REINFORCEMENTS
THE initiation of Babbie Hildreth, which had to be over in time for the
participants to meet Eleanor Watson’s train, was the feature of the
next B. C. A. tea-drinking, held two days ahead of time in honor of the
double reinforcement to the ranks of 19--.
“I hope you’re all satisfied. I’ve come up here out of pure curiosity
about this old cult,” announced Babbie, when they were settled cozily
in Flying Hoof’s stall. “You all wrote the most maddening letters--it
was arranged, I know, what each one should say, so that I’d keep
getting crazier and crazier to be let into the secret.”
“Didn’t you rather want to see your elegant new tea-shop?” demanded
Rachel innocently.
“Ye-es”--Babbie flushed,--“of course I did. It’s lovely, isn’t it? Nora
must appreciate her splendid kitchen----”
“Why, you haven’t seen the kitchen yet, Babbie,” cried Helen Adams
reproachfully. “I’ve been with you every minute since you came.”
“Well, I can guess what it’s like, can’t I?” Babbie defended herself.
“Babbie Hildreth,” demanded Madeline, sternly, “when were you up here
last?”
“In August,” Babbie admitted sulkily, “if you must know. My Aunt
Belinda brought me up in her car.” She brightened in spite of herself.
“Aunt Belinda is so lovely and romantic. She thinks it’s all right for
me to come up and see Robert, since he can’t come very often to see me.
Mother doesn’t, exactly. But she was terribly amused at this B. C. A.
cult. She told me to run along and satisfy my ‘satiable curiosity’ if I
wanted to. I--oh, excuse me one minute, please!”
Having thoughtfully secured a seat at the end of the stall, Babbie
had been the first to observe a dark object in the act of vaulting
the Tally-ho’s back fence. She intercepted the dark object on the
front walk, and accompanied it forthwith to Paradise, where the tea
and marmalade that you hunger for and the curiosity that you feel
about mysterious “cults” may both, under favorable circumstances, be
forgotten as utterly as if they had never been.
So the B. C. A.’s amused themselves by inventing some stunning
“features” for a formal initiation ceremony to be held later for
Eleanor and Babbie together, ate Babbie’s share of the muffins and
jam, congratulated themselves on the way they had “set Betty up in
business,” as Mary Brooks modestly put it, and waited so long for their
beloved “Object” to appear--it was an office-hours afternoon, and Betty
had refused to desert her post even for a B. C. A. tea-drinking--that
they had to run all the way to the station, only to discover, on
arriving there breathless and disheveled, that the train was an hour
late.
“So we might just as well have preserved the dignity of the Harding
faculty and wives,” sighed Mary, straightening her new fall hat. “It’s
all your fault, Betty Wales. You said you’d come in time to go to the
train, and we kept thinking you’d arrive upon the scene every single
minute. And the longer we waited the more we ate, and then the harder
it was to run.”
“Some one came in to see me just at the last minute,” Betty explained.
“I couldn’t say that I had an engagement when it was just larks.”
Betty let the cult and its friends get all the orders they would for
skirt braids and gym suits, and all possible data about needy girls;
but she never confided in them, in return--a conservative attitude
which Madeline considered “distinctly snippy.”
“I just know you’re concealing all sorts of stunning short stories
about your person,” she declared. “Now Bob tells me lovely things about
her fresh-air kids. She isn’t such a clam.”
But Betty was equally impervious to being called a clam and to
fulfilling her obligations toward Madeline’s Literary Career. The humor
and the pathos that came into the secretary’s office she regarded as
state secrets, to be never so much as hinted at, even to her dearest
friends.
“But it sometimes seems as if I should just burst with it all,” she
told Jim Watson, who poked his head in her door nearly every day, and
rapidly withdrew it again if any one else was with her. “It isn’t only
the girls who come on regular business that are so queer, but the ones
that come just for advice. Eugenia Ford has the strangest ideas about
my being able to straighten things out, and she’s told her crowd, and
they’ve told their friends. Every day some girl walks in and says,
‘Are you the one who will answer questions?’ Then I say who I am, and
suggest that maybe she wants her class officer. But she says no, she
means me; and maybe she’s a freshman who has decided that she can’t
live another day without her collie dog, and maybe she’s a senior, who
has cut too much and is frightened silly about being sent home, and
maybe she’s a pretty, muddle-headed little sophomore who’s in love
with a Winsted man and doesn’t dare tell her father and mother, and
is thinking of eloping. Oh, Jim, these are just possible cases, you
understand, not real ones. But you mustn’t ever breathe a word of what
I’ve said.”
“I’m as silent as a tomb,” Jim would assure her gravely each time that
something too nearly “real” slipped out.
