IN MISS MAJOR'S ROOM
When Russell Holiday and his wife named their only child June, they
planned to make her life one long summer holiday. For eighteen
years success went hand in hand with their desire; then an
unfortunate marriage plunged the joyous girl into bleak November.
She grew to hate her happy name. But with the passing of the man
she called husband much of the bitterness vanished, and she began
to plan for others.
"I want this Home to be as beautiful as money can make it and as
full of joy as a June holiday," she told her approving lawyer.
"There must be no age limit. It shall welcome as freely the woman
of forty as her mother or her grandmother. I will gather in the
needy of any sect or race,--the oppressed, the disabled, the
sorrowful, and the lonely,--and as much as can be give to them the
freedom and happiness of a delightful home."
In just one week from the day the ground was broken for the big
building, a drunken chauffeur drove the donor and her lawyer to
their death, and the institution was continued in a totally
different way from that intended by the two who could make no
protest.
To be sure, it stood at last, in gray granite magnificence, on the
crest of Edgewood Hill, a palace without and within; but to those
for whom it was built had never come, through the years of its
being, a single June holiday.
It was this that some of the residents were discussing, as they
crocheted, knitted, or embroidered in Miss Major's room on a dull
May morning.
"Too bad June Holiday couldn't have lived just a little longer!"
Mrs. Bonnyman sighed.
"What would she say if she knew how her wishes were ignored!" Miss
Castlevaine shook her head.
"Regular prison house!" snapped Mrs. Crump.
"Well, I'm glad to be here if I do have to obey rules," confessed a
meek little woman with grayish, sandy hair. "It's a lovely place,
and there has to be rules where there's so many."
"There don't have to be hair-crimping rules, Mrs. Prindle--huh!"
As the curly-headed maker of the hated law walked across the lawn.
Miss Castlevaine sent her an annihilating glance.
"Is that Miss Sniffen?" queried Miss Mullaly, adjusting her
eyeglasses.
Miss Castlevaine nodded.
The others watched the tall, straight figure, on its way to the
vegetable garden.
"She has the expression of a basilisk I saw the picture of the
other day." spoke up Mrs. Dick.
"What kind of an expression was that?" inquired Mrs. Winslow Teed.
"I saw a stuffed basilisk in a London museum when I was abroad, but
I can't seem to recollect its expression."
"Look at _her_!" laughed Mrs. Dick. "She has it to perfection."
Miss Crilly's giggle preceded her words.
"She's like a beanpole with its good clothes on, ain't she? But,
then, I think Miss Sniffen is real nice sometimes," she amended.
"So are basilisks and beanpoles--in their proper places," retorted
Miss Major; "but they don't belong in the June Holiday Home."
"Are her rules so awful?" inquired Miss Mullaly anxiously.
"I don't like them very," answered the little Swedish widow.
"Mis' Adlerfeld puts it politely." laughed Miss Crilly. "I'll tell
you what they are, they are like the little girl in the rhyme--with
a difference,--
'When they're bad, they're very, very bad,
And when they're good, they're horrid!'"
"I heard you couldn't have any company except one afternoon a
week," resumed Miss Mullaly, after the laughing had ceased,--"not
anybody at all."
"Sure!" returned Miss Crilly. "Wednesday afternoon, from three to
five, is the only time you can entertain your best feller."
"Why, Polly Dudley was here Thursday morning!"
"Now you've got me!" admitted Miss Crilly. "She's a privileged
character. She runs over any blessed minute she wants to."
"And she brings her friends with her," added Miss
Castlevaine,--"David Collins and his greataunt's daughter,--Leonora
Jocelyn,--Patricia Illingworth, and Chris Morrow, and that girl
they call Lilith, besides the Stickney boys up in Foxford--huh!"
"She must be pretty bold, when it's against the rule," observed
Miss Mullaly.
"No," dissented Mrs. Albright, "it isn't boldness. Polly runs in
as naturally as a kitten. The rest don't come so very often. I
shouldn't say they'd let 'em; but they do."
"There's never any favoritism in the June Holiday Home--never!"
Mrs. Crump's brown poplin bristled with sarcasm.
"Maybe it's on Miss Sterling's account," interposed Mrs. Albright.
"She thinks so much of Polly, perhaps they hope it'll help to bring
her out of this sooner."
"Don't you believe it!" Miss Castlevaine's head nodded out the
words with emphasis. "Dr. Dudley's a good one to curry favor with."
"Is Miss Sterling a relative of his?" asked Miss Mullaly.
"No. Haven't you heard how they got acquainted? Quite a pretty
little story." Mrs. Albright settled herself comfortably in the
rocker and adjusted the cushion at her back.
The others, who were familiar with the facts, moved closer together
and nearer the window, both to facilitate their needles and their
tongues.
"It was the day after Miss Sterling came, along in September," the
story-teller began, "and she was up in her room feeling pretty
lonesome--you know how it is."
Miss Mullaly nodded--with a sudden droop of her lips.
"She stood there looking out of the window toward the back of the
new hospital,--it was building then,--and she saw a little girl
climbing an apple tree. She watched her go higher and higher,
after a big, bright red apple that was away up on a top branch.
Miss Sterling says she went so fast that she fairly held her
breath, expecting to see her slip; but she didn't, she's so
sure-footed, and it would have been all right if she hadn't
ventured on a rotten branch. When she stepped out on that and
reached up one hand to pick the apple, the branch broke, and down
she went and lay in a little heap under the tree.
"Well, Miss Sterling said she felt as if she must fly right out of
that window and go pick her up. But it didn't take her many
minutes to run down the stairs and out the front door--she didn't
stop to ask permission--and over across lots to Polly. She was in
a dead faint, but in a minute she came to, and Miss Sterling ran up
to the house and got Dr. Dudley and his wife, and they carried her
in, and Miss Sterling went too. The Doctor couldn't find that
Polly was hurt at all, only bruised a little--you see, the branches
had broken her fall, and she was all around again in a few days.
Miss Sterling was pretty well upset by it, so that the Doctor came
home with her, and she had to go to bed, same as Polly did! It
made quite a stir here.
"Ever since then Polly has run in and out, any time of day, just as
I hear she does at the hospital. She's that kind of a girl, never
makes any trouble, and so nothing is said."
"I guess I shall break lots of the rules before I know what they
are."
"You'll learn 'em soon enough, don't you worry! There's a long
list; but you'll get used to 'em after a while--we have to.
There's nothing like getting used to things. It's a great help."