THE BEGUILING OF THE SMALLEST SISTER
With mid-years safely behind her, Montana Marie fairly radiated
happiness.
“I’m anchored here till June all right, I guess,” she giggled joyously.
“If I don’t do something extra-specially silly, I guess I can certainly
stay till June. And now that I’ve caught on to the rights of this
concentration business, why, I can enjoy myself a little. No, I’m not
worrying about next near. I never worry about things so far off as
next year. Besides, maybe by next year----” Montana Marie shrugged her
shoulders with truly Parisian éclat, and blithely refused to finish her
sentence.
Montana Marie’s idea of a good time seemed to center around things to
eat. She became a Perfect Patron of the Tally-ho, and almost every
evening she gave a chafing-dish party in her room. Connie could not
afford to waste her evenings over chafing-dish parties, but she was
too obliging to complain. So she merely disappeared, just before the
parties were due to arrive, spent her evenings studying with the Thorn
or reading in the college library, and was unaffectedly delighted when,
just as the fudge was cool enough to eat, or the rarebit done to a
turn, Montana Marie left her guests to search Morton Hall from top to
bottom for her missing roommate.
“The eats are served,” she would announce with a giggle, when she had
discovered Connie’s whereabouts. “We’re only waiting for you, so hurry
along, and bring all your friends.”
Montana Marie could never learn the names of the Morton Hall girls.
“They all look alike to me,” she declared, and hospitably invited any
and all that she met in the corridors to come and have “eats,” and
meet the Duttons and Georgia and Susanna Hart and Timmy Wentworth.
Marie was past-mistress of the difficult art of “mixing crowds.” After
her advent Morton Hall suddenly took its place as a social center
among the other campus houses. The Belden invited the Morton to be its
partner in getting up a house-play. It was discovered that two of the
sophomore basket-ball team lived in the Morton, and one “Argus” editor.
The monthly house spreads, which Betty had started in the interests
of general sociability, suddenly blossomed out into popular campus
functions. The Morton Hallites were learning to play as well as they
worked, and it was Montana Marie O’Toole who had taught them. Betty
Wales smiled as she remembered how hard she had tried to keep Marie out
of the house.
“I guess it’s generally the best plan to let things sort of decide
themselves,” she reflected. “Then if they go wrong, you can blame it
on the things, and with me, anyway, they usually go right--only there
are some things that just won’t decide themselves.” Betty Wales was not
thinking of the Tally-ho Catering Department (which was deciding to be
the howling success that Babbie had predicted), nor of the Student’s
Aid Secretaryship, nor of Montana Marie O’Toole, among whose faults was
certainly not to be ranked a lack of decision.
“Oh, goodness me!” said Betty Wales at last to the open fire in her
cheerful sitting-room at Morton Hall. “A girl ought to know her own
mind. I’m old enough to know what I want. I’m grown up. But I don’t
feel a bit grown up. I just hate flirts. It’s perfectly dreadful to
keep a nice man on the string. But he won’t let me say no--and I’m not
ready to say yes--not to anybody--yet.”
The little Student’s Aid Secretary put on an old skirt, a white
sweater, and a fuzzy white cap, and went off for a solitary tramp in
the snow.
“Anyhow it’s better to wait till you’re quite sure what you want than
to decide wrong and be very unhappy about it afterward,” she thought,
as, looking very young and irresponsible and contented once more, she
shook the snow out of her hair and hurried in to her place at the head
of a Morton Hall dinner table.
Montana Marie O’Toole was not at dinner that evening. After having
been for two days without ready money she had received a check in the
afternoon mail and had promptly sallied forth to find friends who would
help her spend it. But for some unknown reason the afternoon seemed
to be a busy one for all the college but Montana Marie. Fluffy was
writing a long over-due lit. paper; Straight was coaching the sophomore
basket-ball team; Georgia had disappeared directly after lunch, nobody
knew where; Eugenia Ford was just starting for chemistry lab.; Timmy
Wentworth had promised to go skating. Finally Montana Marie gave up in
despair and wended her solitary way toward her bank. She would get the
check cashed, anyway, if she couldn’t find anybody to come and play
with her. She would send a lot of flowers and candy to all her tutors,
and buy a lovely present for Miss Wales. She hadn’t half thanked them
all for getting her through mid-years. She had been too busy tearing
around having a good time. It was lucky that she had happened to walk
down-town alone, because it gave her a chance to think, and to remember
about all the people she ought to be grateful to. Montana Marie arrived
at the shopping district of Harding in a fine glow of remorse and
appreciation. She was just turning the corner to the bank when she
met Dorothy Wales, walking sedately along in company with another
little girl--a fat little girl with twinkling blue eyes and the general
flyaway air of having dressed in a hurry.
