"We'll make them members," said Patty.
"Well--perhaps--but this is the kind of society that's better small. And
we three are the only ones who really ought to be members, because we
saw the play. But anyhow; you must promise not to tell unless Rosalie
and I give you permission. Do you promise that?"
"Oh, yes! I promise. What's it for?"
"We're going to become sirens," Mae whispered impressively. "We're going
to be beautiful and fascinating and ruthless--"
"Like Cleopatra," said Rosalie.
"And avenge ourselves on Man," added Mae.
"Avenge ourselves--what for?" inquired Patty, somewhat dazed.
"Why--for--for breaking our hearts and destroying our faith in--"
"My heart hasn't been broken."
"Not yet," said Mae with a touch of impatience, "because you don't know
any men, but you will know them some day, and then your heart will be
broken. You ought to have your weapons ready."
"In time of peace prepare for war," quoted Rosalie.
"Do--you think it's quite ladylike to be a siren?" asked Patty
dubiously.
"It's _perfectly_ ladylike!" said Mae. "Nobody but a lady could possibly
be one. Did you ever hear of a washerwoman who was a siren?"
"N-no," Patty confessed. "I don't believe I have."
"And look at Cleopatra," put in Rosalie. "I'm sure she was a lady."
"All right!" Patty agreed. "What are we going to do?"
"We're going to become beautiful and fascinating, with a fatal charm
that ensnares every man who approaches."
"Do you think we can?" There was some doubt in Patty's tone.
"Mae's got a book," put in Rosalie eagerly, "about 'Beauty and Grace.'
You soak your face in oatmeal and almond-oil and honey, and let your
hair hang in the sun, and whiten your nose with lemon juice, and wear
gloves at night, and--"
"You really ought to have a bath of asses' milk," interrupted Mae.
"Cleopatra had; but I'm afraid it will be impossible to get."
"And you ought to learn to sing," added Rosalie, "and have some one song
like the 'Lorelei!' that you always hum when you're about to ensnare a
victim."
The project was foreign to Patty's ordinary train of thought, but it did
have an element of novelty and allurement. Neither Mae nor Rosalie were
the partners she would naturally have chosen in any enterprise, but
circumstances had thrown them together that day, and Patty was an
obliging soul. Also, her natural common sense was wandering; she was
still under the spell of the Egyptian sorceress.
They discussed the new society for several minutes more, until they
heard the murmur of Miss Lord's voice, bidding Mademoiselle goodnight.
"There's Lordy!" Patty whispered warily. "I think you'd better to go to
bed. We can plan the rest in the morning."
"Yes, let's," said Rosalie, with a shiver. "I'm freezing!"
"But we must first take the vow," insisted Mae Mertelle. "We ought
really to do it at midnight--but maybe half-past ten will do as well.
I've got it all planned. You two say it after me."
They joined hands and whispered in turn:
"I most solemnly promise to keep secret the name and object of this
society; and if I break this oath, may I become freckled and bald and
squint-eyed and pigeon-toed, now and forever more."
The three members of the S. A. S. devoted their leisure during the next
few days to a careful study of the work on Beauty; and painstakingly set
about putting its precepts into practice. Some of these seemed
perplexingly at variance. The hair, for example, was to be exposed to
air and sunlight, but the face was not. They cleverly circumvented this
difficulty however. The week's allowance went for chamois-skin. During
every recreation hour, they retired to an airy knoll in the lower
pasture, and sat in a patient row, with hair streaming in the wind, and
faces protected by homemade masks.
One afternoon, a little Junior A, wandering far afield in a game of
hide-and-seek, came upon them unawares; and returned to the safe
confines of the playground with frightened shrieks. Dark rumors began to
float about the school as to the aim and scope of the new society.
Suggestions ranged all the way from Indian squaws to Druid priestesses.
They almost met with disaster while acquiring the ingredients of the
oatmeal poultice. The oatmeal and lemon were comparatively easy; the
cook supplied them without much fuss. But she stuck at the honey. There
were jars and jars of strained honey in the storeroom; but the windows
were barred, and the key was in the bottom of Nora's pocket. Confronted
by the immediate necessity of becoming beautiful, they could not
placidly sit down for five days, and wait for the weekly shopping trip
to the village. Besides, with a teacher in attendance, there would be no
possible chance of making the purchase. Honey was a contraband article,
in the same class with candy and jam and pickles.
