AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE
One morning, late in October, there was great excitement at Highland
Hall. It was just at recess time and all the girls (except Maude Wilder
and Debbie Clark who were under the porch foraging for pie) were on the
veranda or the graveled walk. Two new pupils were arriving. They were
not together for they came in separate hacks. The first was a large girl
of fourteen who, followed by a small, meek father, marched fearlessly up
the steps and looked each girl straight in the eye until she reached
Sallie Dickinson, who stood in the doorway, smiling a welcome.
“I’m Victoria Webster of Iowa,” said she, “and I’ve come here to school.
Where’s Doctor What d’ye-callum? I’ve come here after an education and I
want it right away.”
And then Victoria deliberately turned and winked at the Miller girls; a
real wink, with one bold blue eye wide open, the other shut. Victoria,
the surprised girls perceived, was as fresh as a breeze from her own
prairie, and they were instantly prepared to enjoy her.
The other hack disgorged its contents. An overdressed woman in
ridiculous shoes stepped out; an overdressed girl in even more
ridiculous shoes followed her. The girl, fair-haired and exceedingly
fluffy was almost as violently perfumed as Madame Bolande herself.
Jean, Marjory, Bettie and Mabel glanced casually at this second young
person and suddenly gasped. They had received a jolt. Then they looked
inquiringly at one another and back again at the girl. They couldn’t
quite believe their eyes.
“What’s her name?” demanded Marjory, when Sallie, who had escorted the
last newcomers inside returned to the porch.
“Gladys de Milligan, of Milwaukee,” returned Sallie, holding her nose.
“Her father must be a perfume factory.”
The Lakeville girls looked at one another again.
“Gladys de Milligan,” breathed Marjory.
“Laura Milligan!” gasped Mabel. “Of all things, Laura Milligan!”
“Hush,” warned Jean, a finger on her lips. “Come down on the lawn. We’ll
have to talk this over by ourselves.”
“It’s Laura all right,” said Bettie. “Her hair’s a lot lighter than it
used to be and she’s taller and much more elegant; but it’s the same
turned up nose and the same twisty shoulders and the same small eyes,
too close together.”
“And the same horrid mother,” said Mabel. “What shall we do?”
“Let’s not do anything,” counseled wise Jean. “Let’s wait and see if she
recognizes us.”
“Perhaps anybody as grand as that,” offered Marjory, hopefully,
“wouldn’t _want_ to know plain blue serge folks like us. Of course we
wouldn’t exactly want the Highland Hall girls to think she was an old
friend of ours—”
“She _wasn’t_,” said Mabel, emphatically.
“Well,” argued Jean, “perhaps Laura has changed—certainly she has
changed her name. It wouldn’t be quite fair or kind for us to tell the
other girls the things we know about her. We can wait until we have her
by herself before we seem to recognize her. And maybe she has improved—”
“She needed to,” said Marjory, sagely. “Shan’t we even tell Henrietta?”
“I don’t believe we need to,” returned Jean. “Henrietta won’t like her
anyway. She’s too—well, too cheap. She isn’t Henrietta’s kind, you
know.”
“The Milligans must have made money,” said Marjory. “They hadn’t any
such clothes in Lakeville.”
“Lakeville would have dropped dead if they had,” giggled Bettie.
At first “Gladys” pretended not to recognize the little girls with whom
she had once played in Lakeville; but, needing some one to show her the
way to a class room, she waylaid Marjory in the hall and called her by
name.
“Now, listen,” warned Gladys, shifting her gum to the other side of her
mouth. “Don’t let anybody hear you calling me Laura. It isn’t my name
any more. I always hated that name and Milligan, too. Mother calls me
Gladys—Gladys Evelyn de Milligan.”
“What’s the ‘D’ for,” asked honest Marjory.
“That’s French,” explained Laura. “It’s d e, _de_.”
“But Milligan isn’t French.”
“It’s more elegant that way,” explained Laura, shifting her gum again.
“We’re society people now. It looks better in print when Mother’s ‘Among
those present.’ Now listen. Now that you know my name, see that you
remember it. And tell those other Lakeville girls they can do the same
thing.”
Although the Miller girls’ father supplied the world with soap, although
three continents ate the breakfast food that Hazel Benton’s uncle
manufactured, no one at Highland Hall paraded her wealth and her
so-called “Social standing” as vulgar little Gladys de Milligan paraded
hers. She was always painted and powdered and overdressed; she was
reckless with her spending money, snobbish and artificial to the very
final degree; yet, fortunately for gum-chewing Laura, there were girls
who seemed to like her.
Most of the girls, however, liked Victoria Webster much better. To be
sure Victoria had her faults, but they were pleasanter faults than
Laura’s. Every one of the youngsters admired and tried to imitate
Victoria’s marvelously perfect wink. Maude came the nearest to achieving
success; and little Lillian Thwaite failed the most dismally.
