India to take care of her father, but almost right off he got a
sunstroke and died. And in his death-bed he entrusted Rosamond--that was
her name--to his best friend to finish bringing up. So when Rosamond
went to live with her guardian, and took charge of his bungalow and made
it beautiful and homelike and comfortable--she wouldn't let him drink or
smoke or swear any more. And as he looked back over the past--"
"He was eaten with remorse at the thought of the wasted years," Patty
glibly supplied, "and wished that he had lived so as to be more worthy
of the sweet, womanly influence that had come into his wicked life."
"You've read it!" said Rosalie.
"Not that I know of," said Patty.
"Anyway," said Rosalie, with an air of challenge, "they fell in love and
were married--"
"And her father and mother, looking down from heaven, smiled a blessing
on the dear little daughter who had brought so much happiness to a
lonely heart?"
"Um--yes," agreed Rosalie, doubtfully.
There was no amount of sentiment that she would not swallow, but she
knew from mortifying experience that Patty was not equally voracious.
"It's a very touching story," Patty commented, "but where does Kid McCoy
come in?"
"Why, don't you see?" Rosalie's violet eyes were big with interest.
"It's exactly Kid's own story! I realized it the minute I saw the book,
and I had the _awfulest_ time making her read it. She made fun of it at
first, but after she'd really got into it, she appreciated the
resemblance. She says now it was the Hand of Fate."
"Kid's story? What _are_ you talking about?" Patty was commencing to be
interested.
"Kid has a wicked English guardian just like the Rosamond in the book.
Anyway, he's English, and she thinks probably he's wicked. Most ranchmen
are. He lives all alone with only cow-punchers for companions, and he
needs a sweet womanly influence in his home. So Kid's decided to be a
lady, and go back and marry Guardie, and make him happy for the rest of
his life."
Patty laid herself on the bed and rolled in glee. Rosalie rose and
regarded her with a touch of asperity.
"I don't see anything so funny--I think it's very romantic."
"Kid exerting a sweet womanly influence!" Patty gurgled. "She can't even
pretend she's a lady for an hour. If you think she can _stay_ one--"
"Love," pronounced Rosalie, "has accomplished greater wonders than
that--you wait and see."
And the school did see. Kid McCoy's reformation became the sensation of
the year. The teachers attributed the felicitous change in her
deportment to the good influence of Rosalie, and though they were
extremely relieved, they did not expect it to last. But week followed
week, and it did last.
Kid McCoy no longer answered to "Kid." She requested her friends to call
her "Margarite." She dropped slang and learned to embroider; she sat
through European Travel and Art History nights with clasped hands and a
sweetly pensive air, where she used to drive her neighbors wild by a
solid hour of squirming. Voluntarily, she set herself to practising
scales. The reason she confided to Rosalie, and Rosalie to the rest of
the school.
They needed the softening influence of music on the ranch. One-eyed Joe
played the accordion, and that was all the music they had. The school
saw visions of the transformed Margarite, dressed in white, sitting
before the piano in the twilight singing softly the "Rosary," while
Guardie watched her with folded arms; and the cowboys, with bowie knives
sheathed in their boots, and lariats peacefully coiled over their
shoulders, gathered by the open window.
Lenten services that year, instead of being forcibly endured by a
rebellious Kid, were attended by a sweetly reverent Margarite. The
entire school felt an electric thrill at sight of Miss McCoy walking up
the aisle with downcast eyes, and hands demurely clasping her prayer
book. Usually she looked as much in place in the stained-glass
atmosphere of Trinity Chapel as an unbroken broncho colt.
This amazing reform continued for seven weeks. The school was almost
beginning to forget that there was ever a time when Kid McCoy was not a
lady.
Then one day a letter came from Guardie with the news that he was coming
East to visit his little girl. Subdued excitement prevailed in the South
Corridor. Rosalie and Margarite and an assemblage of neighbors held
earnest conferences as to what she should wear and how she should
behave. They finally decided upon white muslin and blue ribbons. They
pondered a long time over whether or not she should kiss him, but
Rosalie decided in the negative.
"When he sees you," she explained, "the realization will sweep over him
that you are no longer a child. You have grown to womanhood in the past
three years. And he will feel unaccountably shy in your presence."
"Um," said Margarite, with a slightly doubtful note. "I hope so."