They discussed the feasibility of filing through the iron gratings, or
of chloroforming Nora and stealing the key, but in the end Patty
accomplished the matter by the use of a little simple blarney. She
dropped into the kitchen one afternoon with the plaintive admission that
she was hungry. Nora hastened to supply a glass of milk and a piece of
bread and butter, while Patty perched on a corner of the carving-table
and settled herself for conversation. The girls were not supposed to
visit the kitchen, but the law was never rigidly enforced. Nora was a
social soul and she welcomed callers. Patty praised the apple dumplings
of last night's dessert; progressed from that to a discussion of the
engaging young plumber who at the moment claimed all of Nora's thoughts;
then, by a natural transition, she passed to honey. Before she left, she
had obtained Nora's promise to substitute it for marmalade the next
morning at breakfast.
The members of the S. A. S. brought pin-trays to the meal, and
unobtrusively transferred a supply from their plates to their laps.
But even so, disaster still threatened. Patty had the misfortune to
collide with Evalina Smith in the upper hall, and she dropped her
pin-tray, honey-side down, in the middle of the rug. At the same
instant, Miss Lord bore down upon her from the end of the corridor.
Patty was a young person of resource; the emergency of the moment rarely
found her napping. She plumped down on her knees in the midst of the
puddle, and with widespread skirts, commenced frantically searching for
an imaginary stick-pin.
"Is it necessary for you to block up the entire hall?" was Miss Lord's
only comment as she passed.
The rug was happily reversible, and by the simple process of turning it
over, Patty satisfactorily cleaned up the mess. The other two girls were
generous, and shared their supply: so in the end she obtained her honey.
For three wakeful nights they stuck to the poultice--though perhaps it
would be more accurate to say that the poultice stuck to them. In spite
of many washings in hot water, their faces became noticeably scaly.
Miss Sallie, who represented St. Ursula's board of health, met Patty
Wyatt in the hall one morning. She took her by the chin and turned her
to the light. Patty squirmed embarrassedly.
"My dear child! What is the matter with your face?"
"I--I don't know--exactly. It seems sort of--of--dandruffy."
"I should think it did! What have you been eating?"
"Only what I get at meals," said Patty, relievedly telling the truth.
"There's something the matter with your blood," diagnosed Miss Sallie.
"What you need is a tonic. I shall prescribe boneset tea for you."
"Oh, Miss Sallie!" Patty earnestly remonstrated. "I don't need it,
_really_. I'm sure I'll be all right." She had tried boneset tea before;
it was the bitterest brew that was ever concocted.
When Miss Sallie met Mae Van Arsdale suffering from the same complaint,
and later still, Rosalie Patton, she commenced to be perturbed. The
apple trees under her care at the farm had been afflicted that spring
with San José scale, but she had hardly expected the disease to spread
to the school girls. That afternoon she superintended an infusion of
boneset, of gigantic proportions, and at bedtime a reluctant school
formed in line and filed past Miss Sallie, who, ladle in hand, presided
over the punch bowl. Each received a flowing cupful and drank it with
what grace she might, until Patty's turn came. She disposed of hers in a
blue china umbrella holder which stood in the hall behind Miss Sallie's
back. The remainder of the line successfully followed her lead.
Miss Sallie watched her little charges closely for the next few days;
and sure enough, the scales disappeared. (The Associated Sirens had
discarded poultices.) She was more than ever convinced of the efficacy
of boneset.
Shortly after the founding of the society, Mae Mertelle returned from a
week-end visit to her home. (Her mother was ill and she had been sent
for. Someone in Mae's family was conveniently ill a great deal of the
time.) She brought with her three bracelets of linked scales
representing a serpent swallowing his tail. S. A. S. in tiny letters was
engraved between the emerald eyes.
"They are perfectly sweet!" said Patty, with grateful appreciation. "But
why a snake?"
"It isn't a snake; it's a serpent," Mae explained. "To represent
Cleopatra. She was the Serpent of the Nile. We'll be Serpents of the
Hudson."
With the appearance of the bracelets, curiosity in the S. A. S.
increased, but unlike the other secret societies which had appeared from
time to time, its _raison d'être_ remained a mystery. The school really
commenced to believe that the society had a secret. Miss Lord, who had
the reputation of being curious, stopped Patty one day as she was
leaving the Virgil class, and admired the new bracelet.
"And what may be the meaning of S. A. S.?" she inquired.
