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PRETTY MADCAP DOROTHY
OR
How She Won a Lover
A Romance of the Jolliest Girl in the Book-Bindery, and
a magnificent Love Story of the life of a Beautiful,
Willful New York Working Girl.
BY MISS LAURA JEAN LIBBEY
HART SERIES No. 19.
COPYRIGHT, 1891, BY GEO. MONRO'S SONS
Published by
THE ARTHUR WESTBROOK COMPANY,
CLEVELAND, O., U.S.A.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
Chapter I 5
Chapter II 12
Chapter III 20
Chapter IV 32
Chapter V 38
Chapter VI 45
Chapter VII 53
Chapter VIII 60
Chapter IX 66
Chapter X 73
Chapter XI 79
Chapter XII 86
Chapter XIII 92
Chapter XIV 98
Chapter XV 105
Chapter XVI 111
Chapter XVII 118
Chapter XVIII 124
Chapter XIX 131
Chapter XX 138
Chapter XXI 144
Chapter XXII 151
Chapter XXIII 157
Chapter XXIV 163
Chapter XXV 168
Chapter XXVI 174
Chapter XXVII 180
Chapter XXVIII 186
Chapter XXIX 192
Chapter XXX 198
Chapter XXXI 204
Chapter XXXII 209
Chapter XXXIII 214
Chapter XXXIV 220
Chapter XXXV 226
Chapter XXXVI 232
Chapter XXXVII 238
Chapter XXXVIII 242
Chapter XXXIX 247
Pretty Madcap Dorothy
OR
How She Won a Lover
CHAPTER I.
"It's so hard for working-girls to get acquainted. They never meet a
rich young man, and they don't want a poor one. It seems to me that a
girl who has to commence early to work for her living might just as well
give up forever all hopes of a lover and of marrying," declared Nadine
Holt, one of the prettiest girls in the immense book-bindery, to the
group of companions who were gathered about her. "It's get up at
daylight, swallow your breakfast, and hurry to work; and it's dark
before you are out on the street again. How can we ever expect to meet a
marriageable fellow?"
"Do you know what _I_ think, girls?" cried a shrill but very sweet young
voice, from the direction of the window-ledge, adding breathlessly: "I
believe if fate has any lover in store for a girl, that he will be sure
to just happen to come where she is, on one mission or another. That's
the way that it all happens in novels, I took particular pains to
notice. These people who write must know just how it is, I reckon."
"Well, now, who would ever have imagined that a chit of a thing like
_you_, Dorothy Glenn, would have the impudence to put in your oar, or
that you ever thought of lovers, or marrying, and you only sixteen a day
or so ago?" cried one. "It's absurd!"
"I wasn't saying anything about _my_ ever marrying, I was just telling
you what I thought about ever meeting the fellow who is intended for
you--'_the_ right _one_'--as you call it."
"What if you were in a desert?" suggested Nadine, with a curl of her red
lip. "Surely you couldn't expect a young man would ever find a business
that would bring him out there to you, could you?"
"Why not?" cried pretty little Dorothy. "Of course fate would send my
Prince Charming even into a desert to find me," cooed Dorothy. "And as
to the business that would bring him--why, he could come there to
capture the ostriches which are to be found only in the heart of the
desert--so there! You know the old adage: 'People meet where hills and
mountains don't.' I tell you there's some truth in that."
"It's a good thing to have so much assurance and hope," said Nadine,
with a curl of her lip. "I trust that you may find plenty of lovers in
the future, though I doubt it."
"I have plenty now," declared Dorothy, waltzing nimbly about the floor,
as only a bright, happy, thoughtless young girl can who is free from
care. "I couldn't count all who make eyes at me now, so what will it be
when I get as old as the rest of you girls?"--this a trifle maliciously,
for every one of them was at least twenty, and that seemed rather
_passee_ to this bit of femininity of sweet sixteen.