“Well, you’re the only one I ever do burst out to,” Betty assured
him, “except when I decide that it’s only right to ask Miss Ferris or
Prexy or some responsible person like them for advice. I don’t know
why I should talk so much more about it to you, except that you don’t
know any of the girls and never will, whereas Madeline would be sure
to write up anything funny that she heard, and Rachel and Christy and
Helen are on the faculty and the girls who come to see me might be in
their classes, and if Emily Davis knew she’d want terribly to tell the
rest.”
“All girls are leaky,” Jim would announce sententiously at this point
in the argument. “Besides, I’ve been a secretary myself. My job was
exactly the same as yours in the matter of holding confidential
information. Now when are you coming over to see about that linen
closet?”
It was really not at all surprising, considering how highly Jasper J.
Morton valued her opinion, that his architectural representative found
it necessary to consult Betty Wales almost every day on some problem
growing out of the peculiar adaptabilities and arrangements of Morton
Hall.
* * * * *
The B. C. A.’s paced the station platform till they were tired, and
then they further outraged the dignity of the “faculty and wives”
by sitting down to rest on a baggage truck, and swinging their feet
off the edge. It was thus that Jim, who had taken the precaution to
telephone the ticket agent before leaving home, found them a few
minutes before Eleanor’s arrival.
“Do make yourselves as fascinating as you can,” he implored them all
naïvely, “so she’ll stay. She’s been taking singing lessons lately at
home, and her teacher had a New York teacher visiting her, and both of
them got excited about Eleanor’s voice. So now she’s written about some
crazy plan she has for a winter in New York, studying music. That’s all
right after Christmas, maybe, but at present I want her right here,
and the person who can make her see it that way wins my everlasting
gratitude.”
[Illustration: SITTING DOWN TO REST ON A BAGGAGE TRUCK]
“You’ll be likely to win your own everlasting gratitude, I should
say,” Madeline told him. “Eleanor was always expatiating on the charms
of her brother Jim.”
Jim blushed. “That’s all right, but I have a feeling that she’s keener
about some other fellow’s charms by this time. Plenty of fellows are
certainly keen about hers. But lately she doesn’t pay any attention
to them--just goes in for slumming and improving her mind, and now
her voice. So give her a good time, and get her excited about your
mysterious club, and when she begins on the earnestness of life and the
self-improvement business, ring in all Miss Betty’s philanthropies. And
I’ll come in strong on the lonely brother act. I say, there she is this
minute!”
Jim gave a running jump on to the platform of a passing car and had his
innings while the girls, taken unaware, scrambled down from their truck
and hurried after him.
It didn’t seem as if it would be hard to keep Eleanor. There was
the little awkward moment at first, that even the best of friends
experience when they haven’t seen each other for over a year; and then
such a babel of talk and laughter, of questions asked all at once
and never answered, of explanations interrupted by exclamations, and
rendered wholly incoherent by hugs and kisses.
“You haven’t changed a bit,” they told her.
“Yes, you have! You’re prettier than ever.”
“When will you sing for us?”
“Have you done any writing lately?”
“Are you too tired to see the Tally-ho right away?”
“You’re to live in Rachel’s little white house, you know, and we’re all
quarreling about when we can have you for dinner.”
“Picnics! I should think so. As many as you want.”
“Don’t those infants make the absurdest imitations of faculties?”
“How do you like little Mary’s new hat?”
They walked up Main Street chattering like magpies and forgetting to
turn out for anybody, Jim bringing up the rear with Eleanor’s suit case
in one hand and a book of Babbie’s and an untidy bundle of manuscript
that Madeline had dropped in her excitement tucked under the other arm.
Christy invited the whole party to dinner at the Tally-ho, and they
decided that it was quite warm enough to eat in the top story of the
Peter Pan annex. Jim had lighted all the Chinese lanterns and hauled
up two baskets full of dinner, while the girls chattered merrily on
as if they never meant to stop, when Babbie and Mr. Thayer appeared,
sauntering slowly down the hill from the direction of Paradise. They
didn’t seem at all ashamed of the way Babbie had been snatched away
from her own initiation party, but shouted up that they were simply
starved to death, and cheerfully assuming that there was dinner enough
and room enough for all comers, they annexed themselves to Christy’s
party.
“You’re lucky to have a sister to look after you,” Mr. Thayer told
Jim. “I opened a big club-house for my mill people last winter, just
to please these young ladies, and how do they pay me? By cold, cruel
neglect.”
“Nonsense!” Madeline contradicted him cheerfully. “We gave you a
splendid start. That’s all we do for anybody.”
“We’re all so busy,” Betty added quickly. “But we are just as
interested as we ever were. Isn’t the girl I sent you managing well?”