“Don’t try it on a cold day,” warned Victoria, “you might freeze that
way, Lillian, with your mouth half way up your cheek and your nose in a
knot.”
It was a joy to see Victoria and Maude play ball. They went at it
precisely like a pair of boys. And Victoria shared Maude’s affection for
pie.
Madame Bolande liked Gladys Evelyn de Milligan but sarcastic Miss
Woodruff did not. When she called upon that young person in class, she
frequently pretended that she had forgotten her name, so that one day,
to the great amusement of her classmates, Laura would be called Ambrosia
Nectarine and the next Miss Woodruff would address her as Verbena
Heliotrope, Gladiolus Violet or Lucretia Calliopsis or something else
equally ridiculous; but a new one for every occasion. This, of course,
wasn’t exactly kind or even quite courteous; but it is safe to say that
Gladys Evelyn began to regret having changed and embellished her plain
if not beautiful name. Perhaps, before Miss Woodruff had entirely
exhausted her supply of fancy names, poor Gladys Evelyn may have envied
little Jane Pool. No one ever forgot or pretended to forget Jane’s very
brief and very plain name, except Doctor Rhodes, who forgot everybody’s.
Jane was a small girl with a very bright, eager face, smooth brown hair
and a great deal of character. Just about everybody liked Jane.
“Are you related to those grand Chicago Pools?” asked Gladys Evelyn one
day, as she peeled a fresh stick of gum.
“Mercy, no,” returned Jane, who had listened for a weary half hour to
Laura’s tales about her own wonderful people. “There’s nothing grand
about _us_—we’re just plain Pools—little common Pools like mud puddles.
No limousines, no diamonds, no ancestors. Just three meals a day and a
bed at night. We’re just folks—the commonest kind.”
And Gladys, not noticing the twinkle in Jane’s bright black eye,
believed the little rascal, only to learn later that Jane’s father was
accounted one of the wealthiest men in the state of Wisconsin. But you
never would have known it from Jane.
“I wish,” complained Henrietta, one day, “we hadn’t been two days late
in getting to this school. All the girls engaged their walking partners
before we came. I like to walk with Victoria—she steps right off like a
man—but Gladys Evelyn de Milligan—phew! With all those heels and that
tight skirt she _can’t_ walk. But I’ll say one thing for Gladys. She
_can_ chew gum.”
“We didn’t mean to leave you out when we four paired off,” assured Jean.
“But Marjory asked me and Mabel asked Bettie—why, of course we can
switch off sometimes. The _old_ girls engaged their partners last year.”
These walks occurred three times a week. On Sundays, when the entire
school walked two by two to church. On Tuesday, when the girls were
taken, again in twos, to the village to shop; and on Fridays when they
went to the cemetery. The only reason they went to the cemetery was
because a walk of a mile and a half straight west ended there.
Sallie Dickinson usually walked with poor old Abbie Smith, the chaperon.
Abbie was a forlorn creature, neither old nor young. She had a long red
nose, a retreating chin, drooping shoulders and a rounded back.
Colorless, straggling hair and pale eyes. A spineless, unpleasant
person. Like Sallie Dickinson, she was an orphan. Like Sallie, poor old
Abbie had been left penniless at Highland Hall, but at an earlier date.
It was said that Abbie’s stepfather had deliberately abandoned her; and,
looking at Abbie, it seemed not unlikely. One would have supposed that
twenty years of school life would have _educated_ Abbie but they hadn’t.
Abbie was incapable of acquiring an education.
“When I look at Abbie,” confided Sallie, one day, as she laid an armful
of freshly laundered garments on Jean’s bed, “it makes me just sick. Am
_I_ going to be like that twenty years from now?”
“Of course you’re not,” consoled Jean, “You’re ever so bright in school
and you—why, Sallie! It’s all in your own hands. If you learn every
blessed thing you can, some day you’ll be smart enough to teach. And
then, probably, they’d be glad enough to have you teach right here. And
if they wouldn’t, you could go some place else. Don’t ever _think_ that
you have to stay here and be a stupid, downtrodden servant like poor old
Abbie.”
“Well, do you know,” said Sallie, visibly brightening, “I _did_ think
just exactly that. I wake up nights and worry about it. Oh, Jean! I do
wish you’d poke me up once in awhile, whenever you see me losing my
backbone or looking like Abbie—”
“You _don’t_ look like Abbie—you _couldn’t_. Abbie never was pretty or
bright and you _are_. Wait, I want to give you these history notes I dug
up—I know they kept you busy all study hour sorting the clean clothes so
of course you didn’t have time to look anything up. You’ll just _have_
to have splendid marks from now on.”
“You’re a darling!” cried Sallie, rubbing her cheek against Jean’s. “I
wish you’d reached Hiltonburg a whole lot sooner. I _needed_ you.”