Dorothy greeted Miss O’Toole with shy politeness, and Montana Marie
smiled her most expansive smile in return.
“Come in with me while I get some money,” she urged hospitably, “and
then we can go down street together.”
“I’m afraid we can’t,” began Dorothy, but the fat little girl overruled
her.
“Oh, come on,” she urged. “We can run all the way home up that back
street.”
In the bank, while she waited her turn at the cashier’s window, Montana
Marie had a thought. “What do you kids want most in the world?” she
demanded genially, as they went out.
The fat child had her heart’s desire on her tongue’s end. “Cream
puffs--all I can eat.”
Dorothy laughed up into Montana Marie’s lovely, smiling face. “How
silly, Janet Peyton, to want cream puffs the most of anything,” she
said reproachfully.
“Well, what do you want most of anything, dearie?” insisted Marie. Her
great thought had been to the effect that the nicest thing she could
do for Miss Wales was to make the Smallest Sister blissfully happy.
Incidentally it would be fun to fill up fat little Janet Peyton with
cream puffs.
Dorothy considered carefully, bound not to rush into silliness.
“If you’d asked me yesterday,” she explained at last, “I’d have said a
turquoise ring right away, ’cause turquoises are my birth-stone, and
all my roommates have got rings with their birth-stones in. But to-day
I think I’d rather have a pink sash and pink hair-bows, to freshen up
my old white dress for the school party that we’re going to have this
week. Betty says I don’t need a new dress, so I s’pose I don’t. But
whatever she says, my sash is awfully mussy.”
Montana Marie steered her charges into the nearest jewelry store and
demanded turquoise rings. Fat little Janet opened her blue eyes in
astonishment, and Dorothy blushed very red and picked at Marie’s sleeve.
“I can’t have one,” she explained in an agitated whisper. “I only said
I wanted one. Oh, no, you mustn’t get it for me. Betty wouldn’t like
me to take such a elegant present from you.”
Montana Marie patted her shoulder soothingly. “Yes, she would--just
a little ring--from me. Your sister is so lovely to me, and there’s
so little I can do in return. We’ll take the littlest ring if you
like--there’s nothing very elegant about that. Now come along and find
the pink ribbons and the cream puffs.”
At the big dry-goods store Dorothy again timidly explained that Betty
wouldn’t want her to take such big presents from any one, and Montana
Marie kissed her troubled little face, bought the widest, softest pink
sash in the shop, with extra-long hair ribbons to match, pressed the
tempting parcel into her hands, and tucked the tiny ring box deep down
in her coat pocket.
“Now for cream puffs,” she said, smiling at fat little Janet.
“We’re awfully late already, Janet,” began Dorothy. “Do you think----”
“Come, don’t be selfish,” Marie broke in gaily. “You’ve had your
presents, and now it’s Janet’s turn. You can run home up that back
way, you know.”
Cuyler’s was nearer than the Tally-ho, so they went there. Marie
ordered hot chocolate to go with the cream puffs, and ices to cool off
on, because they had hurried so, and a German pancake because she had
never tried one and wanted to see what it was like. And whenever fat
little Janet finished an order of cream puffs, Marie instructed the
waitress to bring more. She made the eating of all the cream puffs you
wanted seem the most delightful and reasonable thing in the world.
Finally fat little Janet smacked her lips over a luscious crusty
mouthful, pushed back her plate with a sigh, and said she was through.
“How I’m ever going to run up that hill!” she ruminated sadly. “I’ve
eaten too much, I guess.”
“You’ve just got to run,” Dorothy told her firmly, and then she give a
little squeal of dismay. “We’ve forgotten Miss Dick’s errand that we
came down-town for. We’ve got to go back by Main Street after all.”
“That’s good,” Montana Marie consoled them, “because now we can go
together. I’d take you all the way back to Miss Dick’s and explain
about my having made you late, only I’ve just remembered that I have
to be tutored in English at half-past four, and it’s nearly that now.
But you just tell her, Dorothy, that I made you come along with me, and
that I’m a friend of your sister’s, and she won’t scold.”