Mr. Thayer nodded. “Only she can’t seem to discover a genius who’s able
to take hold of the prize class.”
“Is that the one my adorable Rafael is in?” demanded Madeline. “Because
if it is, I might----”
“It is, but you can’t have it,” Babbie told her firmly. “They
changed teachers four times last year, after you dropped them so
unceremoniously. This time they’re to have some one who will stick,
aren’t they, Robert?”
Mr. Thayer looked uncomfortable, not wishing either to contradict
Babbie or to slight Madeline’s offer. “It’s better, of course, but
perhaps Miss Madeline will stick this time.”
“Robert!” Babbie’s tone was very hopeless. “Can’t you understand that
Madeline is about as likely to stick as Prexy is to dance a hornpipe
at to-morrow’s chapel?” She sighed deeply. “It must be terrible to be
a reformer; you have to be so hopeful about people’s turning over a
new leaf--whether it’s Madeline sticking, or a dreadful old Frenchman
beating his wife, or the angelic-looking Rafael learning his alphabet.”
“Haven’t they learned that yet?” asked Madeline incredulously.
“Certainly not,” retorted Babbie. “You jabbered Italian all the time
to them, and that spoiled them so that they never would study for the
other teachers.”
“I regret my reprehensible familiarity with their mother tongue,”
announced Madeline grandiloquently, “and I hereby make due reparation.”
Her glance wandered around the table. “I elect Eleanor Watson to take
the prize class.”
“Tell me about it,” Eleanor asked. “I don’t understand at all. I didn’t
know there were any foreigners in Harding.”
So they told her about Factory Hill, about Young-Man-Over-the-Fence
and his Twelfth-Night party that accidentally started the fund for
the club-house, about the education clause in the new factory laws,
the club organization, which was now so efficiently managed by the
Student’s Aid’s prize beneficiary--a senior who had earned every bit
of her college course--and finally about Rafael and Giuseppi and
Pietro and the other Italian boys, who scorned their French and Polish,
Portuguese and German comrades, and insisted upon their own little
club--a concession in return for which they played truant, refused
to study or pay attention, and quarreled violently on the slightest
provocation. They would have to be dropped from the factory pay-roll,
according to the new law, if they did not speedily mend their ways and
learn to read and write.
“Why, I should be almost afraid to be left alone with them,” Eleanor
exclaimed at the end of the recital. “Do they carry daggers?”
“No, they’re not quite so barbaric as that,” Mr. Thayer told her.
“They are just lively boys, who’ve been brought up with strong race
prejudices and no chance to have the jolly good times that would make
them forget their feuds and revolts. They work hard because their
fathers make them, and because it’s the regular way of living for them.
But being forced to study they consider the most bitter tyranny. The
factory inspectors have had their cases up twice now, and if I can’t
make a good report on them at Christmas I shall have to let them go.
I hate to, because they can’t get other work here, and if they leave
their homes and friends, nine out of the ten will probably go straight
to the bad.”
“There’s your chance, Eleanor,” Jim told her eagerly.
“But, Jim, I can’t ‘stick,’ as Babbie calls it. I’m here only for a
little visit. My music----”
“Go down every week for a lesson,” Jim ordered easily. “Don’t miss
a chance at a ripping New England autumn with all this good society
thrown in.”
“Even if you’re not staying long, do take them off my hands for a few
weeks,” begged Mr. Thayer. “They’re afraid of me and sulk stupidly if
I try to teach them, and they’ve been rather too much for any of the
girls who’ve tried.”
“Then what makes you think----” began Eleanor.
“You’ve been elected, Eleanor,” Madeline broke in impatiently. “That
settles it. You can manage them the way you managed that newsboys’
club in Denver. Oh, I’ve heard----” as Eleanor flushed and protested.
“That’s why I elected you. Now we want some songs. Where’s her guitar,
Monsieur Jacques? If Rafael won’t learn the alphabet any other way, you
can sing it to him.”
So Eleanor laughingly consented to meet the Terrible Ten, as Babbie
called them, the next night, and the Ten won her heart, as Jim had
hoped they would.
Eleanor never mentioned the alphabet. She merely inquired of the circle
of dark faces who had heard of Robin Hood, and receiving only sullen
negatives, she began a story. One by one the sullen faces grew eager.
At a most exciting point, where Robin and his band were on the point of
playing a fine joke on the Sheriff of Nottingham, she stopped abruptly.
“I’m tired,” she said. “That’s all for to-night.”
“You tella more next day?” demanded the graceless Rafael. He had fairly
drowned out the first part of the tale with muttered threats upon
Pietro, who had hidden his cap.
Eleanor hesitated diplomatically. “Would you really like to hear the
rest?” she asked finally.
