FRISKY FENTON’S MARTYRDOM
THE Smallest Sister was reconciled at last to being a boarder.
“I’ve got a new chum,” she announced eagerly, coming to see her sister
on an afternoon which Betty, feeling more than usually “caught-up” with
her other activities, had decided to devote to Dorothy.
“What’s happened to Shirley Ware?” asked Betty.
“We’re mad at each other--at least I’m mad at Shirley.” The Smallest
Sister assumed an air of injured innocence. “We don’t speak any more,
except to say good-morning at breakfast if Miss Dick is looking right
at us.”
“But that’s so silly, Dorothy,” Betty protested. “Shirley is a dear
little girl, and if you’ve quarreled it’s probably more your fault than
hers. Tell me all about it, dearie.”
“Well,” Dorothy began sulkily, “I’d just as soon tell you, only
Frisky--that’s Francisca Fenton, my new chum--she asked us all not to
say anything more about it. I’m not the only one that’s mad at Shirley.
Nearly every single girl at Miss Dick’s is too,--only being chums with
her makes it worse for me, because I’m so ashamed of her.”
“Who is this Francisca Fenton?” asked Betty, digressing diplomatically
for a moment from the main issue. “I never even heard you speak of her
before. Haven’t you become chums very fast?”
Dorothy nodded importantly. “She’s one of the older girls. Maybe you
haven’t heard me speak of her, but I’ve just nearly worshipped her ever
since she came last fall. The other day when I cried because I was so
mad at Shirley and so ashamed of her, why, she came and asked me to
be chums. Her chum was in it too, you see. I mean she took sides with
Shirley.”
“Sides about what?” asked Betty innocently.
“About being a tattle-tale, of course,” Dorothy began, and stopped
short, setting her pretty little mouth in a straight, determined line.
“Frisky asked me not to talk about it, and I shan’t,” she announced.
“So don’t you try to make me.”
Betty was mending a pair of Dorothy’s gloves. She stuck the needle into
the rip, folded the gloves, and silently began upon the holes in her
own stockings. Dorothy pretended to look out the window, but she kept
one eye on Betty, who appeared completely absorbed in her work.
“It’s a lovely day,” the Smallest Sister observed presently.
No answer.
“Aren’t we going for our walk pretty soon?” demanded the Smallest
Sister, after a polite interval.
There was another polite interval, then she came over to Betty’s chair
and repeated her question. “Didn’t you hear me, Betty? I asked can’t we
go for our walk pretty soon?”
Betty looked at her coldly. “You can go any time you like,” she said.
“But I’m your company. You asked me to spend the afternoon, and have
supper with you and Miss Eleanor and Eugenia.”
Betty continued her cold scrutiny of the Smallest Sister’s small
person. “I asked my nice little sister to supper,” she announced
judicially. “I didn’t ask a silly little girl who has silly little
quarrels with her best friends, and then won’t talk it over with me and
let me help her straighten it all out.”
“I don’t want to straighten it out,” muttered Dorothy defiantly, “and
Frisky specially asked us----”
“Not to talk about it in the school,” concluded Betty. “If she asked
you not to talk about it to your mothers and big sisters, why, she
isn’t a good kind of chum for you. She can’t be.”
Dorothy flushed an angry pink. “Just wait till you see her. She’s
lovely. She’s the nicest chum I ever, ever had.”
Betty got up quietly and handed the Smallest Sister her hat and coat.
“You’d better be going back, I think,” she said very cheerfully.
“Back where?”
“To school, of course, for supper.”
“I can’t do that,” Dorothy interposed hastily. “Why, I asked Miss Dick
for permission to come and stay with you till the evening study hour.
She’d think it was very queer for me not to stay.”
“I’ll telephone her and explain,” said Betty inexorably.
“I shan’t go if you do,” declared the little rebel. “So now! I shan’t
go!”
“Dorothy Wales,” began Betty gravely, putting one arm around the
Smallest Sister’s waist and drawing her stiff little figure closer,
“if mother were here and you acted this way you know as well as I do
what she’d do. She’d send you straight to bed to stay all this lovely
long afternoon. Now I’m not mother, so I can’t do that. It’s not my
place. But I can see that I’ve made a mistake in bringing you here. I
thought you loved me enough to do as I want--as I think best, I mean.
