THE DOLL WAVE
THE B. C. A. initiation was naturally a joyous occasion. To begin
with, Babbie Hildreth was commanded to stand for half an hour outside
the tea-shop with a huge “engaged” sign pinned across her shoulders.
She smiled composedly, waited patiently for the sign to be adjusted,
and then, since no particular position had been specified, mounted
hastily to the top story of the Peter Pan Annex, where the yellowing
leaves completely hid her from curious eyes. Eleanor was meanwhile
led to the kitchen and told to make sugar-cookies after the family
recipe. As she had never in her life made sugar-cookies--or any other
kind--her demonstration proved entertaining enough to while away the
half hour very pleasantly. Then Babbie was called down, given one of
Eleanor’s cookies, and told to keep on eating it until she could guess
what it was meant to be. She ate it all, making many vain protests,
and was only excused from sampling another because she threatened, in
an irresistibly clever speech, to appeal to the Humane Society. Mary
Brooks was next instructed to write to the person whom she thought
it most concerned, warning him about Eleanor’s lack of domestic
accomplishments. Then Madeline read some “Rules for the Engaged
Member,” which were almost as funny as the “Rules for the Perfect
Patron.”
Babbie had just been put in the most retired corner of the B. C. A.’s
stall and told to do her “Mary-had-a-Little-Lamb” stunt, when Georgia
and the Dutton twins arrived upon the scene, hot from a tennis match
and voicing a reckless determination to go straight through all the
sundaes and cooling drinks on the new menu.
“We can sit with you, can’t we?” asked Straight Dutton. “The other
stalls all have people in them, and Fluffy’s hair is a disgrace to be
seen.”
“Then take her out behind the house--or shop or barn, whatever you call
it--and pin it up,” Madeline told them severely. “Certainly you can’t
come in here. This is a B. C. A. tea-drinking and initiation. You’re
not B. C. A.’s.”
“That’s not our fault. It’s perfectly mean of you to have a secret
society and leave us out,” wailed Fluffy. “Think of all the orders we
got you for skirt braids.”
“In this hard world, my children, virtue is often its only reward,”
Mary reminded them sweetly. “Run away now and play.”
“Let’s spite them by stalking out of their old tea-shop and
transferring our valuable patronage to Cuyler’s,” suggested Georgia.
“I’m too tired to stir,” protested Fluffy. “Let’s stay here and play a
lovely party of our own right under their noses, and never ask them to
come.”
“Let’s sit down quick.”
“Shall we begin with sundaes or lemonade?”
“With both,” announced Fluffy with decision, smiling so persuasively at
Nora that she abandoned two fussy heads of departments, who wanted more
hot water, milk for their tea instead of lemon, and steamed muffins
instead of toasted, while she supplied Fluffy, first with hairpins from
the box that Betty kept in her desk on purpose for such emergencies,
and then with three sundaes and two cold drinks.
Fluffy arranged the five glasses in an artistic crescent in front of
her, and sipped and tasted happily.
“You’re not true sports,” she told the others, who had been content to
begin with one order each. “You won’t be hungry after the second thing
you order--or maybe the third for Georgia-of-the-huge-appetite--and
then you’ll stop, whereas I----” She waved her hand around the inviting
crescent. “The fateful check is made out, and I can eat ’em or leave
’em--it’s all the same to my pocketbook and the Tally-ho. I wish Betty
Wales would come out and say if I’m not the Perfect Patron this trip.”
“Well, she won’t,” declared Straight practically, “and if she should
you’d better remember that it’s your duty to act very haughty and
independent. Come on now and think up something nice for us to do.”
“Wish we knew what B. C. A. meant,” Georgia reflected. “Then we could
parody it.”
“Well, we don’t,” Straight reminded her sharply, “so it’s no use
wishing. We’ve worn ourselves out before this trying to guess. The
thing to do is to think of some regular picnic of a stunt that they’ll
just wish they’d thought of first. Then they’ll respect us more,
and realize what a mistake they made in having a snippy little 19--
society, when they might have had us in it too.”
“S-h!” ordered Fluffy impatiently. “Nobody can think of anything while
you chatter along like that. Let’s keep perfectly still for five
minutes--just eat and think. I’m sure we shall get at it that way.
Georgia, you’ve got a watch that goes. Tell us when time’s up.”
Georgia was too much occupied with keeping track of the time limit to
hit upon an idea, and when Straight’s sundae gave out at the end of
the second minute, she could not keep her eyes and her mind from a
furtive consideration of the menu. So nobody interrupted Fluffy when,
at Georgia’s “Time’s up,” she shot out a triumphant, “I’ve got it!”
