“MAY TIME IS GAY TIME”
May had arrived and with it the first warm spring weather along the
Hudson River valley. Now the river was often crowded with sail boats
dipping their white and gray canvases toward the sky and toward the
water like the wings of a seagull; motor boats chugged along, making
more noise than automobiles; while the steam yachts, ever the
aristocrats among all water craft, sailing into their own harbors up and
down the Hudson shores, ever and anon put forth again as though
intending to leave home behind for adventures on the open sea. All the
hills beyond and near by the neighborhood of Sleepy Hollow were like
mammoth bouquets with their fragrance and beauty upturned to the sun,
while within the meadows and fields and gardens were a greater variety
of wild-flowers than can be found in many other places in this land.
Now at last the ranch girls understood why Miss Katherine Winthrop’s old
home had been called “Primrose Hall” long before ever the school was
thought of. For wild primroses blossomed everywhere, although the season
was late, until the garden about the old place looked like the famous
field of “The Cloth of Gold.”
As much as possible on these bright May days the students at Primrose
Hall lived out of doors, but with the school year drawing to a close it
was not always easy to desert lessons and the thought of approaching
examinations.
One afternoon Jean and Frieda had arranged themselves in a corner of one
of the big verandas with a table between them and a screen carefully set
up to protect them from interruption. The girls were not talking, indeed
an utter silence had reigned between them for the last ten minutes,
broken only by the squeak of Frieda’s pen writing its last essay for the
present term and by an occasional sigh from Jean from the depth of an
oration by Cicero.
Stealing along outside the defensive wall of this screen a short time
later mysterious footsteps might be heard, not of one pair of feet but
of several, and yet not a single head appeared above it.
Frowning, Jean listened and then went on with her work, determined not
to be lured from the strict path of duty.
“Whatever geese are outside the screen,” she thought to herself, “seeing
our sign on it, ‘Positively No Admittance, Studying,’ will go away and
leave us in peace.”
But when a screen falls to the floor with a bang only a few inches from
where one is seated, certainly no degree of devotion to the study of
literature and the classics will prevent one from jumping up with a
scream. And this Jean and Frieda did at the same instant, and behold,
there, with only the prostrate screen dividing them, were Gerry and
Margaret, Lucy and Mollie Johnson, besides several other members of
their Junior class!
“The city has fallen and the prisoners are ours!” Gerry announced,
pointing a pen at Jean’s heart as an improvised dagger.
Jean tried not to look cross. “Look here, girls, what do you want with
us?” she demanded. “You know it isn’t fair to come interrupting a fellow
at his labors, and Miss Winthrop——”
“Oh, Miss Winthrop be—any old thing,” Gerry answered saucily. “Do you
suppose that when school is nearly over that we care half so much for
the views and wishes of our lady principal as we do earlier in the year,
when we might have to live on under the shadow of her displeasure?
However, on this one occasion the fear of that august personage need not
darken our young lives, since she has given her consent to what I am now
about to propose. Oh, well, since it is Margaret’s party, I suppose I
had best let her extend the actual invitation, while I beg you to accept
it beforehand.”
Jean put up two protesting hands, but Frieda showed no such moral
hesitancy. “Please don’t ask Frieda and me to do anything agreeable this
afternoon,” Jean pleaded, “for we simply can’t accept any invitation,
and yet if you ask us we may.”
Margaret Belknap laughed. “Of course you will when you hear what it is.
You must get your coats and hats at once and come and drive with us for
a mile or so to the nearest landing pier and there father and Cecil will
be waiting for us in our yacht to take us for a sail.”
“Oh, my goodness gracious me!” exclaimed Frieda ecstatically, gathering
her school paraphernalia into her arms, “and to think that I have never
been on a yacht or even a sailboat in my whole life!”
Apparently there was to be no further question of their studies this
afternoon, for Jean and Frieda now fairly leaped over the overturned
screen in their efforts to get up to their room for hats and coats
without delay.
However, but two minutes had passed, a not sufficient time for Jean to
have made preparations for the trip, when she was seen slowly returning
toward her group of friends.
“Margaret, Gerry,” she begged, “if the other girls will please excuse
us, I want to speak to you privately for half a minute.”
Jean’s face was flushed and her manner embarrassed. “Please don’t think
I am ungrateful for your invitation, Margaret,” she said softly, “but
really I don’t believe I had better go with you this afternoon after
all. Frieda says she _will_ go,” and unconsciously the speaker put an
added emphasis on the verb will.
Margaret, hurt at her friend’s attitude, did not answer at once,
particularly as Gerry hardly gave her the opportunity.
