The following morning, however, Mabel was once more filled with her
usual self-esteem. Before going to sleep she had written a poem which
would have sounded more original if it had not been so very like several
well-known bits of verse she had often read. But to Mabel it seemed to
spring from her soul, and after reading it with tears of appreciation in
her eyes, she decided to let the _Times-Leader_ have the privilege of
printing it.
That was to be a strange, terrible and eventful Monday. The Day of
Overheard Conversations Mabel might have named it.
There was nothing to warn her of the day's disagreeable outcome. It was
one of Louisville's loveliest mornings, and there was enough left from
her Sunday dinner to give her a good breakfast. She was up early enough
to go over her lessons, and the apartment as she left it after Sunday's
violent cleaning had a look of righteous order and dustlessness. Also,
having read the poem a number of times, Mabel saw herself as the coming
poetess and preened herself accordingly.
One of the nicest girls in high school overtook Mabel and they walked to
school together. It was in the cloak-room that Mabel received her first
stab. The other stepped around the end of a cloak rack where she was met
by a third girl whom Mabel knew but slightly.
"Hello, Grace," she heard her say. "I stopped at your house but you had
gone."
"Yes, I walked to school with Mabel Brewster," replied Grace.
"Well, how you can stand her _I_ don't know," said the other girl with a
sniff. "Of all the stupid prigs she is the worst!"
"Oh, I wouldn't say _that_," said Grace gently.
"Well, _I_ would!" declared the other girl stubbornly. "She thinks she
is a wonder and knows everything, when in fact she is stupid and
conceited, and _no_ one likes her."
Grace was a Girl Scout and this talk shocked her. She shook her head. "I
don't think you are really right, Mary, and besides I don't think you
ought to speak so."
"It is true, just the same," said the girl stubbornly. "You know
yourself what her marks are--just as low as she can stand and pass. And
that way she has of smiling in such a superior way when anyone else
misses. And when _she_ misses she always has such a good excuse! I do
wonder why the teachers stand for it!"
A group of laughing and chattering girls came into the cloak-room and
Mabel seized the opportunity to slip into the hall and into the
class-room. Her face burned. Of course she told herself that the girl
was jealous, but Mabel was one of those persons who require the approval
and admiration of those about her in order to be happy.
She did such poor work that morning that she was obliged to stay after
school, although she knew that she ought to be at the office. She took
her books to a desk in the reference library where she was soon lost in
her work.
Presently she heard the low voices of a couple of teachers. They came
and seated themselves on the other side of a big blackboard just behind
Mabel.
"Oh, dear," sighed one of them, "this weather makes me long for
vacation."
"The last weeks of school are always a drag," answered the other. "And I
think the children feel it as much as we teachers. Even my brightest
pupils are letting down, and the marks have all fallen off."
"Even Mabel Brewster's marks?" queried Miss Jones with a sniff.
"What a goose that girl is!" said Miss Hannibal. "I don't know what does
ail her."
"An inflated ego," said Miss Jones.
"Novels and the New Woman Movement, I think," said Miss Hannibal. "It is
a perfect shame. I feel _so_ sorry for her mother. Here this girl, as
soon as she gets where she would naturally be of some service and
comfort to her mother, steps gaily out of all her responsibilities and
home duties and sets up a home of her own and goes around talking about
a career. _Career_, indeed! Why, the child has nothing to career _on_!
She did not inherit her mother's cleverness. If she was _my_ child, I
would send her to her room and keep her there on bread and water until
she came to her senses."
"So would I," said Miss Jones, "but it is really none of our business,
of course."
"Well, in a way it is," answered Miss Hannibal testily. "You see she is
doing very poor school work, and the Principal told me yesterday that he
would probably have to drop her from her class at the end of the school
year. And she _won't_ work, because she is so crazy over that silly
newspaper job that she simply neglects everything else. I just _don't_
see what ails her mother!"
