to her. She wouldn’t
stoop to do an underhanded, sneaky, nor a mean thing--not if she got a
crown by doing it. She never says nasty things, but when she looks at
you--if you’ve been contemptible in any way--you can’t help curling up.
I’ve always been very proud that Dorothy seems to like me; she doesn’t
like every one. The Hammonds, and that crowd, pretend not to care for
what she thinks, because they’re richer than she is, but she is the
very concentrated extract of blue blood, and they do care a lot. If
there is any aristocracy in America, it’s people like Dorothy’s family.”
“But there isn’t; papa says it is sheer nonsense to talk about
aristocracy in a republic,” said Jan, her independence touched.
“All right; I don’t say it isn’t, so don’t wave the Stars and
Stripes at me,” said Gwen. “But if there is aristocracy, it must be
those people descended from the signers of the Declaration, and the
Revolutionary fighters, and the colonists, and all those. Why, you’re
descended from them yourself, so you needn’t fire up, Janet Howe.”
“I don’t care; in the West we don’t fuss about trifles. Tell me about
Dorothy,” said Janet.
“There isn’t much more to tell, and what there is you’ll find out for
yourself. But it was a big thing for Dorothy to champion you. You’ll
see that it will make a difference. Both ways,” added Gwen honestly,
“for it will make the Hammonds and Floss Gilsey hate you. I wish we
could put our heads together to get Gladys away from those girls. I
should think she’d know better than to like them, and they’re certain
sure to spoil her, if it keeps up.”
“I’m afraid if I put my head into it she would go with them all the
more,” said Jan, with a hurt little laugh. “Gladys can’t bear me, Gwen.”
“Gladys is a perfect goose; if she likes such girls as the Hammonds she
couldn’t be expected to like you. But just you wait. She’ll come round.
Those girls are sure to do something mean to her some day--they’re
so jealous of everybody, and I’m proud to say they just hate me. And
as to you, nobody could help liking you sooner or later, Jan. You’re
a regular dear!” and Gwen kissed her cousin on the front steps,
moved with compunction for the neglect which had exposed her to her
unpleasant experience at noon, admiration of the generosity which did
not resent it, and pride in the little Lochinvar out of the West whom
Dorothy Schuyler had sealed with her approval.