“Will you kindly tell us, Jean Bruce, what has happened to make you
change your mind in the distance between the veranda and your bedroom
door?” she inquired. “You need not tell me that you won’t go for a sail
on the Hudson for the first time in your life because you love your
Cicero so.”
Jean shook her head, smiling in spite of herself. “Well, not exactly.”
“Oh, Margaret, for heaven’s sake explain to Jean that we have asked
Olive too, but that Olive says she positively can’t join us. Of course
she is working on that plagued old Shakespeare essay of hers. And to
think that once I believed I had a chance at that Shakespeare prize.”
At Gerry’s first words Jean’s face had magically cleared. “Oh, if
Margaret wants Olive too, I will make her come along with us, she shall
not be such a grind,” she protested. But before she could vanish for the
second time Margaret and Gerry both clutched at her skirts.
“Don’t urge Olive to come with us, for you see we don’t really want her,
and only asked her because we knew she couldn’t come.” Margaret
explained hastily, and then seeing Jean’s face crimson with anger and
resentment, she gave her an affectionate shake.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, child, when will you ranch girls get over being
so touchy about one another? You know that now we know Olive better, we
like her as much as any girl in our class. To tell you the truth, it is
just because we are trying to fix up some plan to show Olive how we feel
toward her that we did not want her to come along with us now. It seemed
to us this would be our best chance to let you know our idea and to see
what you think about it. I suppose I might have told you this at first,”
Margaret ended, “only I am not a tactful person, and perhaps put things
pretty badly.”
“You certainly did,” Jean laughed, “but now I will hurry and get my
belongings, as I am perfectly dying to hear what you have in mind.”
An hour later eight members of the Junior class, Frieda and Mollie and
Miss Rebecca Sterne, having arrived at a private landing pier not far
from their school, were assisted aboard the steam yacht “Marathon” by
Cecil Belknap and his father.
During the first half of the sail there was little real conversation
among the girls, only “Ohs” and “Ahs” of delight at the beauty of the
river scenery and the wonders of the yacht. But by and by on their
return journey when Margaret and her guests were seated around the salon
dining table drinking afternoon tea, Gerry, who never could bear putting
off things, turned to her hostess.
“Look here, Margaret,” she said in tones loud enough for the entire
company to overhear, “if your father and brother will pardon us, I vote
that we plunge right into the subject we have come together to discuss
this afternoon. I suppose your father and Cecil must both have heard
something of Olive’s story by now.”
Margaret nodded. Jean was not so sure that she cared to have Olive’s
difficulties at school discussed before Cecil Belknap, whom she did not
yet thoroughly like, but as Margaret’s guest she did not like to
protest.
Gerry then leaned across the table toward the ranch girls with her
teaspoon poised in the air.
“Look here, Jean, Frieda, everybody, it is just like this. You know that
when the three ranch girls came to Primrose Hall most of us liked two of
the three girls right from the first, after a few of their western
peculiarities had rubbed up against our eastern ones. But with the third
girl, with Olive—well, it was different. In the first place, Olive was
shy and did not look exactly like the rest of us (she is much prettier
than I am, for example); in the second place, the story was circulated
about among the girls that Olive was part Indian, the daughter of a
dreadfully ignorant Indian woman from whom she had run away and that now
she was trying to pretend that she was no relation to her own mother. Of
course, had any one of us ever looked at Olive very hard we must have
known that this story was an untruth, or else only a half truth, which
is the worst kind of a lie. But we were too prejudiced and Olive too shy
to stand up for herself and—oh, what is the use of my going into this
horrid part of my story when I want to come to the fairy tale at the
end! After a while some of us girls did begin to see a little further
than the end of our noses and to suspect that a girl as clever as Olive
in her studies, as lovely in disposition and as refined and gentle in
her manner, could hardly be what we had believed her, simply couldn’t.
And now I want to say just one thing in excuse for myself. I did know
that Olive was a lady and more than a lady, a trump, before I learned
that she was not an Indian girl, but a heroine,” and here Gerry paused
an instant to sigh and to get her breath in order to continue to express
her romantic delight in the change of the stranger girl’s fortune.
Hurriedly, however, Margaret Belknap now seized this moment’s respite.
“I knew that Olive was charming too,” she interposed, “and I did try to
be nicer to her before I went away for the Christmas holidays, intending
on my return to ask her to overlook the past and be friends. I suppose
there were other girls in our class who felt the same way and had this
same intention?”