"It's a secret society," said Patty.
"Ah, a secret society!" Miss Lord smiled. "Then I suppose the name is a
DEEP MYSTERY." She lowered her voice, as she said it, to sepulchral
depths.
There was something peculiarly irritating about Miss Lord's manner; it
always suggested that she was amused by the vagaries of her little
pupils. She did not possess Miss Sallie's happy faculty of meeting them
on a level. Miss Lord peered down from above (through lorgnettes).
"Of course the name is a secret," said Patty. "If that got out, it would
give the whole thing away."
"And what is the object of this famous society? Or is that too a
secret?"
"Why, yes, that is, I mustn't tell you exactly."
Patty smiled up at Miss Lord with the innocent, seraphic gaze that
always warned those who knew her best that is was wisest to let her
alone.
"It's a sort of branch of the Sunshine Society," she added
confidentially. "We're to--well--to smile on people, you know, and make
them like us."
"I see!" said Miss Lord, with an air of friendly understanding. "Then S.
A. S. stands for 'Sunshine and Smiles?'"
"Oh, please! You mustn't say it out loud," Patty lowered her voice and
threw an anxious glance over her shoulder.
"I wouldn't tell anybody for worlds," Miss Lord promised solemnly.
"Thank you," said Patty. "It would be dreadful if it got out."
"It is a very sweet, womanly society," Miss Lord added approvingly. "But
you ought not to keep it all to yourselves. Can't you let me be an
honorary member of the S. A. S.?"
"Certainly, Miss Lord!" said Patty sweetly. "If you care to belong, we
should _love_ to have you."
"Lordy wants to be a Siren!" she announced to her two fellow members
when she met them shortly in the gymnasium. The account of the interview
was received with hilarity. Miss Lord was anything but the accepted type
of siren.
"I thought a few smiles might relieve the gloom of Latin class," Patty
explained. "It amuses Lordy to think she's helping the children in their
play; and it doesn't hurt the children."
For a time the S. A. S. flourished with the natural health of youth, but
as the novelty wore off, the business of becoming beautiful grew
onerous. Mae and Rosalie continued to study the beauty book with dogged
perseverance,--the subject lay along the line of their natural
ambitions--but Patty felt other matters calling. Spring field sports had
commenced, and the nearness of the annual match with Highland-Hall,
crowded out her interest in cold cream and almond meal. She and Mae were
not naturally _simpatica_, and in spite of Mae's insistence, Patty
became an apathetic siren.
One Saturday just after the spring recess, Patty received permission to
lunch in town with "Uncle Bobby." He was an uncle by courtesy only, but
Patty had failed to inform the Dowager that the title was not his by
natural right. She knew well what the result would be. It is quite
proper to have luncheon with an uncle; and quite improper with even the
oldest and baldest of family friends.
When the "hearse" returned from the station at dusk with Mademoiselle
and the city contingent, Rosalie Patton was waiting the arrival on the
porte-cochère. She separated Patty from the group and whispered in her
ear.
"The most awful thing has happened!"
"What?" Patty demanded.
"The S. A. S. All is discovered!"
"Not really!" cried Patty, aghast.
"Yes! Come in here."
Rosalie drew her into the empty cloak-room and shut the door.
"You mean--they've found out the name--and everything?" Patty demanded
breathlessly.
"Not quite everything, but they would have if it hadn't been for Lordy.
She saved us for once."
"Lordy saved us!" There was incredulity mixed with Patty's horror. "What
do you mean?"
"Well, yesterday, Mae went shopping in the village with Miss
Wadsworth--and you know what kind of a chaperone Waddy makes." Patty
nodded impatiently. "_Anybody_ could fool her. And Mae, right under her
very nose, commenced a flirtation with the _Soda-Water Clerk_."
"Oh!" said Patty hotly. "How perfectly horrid!"
"She didn't care anything about it, really. She was just trying to put
the principles of the S. A. S. into practice."
"She might at least have picked out somebody decent!"
"Well, he is quite decent. He's engaged to the girl at the underwear
counter in Bloodgood's, and he didn't want to be flirted with a bit. But
you know how persistent Mae Mertelle is, when she makes up her mind. The
poor young man just couldn't help himself. He was so embarrassed that he
didn't know what he was doing. He gave Hester Pringle half chocolate and
half sarsaparilla, and she says it was a _perfectly awful_ combination.