It was on a Sunday that Guardie arrived. The school--in a
body--flattened its nose against the window watching his approach. They
had rather hoped for a flannel shirt and boots and spurs, and, in any
case, for a sombrero. But the horrible truth must be told. He wore a
frock coat of the most unimpeachable cut, with a silk hat and a stick,
and a white gardenia in his buttonhole. To look at him, one would swear
that he had never seen a pistol or a lariat. He was born to pass the
plate in church.
But the worst is still to tell.
He had planned a surprise for his little ward. When she should come back
to the ranch, it would be to a real home. A sweet, womanly influence
would have transformed it into a fitting abode for a young girl. Guardie
was not alone. He was accompanied by his bride--a tall, fair, beautiful
woman with a low voice and gracious manners. She sang for the girls
after dinner, and as sixty-four pairs of eyes studied the beautiful
presence, sixty-four--no, sixty-three--of her auditors decided to grow
up to be exactly like her. Margarite did the honors in a state of dazed
incomprehension. Her make-believe world of seven weeks had crumbled in
an hour, and she had not had time to readjust herself. Never--she
realized it perfectly--could she have competed in femininity with
Guardie's wife. It wasn't in her, not even if she had commenced to
practise from the cradle.
They went back to the city in the evening, and before the entire school,
Guardie patted her on the head and told her to be a good little kiddie
and mind her teachers. His wife, with a protecting arm about her
shoulders, kissed her forehead and called her "dear little daughter."
After evensong on Sundays, came two hours of freedom. The teachers
gathered in the Dowager's study for coffee and conversation, and the
girls presumably wrote letters home. But that night, the South Corridor
followed no such peaceful occupation. Margarite McCoy experienced a
reversion to type. In her own picturesque language, she "shot up the
town."
The echoes of the orgie at last reached the kaffee klatsch below. Miss
Lord came to investigate--and she came on her tiptoes.
Miss McCoy, arrayed in a sometime picture hat cocked over one ear, a
short gymnasium skirt, scarlet stockings and a scarlet sash, was mounted
upon a table, giving an imitation of a clog dance in a mining-camp,
while her audience played rag-time on combs and clapped.
"Margarite! Get down!" someone suddenly warned in frightened tones above
the uproar.
"You needn't call me Margarite. I'm Kid McCoy of Cripple Creek."
Her eye caught sight of Miss Lord towering above the heads crowded in
the doorway and she quite suddenly climbed down. For once, Miss Lord was
without words. She stared for a space of three minutes; finally, she
managed to articulate:
"Sunday evening in a Church school!"
The audience dispersed, and Miss Lord and Miss McCoy remained alone.
Rosalie fled to the farthermost reaches of Paradise Alley and discussed
possible punishments with Patty and Conny for a trembling hour.
"Lights-out" had rung before she summoned courage to steal back to the
darkened South Corridor. The sound of smothered sobbing came from
Margarite's bed. Rosalie sank down on her knees and put her arm around
her room-mate. The sobbing ceased while Margarite rigidly held her
breath.
"Kid," she comforted, "don't mind Lordie--she's a horrid, snooping old
thing! What did she say?"
"I'm not to leave bounds for a month, have to learn five psalms by heart
and take f-fifty demerits."
"Fifty! It's a perfect shame! You'll never work them off. She had no
_right_ to make a fuss when you'd been good so long."
"I don't care!" said Kid, fiercely, as she struggled to free herself
from Rosalie's embrace. "She'll never have a chance again to call me her
sweet little daughter."
X
Onions and Orchids
"The perimeters of similar polygons are as their homologous sides."
Patty dreamily assured herself of this important truth for the twentieth
time, as she sat by the open schoolroom window, her eyes on the
billowing whiteness of the cherry tree which had burst into blossom
overnight.
It was particularly necessary that she should finish her lessons with
dispatch, because it was Saturday, and she was going to the city with
Mademoiselle's party to spend an hour in the dentist's chair. But the
weather was not conducive to concentrated effort. After an hour of
half-hearted study, she closed her geometry, and started upstairs to
dress, leaving the stay-at-homes to another hour of work.
She started upstairs; but she did not get very far on the way. As she
passed the open door that led to the back porch, she stepped outside to
examine the cherry tree at close range; then she strolled the length of
the pergola to see how the wistaria was coming on; from there, it was
just a step to the lane, with its double row of pink-tipped apple trees.