"Does her mother know what poor work she is doing in school?" asked Miss
Jones.
"I don't know," said Miss Hannibal. "And I don't know what good it would
do if she did. A girl who thinks as little of her mother as Mabel does
would not care what she thought and would not listen to her advice. You
may be sure that she has cost her mother many bitter tears already. _I_
shan't worry about her. She spoils my thoughts. I have wanted to ask you
how the Morrisson boys are doing."
Miss Jones proceeded to enthuse over the Morrissons, but for once their
achievements did not interest Mabel at all. She was stunned and angry.
Yet as she sat huddled motionless in her corner, waiting for the
teachers to go, she soon recovered her balance, and reflected that they
too were probably jealous. She thought fondly of her position on the
newspaper and proudly dreamed her dream of the day when she would drift
into the magic circle of the Chief Editor's desk as his best reporter.
When Miss Hannibal and Miss Jones sauntered away, Mabel lost no time in
making good her own escape. She crossed over to Third Street where the
beautiful houses with their look of reserve and wealth always catered to
her love of luxury. Ahead were three girls in Girl Scout uniforms. She
recognized them at once: Rosanna Horton with her black docked hair,
Claire Maslin's long swinging red braid and Elise Hargrave's bobbing
curls. At first Mabel decided to walk slowly and avoid them but she
changed her mind and caught up with them.
"Do you still like the work you are doing?" asked Claire in her soft
drawl.
"I suppose so," said Mabel, and then as though forced into honesty, she
added, "The trouble is, I miss mother and Frank so that I don't seem to
do all the work I planned after all. It doesn't seem to be working out
right. Of course I shall go on with it, because I really owe it to
myself, but it isn't half the fun I thought it was going to be."
"I knew it," said Elise Hargrave gently. "It is a most dreadful thing to
be _torn_ from the home nest, and when one hops out by one's self and
waves that not so strong wing one must of a necessity wish to be back."
"Why don't you give up and go home?" said Rosanna. "You would be doing
the wise thing."
"No, I can't," said Mabel. "I suppose some day when I am famous, I will
perhaps take mother and Frank to live with me." She laughed and nodded
as she left the girls and hurried on to the _Times-Leader_ office.
"She means it; she actually _means_ it!" said Rosanna in a hushed voice.
"Of course she means it!" laughed Claire. "Isn't she funny? I never saw
a girl so conceited in my life. And really she _isn't_ bright at all.
She is just an ordinary girl with ordinary gifts. I think she is usually
quite stupid when she talks, but perhaps that is because she is so
awfully conceited that it bores you."
"I hate to hear you say such things about her," said the tender-hearted
Rosanna.
When Mabel reached the office she went directly to the big shabby
dictionary open on its stand, and looked up two words, _Inflated_, and
_ego_. The result was not pleasing! She sat before the book, glooming
over the unflattering result of her quest. So she had an "inflated
ego," had she? As she sat there, the office boy, seeing her close to his
letter-press and feeling himself capable of starting an acquaintance
with any girl his own size, pulled his purple and gold necktie into
place, seized a few sheets of paper, and sauntered up. Mabel continued
to stare at the open page of the dictionary.
"Kiddin' me," thought the boy to himself. He put the papers in place,
and commenced to whistle, one careful eye on Mabel. He whistled so far
off the key that she looked up. Instantly he grinned.
"Great job, this!" he said cheerfully, twisting the lever with a vast
show of effort. "I bet I work harder than any fellow in this office. I
bet I work harder than the Chief himself." Mabel continued to look at
him, but did not speak, and he continued, "Your name is Brewster; Mabel
Brewster, isn't it? I saw it on some of the papers Miss Gere and the
Chief threw in the waste basket. Say, what do you write such gobs of
stuff for? They don't use it. Aren't you on to that yet? My name's Jesse
Hart. Ain't that a peach of a name to give a fellow? Sounds like a
sure-nuff girl's name--Jesse. And Hart means a deer. Fellows used to
call me Jessie dear when I was a kid, but I knocked a couple of 'em out
and they quit it." He grinned at Mabel more cheerfully than before.
