PEERS OR PIGS
The day of the party to be given in honor of Clare Tasselwood arrived and
the three most interested were in Gwyn’s room dressing for the occasion.
“There is something very queer about Clare,” Beulah announced. “I just
passed her room a moment ago. The door was open and I saw her sitting in
front of the mirror brushing out that mass of long yellow hair of hers,
and I am positive that she was laughing. She saw my reflection, I
suppose, for the moment I had passed she got up and closed the door so
quickly that it sounded like a slam.”
Gwynette, bemoaning the fact that they were not permitted to have maids
assist them with their dressing, said impatiently: “Pat, you’ll simply
_have_ to help me with these hooks.” Then, to Beulah: “What are you
driving at? Why do you think it is queer that Clare Tasselwood should be
laughing? You laugh sometimes yourself, don’t you?”
“Why, of course I do, if I think of something funny,” Beulah agreed, “but
what I can’t understand is why Clare Tasselwood should laugh all alone by
herself when she is dressing to go to our party. Of course she can’t have
any idea that we are giving it because we believe her to be the daughter
of a younger son of the English nobility, can she?”
“Of course not!” Gwyn declared. “We three are the only ones who know that
and we have not told. I am more than ever convinced that it is true, for
yesterday, when Madame Vandeheuton asked me to take Clare’s mail to her
room there was a letter with what appeared to be a crest on it.”
Patricia, having finished hooking up the blue satin gown of her friend,
remarked with energy: “Well, I’m certainly glad to hear that. I’ve had
‘ma doots’ lately about the whole thing, and now and then a faint idea
penetrates my brain that we’re idiots whichever way it is. Here we are
squandering not only this month’s spending money but next month’s as
well, and what is to come of it?”
Beulah sat on a low stool to put on her gilt slippers. “Oh, we’ll have to
take a gambler’s chance. Pat, be a sport. We know for a fact that there
is a pupil at this seminary who is the daughter of a younger son of a
noble English family. Miss Granger was only too glad to let _that_ much
be known. I’ve no doubt it brought her several pupils whose vain mothers
wished them to be associated with such a girl even if they could not know
which one she was.”
Pat agreed. “And didn’t we study the qualities of every girl in this
establishment, beginning with Clare and ending with that timid,
sickly-looking creature who always wears brown?”
“And who associates, by choice, with the granddaughter of my mother’s
servants,” Gwyn scoffed as she surveyed her beautiful party gown in the
long gilt-framed mirror. “Wasn’t it adorable of Ma Mere to send me this
creation from Paris? She knows how hurt I am because she put me in this
detestable prison instead of permitting me to accompany her to France,
and so she sends me presents to sooth my wounded spirits, I suppose.”
“Your mother is mighty good to you,” Pat remarked in rather a critical
tone, “better than I think you deserve. I have never yet heard you say
that you wish you could do something to add to _her_ pleasure.”
Gwynette crossed the room, watching the swing of the soft satin folds in
the mirror over one shoulder. Her lips were pressed together as though
she were trying to keep from retorting to her friend’s speech, but her
mounting anger caused her to stop in front of Pat’s chair and flare at
her. “I can’t understand _why_ you continue to associate with me at all,
since you disapprove of me so entirely. If you feel that it is an idiotic
thing for us to try to do homage to the daughter of nobility, why didn’t
you say so at first? It is too late now to make any changes in our plans,
but after tonight I shall no longer expect you to be one of my intimate
friends.”
Beulah said conciliatingly: “Gwyn, we aren’t any of us perfect, and we
certainly don’t want our friends to pretend they think we are, do we?”
Then, in an entirely different tone, she continued: “For myself, Gwyn,
since your brother and fifteen other cadets are coming to our party, I
shall consider my money well spent. I’m pining for a dance. And, as for
the Lady Clare Tasselwood, I don’t care a fig whether she is or isn’t.
Hark, what’s the commotion without?”
The palatial bus from The Palms was arriving and on the high seat with
the driver, resplendent in his gold-trimmed blue uniform, sat Cadet
Harold.
Beulah, who had skipped to the front window, hurried back to don her
cloak and tie a becoming cherry colored scarf over her short light brown
curls. “Gwyn, I wish you would be the one to tell Lady Clare that the
hour of departure has arrived. Pat and I will round up the other twelve.”
Gwynette lifted her eyebrows as she adjusted her swansdown-trimmed cloak
about her slim shoulders. “Sometimes, Beulah, from your choice of
English, I might think you a cowgirl.”