Some one noticed that the huge clock on the mantel wanted just three
minutes to one, so the fragments of luncheon were crammed back into
their baskets, and the girls, chatting and laughing, went back to their
work, for they had a very particular foreman. But one of their number,
Jessie Staples, hung back to have a word with Dorothy.
"I hope that you will not grow into a flirt," she said, slipping her arm
about Dorothy's waist and looking into the young girl's flushed face
with serious eyes, adding: "This brings me to the question that I
intended asking you this noon. Where did you meet that young car
conductor who walked up as far as your home with you last night? Do tell
me, little Dorothy."
"Were you spying upon me, you mean thing?" cried Dorothy Glenn, blushing
as fiery red as the crimson heart of a peony, and stamping angrily the
tiniest of little feet; and she flung her companion's arm from her as
though it had stung her.
"Can't you tell me?" pleaded Jessie, earnestly. "Remember, you have no
one to warn you. You are an orphan in this great, cold world, and--and
you are so young that you don't know life, and can not realize that
every young man who smiles into your eyes and says flattering things is
_not_ in love. When you have no relative to confide in, you ought to
have a girl friend older and wiser than yourself. Let me be that friend
to you, Dorothy."
As she listened, the momentary anger died out of the girl's face. She
couldn't keep angry with anybody very long, and quite before Jessie had
finished her sentence a pair of plump white arms were thrown round her
neck and Dorothy's soft, peachy pink cheek was nestling against her own,
while the sweet young voice whispered:
"Won't you breathe it, Jess, if I tell you the greatest secret in the
whole wide world? Promise on your word and honor that you won't and I'll
tell you, and it will fairly make you hold your breath. It's just like
those grand love stories all of us girls like to crowd around together
at lunch hour and read in the Fireside Companion, when we pick up the
special copies they throw around; only this is in real life, you know."
"I promise," returned Jessie Staples, gravely; "only I hope this isn't a
ruse to turn off the question about the young car conductor whom I saw
you with."
"Oh, no! the secret is about him," laughed Dorothy, gleefully, "and it
will make you open your eyes wider than they are now when you hear it;
and it's so dreadfully romantic, too. You know how Nadine Holt has been
boasting of late about the handsome new conductor on the Broadway car,
on whom she has 'made a mash,' as she phrases it. Well, the young man
you saw me talking to--is he."
"What?" gasped Jessie. "Do you mean it was Nadine's beau to whom you
were talking?"
"He's _not_ her beau!" declared Dorothy, flushing up redly and angrily.
"He doesn't care a snap of his finger for Nadine. He told me so."
"He--told--you--so?" repeated Jessie Staples, too amazed at the instant
to frame any other remark, while the thought flashed through her brain
how deeply Nadine Holt loved this handsome young man, and that she was
confident of a proposal of marriage from him sooner or later. She had
often told Jessie as much as that of late.
"It was only last week that I first met him," Dorothy went on, "and it
happened in this way: I came down, just by chance, on his car, and--and
I noticed that he looked at me rather admiringly, as he changed my
fifty-cent piece, while standing beside me; and--and I noticed, too,
that he leaned against me a little more than the occasion demanded, or
at least I fancied so; but perhaps it was the jolting of the car. I took
little shy peeps at him. I wanted to see what he looked like, Nadine had
been sounding his praises so. I found he was dreadfully nice, quite the
handsomest young fellow I had ever seen--elegantly formed, straight as
an arrow, with such a beautiful dark mustache, dark hair, and laughing
black eyes, and the whitest of white hands. When he helped me off the
car he held my hand so tightly and so long that I felt terribly
embarrassed and did not know what to do or say. But, oh! he was _so_
polite! I dropped my eyes and never looked at him as I stepped off. How
I ever got into the other car I never knew. A moment later the other
conductor came around for my fare, and then--oh, horrors! I could not
find my pocket-book. I searched frantically in every pocket. 'I--I must
have _lost_ my purse,' I faltered, beginning to cry, for I saw he did
not believe me, and thought that I meant to beat my way, as they call
it, when just at that instant puffing and panting, up came the other
conductor--the handsome fellow whom I had just left.