Before she knew it, Patty found herself sitting on the stone wall at the
end of the lower pasture. Behind her lay the confines of St. Ursula's.
Before her the World.
She sat on the top of the wall, and dangled her feet out of bounds. The
very most scandalous crime one could commit at St. Ursula's was to go
out of bounds without permission. Patty sat and gazed at the forbidden
land. She knew that she had no time to waste if she were to catch the
hearse and the train and the dentist's chair. But still she sat and
dreamed. Finally, far across the fields on the highroad, she spied the
hearse bowling merrily to the station. Then it occurred to her that she
had forgotten to report to Mademoiselle that she was going, and that
Mademoiselle, accordingly, would not be missing her. At the school, of
course, they would think that she had gone, and likewise would not be
missing her. Without any premeditated iniquity, she was free!
She sat a few moments longer to let the feeling penetrate. Then she slid
over the wall and started--a joyous young mutineer, seeking adventure.
Following the cheery course of the brook, she dipped into a tangled
ravine and stretch of woodland, raced down a hillside and across a
marshy meadow, leaping gaily from hummock to hummock--occasionally
missing and going in. She laughed aloud at these misadventures, and
waved her arms and romped with the wind. In addition to the delicious
sense of feeling free, was added the delicious sense of feeling bad. The
combination was intoxicating.
And so, always following the stream, she came at last to another
wood--not a wild wood like the first, but a tame, domesticated wood. The
dead limbs were cut away, and the ground was neatly brushed up under
the trees. The brook flowed sedately between fern-bordered banks, under
rustic bridges, and widened occasionally into pools carpeted with lily
pads. Mossy paths set with stepping-stones led off into mysterious
depths that the eye could not penetrate: the leaves were just out enough
to half hide and to tantalize. The grass was starred with crocuses. It
looked like an enchanted wood in a fairy tale.
This second wood, however, was bordered by a solid stone wall, and on
top of the wall, by four strands of barbed wire. Signs appeared at
intervals--three were visible from where Patty stood--stating that these
were private grounds, and that trespassers would be prosecuted to the
full extent of the law.
Patty knew well to whom it belonged; she had often passed the front
gates which faced on the other road. The estate was celebrated in the
neighborhood, in the United States, for the matter of that. It comprised
500 acres and belonged to a famous--or infamous--multi-millionaire. His
name was Silas Weatherby, and he was the originator of a great many
Wicked Corporations. He had beautiful conservatories full of tropical
plants, a sunken Italian garden, an art collection and picture gallery.
He was a crusty old codger always engaged in half-a-dozen lawsuits. He
hated the newspapers, and the newspapers hated him. He was in
particularly bad repute at St. Ursula's, because, in response to a
politely couched note from the principal, asking that the art class
might view his Botticelli and the botany class his orchids, he had
ungraciously replied that he couldn't have a lot of school girls running
over his place--if he let them come one year, he would have to let them
come another, and he didn't wish to establish a precedent.
Patty looked at the "No Trespassing" signs and the barbed wire, and she
looked at the wood beyond. They couldn't do anything if they did catch
her, she reasoned, except turn her out. People weren't jailed nowadays
for taking a peaceable walk in other people's woods. Besides, the
millionaire person was attending a directors' meeting in Chicago. This
bit of neighborhood gossip she had gleaned that morning in her weekly
perusal of the daily press--Saturday night at dinner they were supposed
to talk on current topics, so Saturday morning they glanced at the
headlines and an editorial. Since the family were not at home, why not
drop in and inspect the Italian garden? The servants were doubtless more
polite than the master.
She selected a portion of the wall where the wire seemed slack, and
wriggled under, stomach-wise, tearing only a small hole in the shoulder
of her blouse. She played with the enchanted wood half an hour or so;
then following a path, she quite suddenly left the wood behind, and
popped out into a garden--not a flower garden, but a kitchen garden on
an heroic scale. Neat plots of sprouting vegetables were bordered by
currant bushes, and the whole was surrounded by a high brick wall,
against which pear trees were trained in the English fashion.
A gardener was engaged, with his back toward Patty, in setting out baby
onions. She studied him dubiously, divided between a prompting to run,
and a social instinct of friendliness. He was an extremely picturesque
gardener, dressed in knickerbockers and leather gaiters, with a touch of
red in his waistcoat, and a cardigan jacket and a cap on the side of his
head. He did not look very affable; but he did look rheumatic--even if
he chased her, she was sure that she could run faster than he. So she
settled herself on his wheelbarrow and continued to watch him, while she
pondered an opening remark.