Miss Dick’s errand was at a drug store; one of the girls had a bad cold
and the school doctor had prescribed for it.
“Want a soda while we wait?” Marie asked Janet.
Janet shook her blond head hard. “No, thank you. It might make us
later,” she said very solemnly.
“How do you two happen to be down-town without a teacher?” asked Marie
curiously. “In the boarding-schools I went to we always walked two and
two, with a teacher policing the end of the line.”
“Well, you see Harding is such a safe little place,” explained Dorothy,
“and Miss Dick believes in trusting us a good deal, and----”
“We’re both honor girls,” cut in Janet placidly.
Montana Marie could not repress a wild peal of laughter.
“You won’t be any longer, I guess,” she told them gaily, “but never
you mind that. You’ve had what you wanted most in this world, and that
ought to count for something.”
Pursuing her policy of showing proper gratitude to those who had helped
her to stay in Harding, Marie asked Helen Adams to have dinner with her
at the Tally-ho.
Over the desert she told the story of her afternoon adventure. “I wish
I knew whether the fat little one is sick from overeating,” she said,
“and whether Dorothy minded the scolding she probably got. I ought to
have thought about the consequences, but I never do for myself, and
so I didn’t for them. Getting in and out of scrapes is the whole fun
of boarding-school, as far as I can see, but those infants said they
were honor girls, so I guess they haven’t had as much experience with
scrapes as I have. Will Miss Wales be awfully cross at me, do you
think, for getting her little sister into a mess?”
Uncertainty on this point kept Marie from asking questions for two
days. Then she confided her anxieties to Betty, and persuaded her to go
and help find out what had happened when the “honor girls” came home
from their belated expedition after medicine.
Dorothy came dancing down-stairs to receive them, flying into Betty’s
arms, and wiggling hastily out to offer a polite hand-shake to Marie,
who grinned sheepishly, and inquired for Janet.
“She’s all right now,” Dorothy told her, “but she felt pretty sick that
night, and she says she doesn’t want any more cream puffs at present
and maybe not ever.”
“And did you get scolded for being late?” asked Marie hastily.
“Well, yes, we did,” explained Dorothy. “But it wasn’t your fault a
bit, Miss O’Toole. We ought to have said no and stuck to it. Miss Dick
said we ought.”
“And did she take you off the honor list?” demanded Marie.
“Well, yes, she did,” admitted the Smallest Sister reluctantly. “For
the present she did. She said she felt that she must, as an example,
but that she really thought we could be trusted pretty soon again.
You see,” the Smallest Sister’s face was very earnest, “you don’t very
often meet somebody who will give you the things you want the most of
all in the world. We explained all that to Miss Dick, and she said
it was an unusual ’sperience to have happen. And Betty dear, ought
I to keep the sash and the ribbons and the ring? Miss Dick said I
was to ask you about that. Only I--I didn’t tell her about the ring
because--because I couldn’t stand it to have her say I mightn’t keep
it,” sighed the Smallest Sister despairingly. “And it’s been just awful
waiting for you to come, because Miss Dick said it would be best for me
to wait till you came, and not on any account to send for you.”
“But wasn’t the school party last night?” asked Marie.
The Smallest Sister nodded. “I wore my mussy old sash to that.”
“So you didn’t get quite what you wanted after all,” said Marie when
Betty had decided that Dorothy might keep Marie’s presents, only
Marie mustn’t do so any more. “You wanted a sash to wear to the
party, and you only got one you couldn’t wear, and I’m awfully sorry
about getting you into a scrape with Miss Dick. I was so busy feeling
grateful that day that I never thought about anything else.”
The Smallest Sister sighed. “It’s very hard to think of everything at
once, isn’t it?” she said quaintly. “Yourself and the person that’s
with you and the person that’s waiting. ’Specially the person that’s
waiting.”
“Very ’specially the person that’s waiting,” repeated Montana Marie
O’Toole, with a burst of merriment quite unwarranted by the Smallest
Sister’s argument.
Betty Wales blushed a vivid scarlet and looked suspiciously at the
mirthful Marie. But Marie was quite unconscious of Betty’s indignant
scrutiny. Marie was looking blissfully at nothing in particular, and
the Smallest Sister was looking in amazement at Marie. Betty Wales’s
blush had therefore been quite unnecessary, and as soon as she was
assured of that it faded as swiftly as it had come.