“I’m not sure whether it’s four minutes or five,” said Georgia
anxiously, “but if you’ve got it, Fluffy, fire away.”
“Well, only the general plan,” explained Fluffy modestly. “I think we
ought to set a silly fashion. We can--girls are like sheep, and we’ve
made a reputation for doing interesting things that all the others wish
they could do too. We can call the thing the ‘C. I.’s’--that’s for
Complete Idiots--and not tell a soul what it means until we’re ready to
back out and let our devoted followers feel as silly as they have to.
It will be a circus pretending to be keen for it ourselves and egging
the others on, and it will just show the B. C. A.’s that we’re not as
young and simple-minded as maybe they think us.”
“That sounds good to me,” agreed Georgia, “only what fashion shall we
set?”
Fluffy frowned and rumpled her hair absently. “I can’t think of
anything silly enough. Big bows and pompadours and coronet braids and
so on are as silly now as they possibly could be. Shoes without heels
wouldn’t be extreme enough. Prexy wouldn’t let us wear a uniform, even
if we could think of a ridiculous enough one. I guess it can’t be
anything about dress.”
“Some fad for our desks, like ploshkins,” suggested Straight.
“Only not a bit copy-catted from that, because some of the B. C. A.’s
helped start ploshkins,” amended Georgia.
“Let’s take another think,” said Fluffy.
“Wait a minute,” begged Straight, and providently ordered two more
sundaes to span the terrible interval.
“You keep time on this thought,” ordered Georgia, passing her watch to
Fluffy.
Fluffy nodded abstractedly.
“Five minutes,” she announced presently. “I can’t think of----”
“This time I’ve got it,” Georgia broke in eagerly. “First I thought of
a silly game like tops or marbles or skipping ropes, and then I thought
of dolls--buying them and dressing them and carrying them around. I
heard of a girls’ school that did it once in dead earnest.” She looked
anxiously at Fluffy, who could “get people excited over the fourth
dimension if she wanted to.” “What about it, Fluff?”
Fluffy sipped from each of her five glasses reflectively before she
answered.
“Dolls it is,” she said briefly at last. “Come on down and buy ours
now.”
The straight-haired twin had never played with dolls in her life,
having scorned all feminine diversions and spent her youth chasing
rabbits, riding her pony, or playing tag, hockey, and prisoner’s base
with her brothers and her brothers’ friends. She chose the biggest,
most elegant, and expensive French doll in the shop, named her Rosa
Marie on the spot, and paid for Georgia’s choice--a huge wooden doll
with staring blue eyes and matted black hair--on condition that Georgia
would help her dress Rosa Marie.
“You’re actually getting fond of Rosa Marie already,” Georgia teased
her.
“Maybe I am,” said Straight stoutly, “but you’d better not fuss, when
I’m spending such a lot to help along your game.”
“Lucky we’re starting on it so early in the month,” Fluffy said, a
baby doll in a lace bonnet and a long white dress in one hand, and an
Esquimaux, in white fur from head to foot, in the other.
“Get ’em both and come along,” advised Georgia. “You’ll look terribly
cute going home with one on each arm.”
“And if you get small ones you can be getting more all the time,”
Straight took her up. “Have a regular family, you know, and a carriage
to take them out in, and a doll’s house to keep them in at home. A
doll’s house would look great in your room, Fluffy dear.”
“It’s so bare and cheerless that it just needs a doll’s house,”
declared Georgia. “I dare you to buy one and put it on your royal
Bokara rug, between your teakwood table and your Dutch tee-stopf, with
your best Whistler print hanging over it.”
Fluffy turned to the saleswoman. “These two, please,” she said, “and
let me see your largest, loveliest doll’s house.”
The organizers and charter members of the C. I.’s tramped home in the
autumn twilight, quarreling amiably about the relative advantages of
“risking” to-morrow’s Logic quiz and writing “Lit.” papers between
breakfast and chapel, or making a night of it--and in that case should
the doll-dressing come before or after ten?
“I can’t ‘risk’ Logic,” Straight confessed sadly. “I’ve been warned
already. Don’t make me sit up all by myself to cram. I’d almost rather
not dress Rosa Marie to-night than do that.”
Just then they ran into Eugenia Ford coming out of the Music Building.
“Hello, Miss Ford,” Georgia greeted her pleasantly. “Look at Fluffy’s
dolls. Have you got one yet?”
Eugenia, somewhat dazed by the suddenness of the onslaught, went into
raptures over the baby doll, blushingly acknowledged that she hadn’t
one, and begged for more light on the matter.