Rafael’s brown eyes met hers, clouded with supreme indifference, and
his expressive shoulders shrugged coldly.
“Oh, maybe,” he admitted.
“Then what will you do for me? You can’t expect me to amuse you big
boys the whole evening, while you do nothing to amuse me in return.
This is a club, you know. In a club everybody does something for
everybody else.”
“What you like?” demanded Rafael, with suppressed eagerness.
“Yes, what you like?” echoed Pietro, the quarrel between them quite
forgotten.
“I’m very fond of pictures,” announced Eleanor gravely. “If you’d each
draw a picture of Robin Hood on the blackboard over there--here are a
lot of colored chalks--and put his name under it--Robin, we’ll call him
for short--why, I should think you’d done your full share.”
The Terrible Ten exchanged bewildered glances, and one after another
slouched nonchalantly to the chalk box. The colored crayons were
a novelty, nine of the Terrible Ten were born artists, and the
tenth--Rafael, whose crushed hand was still stiff and awkward--was
pathetically anxious to satisfy the new teacher’s strange demands. His
Robin Hood looked like a many colored smutch, with a sprawling green
frame around it--that was Sherwood forest, thrown in for good measure.
“Don’t forget the name,” Eleanor reminded them calmly, when, the
pictures finished, the artists began to exchange furtive glances again
in regard to the next requirement.
“You make lil’ sample on mine,” suggested Rafael craftily.
“No, I’ll make one up here,” Eleanor amended, “where everybody can see
it.”
And to her surprise the Terrible Ten, with many sighs and grimaces,
and much smutting out of mistakes with wetted fingers, toilsomely
accomplished the writing.
“Now,” Eleanor said, “let’s talk for a while before we go home. There’s
a bag of peanuts under my coat. Will you bring it, please, Pietro?” She
took the bag and grouped the boys around the long table. “Now let’s
play a game while we eat. I’ll ask questions, and the one that answers
quickest gets some peanuts. Listen now: if I give Pietro six peanuts
and Giovanni five, how many will that be?”
Dazed looks on the faces of the Ten, followed by anxious
finger-counting.
“Fifteen,” hazarded Pietro.
“Nix, nine,” shrieked Rafael.
Giuseppi got it right, and to make sure they counted at the top of
their lungs, while Eleanor passed him, one by one, the eleven peanuts.
“Now, if he gives Pietro two----” began Eleanor.
“Aw, come off. You say you gif to me,” interrupted Giuseppi. “I wish to
keep my peanuts.”
Eleanor gravely accepted the amendment. “All right.” She counted out
eleven peanuts, and held them up in her hand. “Now I have eleven
peanuts. If I give Pietro two”--she suited the action to the word--“how
many have I left?”
More frantic finger-counting, and this time Giovanni got the prize.
Then Rafael and his six unfed comrades burst into angry protests. “You
give Pietro two for nix. He never guess right.”
“No fair that he gets some for nix.”
Eleanor met the crisis calmly. “They’re my peanuts, so I can give him
two if I like. But wait a minute. See what I do now. I give Rafael two,
you two, you two, and you, and you, and you, and you. How many is that?
The one that guesses right gets as many as all you boys have together.
Quick now.”
Efforts to eat the peanuts and count them at the same time resulted in
absolute pandemonium.
“Let’s have paper,” Eleanor suggested. “That’s easier than doing it all
in your head.”
Before the evening was over the passing out of peanuts two by two had
accomplished the learning of the “two-times” table, as far as two times
ten.
“Who promises to come next time?” asked Eleanor, while they waited
awkwardly for her to gather up her wraps.
“Me.”
“Me.”
“Me.”
“You bet I do.”
“Dis club is O.K.”
“You doan fergit the story?”
“Not if you’ll all try to remember the ‘two-times’ table,” Eleanor
promised, shaking hands gravely all around.
“She’s de peach fer sure. Gotta all dem oder teachers beat,” announced
Pietro on the steps.
“Don’t you call her no peach. She’s a lovely lady,” corrected Rafael,
aiming a deft blow with his left hand.
“Ain’t a lada a peach?” challenged Pietro, dancing out of reach.
“All right for Italian girl, not good enough for lika her,” Rafael
answered fiercely.
“Wonder if she bring more dem peanuts next week,” speculated Nicolo.
“She ain’t no millionaire, maybe.” Rafael turned upon him scowling.
“But doan you dare fergit the two-times, ’cause den she’ll fergit
Robin. I killa de kid dat fergits.”
Rafael was evidently the Ten’s leader. They received his dire threat
in awed silence, and tramped off, chanting the two-times table with a
vigor that reached Eleanor, reporting her evening’s experiences to Mr.
Thayer, and clinched her wavering determination into a promise to stay
for at least a month in Harding.