"Say, you don't wear yourself out talkin', do you, sis?"
Mabel flushed with anger. A couple of the reporters saw the two and
smiled playfully. "Jessie dear" winked back and Mabel flushed.
"I don't want to talk to you," she said distinctly. "I wish you would go
away."
"Suits me!" said Jesse. "Suits me all right, Miss High-Mighty." He gave
a short laugh with a close imitation of the manner of Dalton Duplex, his
movie star villain, and strutted off. Mabel noted that the rims of his
ears were very red. She dismissed him angrily from her thoughts and went
over to Miss Gere's desk.
The thin man pounded furiously on the next typewriter as usual, but he
looked up as she passed him. "A new crush, Miss Mabel?" he asked
mischievously.
Mabel was too angry to answer; she rudely flounced into the chair and
turned her burning face away.
Surely, she thought, there _never_ was another girl who had so many
things to annoy her. That silly boy! As though she would bother to look
at him. The two immaculate Morrissons flashed through her mind. Such
boys and their friends were well worth while. Then her mind turned to
the remark about the waste basket. She wondered if her work was being
thrown away. She knew that it was always rewritten, but she thought that
was the rule of the office. Mabel had a lot to think of.
The next morning Jesse proceeded to prove that he was a youth of grit
and determination. He wore another necktie, and when he saw Mabel
sitting at Miss Gere's desk he went over and grinned a cheerful
good-morning. Mabel returned it glumly with a stony stare that would
have quelled a less determined boy.
"Say, how about a picnic Sunday afternoon?" he asked without noting the
drop in temperature. "I thought we could ask your mother to chaperone
us, and get your brother Frank, and a couple of other fellows and have
supper at Jacobs' park. The chaps have a car and they know two dandy
girls."
"No," said Mabel decidedly. "It isn't possible for me to go. I am sure
mother wouldn't go, nor Frank." She spoke so sneeringly that Jesse
flushed.
"That's where you guess again, Miss Highty-Mighty!" he said. "I saw
Frank last night and he asked his mother, and she said _sure_, so I
guess I just get another girl for little me, and you needn't think I
don't know where to get off. I won't trouble you again, so don't you
worry." He stalked off, leaving Mabel furious to think that Frank and
her mother were going to go with that dreadful boy and his dreadful
friends. She could just _see_ the sort they must be: the girls like a
lot of the girls she knew in high school, giggly, silly, gum-chewing
girls, with untidy ruffed-up hair pulled over their ears, and boys like
Jesse. She sent a cautious glance after Jesse. After all there was
nothing really the matter with him, except she just didn't like his
neckties, and oh well, he wasn't a bit like the Morrissons, for
instance, who always looked as though they had come out of a bandbox,
and were so polite, and _such_ fun.
That night going home. Mabel met Frank. He seemed to be always hanging
around the corner nearest the _Times-Leader_ office when she came out at
night and always walked home with her.
"Jesse says you won't go on our picnic," Frank commenced at once.
"Why, of course not!" said Mabel. "I am perfectly surprised to think
that you and mother would mix with such people!"
"Such people?" repeated Frank. "_What_ people?"
"Why, the sort that Jesse boy must go around with. Of course I know how
mother is. She would chaperone anyone who wanted her, but I should think
_you_ would know enough to keep her out of it."
"Well, I don't see how you figure it," said Frank sulkily. "I am going
to take Helen Culver. She is all right, isn't she? And Jesse was going
to take you, and I bet you think _you_ are all right, and Rosanna Horton
and that Maslin girl are going with Jesse's cousins. Pretty good crowd,
I take it."
"Who are his cousins, for mercy sake?" demanded Mabel.
"Don't you know?" asked Frank. "The Morrissons, of course! You know
their father owns the _Times-Leader_."