“Oh, well, you’re not so far behind the times,” Fluffy consoled her
sweetly. “The limit is day after to-morrow, isn’t it, Georgia? If you
get one all ready by then, you can join the C. I.’s.”
“What in the world is that?” demanded Eugenia eagerly.
“I believe the meaning’s to be a secret for a while,” Straight
explained solemnly, “but if you have a doll you can belong; that I’m
sure of. We’ve got ours here.” She patted Rosa Marie, and pointed to
Georgia’s ungainly parcel. “It’s sure to be fun. Anyway, we’re all for
it.”
“It sounds just splendid,” declared Eugenia, who still had aspirations
toward intimacy with the jolliest, most exclusive crowd in Harding.
“It’s lovely of you to tell me about it. Can anybody--can I tell my
friends?”
The conspirators exchanged glances. Democracy would repel Eugenia. To
her the C. I.’s must be made to appear highly exclusive.
“Ye-es,” Fluffy said at last. “It’s for anybody--that is anybody you’d
ask. The dolls have got to be dressed by day after to-morrow, you
know. Straight’s is going to be a perfect wonder. We’re thinking of
having a doll-show later, so you’d better take some pains with yours.
Good-night.”
“I wonder if the stores are closed yet,” added Straight loudly as
Eugenia started off. “I ought to have bought some real lace for Rosa
Marie’s petticoat.”
“Let’s go back, even if we are late to dinner,” declaimed Georgia
distinctly. “By to-morrow everybody in the place will be rushing down
for dolls and dolls’ dresses, and they’ll be dreadfully picked over.”
The conspirators paused to watch the effect of their sallies, and
subsided, overcome with mirth, on the Music Building steps, when little
Eugenia walked more slowly, halted, and finally turned down the hill
toward Main Street.
“She’s not going to be at the tail of any procession of Complete
Idiots,” chuckled Georgia. “Oh, I say, here comes Christabel Porter!
Let’s tackle her.”
Christabel Porter was a lanky, spectacled senior with a marvelous
memory, a passion for scientific research, a deep hatred of persons
who misnamed helpless infants, and a whole-hearted contempt for the
frivolity of the Dutton twins and their tribe. She respected Georgia,
making an exception of her because she always wore her hair plain and
never indulged in any kind of feminine furbelows.
“No use,” objected Fluffy. “Let’s go along to dinner so we can get
through and begin on Rosa Marie’s clothes.”
“We’ve got all night,” said Georgia easily, “if we need it. Let’s have
a try at the impossible. Hello, Christabel. Have you been buying one
too?”
Christabel squinted near-sightedly at the trio. “Oh, it’s you,” she
said. “What on earth are you doing up here on those cold steps, when
it’s past six already?”
“Talking to you,” Fluffy told her sweetly, holding the Esquimaux
up against the western light and smoothing the baby’s skirts
ostentatiously.
Christabel squinted harder. “Dolls!” she scoffed at last. “What on
earth are you up to now?”
“Georgia’s is the biggest,” said Straight sulkily. “Tell her about the
C. I.’s, Georgia. You were the one that thought of it. It’s nothing to
blame us about.”
Christabel listened to the tale in bewildered silence. At the
conclusion she gave a deep sigh. “Count me in,” she said. “I’m thinking
of taking a Ph. D. in psychology at Zurich next winter. I guess this
is as good an experiment on the play instinct as I’m likely to run up
against.” She sighed again deeply. “Of all the queer unaccountable
reactions! If it was after midyears, perhaps I could understand it,
but now---- Don’t tell any one else that I’m studying it, please; they
wouldn’t be quite natural if they knew. Where do you buy dolls?”
That evening the Belden House was in a flutter of excitement. The
Dutton twins were in Georgia’s room with the door locked. Fluffy’s
dolls were reposing on her bed, carefully pillowed on two lace-edged
sachets. The doll’s house was delivered about eight o’clock, and most
of the paper was torn off it in some way or other before Fluffy saw
it. Georgia sternly refused to open the door to any one. The sound of
cheerful conversation, laughter, and little squeals of pleasurable
excitement floated out over the transom. Plainly the Dutton twins
and Georgia Ames were not studying Logic--or they were studying it
after peculiar methods of their own. Furthermore, Fluffy’s note-book
was lying conspicuously on her table, and Barbara West had borrowed
Georgia’s, and was almost in tears over its owner’s curt refusal to
come out and explain what Barbara angrily described as “two pages of
hen scratches about undistributed middle, and that was just what I
didn’t get!”
