There is something about the first days of spring that stirs that most
primitive instinct in every human being--the desire to move on, the
nomadic impulse, the explorer sense.
Even the girls at Andrews, with heads full of friendships, coming
examinations and summer plans, felt this world-old impulse. School was
too small. The roads and fields that they knew so well, sweet with apple
blossoms as they were, were all too tame and familiar to satisfy this
longing that had made itself apparent by the time the engrossing subject
of Annapolis was out of the way.
The girls yawned rudely in classes, no matter what sharp words were
spoken to correct them. They even stretched their young arms out
side-ways and rested them on the next chairs. They turned wistful eyes
away from their books out toward the sunlight-sprinkled world and
wondered what was in it beyond those immediate roofs and trees that they
could see.
Finally Peggy could stand it no longer. "Well, girls," she announced one
bright Saturday afternoon when there was no more school work to consider
for the day, "we're all going hunting for the source of something--we're
going exploring. Anybody know a nice, twisty river that we can take for
the work? One without too many crabs in it, because, of course, we may
want to wade."
The girls were full of enthusiasm at once. Their first thought, as
usual, was what they were to take to eat. Several voted for fudge, but
Peggy scornfully reminded them that this was an unheard of diet for
explorers, and besides she expected to be ravenous by the time they'd
walked a few miles. So a more comprehensive luncheon was planned,
without the bacon this time, for they did not want to build fires, and a
small, bright, quickly-running stream was decided upon for the object of
their exploration. To reach this it was necessary that they take a
suburban car and ride quite a distance into unfamiliar country, which
was just what they had wished. Not those same old roads that they had
walked to powder, not those same old rivers on the side of which every
class had made its fires since the opening of the school, but a brand
new part of the country where foot of Andrews girl had never trod
before, to their knowledge,--this was ideal, and it added considerably
to their delight that Mrs. Forest had given permission for their class
to go without taking a teacher along.
They all wore white shirtwaists, white skirts, white shoes, and white
linen tennis hats. They looked rather like a party of sunny angels as
they boarded their car. They realized that they made a good appearance,
but they were not prepared for the effect they had upon a certain
motherly-looking woman who watched them file in and take their seats.
She gazed at them very hard and her mouth curved into the most wistful
smile the girls had ever seen, and tears came suddenly to her eyes as
she glanced hastily away. The other people in the car breathed deep in
sympathy. But the girls could no more have understood the vivid
impression of youth and loveliness they had given than they could have
deciphered the Rosetta stone. In their hearts were only the most prosaic
thoughts of dainty little sandwiches and stuffed olives, with an
undernote of healthy happiness and rampageous good spirits.
"What can be more beautiful than a group of young girls?" a woman was
saying to her neighbor. "Aren't they just ideal, all in white that
way--those pretty girlish dresses and those white shoes and stockings--"
If she had known the girls' most eager thought in connection with those
white shoes and stockings was to throw them as far away as possible onto
a rock in the river they had set out to explore, and in regard to those
white dresses, their dearest wish was to fasten them up about their
knees while, with all manner of joyous shouts and yells they should go
wading below a waterfall.
As they approached the suburban stop where they had been advised to get
off, as being near the river they were going to, they gathered up their
boxes of luncheon and crowded to the door of the car, humming very
softly one of their favorite school songs.
And when the car stopped and let them off in a beautiful strip of
country woodland, their voices came out louder and they went swinging
along in the direction of the stream whose cool rippling music they were
so eager to hear. They had to climb several fences, but they had been
told that these woods were always open to school and college girls, for
there was a larger college nearer than Andrews, and the girls haunted
the place. There was nobody in sight to-day, however, and they scrambled
to the top of gateways and then jumped down into each other's arms,
knocking each other down and laughing and shouting until the woods
echoed with their noise.
The stream was broad and rather shallow and was rushing along over its
little shining stones at a great rate. Now and then there was the silver
flash of minnows or the sluggish shadow of swimming tadpoles. But, look
as they would, they could not see the dreaded green-brown menace of a
crab, so their happiness was complete.
There were smooth gleaming rocks rising high out of the water
everywhere. Once this stream had been a powerful river and it had
perhaps tumbled these rocks here and then worn them down to the
delightful shininess they showed now. Fascinatingly enough they could
walk out on them, stepping with care from one to another until they were
in the middle of the stream, and then they could pursue their way
upstream in the same exciting way for quite a distance. The girls were
in all attitudes, wildly trying to keep their balance and make this
fascinating journey at the same time, when there was a splash, a shout,
and then a dripping figure emerged between two large rocks and held up
its wet hands pitifully for help.
Under her wet hair and through the water streaming down her face, the
girls recognized Peggy, much more slimpsy in her white dress than she
had been a minute ago.
"First one in!" they greeted her catastrophe uproariously, and in
delighted unanimity they sat down on the rocks wherever they happened to
be and pulled off their shoes and stockings and turned up their skirts,
and then sliding gracefully down, wriggled their contented toes in the
water and shrieked as it encroached coldly on their ankles.
