While eating a not too satisfactory supper on the corner of the kitchen
table, Mabel was blissfully unaware of the fact that her venture into
the world was being discussed at two dinner tables at least.
Rosanna, filled with misgivings, had repeated all that Mabel had said
and she was distressed to see that Uncle Bob regarded it as a good joke,
while his wife, the little Scout Captain, was convinced that the outcome
would be exactly what she desired. And when Rosanna asked what that was,
she laughed and said, "Wait and see."
Claire Maslin, telling her father about it, was met with shouts of
laughter.
"The girl is crazy!" he merely said. "That fat little Brewster girl that
ate so much candy here the other day? She will be sick of her bargain
soon."
"I would like it myself," said Claire sullenly. "She can do exactly as
she pleases. I wish _I_ could."
"My poor little girl," said Colonel Maslin, "that is all in the world
that ails you! I can run a regiment, but I don't seem able to run one
girl. I wish you would try to see, my dear, that you are a lucky, very
lucky young person, and act accordingly."
"_Lucky?_" said Claire bitterly. "You call _me_ lucky? Oh, it is not
your fault, daddy! I am as sorry for you as I am for myself, but it is
so funny to hear you use that word."
"Well, I call _myself_ lucky," said Colonel Maslin, staring at the
flowers that decorated the table.
"Do you? Why?" demanded Claire, her lip curling. She too stared at the
flowers. She would not look at her father.
"I have your dear mother and I have you," he said after a long pause.
"I _am_ a comfort to you, I am sure," she said in low, tense tone, "and
mother must be a comfort too. You would be glad if we both--"
"Stop!" said Colonel Maslin sharply. "You remember you are never to
speak unkindly of your poor mother. You are wrong, all wrong, and I
would give my right hand if I could set you right, if I could make you
understand what is honestly in my heart. When you are older you will
perhaps understand."
"When I am older!" cried Claire. "When I am older--" She sat staring at
her father, rigid and pale, then suddenly all her self-control deserted
her. She leaned forward, burst into a storm of sobs, and pounded
furiously on the table. Her voice tore out in a shrill scream. "When I
am older--_you_ know what I will be then!" she panted, and her sobs rose
higher.
With a muttered exclamation Colonel Maslin rose from the table, dashed
to his daughter's side, lifted her in his arms, and as though she was
still a little child he carried her to her room and laid her struggling
and writhing, on her bed. Her maid entered hurriedly.
"Take care of her," he begged, and left the room.
An hour later he sat in little Mrs. Horton's own sitting-room and talked
while she watched him with eyes made soft by unshed tears of sympathy.
"It is the first time I have asked for help," he said brokenly after
awhile, and she sighed to see the gallant soldier bowed by grief. "But I
have pinned my hope on the Girl Scouts, and now that I know you, on you.
Save my little girl for me, dear lady, save her for her mother's sake! I
need Claire so! And her coldness, her wild fits of temper, and her
gloomy black moods are so unlike the sunny little tot she used to be
that there are times when it seems as though I could never bear it. Is
it always to be so, Mrs. Horton?"
"No!" cried the tiny Captain in quite a fierce voice. "_No indeed!_
Something shall be done to help you. Claire has just made a wrong start,
and her terrible sorrow, instead of making her more loving and more
tender, has made her cold and hard. Don't worry, Colonel Maslin.
Something shall be done."
Colonel Maslin shook his head. "I have about given up hope," he said
sadly. "These fits of excitement are growing on her. At first I thought
that they were plain temper, but it is not possible. Why, Claire is in
her teens, and her whole life has been a lesson in self-control! Our
Chinaman is a living sermon on it. And she has been guarded against
anything nerve racking or exciting or disagreeable."
"Let me think it over for a little," said Mrs. Horton, wrinkling her
smooth brow. "I will find some way of reaching the poor child, I am
sure. It may take a little time. Urge her to come to the Girl Scout
meetings and I will watch her."
"You are more than good," and the Colonel bowed over the tiny hand that
had met his in a firm, comforting grip.
She shook her head and said, "The Scouts themselves, one of them or all,
will do it, I feel positive. That is one thing the Order is for, you
know; to help one another."
"I trust you," said Colonel Maslin.
"Treat her as though nothing has happened this evening," suggested Mrs.
Horton.