When the quarter to ten warning-bell jangled through the Belden House
halls, Georgia threw her room hospitably open. With magic celerity it
filled up with curious girls, who stared in amazement at the spectacle
of Straight Dutton rocking a huge doll to sleep, laughed at Wooden’s
mussy wig and checked gingham apron--“Exactly like the ones I used to
have to wear,” Georgia explained pathetically, “and the other girls
laughed at me just that way”--and noisily demanded explanations of
the absurd trio’s latest eccentricity. Next morning alarm clocks went
off extra early, Main Street swarmed with Belden House girls on a
before-chapel quest for dolls, the toy-shop proprietor telegraphed a
hurry order to the nearest doll factory, and surreptitious examination
of queer, hunchy bundles broke the tension of the Logic quiz and
blocked the hallways between classes.
That afternoon there were doll-dressing bees at every campus house, and
Fluffy’s doll-tea in Jack o’ Hearts’ stall was the centre of interest
at the Tally-ho Tea-Shop.
A pleasant vagueness about the C. I.’s continued to pervade the
speech of its founders. Nobody seemed to know exactly where or when
the first meeting would be held. But, quite irrespective of the club
or the mystic time-limit imposed for membership, the doll fad took
possession of Harding. It was a red letter day for the conspirators
when the junior class president, an influential young person who prided
herself on her independence of character, appeared on the platform at
class meeting, with her doll in her arms. The college poetess, who
went walking alone and had had several of her verses printed in a real
magazine--sure signs of genius--took her darling doll to call on the
head of the English Department, with whom she was very intimate. A maid
who went to the door with hot water for the tea declared “cross her
heart” that she saw Miss Raymond with the doll on her lap, undressing
it, “just like any kid.” However that might have been, the poetess
continued to be great friends with Miss Raymond; evidently the doll
episode had not “queered” her with that august lady.
So the doll wave swept the college. Spreads became doll parties, French
lingerie was recklessly cut up into doll dresses, girls who had never
sewed a stitch in their lives labored over elaborate doll costumes, and
on warm October afternoons the campus resembled a mammoth doll market,
with Paradise as an annex for exclusive little parties. Tennis matches
and basket-ball games were watched by doll-laden spectators, and some
of the best athletes actually refused to go into their autumnal class
meets because it took too much time when the doll parties were so much
more fun.
Christabel Porter showed Georgia, in strict confidence, the tabulated
results of her observations.
“Insane, one,” it read; “still infantile, all freshmen, nearly all
sophomores, many juniors and seniors; slavish copy-cats, practically
all the rest of the college; can’t be accounted for, three.”
“The one,” she explained, “is the college poetess, and the three are
you and the Duttons. You’re not infants, you’re not stupid, you’re not
exactly crazy, you’re far from being copy-cats. I don’t understand you
at all.”
“You never will, Christabel,” Georgia told her sweetly, “no matter if
you take a dozen Ph. D.’s in Psych. at Zurich. But you shall presently
understand the C. I.’s. There is a meeting in my room to-morrow at two.”
“Won’t it be rather crowded?” inquired Christabel anxiously, glancing
around Georgia’s particularly minute and very much littered “single.”
Georgia smiled enigmatically. “Oh, it won’t take long, I think. It
means so much red tape to arrange for a more official place, like the
gym or the Student’s Building hall. The back campus would do, only the
weather man says rain for to-morrow.”
Next morning Georgia and the Duttons cut Logic (except Straight, who
dared not), Lit., and Zoölogy lab.
By noon Georgia’s walls were ablaze with effective decorations.
“Complete Idiots,” printed in every color of the rainbow, was
interspersed with sketches of every conceivable type of girl playing
with every possible variety of doll. Straight could draw, if she could
not adorn a Logic class. Fluffy and Georgia sighed to think that other
people’s “memorabils” would be enriched with these fascinating trophies.
At a few minutes before one Straight and Fluffy slipped
unostentatiously down-town in the rain to have lunch at a small new
place where there would be no gamut of inquiry to run about the
afternoon’s plans. Georgia meanwhile locked her door and waited until
the house was at lunch, when she let herself out, posted a sign,
reading, “Please don’t disturb until two o’clock,” hurried down-town
by a back way, and joined the Duttons just in time to gobble a sandwich
or two before the next train to the Junction.
On the station platform they met Madeline and Babbie Hildreth.
“Where are you going?” demanded Madeline.
“To the big city to buy Georgia a turban swirl,” Fluffy told them with
a smile.
“I thought your C. I. blow-out was to-day,” said Madeline innocently.
“Oh-ho!” cried Georgia. “So you do take some interest in our society,
though you haven’t appeared to. You’ll take more by to-morrow. Why
don’t you go to the meeting? You’ve just got time. I know they’d vote
to set aside the entrance requirements in favor of such distinguished
persons as yourselves.”