It made her feel so sick that she couldn't eat any dinner. And all this
time Waddy just sat and smiled into space and saw nothing; but all the
girls saw,--and _so did the drugstore man_!"
"Oh!" said Patty breathlessly.
"And this morning Miss Sallie went to the drugstore to get some potash
for Harriet Gladden's sore throat, and he told her all about it."
"What did Miss Sallie do?" Patty asked faintly.
"Do! She came back with blood in her eye, and told the Dowager, and they
called up Mae Mertelle and then--" Rosalie closed her eyes and
shuddered.
"Well," said Patty impatiently. "What happened?"
"The Dowager was _perfectly outraged_! She told Mae that she had
disgraced the school and that she would be expelled. And she wrote a
telegram to Mae's father to come and take her away. And she asked Mae if
she had anything to say for herself, and Mae said it wasn't her fault.
That you and I were to blame just as much as she, because we were all in
a society together, but that she couldn't tell about it because she'd
sworn."
"Beast!" said Patty.
"So then they sent for me and commenced asking questions about the S. A.
S. I tried not to tell, but you know the way the Dowager looks when
she's angry. Even a sphinx would break down and tell everything it
knew, and I never did pretend to be a sphinx."
"All right," said Patty, bracing herself for the shock. "What did they
say when they heard?"
"They didn't hear! I was just on the point of breaking my vows and
telling all, when who should pop in but Lordy. And she was _perfectly
splendid_! She said she knew all about the S. A. S. That it was a very
admirable institution, and that she was a member herself! She said it
was a branch of the Sunshine Society, and that Mae had never meant to
flirt with the young man. She had just meant to smile and be kind to
everybody she came in contact with, and he had taken advantage. And Mae
said, yes, that was the way of it, and she shoved off all the blame on
that poor innocent soda-water clerk."
"Just like her," Patty nodded.
"And now Mae is _perfectly furious_ with him for getting her into
trouble. She says that he's a horrid little thing with a turn-up nose,
and that she'll never drink another glass of soda-water as long as she
stays in St. Ursula's."
"And they're going to let her stay?"
"Yes. The Dowager tore up the telegram. But she gave Mae ten demerits,
and made her go without dessert for a week, and learn Thanatopsis by
heart. And she can't _ever_ go shopping in the village any more. When
she needs new hair ribbons or stockings or anything, she must send for
them by some of the other girls."
"And what's the Dowager going to do to us?"
"Nothing at all--and if it hadn't been for Lordy, we'd all three have
been expelled."
"And I've always detested Lordy," said Patty contritely. "Isn't it
dreadful? You simply can't keep enemies. Just as you think people are
perfectly horrid, and begin to enjoy hating them, they all of a sudden
turn out nice."
"I hate Mae Mertelle," said Rosalie.
"So do I!" Patty agreed cordially.
"I'm going to leave her old society."
"I'm already out." Patty glanced toward the mirror. "And I'm not
freckled and I'm not squint-eyed."
"What do you mean?" Rosalie stared; she had for the moment forgotten the
dread nature of the oath.
"I've told Uncle Bobby."
"Oh, Patty! How could you?"
"I--I--that is--" Patty appeared momentarily confused. "You see," she
confessed, "I thought myself that it would be sort of interesting to
practice on somebody, so I--I--just tried--"
"And did he--"
Patty shook her head.
"It was awfully uphill work. He never helped a bit. And then he noticed
my bracelet and wanted to know what S. A. S. meant. And before I knew
it, I was telling him!"
"What did he say?"
"First he roared; then he got awfully sober, and he gave me a long
lecture--it was really very impressive--sort of like Sunday School, you
know. And he took the bracelet away from me and put it in his pocket.
He told me he'd send me something nicer."
"What do you s'pose it will be?" asked Rosalie interestedly.
"I hope it won't be a doll!"
Two days later the morning mail brought a small parcel for Miss Patty
Wyatt. She opened it under her desk in geometry class. Buried in
jeweler's cotton she found a gold linked bracelet that fastened with a
padlock in the shape of a heart. On the back of one of Uncle Bobby's
cards was written:--
"This is your heart. Keep it locked until the chap turns up who has the
key."
Patty deflected Rosalie as she was turning into French and privately
exhibited the bracelet with pride.
Rosalie regarded it with sentimental interest.
"What has he done with the key?" she wondered.
"I s'pose," said Patty, "he's got it in his pocket."