You don’t, so I must send you home to mother at once. Now I want you to
go right back to Miss Dick’s, and tell her that I can’t have you to tea
to-day. You needn’t say why. And I shall write to mother to-night.”
“But Betty----”
“There’s no use arguing about it, Dorothy,” Betty cut her short. “I
mean exactly what I say. Put on your hat at once.”
A month of being the youngest boarder and the school pet, supplemented
by Eugenia’s many flattering attentions, had badly spoiled the Smallest
Sister, but she could still recognize the voice of authority. In an
uncomfortable flash she came to her senses. Her sister Betty meant
what she said. She was going to be sent back to mother in disgrace.
For a few minutes longer pride sustained her. Silently she lifted her
chin for Betty to draw the elastic of her hat beneath it. Silently she
stretched out her arms for Betty to pull on her coat. With only a faint
tremor in her voice she said good-bye, and holding herself very erect
marched out of the room, shutting the door after herself in a fashion
that could not absolutely be called banging, because then Betty might
tell her to come back and do it over, but was perilously near that
unladylike mode of procedure.
When she had gone Betty sank down wearily in her big chair. She was
bewildered, frightened, discouraged. “I didn’t manage right,” she
reflected sadly. “I ought to have got around her some way. I can’t bear
to send her home. I love to have her here so, and then she will feel
that it’s a punishment--and it is too--when it’s only that I have to
do it, because I don’t know how to manage. I’ve tried to do more than
I can. Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear!” Betty’s golden head sank down on
the arm of the big chair, and her slender figure shook with her tears.
It was thus that the Smallest Sister, flying up the stairs and bursting
precipitately into the room she had left with such dignity, found her.
“Please go away. I’m t-tired. I’d rather be let alone,” Betty sobbed,
evidently mistaking the invader for somebody else.
The Smallest Sister hesitated, then her soft little arms tugged at the
prostrate figure. “Please don’t cry,” she begged. “Please listen to
me, Betty. I know I’ve got to go home. I haven’t come to tease you to
take it back--honestly I haven’t. But I’m going to tell you all about
Shirley and Francisca and me. I’d rather. Please don’t cry any more,
Betty dear.”
Betty sat up, dabbing at her wet cheeks with a damp handkerchief.
Dorothy offered her a dry one, and when Betty moved to one side of the
big chair and smoothed down her skirts invitingly, the Smallest Sister
climbed in beside her. Two in a chair is always the way to begin to
make up.
“Now I’ll tell you,” she began. “You see Frisky had a spread for her
four roommates in their study after the lights were out. She rooms ’way
down at the end of the long corridor, and they shut the door--that’s
against the rules--and lit a candle, and trusted to luck that nobody
would see it shining underneath the door. Miss Carson--the one we call
Kitty Carson, because she comes along so still--is their corridor
teacher, and she doesn’t often bother to go ’way down to that end,
unless there’s a noise. She didn’t that night, but Shirley woke up
and was thirsty and wanted a drink. And on the way to where the table
with the pitcher of ice-water is, she got lost, because the hall is
pretty dark, and she saw the light under the door and knocked, and they
started her back the right way. Next morning she was telling about it
at breakfast, and Kitty Carson heard her, and asked her all about how
she got back, and Shirley told every single thing--about the spread
and who was there and all. And so now Frisky has to stay in bounds for
two weeks, and she can’t have any candy or a box from home till after
Christmas. Kitty Carson wrote to say so--and that’s all, Betty dear.
Frisky said she was sick of the subject, and not to mention it again,
but of course she never meant not to tell you. I s’pose you have a good
reason to want to know. I’m sorry you had to cry.”
Betty leaned over and kissed the flushed, eager little face so close
beside hers. “Thank you for coming back,” she said. “Now we’re good
friends again, aren’t we?”
Dorothy nodded.
“And do you want to know what I think?”
Another nod.
“Well, I’m afraid you’ve all been very unkind to Shirley. Have you
called her tattle-tale, and shut her out of all the fun, and maybe made
her cry?”
This time the nod was very emphatic.
“We call her Tattle-tale Shirley. How did you ever guess that, Betty?
And we don’t associate with her at all. And she cries into her pillow
at night, because she hears us whispering secrets and we leave her out.