He glanced up suddenly and caught sight of her. The surprise nearly
tipped him over.
"Good morning!" said Patty pleasantly.
"Ugh!" grunted the man. "What are you doing there?"
"Watching you plant onions."
This struck Patty as a self-evident truth, but she was perfectly willing
to state it.
He grunted again as he straightened his back and took a step toward her.
"Where'd you come from?" he demanded gruffly.
"Over there." Patty waved her hand largely to westward.
"Humph!" he remarked. "You belong to that school--Saint Something or
Other?"
She acknowledged it. Saint Ursula's monogram was emblazoned large upon
her sleeve.
"Do they know you're out?"
"No," she returned candidly, "I don't believe they do. I am quite sure
of it in fact. They think I've gone to the dentist's with Mam'selle, and
she thinks I'm at school. So it leaves me entirely at leisure. I thought
I'd come over and see what Mr. Weatherby's Italian garden looks like.
I'm interested in Italian gardens."
"Well I'll be--!" He commenced, and came a trifle nearer and stared
again. "Did you happen to see any 'No Trespassing' signs as you came
through?"
"Mercy, yes! The whole place is peppered with 'em."
"They don't seem to have impressed you much."
"Oh, I never pay any attention to 'No Trespassing' signs," said Patty
easily. "You'd never get anywhere in this world if you let _them_ bother
you."
The man unexpectedly chuckled.
"I don't believe you would!" he agreed. "I've never let them bother me,"
he added meditatively.
"Can't I help you plant your onions?" Patty asked politely. It struck
her that this might be the quickest route to the Italian garden.
"Why, yes, thank you!"
He accepted her offer with unexpected cordiality, and gravely explained
the mode of work. The onions were very tiny, and they must be set
right-side up with great care; because it is very difficult for an
embryonic onion to turn itself over after it has once got started in the
wrong direction.
Patty grasped the business very readily, and followed along in the next
row three feet behind him. It turned out sociable work; by the end of
fifteen minutes they were quite old friends. The talk ranged far--over
philosophy and life and morals. He had a very decided opinion on every
subject--she put him down as Scotch--he seemed a well-informed old
fellow though, and he read the papers. Patty had also read the paper
that morning. She discoursed at some length upon whether or not
corporations should be subject to state control. She stoutly agreed with
her editor that they should. He maintained that they were like any other
private property, and that it was nobody's damned business how they
managed themselves.
"A penny, please," said Patty, holding out her hand.
"A penny?--what for?"
"That 'damn.' Every time you use slang or bad grammar you have to drop a
penny in the charity box. 'Damn' is much worse than slang; it's
swearing. I ought to charge you five cents, but since this is the first
offense, I'll let you off with one."
He handed over his penny, and Patty gravely pocketed it.
"What sort of things do you learn in that school?" he inquired with a
show of curiosity.
She obligingly furnished a sample:
"The perimeters of similar polygons are as their homologous sides."
"You will find that useful," he commented with the suggestion of a
twinkle in his eye.
"Very," she agreed--"on examination day."
After half an hour, onion-planting grew to be wearying work; but Patty
was bound to be game, and stick to her job as long as he did. Finally,
however, the last onion was in, and the gardener rose and viewed the
neat rows with some satisfaction.
"That will do for to-day," he declared; "we've earned a rest."
They sat down, Patty on the wheelbarrow, the man on an upturned tub.
"How do you like working for Mr. Weatherby?" she inquired. "Is he as bad
as the papers make out?"
The gardener chuckled slightly as he lighted his pipe.
"Well," he said judiciously, "he's always been very decent to me, but I
don't know as his enemies have any cause to love him."
"I think he's horrid!" said Patty.
"Why?" asked the man with a slight air of challenge. He was quite
willing to run his master down himself, but he would not permit an
outsider to do it.
"He's so terribly stingy with his old conservatories. The Dowager--I
mean Mrs. Trent, the principal, you know--wrote and asked him to let the
botany class see his orchids, and he was just as rude as he could be!"
"I'm sure he didn't mean it," the man apologized.