The rebuked maiden chuckled mischievously. “I ain’t, though,” she said
inelegantly, “but if ever there was a romance of the Wild West written
that I haven’t read, I hope I’ll hear of it soon. I’m daffy about the
life. Truth is, I’d heaps rather meet a cowgirl than I would a younger
daughter of——”
But Gwynette, with a proud toss of her handsome head, had swept from the
room, leaving Beulah to mirthfully follow, accompanied by Pat, whose dark
looks boded no good. Beulah drew her friend back and closed the door.
“Child,” she remonstrated, “don’t take Gwyn’s loftiness so much to heart.
I think she is just as superlatively selfish as you do, and I also think
she treats her invalid mother shamefully, but you know we can’t go around
this world telling everyone _just_ what we think of them. It isn’t done
in the best society. Gwyn has her good points, too, otherwise we wouldn’t
have been chumming with her, would we?”
“Well, take it from me. I’ve chummed my last. After tonight I’ll choose
my friends, not have them chosen for me.”
“Meaning what?”
“You know as well as I do that because our three mothers were in the same
set at home, we were all packed off here together, but come, I’ll try to
get some pleasure out of this idiotic party.”
When they reached the lower hall, they found all of the girls who had
been invited waiting for Madame Vandeheuton, who was to be the evening’s
chaperone. She was a timid little French woman who felt that the girls
were always making fun of her efforts at speaking English, and so she
usually kept quiet, except when she was teaching her dearly loved native
tongue. Gwynette had especially asked that Madame Vandeheuton be
permitted to accompany them, since they could not go without one of the
teachers.
Clare Tasselwood was gorgeously arrayed in a brocaded gold velvet gown
with a crownlike arrangement of pearls bound about her mass of soft
yellow hair. She looked more than ever regal. Gwynette sat beside her in
the bus and was her constant companion throughout the evening. The
ballroom of The Palms had been reserved for this party and the fifteen
cadets were charmed with the pretty girls from the select seminary, but
handsome Clare was undeniably the belle.
Each time that a dance was concluded, Gwyn asked her partner to take her
to that part of the salon to which Clare’s partner had taken her.
Harold Poindexter-Jones noticed this after a time and asked slangily:
“What’s the big idea, Sis? Is the tall blonde a new crush?”
Gwyn’s haughty reply was: “Harold, I consider your language exceedingly
vulgar. If you wish to know, this party is being given in honor of Clare
Tasselwood, whose father is a younger son of English nobility.”
Her brother looked at her in wide-eyed amazement, then burst into a
laugh. Indignantly Gwyn drew him through an open door, out upon a
deserted porch.
“What do you mean by such an ill-mannered explosion?” she inquired wrath
fully.
Harold became very sober. “Sis,” he said, “are you in dead earnest? Has
that girl been telling any such yarn about her family?”
“Why no,” Gwyn had to confess, “she didn’t tell it, but——”
Again the boy laughed: “That’s too good to keep. I’ll have to tell the
fellows. Old Hank Peters, the chap who has danced with her so much, comes
from her part of the globe—Chicago, to be accurate, and he said that her
father made his pile raising pigs—and they aren’t English at all. They
are Swedes.”
Gwynette was angry with herself and everyone else. “Don’t you dare to
tell; not a single soul!” she flared. “If you do, I’ll get even with you
some time, some way.”
The boy, suddenly serious, took his sister’s hand. “Gwyn,” he said, “I
have no desire to make this a joking matter with the fellows. Of course
I’ll keep it dark, but I do hope it will teach you a lesson.”
Beulah and Pat wondered at Gwynette’s altered manner toward the guest of
honor, but, not even to them did she confide the humiliating information
she had received.
On the ride back to the seminary in the bus Gwyn had very little to say
and the others attributed it to weariness.
Gwynette noticed a merry twinkle in the blue eyes of Clare Tasselwood
when she effusively bade the three hostesses good-night, assuring them
that she had spent a most delightful evening. Gwyn went sulkily to her
room almost _sure_ that the daughter of that pig-raising Westerner had
known all along _why_ the party had been given. She had indeed learned a
lesson she decided as she closed her room door far less gently than she
should have done at that hour of night. Before retiring she assured
herself that even if she found out who _really was_ the daughter of a
younger son of English nobility, she wouldn’t put _herself_ out to as
much as speak to her.