"How awfully romantic!"
"It sounds sort of romantic," Patty agreed with the suggestion of a
sigh. "But it isn't really. He's thirty years old, and beginning to be
bald."
IX
The Reformation of Kid McCoy
Miss McCoy, of Texas, had been subjected to the softening influences of
St. Ursula's School for three years, without any perceptible result. She
was the toughest little tomboy that was ever received--and retained--in
a respectable-boarding-school.
"Margarite" was the name her parents had chosen, when the itinerant
bishop made his quarterly visit to the mining-camp where she happened to
be born. It was the name still used by her teachers, and on the written
reports that were mailed monthly to her Texas guardian. But "Kid" was
the more appropriate name that the cowboys on the ranch had given her;
and "Kid" she remained at St. Ursula's, in spite of the distressed
expostulation of the ladies in charge.
Kid's childhood had been picturesque to a degree rarely found outside
the pages of a Nick Carter novel. She had possessed an adventurous
father, who drifted from mining-camp to mining-camp, making fortunes and
losing them. She had cut her teeth on a poker chip, and drunk her milk
from a champagne glass. Her father had died--quite opportunely--while
his latest fortune was at its height, and had left his little daughter
to the guardianship of an English friend who lived in Texas. The next
three turbulent years of her life were spent on a cattle range with
"Guardie," and the ensuing three in the quiet confines of St. Ursula's.
The guardian had brought her himself, and after an earnest conference
with the Dowager, had left her behind to be molded by the culture of the
East. But so far, the culture of the East had left her untouched. If any
molding had taken place, it was Kid herself who shaped the clay.
Her spicy reminiscences of mining-camps and cattle ranches made all
permissible works of fiction tame. She had given the French dancing
master, who was teaching them a polite version of a Spanish waltz, an
exposition of the real thing, as practised by the Mexican cow-punchers
on her guardian's ranch. It was a performance that left him
sympathetically breathless. The English riding master, who came weekly
in the spring and autumn, to teach the girls a correct trot, had
received a lesson in bareback riding that caused the dazed query:
"Was the young lady trained in a circus?"
The Kid was noisy and slangy and romping and boisterous; her way was
beset with reproofs and demerits and minor punishments, but she had
never yet been guilty of any actual felony. For three years, however,
St. Ursula's had been holding its breath waiting for the crash. Miss
McCoy, from her very nature, was bound to give them a sensation
sometime.
When at last it came, it was of an entirely unexpected order.
Rosalie Patton was the Kid's latest room-mate--- she wore her room-mates
out as fast as she did her shoes. Rosalie was a lovable little soul, the
essence of everything feminine. The Dowager had put the two together, in
the hope that Rosalie's gentle example might calm the Kid's tempestuous
mood. But so far, the Kid was in her usual spirits, while Rosalie was
looking worn.
Then the change came.
Rosalie burst into Patty Wyatt's room one evening in a state of
wide-eyed amazement.
"What do you think?" she cried. "Kid McCoy says she's going to be a
lady!"
"A what?" Patty emerged from the bath towel with which she had been
polishing her face.
"A _lady_. She's sitting down now, running pale blue baby ribbon through
the embroidery in her night gown."
"What's happened to her?" was Patty's question.
"She's been reading a book that Mae Mertelle brought back."
Rosalie settled herself, Turk fashion, on the window seat, disposed the
folds of her pink kimono in graceful billows about her knees, and
allowed two braids of curly yellow hair to hang picturesquely over her
shoulders. She was ready for bed and could extend her call until the
last stroke of the "Lights-out" bell.
"What kind of a book?" asked Patty with a slightly perfunctory note in
her voice.
Rosalie was apt to burst into one's room with a startling announcement
and then, having engaged everybody's attention, settle down to an
endless, meandering recital sprinkled with anti-climaxes.
"It's about a sweet young English girl whose father owned a tea estate
in Asia--or maybe Africa. But anyway, where it was hot, and there were a
lot of natives and snakes and centipedes. Her mother died and she was
sent back home to boarding-school when she was a tiny little thing. Her
father was quite bad. He drank and swore and smoked. The only thing that
kept him from being awfully bad, was the thought of his sweet little
golden-haired daughter in England."
"Well, what of it?" Patty inquired, politely suppressing a yawn. Rosalie
had a way of trailing off into golden-haired sentiment if one didn't
haul her up sharp.