"'You dropped your purse on the seat of my car,' he said, raising his
hat from his dark curls. 'Permit me to return it to you.'
"I was so overjoyed to get it that I forgot to thank him. I remembered
later that I had not done so. And what do you think? that very evening
he called with a book I had also left on the seat, and which I had
entirely forgotten. My name and address were written on the fly-leaf.
Just at that moment one of the young men from the book-bindery happened
along who knew him, and he introduced us. I did not invite him in, but
we stood and talked for an hour or more on the steps, and he asked at
length for the pleasure of my company to go with him to the theater the
following evening, if my folks were willing.
"I told him I had no relatives to consult, and that I'd like ever so
much to go, but--but I had heard that he was Nadine Holt's regular
company. Oh, Jess, how angry he got when I said that! He flushed to the
very roots of his dark hair. You ought to have seen him.
"'Pardon me, but I am _not_!' he replied, 'though I hear that she is
circulating such a story; but there is no better authority on the
subject than myself. I have spoken to her a few times; but it is
ridiculous for a girl to presume, if a man is pleasant to her, that he
wants to marry her. I cannot even say that I admire Miss Nadine Holt. As
a rule a man like myself does not admire a girl whose acquaintance he
can form through a handkerchief flirtation.
"I thought of telling Nadine that, but you know what a fury she is. Why,
she would almost kill me, I believe, if she once got an inkling that I
knew about it.
"Well, to make a long story short, it so chanced that he happened along
our street every night after that, and always found me, quite by chance,
sitting out on the steps, and so he stopped for a chat. And now comes
the most wonderful part of the affair. He is no _real_ street-car
conductor at all. I don't mean just that, but--oh, Jess! this is what I
mean: he--he bet with a number of young gentlemen the last election and
lost the wager. If he lost he was to come to New York and be a
street-car conductor for three months, and that is what he did. He is a
young lawyer in a small town near here, and has great expectations, he
says.
"His time will be up to-morrow, Jessie, and then he is going back to his
home, and--and I shall never see him again. He is like a prince in
disguise--such as we read about. I always thought him too grand and
polite to be only a street-car conductor."
Jessie Staples felt greatly relieved in her heart that he was going away
so soon, but she was too wise to say so to Dorothy, knowing that if one
attempts to break up an infatuation on the part of a girl of that age,
ten to one it makes matters only worse.
"Life will never be the same to me after Harry Langdon goes, for,
Jessie, I--I have learned to care for him. I couldn't help myself though
I tried hard not to, and to be gay and jolly before all the girls. But,
oh, Jessie, pity me! My heart is breaking! I wish I could die!"
They did not notice, as they moved on, that the door near where they had
stood talking was partly ajar, nor did they see the girl who had paused
in the entry outside almost at the very beginning of their
conversation. It was Nadine Holt, and she had heard every word, from
beginning to end, that Dorothy had uttered; and even after they had
passed on she stood there, cold and motionless as a statue cut in
marble.
"Great God in heaven! this explains Harry Langdon's sudden coolness,"
she muttered, with a great, choking sob; "but if Dorothy Glenn attempts
to take my lover from me--let her beware! this earth will not be broad
enough to hold the two of us. It will be war to the very death between
us, and we shall see which one of us shall win him!"
By a violent effort Nadine controlled her wild grief and passed into the
work-room. It was only her indomitable pride that kept her from taking
her hat and sacque and going straight home and to her bed, there to weep
her very heart out--aye, weep her very life out, if she could. If her
lover was fickle, Nadine told herself that she did not care to live and
face the dull, cold world, for what is life and the world to a young
girl if the lover on whom she has set her heart and her hopes proves
false to her?