The first Wednesday in every month was a Perfectly Awful Day--a day to
be awaited with dread, endured with courage and forgotten with haste.
Every floor must be spotless, every chair dustless, and every bed
without a wrinkle. Ninety-seven squirming little orphans must be
scrubbed and combed and buttoned into freshly starched ginghams; and
all ninety-seven reminded of their manners, and told to say, 'Yes,
sir,' 'No, sir,' whenever a Trustee spoke.
It was a distressing time; and poor Jerusha Abbott, being the oldest
orphan, had to bear the brunt of it. But this particular first
Wednesday, like its predecessors, finally dragged itself to a close.
Jerusha escaped from the pantry where she had been making sandwiches
for the asylum's guests, and turned upstairs to accomplish her regular
work. Her special care was room F, where eleven little tots, from four
to seven, occupied eleven little cots set in a row. Jerusha assembled
her charges, straightened their rumpled frocks, wiped their noses, and
started them in an orderly and willing line towards the dining-room to
engage themselves for a blessed half hour with bread and milk and prune
pudding.
Then she dropped down on the window seat and leaned throbbing temples
against the cool glass. She had been on her feet since five that
morning, doing everybody's bidding, scolded and hurried by a nervous
matron. Mrs. Lippett, behind the scenes, did not always maintain that
calm and pompous dignity with which she faced an audience of Trustees
and lady visitors. Jerusha gazed out across a broad stretch of frozen
lawn, beyond the tall iron paling that marked the confines of the
asylum, down undulating ridges sprinkled with country estates, to the
spires of the village rising from the midst of bare trees.
The day was ended--quite successfully, so far as she knew. The
Trustees and the visiting committee had made their rounds, and read
their reports, and drunk their tea, and now were hurrying home to their
own cheerful firesides, to forget their bothersome little charges for
another month. Jerusha leaned forward watching with curiosity--and a
touch of wistfulness--the stream of carriages and automobiles that
rolled out of the asylum gates. In imagination she followed first one
equipage, then another, to the big houses dotted along the hillside.
She pictured herself in a fur coat and a velvet hat trimmed with
feathers leaning back in the seat and nonchalantly murmuring 'Home' to
the driver. But on the door-sill of her home the picture grew blurred.
Jerusha had an imagination--an imagination, Mrs. Lippett told her, that
would get her into trouble if she didn't take care--but keen as it was,
it could not carry her beyond the front porch of the houses she would
enter. Poor, eager, adventurous little Jerusha, in all her seventeen
years, had never stepped inside an ordinary house; she could not
picture the daily routine of those other human beings who carried on
their lives undiscommoded by orphans.
Je-ru-sha Ab-bott
You are wan-ted
In the of-fice,
And I think you'd
Better hurry up!
Tommy Dillon, who had joined the choir, came singing up the stairs and
down the corridor, his chant growing louder as he approached room F.
Jerusha wrenched herself from the window and refaced the troubles of
life.
'Who wants me?' she cut into Tommy's chant with a note of sharp anxiety.
Mrs. Lippett in the office,
And I think she's mad.
Ah-a-men!
Tommy piously intoned, but his accent was not entirely malicious. Even
the most hardened little orphan felt sympathy for an erring sister who
was summoned to the office to face an annoyed matron; and Tommy liked
Jerusha even if she did sometimes jerk him by the arm and nearly scrub
his nose off.
Jerusha went without comment, but with two parallel lines on her brow.
What could have gone wrong, she wondered. Were the sandwiches not thin
enough? Were there shells in the nut cakes? Had a lady visitor seen
the hole in Susie Hawthorn's stocking? Had--O horrors!--one of the
cherubic little babes in her own room F 'sauced' a Trustee?
The long lower hall had not been lighted, and as she came downstairs, a
last Trustee stood, on the point of departure, in the open door that
led to the porte-cochere. Jerusha caught only a fleeting impression of
the man--and the impression consisted entirely of tallness. He was
waving his arm towards an automobile waiting in the curved drive. As
it sprang into motion and approached, head on for an instant, the
glaring headlights threw his shadow sharply against the wall inside.
The shadow pictured grotesquely elongated legs and arms that ran along
the floor and up the wall of the corridor. It looked, for all the
world, like a huge, wavering daddy-long-legs.
Jerusha's anxious frown gave place to quick laughter. She was by
nature a sunny soul, and had always snatched the tiniest excuse to be
amused. If one could derive any sort of entertainment out of the
oppressive fact of a Trustee, it was something unexpected to the good.
She advanced to the office quite cheered by the tiny episode, and
presented a smiling face to Mrs. Lippett. To her surprise the matron
was also, if not exactly smiling, at least appreciably affable; she
wore an expression almost as pleasant as the one she donned for
visitors.
'Sit down, Jerusha, I have something to say to you.' Jerusha dropped
into the nearest chair and waited with a touch of breathlessness. An
automobile flashed past the window; Mrs. Lippett glanced after it.
'Did you notice the gentleman who has just gone?'
'I saw his back.'
'He is one of our most affluential Trustees, and has given large sums
of money towards the asylum's support. I am not at liberty to mention
his name; he expressly stipulated that he was to remain unknown.'