"I shall not see her again tonight. By the time I reach home (I shall
have to drive up to Camp from here) she will be asleep. In the morning
nothing will be said. Claire will simply be a little more sullen and
aloof."
"Be of good cheer," smiled the little Captain, and Colonel Maslin went
on his lonely and sorrowful way wondering if the little lady could
really find a way to help his poor child.
In her own soft, luxurious bed, Claire was lying spent and shaken by
the storm she had just passed through. She tried to recall the talk at
the dinner table, but in her dazed condition she could not remember
anything that should have started such a dreadful scene. As she recalled
her own actions, the cries and sobs, the tears and wild words, she
shuddered. Each time she gave way like that seemed to be worse than the
last. And Claire was proud. It shamed her to have her own father see her
acting so, yet some dreadful Something within her seemed to make her
explode in that way once in awhile. And the times were growing closer
and closer. No matter what happened, even the greatest pleasures that
her father planned for her filled her with a sort of hard anger. She
hated everything and everybody. All she wanted was to be let alone, and
then she read book after book until she was dull and dizzy. Then came
long, sleepy rides in the limousine over smooth, uneventful roads.
When at length her maid brought her a glass of hot milk, she did not
know that there was a sleeping powder in it, but sleep came quickly and
mercifully and she did not waken until late the following morning.
A note was on the chair by her bedside, just the usual affectionate
greeting from her father, a pretty little custom of his whenever he was
obliged to leave before she was awake. No matter how hurried, he always
took time to write a line or two before he left. Any other girl would
have been so proud and pleased with his unfailing tenderness and
attention, but Claire wrapped herself round with coldness and accepted
all he did for her without even the thanks she would have offered to a
stranger.
She even hesitated to read the short, loving note. It bored her, she
told herself. But she opened it idly and skimmed the words that told her
that she must spend an easy day because he had planned a little surprise
for Rosanna and Mabel and herself. Claire lifted her eyebrows. She had
forgotten to tell her father that Mabel bored her to death. Rosanna was
not quite so bad; in fact, she really liked the pretty, dark-eyed girl
who seemed so warm-hearted and so sincere. Then with scarcely a thought
of curiosity as to the nature of the surprise, she touched the bell that
summoned the maid with her breakfast, and idly picking up a copy of the
Handbook for Girl Scouts, commenced to read.
"A Girl Scout is loyal," she read, "to the President, to her country,
and to her officers; to her father, to her mother--"
Claire stopped there, at least something stopped her. She read the words
repeatedly, "Loyal to her father." What was loyalty anyway? She read on:
"She remains true to them through thick and thin. In the face of the
greatest difficulties and calamities, her loyalty must remain
untarnished."
Claire frowned. _She_ was faced with terrific difficulties, while a
frightful calamity, like a black cloud, darkened all her future. What
did loyalty to her father mean in her case? She read on: "A Girl Scout
is cheerful under all circumstances." Claire thought of her wild ravings
the night before, and frowned. She skipped down the page to a short
paragraph that her eyes seemed unable to avoid.
"Kipling in _Kim_ says that there are two kinds of women,--one kind that
builds men up, and the other that pulls men down; and there is no doubt
as to where a Girl Scout should stand."
Now Claire in her most selfish moods could not blind herself to the fact
that her violent scenes were always followed by days of deep
mournfulness on the part of her father. Lines appeared in his handsome
face and his hair seemed to grow grayer. Was she pulling her father
down? She refused to answer the question, and flirted the pages over to
escape that part. She scanned the qualifications for the three grades of
Girl Scouts. She was only a Second-Class Scout, and she knew that she
was a poor one at that. She had been too indolent to try for the First
Class. She read the necessary qualifications over.
She could not set a table for any meal, and she could not sew. She had
never tried to walk a mile in twenty minutes, and as for dressing or
bathing a child, Claire wondered where she could borrow one to try on.
She could not pass the First Aid or the International alphabet exam.
She could not train a Tenderfoot; at least it was too much trouble, and
while she could name ten trees, ten wild flowers, ten wild animals and
ten wild birds, they were all Chinese. She could swim; oh, _how_ she
could swim! A thrill of joy shook her as she thought of past hours spent
in soft tropic waters. As for fifty cents in bank earned by herself,
that was so funny that Claire laughed aloud. She could not imagine
earning _five_ cents, let alone fifty.
