A GROWING GIRL
After her third day of solitary confinement, Maude promised to apologize
properly to Miss Woodruff the next morning, immediately after prayers.
“Miss Woodruff,” said Maude, standing very slim and straight at her own
desk in the Assembly room, “I apologize for the things I did to
your—your _clothes_ the other night. I’m sorry it was necessary to do
them.”
“That will do,” said Dr. Rhodes, raising his hand, hastily—for there was
no knowing how far irrepressible Maude might go, with all those other
girls ready to applaud. “I’m sure Miss Woodruff accepts your apology.”
“I do,” replied Miss Woodruff, coldly, “but I should also like to have
my silver cardcase returned at once. I have always kept it on the right
hand side of my dresser, exactly six inches from my pincushion.”
“_Sacré bleu! Quel précision!_” breathed untidy Madame Bolande.
“When I went to your closet to get that red—well, that red _garment_,”
replied Maude, “I noticed that the top of your dresser was perfectly
neat and tidy. But I _didn’t_ see any cardcase. It might have _been_
there but I didn’t notice it. I certainly didn’t take it.”
“Very well,” said Miss Woodruff. “You may now be seated. Classes
please.”
Mabel, the other culprit, was now behaving very well indeed. She was
learning her lessons, and, under the patient tuition of Miss Emily
Rhodes, was improving her naturally untidy penmanship. She was also
meekly, conscientiously and courageously going without dessert; and
never—it seemed to always hungry Mabel—had there been so very many
entrancing varieties of pie, so many choice puddings; and, of all weeks
of the year, that was the one that the fat cook chose for the
introduction of a brand new custardy affair that every one of the girls
declared “simply scrumptious.”
Usually, there was much swapping of food at meal time. Grace Allen
didn’t like butter but Ruth Dennis did; and was glad to give her tapioca
pudding to Grace in exchange for Grace’s daily butter. Augusta disliked
celery but adored pickles so she and Cora carried on an equally
gratifying exchange. Mabel always traded her lima beans for Alice
Bailey’s cocoanut pie—Alice hated cocoanut—and of course, during that
dessertless week Mabel was obliged to refuse not only her own pie but
Alice’s. But everybody liked the new custard.
“Taste mine,” tempted little Jane Pool. “It’s just licking good. Come
on, nobody’s looking.”
“No,” sighed Mabel, “it wouldn’t be honest. I _said_ I’d go without so
I’ll go all the way—one week can’t last forever.”
“Never mind, Mabel,” comforted Maude, “I’ll ask Nora to make this kind
_often_ next week and I’ll give you my share just once so you can catch
up. Besides, I owe you that much—I led you into this scrape, you know.”
Going without dessert, however, was a small trouble compared with
mysteriously losing two full grown parents. Mabel’s were still missing.
As she had no address except Berlin, she wasn’t at all sure that her own
letters were reaching _them_. She and each of the other Lakeville girls
had had several brief, boyish letters from their friend and
fellow-camper, Laddie Lombard, the shipwrecked boy they had rescued at
Pete’s Patch; but from her parents, not a word for so many weeks that it
made Mabel shiver to count them.
Her thoughts, nowadays, were gloomy ones. What if she had to stay at
Highland Hall until she was faded and forty like poor old Abbie. What if
her skirts kept getting shorter and shorter (or what was more likely,
narrower and narrower) like Cora’s. What if her middy blouses faded and
frayed like Sallie’s, with no prospects of new ones. And what if she
_never_ saw her dear parents again—that was the worst thought of all.
Her plump easy-going mother, her kind, pleasant father.
Yes, that was the worst thought of all. It weighed Mabel down. No matter
what else she might be doing at the moment, Mabel couldn’t quite escape
from the steadily increasing weight of that puzzling trouble.
“I’d give all four of my letters from Laddie,” said Mabel, wistfully,
“for just a postal card with one little word on it from my mother.”
“Well,” declared Gladys de Milligan, who also was watching the mail bag,
expectantly, “if I had a daughter as clumsy as you are I’d chuck her
into a boarding school and leave her there _forever_. I’d be _glad_ to
forget about her.”
“Anyhow,” declared Mabel, crossly, “you don’t need to chew gum in my
ear, even if you _would_ be that kind of a mother.”
The Lakeville girls tried to cheer troubled Mabel but she could see that
they, too, were becoming anxious. Indeed, Bettie had secretly written to
Mr. Black about it. Mr. Black, Bettie firmly believed, could fix
_anything_.
“My goodness!” said Cora, one evening, when the girls were waiting for
Henrietta to come and tell them ghost stories on the spooky front
stairs, “here are the Christmas holidays coming right along and I don’t
know what I’m ever going to _do_. I’ve written and written to my people
about the way I’m growing—told ’em I was seven feet tall if I was an
inch—and they won’t _believe_ me. They think I’m _exaggerating_! Here I
am, growing a mile a minute; but my clothes, alas! are standing still.