But, Betty, she ought to have to feel bad. It’s just mean to tell on
another girl. Poor Frisky has to walk up and down the tennis-courts
alone for her exercise hour, with Kitty Carson watching out of her
window to see that she does it. But she says she wouldn’t mind that.
What she minds is thinking anybody could be so hateful that she’d go
and tell.”
“But did Shirley mean to tell, or did she just get frightened and
confused and speak before she thought?”
“Well,” the Smallest Sister admitted reluctantly, “I s’pose maybe she
got rather frightened. Kitty Carson looks at you so hard through her
big specs that you generally do. But she had ought to have thought.”
Dorothy was earnest if not grammatical. “Frisky says she’d sooner be
expelled from school herself than get another girl into disgrace.”
“Frisky, as you call her, is older. Shirley is little and timid, and
I’m sure she didn’t realize that she was saying anything wrong. Did
she now, Dorothy? Tell me ‘honest and true,’ what you think. Did she
dislike Frisky, and want to get her into trouble?”
“No-o, I s’pose not. She used to say she worshipped her just as much as
I did.”
“Then do you think it’s quite fair to treat her as you have?”
“No-o, I guess maybe not. Frisky’s old chum, that she had before me,
said it wasn’t, but I didn’t s’pose she knew. I’ll tell Frisky what you
think, and I’ll tell Shirley that I forgive her if she truly didn’t
mean it. Of course I can’t be chums with her again, because now I’m
chums with Frisky. But I won’t call her tattle-tale any more, and I’ll
tell the others what you think.” The Smallest Sister sighed and slipped
off the chair. “I guess--I guess I’d better be going,” she said very
softly. “Were you--were you going to have ice-cream for supper, maybe?”
Betty stifled an impulse to take the appealing little figure in her
arms and promise her ice-cream and chicken patties and hot chocolate
and all the other dainties she loved best. She had been a very naughty
little girl, and mother would say----
The Smallest Sister, oddly enough, was also thinking of mother. “I
guess it doesn’t matter what you’re going to have,” she announced
hastily. “I guess mother would say I’d better go back and think it
all over by myself quietly, and--and next time ’member to ask you
first what you think about tattle-tales that don’t mean to be and--and
perhaps come some other night for supper. Oh”--her voice broke--“I
honestly forgot that I’m to go home.”
“But we’re friends again, now,” Betty told her, “and you’re going to
tell me things just as you always have. Aren’t you? Will you, I mean,
if I should think it over, and decide that it will be all right for you
to stay?”
“Yes, I will. I will ask you about every least little thing I want to
do,” declared Dorothy earnestly. “Do you think that maybe you’ll decide
I may stay?”
“Yes, I think I’ll decide that you may stay,” laughed Betty. “So don’t
ever make me sorry that I’ve decided that way.”
“I won’t. I’m sure I won’t. I just hate to have you cry, Betty.”
“I think,” Betty told her with a very sober face, “that you’d better
not come for supper for two whole weeks. That will make you remember
better perhaps. And when you come you may bring your new chum, if Miss
Dick is willing.”
“Oh, goody for joy!” The Smallest Sister quite overlooked the penalty
imposed on herself in the idea of being able to do something for her
dear, misused Frisky.
She said good-bye contentedly, because she could tell Frisky the sooner
by going home to tea, and she skip-hopped down-stairs and up the street
much too gaily for a naughty little girl who had been deprived of a
treat and sent away to think over her naughtiness in private.
Betty watched her smilingly. “I don’t seem to be able not to spoil
her,” she reflected. “But she’s just as sweet as she can be usually.
And she came back of herself to tell me, and she really sent herself
home, so I guess it’s all right--that is, if this new chum is a nice
girl. I do hope she is.”
The Smallest Sister did not ask to be invited to supper before the
appointed time, though two meals a week with Betty or Eugenia were
her usual allowance, and she had grumbled and even wept before, if
anything had happened to keep her away.
“Poor Francisca can’t even go to walk or down-town for two weeks.
I guess I can give up one thing I like as long as that,” she told
Eugenia, when that soft-hearted little person suggested intervening
with Betty for a restoration of privileges. “Francisca says it’s a
comfort to her to feel that somebody else has troubles.”