"Oh, yes, he did!" maintained Patty. "He said he couldn't have a lot of
school girls running through and breaking down his vines--as if we would
do such a thing! We have perfectly beautiful manners. We learn 'em every
Thursday night."
"Maybe he was a little rude," he agreed. "But you see, he hasn't had
your advantages, Miss. He didn't learn his manners in a young ladies'
boarding-school."
"He didn't learn them anywhere," Patty shrugged.
The gardener took a long pull at his pipe and studied the horizon with
narrowed eyes.
"It isn't quite fair to judge him the way you would other people," he
said slowly. "He's had a good deal of trouble in his life; and now he's
old, and I dare say pretty lonely sometimes. All the world's against
him--when people are decent, he knows it's because they're after
something. Your teacher, now, is polite when she wants to see his
conservatories, but I'll bet she believes he's an old thief!"
"Isn't he?" asked Patty.
The man grinned slightly.
"He has his moments of honesty like the rest of us."
"Perhaps," Patty grudgingly conceded, "he may not be so bad when you
know him. It's often the way. Now, there was Lordy, our Latin teacher. I
used to despise her; and then--in the hour of trial--she came up to the
scratch, and was _per-fect-ly bully_!"
He held out his hand.
"A penny."
Patty handed him back his own.
"She kept me from getting expelled--she did, really. I've never been
able to hate her since. And you know, I miss it dreadfully. It's sort of
fun having an enemy."
"I've had a good many," he nodded, "and I've always managed to enjoy
them."
"And probably they're really quite nice?" she suggested.
"Oh, yes," he agreed, "the worst criminals are often very pleasant
people when you see their right side."
"Yes, that's true," said Patty. "It's mainly chance that makes people
bad--I know it is in my own case. This morning for instance, I got up
with every intention of learning my geometry and going to the
dentist's--and yet--here I am! And so," she pointed a moral, "you always
ought to be kind to criminals and remember that under different
circumstances you might have been in jail yourself."
"That thought," he acknowledged, "has often occurred to me. I--we--that
is," he resumed after a moment of amused meditation, "Mr. Weatherby
believes in giving a man a chance. If you have any convict friends, who
are looking for a job, this is the place to send them. We used to have a
cattle thief taking care of the cows, and a murderer in charge of the
orchids."
"What fun!" cried Patty. "Have you got him now? I should love to see a
murderer."
"He left some time ago. The place was too slow for him."
"How long have you been working for Mr. Weatherby?" she asked.
"A good many years--and I've worked hard!" he added, with a slight air
of challenge.
"I hope he appreciates you?"
"Yes, I think on the whole that he does."
He knocked the ashes from his pipe and rose.
"And now," he suggested, "should you like me to show you the Italian
garden?"
"Oh, yes," said Patty, "if you think Mr. Weatherby wouldn't mind."
"I'm head gardener. I do what I please."
"If you're head gardener, what makes you plant onions?"
"It's tiresome work--good for my character."
"Oh!" Patty laughed.
"And then you see, when I have a tendency to overwork the men under me,
I stop and think how my own back ached."
"You're much too nice a man to work for him!" she pronounced
approvingly.
"Thank ye, Miss," he touched his hat with a grin.
The Italian garden was a fascinating spot, with marble steps and
fountains and clipped yew trees.
"Oh, I wish Conny could see it!" Patty cried.
"And who is she?"
"Conny's my room-mate. She's awfully interested in gardens this year,
because she's going to get the botany prize for analyzing the most
plants--at least, I think she's going to get it. It's between her and
Keren Hersey; all the rest of the class have dropped out. Mae Van
Arsdale is working against Conny, to spite me, because I wouldn't stay
in an old secret society that she started. She gets orchids from the
city and gives them to Keren."
"H'm," he frowned over this tangle of intrigue. "Is it entirely fair for
the rest to help?"
"Oh, yes!" said Patty. "They have to do the analyzing, but their friends
can collect and paste. Every time anybody goes for a walk, she comes
back with her blouse stuffed full of specimens for either Conny or
Keren. The nice girls are for Conny. Keren's an awful dig. She wears
eye-glasses and thinks she knows everything."
"I'm for Miss Conny myself," he declared. "Is there any way in which I
could help?"
Patty glanced about tentatively.
"You have quite a number of plants," she suggested, "that Conny hasn't
got in her book."
"You shall take back as many as you can carry," he promised. "We'll pay
a visit to the orchid house."