That brought her thoughts around to Mabel Brewster, and Claire saw her
in a new light.
There was a lucky girl even if she _was_ silly and conceited. She
believed in herself and had gone off alone to fight the world, with all
her banners flying. Yet there was that loyalty law cropping up again.
What if Mabel _could_ write as splendidly as she said, wasn't her place
really at home with her mother and brother? Claire was sure the
Brewsters were not rich, and in that case Mrs. Brewster certainly needed
help. Loyalty; always loyalty! A new and disturbing thought flashed over
Claire. Perhaps she owed her own mother some loyalty too, even though
she was away in a sanitarium. Wasn't it loyalty to her to keep her
troubled, lonely and unhappy father "built up" so far as it lay in her
power?
Claire closed the little offending blue book and flung it across the
room and when her maid entered she was lying petulantly with her head on
her arm, her glorious red hair streaming over her like a glittering
veil.
The little book, so helpful and so uplifting, had not helped Claire at
all. But that was because in her heart she did not want to be helped.
She had lived for herself so long in her queer, cold, brooding fashion
that the thought of anything different actually hurt her just as it
hurts to stand on one's foot when it is asleep. Claire had held one
position of thought for so long that it made her hurt and sting and
prickle even to think of moving. So she buried her face in her arm and
hid under her shining red hair and studied her queer jade ring and tried
to forget the feeling that she might be in the wrong.
Mabel Brewster's awakening was even more disagreeable, although she
really deserved it less. She was not accustomed to pickles and cold ham
and cheese for supper, as Mrs. Brewster was a careful mother. Also
Mabel, to celebrate her great step, had found a light novel, and
snapping on a perfectly fascinating reading light at the head of her
bed, had proceeded to read until after one o'clock. Then she dreamed!
She dreamed that she tried to get out of bed and couldn't because there
was a sour green pickle as large as a street car right in the way, and
the City Editor sat on top and looked at her from under his green shade
and told her that the only way that she could get out was by eating her
way through the pickle. So she commenced, while all the society ladies
in Louisville looked on and said, "Dear me, isn't it wonderful what a
girl can accomplish if she will only leave home, and _live for
herself_?" And the pickle was so sour that it made Mabel shudder with
cold and she shuddered herself awake, to find all the bed-clothes on the
floor. She got up and made the bed over, and found it was only three
o'clock, although she had been hours and hours trying to eat that
frightful pickle. The bed was too soft or too hard or something, and she
could not get to sleep again for a long while. She was glad to waken
again and find that it was morning. Unfortunately, after all the
adventures of the night Mabel had over-slept and was obliged to start
off to school without breakfast and with her hair ribbon badly tied.
Also there was no time to put the apartment in order, and Mabel was
rather shocked to find how badly one person could tumble things up.
She half hoped her mother would run around during the morning and put
things in shape, but when she unlocked her door at one o'clock, when
school was over for the day, she found her bed still unmade, her clothes
tumbling out of the suitcase, and the soiled dishes on the kitchen
table.
She had cold boiled ham for luncheon, and but little of that because
just as she commenced to eat, a telephone call interrupted her. It was
Miss Gere asking how soon she would be down with her items and to take
up some other work. The items were not written up, and Mabel had to
give up her luncheon time to writing them. There was no time to tidy up,
and Mabel hurried down town hoping now with all her heart and soul that
her mother would not get time to use the duplicate key that Mabel had
insisted on her taking. She felt her cheeks burn as she thought of her
mother seeing the mess and cleaning it up in her kind way.
Mabel had no cause to worry. When her mother dropped in about four
o'clock she merely looked the place over, then sat down and laughed in
the strangest manner. Then she carefully went out without disturbing
anything, and took a covered basket into the apartment below where she
talked for awhile with Mabel's grandmother, who laughed too; laughed
hard and long, and who then said mysteriously, "Well, thank you for the
rolls, my dear! I think they will do me more good than they would Mabel.
And I think I shall not be 'at home' for the next week or so."
Mabel did not get home until six o'clock. She had forgotten to stop at
the market, so she had only shredded wheat and milk and pickle for
supper. She ate shredded wheat and milk. It was a modern apartment with
thin walls. Somebody was having chops and baked apples for supper, and a
few minutes later there was a smell of fried chicken. Mabel helped
herself to another shredded wheat biscuit.