On the appointed evening Eugenia had a house-play rehearsal from five
to six, a class officers’ meeting at quarter to seven, and a written
lesson to cram for in Psych. 6. So Betty and the chums supped alone
at a cunning little table by the Tally-ho’s famous fireplace. It
was lighted with the “extra-special” candle-shades and there were
new menu-cards with fat, rosy-faced, red-coated coachmen cracking
long whips at the top, and an adorable sketch of the Peter Pan Annex
growing up the left side. Bob Enderby had designed them--under protest,
because he said he was much too famous to be doing menu-cards nowadays;
Madeline had colored them by hand, and the Tally-ho waitress had to
keep a sharp lookout to prevent their all being carried off for
souvenirs. One was lost that very evening; yes, for the first time in
the Tally-ho’s history, an extra-special candle-shade was missing at
the close of the dinner-hour.
Francisca and Dorothy arrived late and breathless--they had been kept
to tidy their rooms, Dorothy explained, but Francisca shook her head
playfully at her small friend and took all the blame.
“I’m always being kept for something,” she said cheerfully. “It’s a
perfect miracle that I’m here at all. If I don’t have to copy my French
exercise one hundred times because I didn’t pay attention in class, I
have to learn ‘Paradise Lost’ because I contradicted Kit--Miss Carson,
or else I don’t pick up my nightie and--well, I’m just always in hot
water, Miss Wales. It was lovely of you to ask me. Please call me
Frisky--everybody does.”
Francisca was the prettiest girl--next to Eleanor Watson--that Betty
had ever seen. Her eyes were soft and deep and very, very brown--like
big chocolate creams. Her hair was dark and wavy, growing low down on
her forehead in a widow’s peak. She puffed it out around her face in a
fashion that was too old for her, but was nevertheless very becoming.
Her manner was that of an older girl too--very assured and confident,
but very charming. When she smiled, which she did most of the time,
two big dimples showed. She lisped a little, and this gave a funny,
childlike twist to her remarks, which were not at all childlike. She
adopted a curious attitude of resignation toward the cruel fate that
kept her always “in hot water.” She was sweetly forgiving toward those
who had inflicted the two weeks’ penance just ended, and she thanked
Betty for her opinion, sent by Dorothy, about little Shirley Ware. She
had entirely forgiven Shirley, she said, and she meant to forget about
it and hoped Shirley would do the same.
“You see,” she explained, “all the little girls love me so that I
imagine they did make her pretty uncomfortable. I never meant them
to, Miss Wales, but you can’t help being a favorite and having people
champion your cause. Can you now?”
She made picturesquely vague references to some secret sorrow that was
even worse than being in perpetual hot water at Miss Dick’s. Afterward
Betty inquired about it from Dorothy.
“Oh, she’s got a stepmother,” Dorothy explained in awe-struck
tones. “They don’t get along well together. Frisky says she’s very
unsympathetic.” Dorothy pulled out the long word with much difficulty.
But for all her vanity and absurdity Frisky Fenton was a lovable
creature. She was preëminently a “jolly girl.” She had comical names
for all Miss Dick’s teachers. She hit off the peculiarities of her
schoolmates, and told absurd stories about them. She noticed everything
that went on around her and kept up a vivacious fire of comment. As
soon as she forgot to affect resignation and the secret sorrow, she
was most appreciative of all the pleasures life had to offer and
particularly of the treat Betty had given her. Everything they had to
eat was “simply great,” the Tally-ho was “exactly perfect,” Betty was
“too sweet,” and Dorothy “a little darling.”
Betty decided that she was only silly on top, and, though she much
preferred Shirley as a best friend for Dorothy, she saw no reason to
worry about Francisca’s bad influence, especially as the Smallest
Sister displayed much conscientiousness in the matter of coming to
consult her big sister on all important matters.
She came twice that very week. Once it was to ask if she should wear
her best white dress, or only her second best blue one to Shirley’s
birthday party. Frisky had advised the best, under all the delicate
circumstances, but Dorothy wanted to be quite sure. The next time
a moral question was involved. If you were asked to a spread after
bedtime was it wrong to go? Betty, who detested prigs, dexterously
evaded the issue.
“It’s rather messy eating in the dark, and you must get awfully sleepy
waiting for the teachers to go to bed. When you’ve all got desperately
hungry for good eats let me know, and we’ll have a scrumptious spread
at the Tally-ho.”