I’m going home with Maude, to visit her perfectly scrumptious family,
and I haven’t one single dud that’s big enough either lengthwise or
sidewise.”
“Didn’t the photographs work?” asked Helen Miller. For the Miller girls,
at Cora’s request, had taken a number of snapshots of the growing girl
to be sent to her doubting parents. Perhaps Cora had grown a little at
the very moment in which she was snapped. At any rate the pictures were
slightly hazy as to outline; yet, to the girls, they looked convincingly
like Cora.
“No,” returned Cora, mournfully. “They didn’t believe that it _was_ a
picture of me.”
“What are you going to try next?” asked little Jane Pool.
“Nothing. I’ve given up. I’ve half a mind to stay right here for the
holidays.”
“Nonsense!” said Maude. “You can wear _my_ clothes—I’ve several things
that are too big for me—that new navy blue taffeta, for instance.”
“I _couldn’t_ do that,” said Cora, blushing until her freckles
disappeared. “Your people would know they were yours. I’d feel ashamed.”
“Yes, that wouldn’t do,” agreed Jean.
“I know what to do,” said Henrietta, who had arrived and was perched on
the substantial newel post. “We’ll _all_ lend you things. You can take
that new white blouse of mine—it will have to shrink before _I_ can wear
it.”
“I’ll lend you my pleated skirt,” said Helen Miller, “you have it most
of the time, anyway.”
“I have a petticoat that would go with it,” said Dorothy.
“Please—please take my new umbrella,” pleaded little Jane Pool,
earnestly. “I want to lend you _something_ and that’s the only thing I
have that’s big enough.”
“You’re a bunch of darlings,” said Cora, hugging them all by turns, “and
I’ll be _glad_ to borrow your things.”
“Of course it’s too late to be of any use for vacation,” said Jean, “but
I have an idea. Why don’t you ask Doctor Rhodes to write to your people
and tell them the horrible truth about your inches. Have Mrs. Henry
Rhodes measure you. Figures, you know, never—well, exaggerate. They may
believe Doctor Rhodes.”
“Angel child!” cried Cora, “I’ll do just that. You’ve found the answer.”
Perhaps Jean had, for Doctor Rhodes, both amused and impressed by Cora’s
remarkable plight, _did_ write to her people and the response was a
large box that arrived soon after Cora returned from Maude’s.
“And my goodness!” said exaggerating Cora, “there are tucks a mile wide
and hems a mile deep and a whole acre of cloth in _everything_.”
Three days after the evening on the stairs, the girls were all in the
school room when Sallie, a little late, came in with the mail bag. There
was a pleasing plumpness about the bag that day; and, as usual, all the
girls crowded into the space just below the rostrum, so that Sallie, the
post girl, looked down upon a small sea of eager, upturned faces.
Sallie reached into the bag, as was her habit, and pulled out a letter.
“Miss Eleanor Pratt,” she read. One of the Seniors accepted it, calmly.
“Miss Anne Blodgett, Miss Isabelle Carew, Miss Ruth Dennis, Miss Debbie
Clark, Miss Hazel Benton, Miss Gladys de Milligan, Miss Bettie Tucker,
Miss Augusta Lemon, Miss Beatrice Holmes—” Another Senior strolled
leisurely forward and condescended to accept a letter. Really, those
older girls were annoying; they were so _blasé_ about their mail.
“Miss Mabel Bennett,” called Sallie, in her clear, strong voice.
Mabel seized her letter and waved it, gleefully. “It’s from _Mother_!”
she cried. “Hip, Hip, Hooray!” (There was nothing _blasé_ about Mabel.)
Sallie, beaming sympathetically, pulled another letter from the bag.
“Miss Mabel Bennett,” she announced.
“It’s from Mother,” Mabel shrieked again.
But when the third letter proved to be Mabel’s, too, Mabel was too
breathless with excitement to do more than gasp. When she had received
five letters and four postal cards and a package containing thick,
remarkably substantial German handkerchiefs, one for herself and one for
each of her Lakeville friends, it was almost a relief to hear Sallie
read a different name; for even the lofty Seniors were staring at her in
astonishment.
“It wasn’t my _people_ that were lost,” explained Mabel, after she had
read all this accumulation of mail. “For quite a long time Mother mailed
her letters in an old post-box that wasn’t used any more for that
purpose. She didn’t understand enough German when somebody told her that
wasn’t the right one. But Father found out about it; and, after a long
time, they succeeded in getting the German postmaster to open the old
box and send her letters. So I’m not an orphan after all. And this week
I’m going to buy something lovely with every penny of my thirty cents
for Sallie, because she is.”