As Margaret paused four or five other voices answered: “There certainly
were,” before she went on. “Yes, I know. But after we got back from our
holidays it was then too late to make Olive believe in our good
intentions, because in that short time things had so changed for her
that she had become more interesting than any of the rest of us. You can
see, Jean and Frieda, just what we have been up against?” (The
well-broughtup Margaret was not conscious of using slang at this moment
and only her brother smiled at her.) “If our Junior class had then
rushed up at once to Olive and apologized to her, after we had learned
of what had befallen her, why we did not believe that she would care
very much for such a belated repentance. So for months now we have been
trying to think of some pretty and tactful way to show our real feeling
toward her and now we hope we have at last hit upon the right plan.”
“Do let me tell the rest, Margaret, you have talked such a long time,”
and though a laugh went all around the table at her expense, Gerry again
burst forth: “Everybody here knows that we are to have our school finals
now in a short time and see the Seniors graduate and the Juniors, who
are trying for the Shakespeare prize, give their recitations before the
committee specially chosen to pass on them? Then of course we have
luncheon and afterwards a dance on the lawn with all our guests at the
commencement present. But there is one thing that perhaps you two ranch
girls don’t know and that is that we always choose one of the Primrose
Hall girls as our Queen for commencement day. Of course she must be
selected from among the entire school, not from any one class; but
Margaret and some of the other Juniors and I have been talking things
over with the Seniors and they say it is our turn to have the Queen and
that they are willing to—you know what we want to do, don’t you, Jean
and Frieda?”
Jean bowed her head showing that she understood, but Frieda still
appeared mystified.
“I think it would be a beautiful thing for you girls to do, if you
really wish to do it,” Jean answered a bit huskily, although she was
trying not to show any special emotion before Cecil Belknap, who had
been watching her pretty closely all afternoon through his same hateful
pair of eyeglasses.
“Beautiful to do what?” Frieda now demanded, turning first toward Mollie
and then toward Lucy Johnson for the explanation of this everlasting
preamble of Gerry’s and Margaret’s.
“Why, choose Olive for our School Queen for commencement day,” Gerry
returned, “and as our finals take place in May, I suppose you can call
her ‘Queen of the May’ if you like. For you see she does preside over
our dances all afternoon, leads any special ones, and we pay her
whatever homage we can. Now, please, don’t you, Cecil, or any other
human being at this table start reciting: ‘You must wake and call me
early, call me early, mother dear’,” she concluded, “for if it were not
for that tiresome, weepy poem, I should think the choosing of a May
Queen one of the prettiest customs in the world. But I can assure you
that at least eleven out of every twelve persons who come to our
commencement feel called upon to spout that poem; I suppose because it
is so ridiculously easy to remember.”
As soon as the speaker finished Margaret jumped up from the table, her
guests immediately following suit. “Then it is all settled,” she
exclaimed happily, lifting high her pretty teacup, “so let us drink to
Olive as our next queen and to the other ranch girls.”
“I suppose you mean Jack too, even if you don’t know her,” Frieda
suggested loyally before joining in the toast. And Gerry’s hearty “Of
course,” ended the pretty scene.
For now the entire party of girls, deserting the salon, made their way
again out on to the deck of the yacht. Of the group Jean was the last to
leave, followed by Cecil Belknap.
“Oh, I say, Miss Bruce, will you go a bit slow?” he asked. “My sister
tells me that she has asked you to pay us a visit at our cottage on the
Massachusetts coast this summer and I hope you are going to be jolly
enough to come, for I should enjoy it most awfully.”
“You wouldn’t really, not a visit from a western ranch girl?” Jean’s
eyes danced; “but it is very kind of you to say so,” she ended prettily,
extending her hand to the young man.
Cecil was looking out the open door to where the lights were now
twinkling forth one by one along the side of the Jersey shore. “No, it
is not what I would call good of me,” he replied quietly. “I thought I
told you at our house at Christmas that I liked you and that if there
wasn’t any fellow out West, I would like to see more of you anyhow. Do
say you will make us the visit?”
With a new dignity that a year of Primrose Hall had helped develop in
her, Jean now shook her head. “No,” she replied quietly, “I have already
explained to Margaret that I shan’t be able to come to her this summer.
You see, my cousin, Jack Ralston, whether she is better or not, is to
leave the hospital in New York early in June and then we expect to go
back to the Rainbow Ranch for the summer time. After that we may go, who
knows where?”
The young people went out on deck together as the yacht was now running
in toward shore, and beyond the landing pier in the soft, spring dusk
the travelers could see the old school carryall and in another carriage
Olive and Miss Winthrop waiting to drive the party back to Primrose
Hall. But before anybody was allowed to leave the yacht Gerry had
solemnly whispered to each one of them. “Remember, please, Olive is not
to hear a single, solitary word about our plan. It is to be a secret up
to the very last minute.”