Jerusha's eyes widened slightly; she was not accustomed to being
summoned to the office to discuss the eccentricities of Trustees with
the matron.
'This gentleman has taken an interest in several of our boys. You
remember Charles Benton and Henry Freize? They were both sent through
college by Mr.--er--this Trustee, and both have repaid with hard work
and success the money that was so generously expended. Other payment
the gentleman does not wish. Heretofore his philanthropies have been
directed solely towards the boys; I have never been able to interest
him in the slightest degree in any of the girls in the institution, no
matter how deserving. He does not, I may tell you, care for girls.'
'No, ma'am,' Jerusha murmured, since some reply seemed to be expected
at this point.
'To-day at the regular meeting, the question of your future was brought
up.'
Mrs. Lippett allowed a moment of silence to fall, then resumed in a
slow, placid manner extremely trying to her hearer's suddenly tightened
nerves.
'Usually, as you know, the children are not kept after they are
sixteen, but an exception was made in your case. You had finished our
school at fourteen, and having done so well in your studies--not
always, I must say, in your conduct--it was determined to let you go on
in the village high school. Now you are finishing that, and of course
the asylum cannot be responsible any longer for your support. As it
is, you have had two years more than most.'
Mrs. Lippett overlooked the fact that Jerusha had worked hard for her
board during those two years, that the convenience of the asylum had
come first and her education second; that on days like the present she
was kept at home to scrub.
'As I say, the question of your future was brought up and your record
was discussed--thoroughly discussed.'
Mrs. Lippett brought accusing eyes to bear upon the prisoner in the
dock, and the prisoner looked guilty because it seemed to be
expected--not because she could remember any strikingly black pages in
her record.
'Of course the usual disposition of one in your place would be to put
you in a position where you could begin to work, but you have done well
in school in certain branches; it seems that your work in English has
even been brilliant. Miss Pritchard, who is on our visiting committee,
is also on the school board; she has been talking with your rhetoric
teacher, and made a speech in your favour. She also read aloud an
essay that you had written entitled, "Blue Wednesday".'
Jerusha's guilty expression this time was not assumed.
'It seemed to me that you showed little gratitude in holding up to
ridicule the institution that has done so much for you. Had you not
managed to be funny I doubt if you would have been forgiven. But
fortunately for you, Mr.--, that is, the gentleman who has just
gone--appears to have an immoderate sense of humour. On the strength
of that impertinent paper, he has offered to send you to college.'
'To college?' Jerusha's eyes grew big. Mrs. Lippett nodded.
'He waited to discuss the terms with me. They are unusual. The
gentleman, I may say, is erratic. He believes that you have
originality, and he is planning to educate you to become a writer.'
'A writer?' Jerusha's mind was numbed. She could only repeat Mrs.
Lippett's words.
'That is his wish. Whether anything will come of it, the future will
show. He is giving you a very liberal allowance, almost, for a girl
who has never had any experience in taking care of money, too liberal.
But he planned the matter in detail, and I did not feel free to make
any suggestions. You are to remain here through the summer, and Miss
Pritchard has kindly offered to superintend your outfit. Your board
and tuition will be paid directly to the college, and you will receive
in addition during the four years you are there, an allowance of
thirty-five dollars a month. This will enable you to enter on the same
standing as the other students. The money will be sent to you by the
gentleman's private secretary once a month, and in return, you will
write a letter of acknowledgment once a month. That is--you are not to
thank him for the money; he doesn't care to have that mentioned, but
you are to write a letter telling of the progress in your studies and
the details of your daily life. Just such a letter as you would write
to your parents if they were living.
'These letters will be addressed to Mr. John Smith and will be sent in
care of the secretary. The gentleman's name is not John Smith, but he
prefers to remain unknown. To you he will never be anything but John
Smith. His reason in requiring the letters is that he thinks nothing
so fosters facility in literary expression as letter-writing. Since you
have no family with whom to correspond, he desires you to write in this
way; also, he wishes to keep track of your progress. He will never
answer your letters, nor in the slightest particular take any notice of
them. He detests letter-writing and does not wish you to become a
burden. If any point should ever arise where an answer would seem to
be imperative--such as in the event of your being expelled, which I
trust will not occur--you may correspond with Mr. Griggs, his
secretary. These monthly letters are absolutely obligatory on your
part; they are the only payment that Mr. Smith requires, so you must be
as punctilious in sending them as though it were a bill that you were
paying. I hope that they will always be respectful in tone and will
reflect credit on your training. You must remember that you are
writing to a Trustee of the John Grier Home.'
Jerusha's eyes longingly sought the door. Her head was in a whirl of
excitement, and she wished only to escape from Mrs. Lippett's
platitudes and think. She rose and took a tentative step backwards.
Mrs. Lippett detained her with a gesture; it was an oratorical
opportunity not to be slighted.
'I trust that you are properly grateful for this very rare good fortune
that has befallen you? Not many girls in your position ever have such
an opportunity to rise in the world. You must always remember--'
'I--yes, ma'am, thank you. I think, if that's all, I must go and sew a
patch on Freddie Perkins's trousers.'
The door closed behind her, and Mrs. Lippett watched it with dropped
jaw, her peroration in mid-air.