“But why----” began Babbie.
“Georgia can’t live another minute without a turban swirl,” jeered
Straight, climbing on to the train before it had fairly stopped.
“Tell all inquiring friends that we deeply regret not being able to be
present at the fatal moment,” added Georgia.
“Be a dear, Madeline, and go, so you can tell us how they took it,”
begged Fluffy.
“There are perfectly lovely souvenirs,” chanted the trio in chorus, as
their train pulled out.
The organizers of the C. I.’s witnessed part of the matinée. Georgia
and Straight bought a blue chiffon waist in partnership, and Fluffy,
from force of habit, bought a Chinese doll. They had an early dinner
to conform as far as possible to the rules about being chaperoned in
town after dark, and they arrived in Harding again, tired and damp but
expectant, soon after seven.
At the Tally-ho they stopped to find out, if possible, what sort of
reception they were likely to get further on. Madeline welcomed them
joyously.
“I went,” she said, “and I knew you’d want me to take charge in your
absence, so I did. Everybody who got a souvenir”--she pointed to hers,
decorating the wall back of the famous desk--“is happy. Others are
amused or wrathful according to the stage of development of their sense
of humor. Christabel Porter sent word that she understands you less
than ever. The poetess almost wept at such desecration of her idyllic
amusement. About two hundred girls came, and the rest of the college
either tried to and couldn’t get inside the Belden House door, or wept
at home because of their ineligibility. Mary Brooks wept too, because
her famous rumor stunt isn’t in it any longer with this gallery play
of yours. She wants you three to come to dinner to-morrow--Professor
Hinsdale is away--and tell her all about it.”
“Thanks,” said the trio nonchalantly.
“Don’t you think we’re pretty nearly smart enough to belong to the B.
C. A.’s?” demanded Georgia tartly at last.
“The B. C. A.’s?” repeated Madeline. “Oh, was that what you were
venting your beautiful sarcasm on? We thought you were hitting all
those new department societies that everybody is making such a silly
fuss about getting into.”
The trio exchanged glances.
“It was partly that,” admitted Georgia. “We’ve absolutely sworn off
from being in such things ourselves, or sending violets, except to
girls who make Dramatic Club or Clio--the real big honors, you know.”
“And have you also sworn off from going to the celebration dinners?”
inquired Madeline with a wicked smile.
“We haven’t decided about that,” Georgia informed her with dignity.
“But please don’t forget,” she added solemnly, “that your crowd began
this foolish club idea, and has done a lot to develop it. It was you
principally that we meant to hit off.”
Madeline grinned. “I really wish you were eligible to the B. C. A.’s,”
she said, “because then we could see how manfully you would resist
temptation. But it will be at least a year before you can any of you
possibly meet--well, we’ll call it the age limit. So don’t waste time
hunting over the bulletin-boards for a notice of your election.”
“We are generally considered rather frivolous,” Georgia told her
severely, “but we do stick to our principles--of which the anti-club
idea is one that we cherish greatly.”
“Though you’ve very recently acquired it,” murmured Madeline.
“Very,” agreed Georgia cheerfully. “Good-night.”
Outside the bewildered Dutton twins sorrowfully took Georgia to task
for spoiling forever their chances with the B. C. A.’s.
“Are you crazy?” demanded Straight.
“Don’t you remember why we started the whole doll business?” asked
Fluffy.
Georgia, who had been rather absent and constrained during the
afternoon’s adventures, gazed at them pityingly. “You little
innocents!” she said at last. “Can’t you see what she’s done for us?
Imagine the mud that two hundred girls have tracked through the Belden
House halls. Imagine the rage of the matron, and the things that some
of the faculty prigs will say about this whole business. I’ve been
worried to death all day, to tell you the truth. But now we don’t have
to care. We’re reformers. We’re disciples of the simple life, giving
demonstrations of the foolishness of over-organization. We’re sorry
about the mud and all that, of course. We’re--anyhow, I demand the
satisfaction of telling Christabel Porter the truth about us. I can’t
bear to have her explain us wrong, after all her trouble.” Georgia
splashed into a puddle and exclaimed angrily at the incident. “What in
Christendom can B. C. A. stand for?” she muttered wrathfully, stamping
off the mud.
“Who cares?” cried Straight, splashing into a puddle herself for sheer
bravado.
“Who indeed?” Fluffy took her up. “I’ve had a thought, Georgia. Let’s
keep on playing dolls. Then Christabel Porter can’t explain us at all.
She’ll be too mixed up to ever go to Zurich.”