In a minute more they were all in, splashing and stamping, the stones
smooth under their eager feet as they took each step.
They went on together up the stream farther and farther, following its
twisted way until they came to a place they could not hope to
climb--where the stream made a sheer leap downwards for a distance that
was much greater than their height, and came plashing down toward them
in a thousand rainbow lights by means of a spreading waterfall.
"I might as well stand under that," chortled Peggy, "I am as shipwrecked
as I can be already. I fell flat when I tumbled off the rock back
there."
"OH--O-OH," she cried as she sidled up to the water and finally made her
plunge into it. Pounding down and stinging like a hundred little sharp
needles of cold, she had never felt such breathlessness nor such
elation. Over her, and shrouding her in a gleaming mist, the water came,
and the girls stood speechless watching her as she stood there like some
Indian princess observing the rites of the waterfall.
This was the tableau she made when there came another group of shouts
and laughing voices from over the bank of the river, and there all of a
sudden looking down were a crowd of older girls, carrying luncheon boxes
too, and at the moment opening their mouths and eyes wide in
astonishment. At first the rest of the Andrews girls were so far back
toward the bank that the newcomers did not see them, and all their gaze
focused on Peggy and from their faces it was apparent that they scarcely
thought her real. Her arms were upstretched toward the descending water
and her face, mist-covered, was lifted. Her slim bare feet shone in the
sunlight and sparkled through the water like the feet of some very young
Diana, resting from the hunt.
Her dress had lost its starchy lines long since and now resembled a
Greek costume as much as anything--at least it would be hard to decide
that it wasn't.
"I _never_ in my life--" murmured one of the girls, and her voice broke
the spell and the others began to descend the steep bank, becoming aware
of the rest of Peggy's party as they did so. Peggy herself was still
oblivious. The noise of the waterfall obscured all else, and her efforts
to breathe in spite of the water that filled her eyes and nostrils and
mouth took all her attention.
"That's the dandiest looking girl I ever saw," said the tallest of the
newcomers, heartily. "I wonder if she could be at Hampton and I not have
seen her. If she's not there she ought to be, and I'm going to try to
get her to change her college and come to us."
"Are you Hampton girls?" Katherine came forward and asked, with the
frank and friendly directness that is permissible between girls all of
an age and all in school. "Because I'm going to Hampton next year. We
are Andrews girls now."
She thought she noticed a stir among the Hampton people as she said
this, and their gaze traveled eagerly over the entire group from the
prep school. For these girls would be among the most important entering
Hampton next fall--the Andrews girls always coming in for a large share
of the freshman honors, carrying off the class offices and writing the
class songs and shining in all the more pleasant and social branches of
college life. Then the tall girl looked back toward Peggy. Peggy at the
same minute saw her audience and came forth, shame-facedly, like a
little drowned rat, Katherine said, while she smoothed the pasty wet
folds of her skirt and tried to shake some of the water from her curly
hair.
"Is _she_ going?" the tall girl demanded with interest, pointing to this
dripping apparition.
"I--don't--think she's planning to go to college at all," said Katherine
hesitatingly. "I never heard her say that she was going. I'm her
room-mate, and she's the nicest girl in all the world, and Hampton will
never know what it loses by not getting her."
"She's just the kind we want," sighed the tall girl. "Well, glad we met
you--" Her party started off downstream, but she turned and called back
over her shoulder, "When you come up next fall come over and see
me,--I'm Ditto Armandale--in Macefield House."
"Thanks, I'm Katharine Foster," Peggy's room-mate called after her.
"Good-bye--and I'm really coming."
With a friendly wave the college girls disappeared around the first bend
in the little river, and Katherine turned to the perturbed Peggy,
expecting her to make some remark about the ridiculous way the others
had found her.
But her eyes had a faraway expression in spite of their slightly worried
look, and the remark Peggy made was, "Oh, Katherine, Katherine, I wish I
were going to Hampton."
Katherine started to speak, but could not, and turned her head hastily
away because the thought of four years without Peggy, even four years
among hundreds of attractive girls like Ditto Armandale, seemed to her
at the minute but a bleak expanse unlit by a single gleam of comfort.
"Peggy, won't you write to your aunt and tell her you _must_ come?" she
begged suddenly. "Don't you think she'd let you if she knew that
Florence and I and most of the girls are going?"
Peggy rubbed her moist forehead thoughtfully. "Don't think so," she
said, "but I might write and--_hint_ that I want to go."
Their momentary depression passed, though, when they sat down to eat the
good things they had brought in their boxes. Peggy kept in the sun as
much as possible, hoping to dry off before it was time to go home. This
phase came to her more poignantly later, however, when the other girls
had put on their shoes and stockings again and were making ready to go
home.
"But mine are all wet and they won't go on," mourned Peggy, "and my
dress is a disgrace and my hair isn't very dry yet either, and when I
put my hat on little rivulets run down my face like so many horrid young
Niagaras. Oh, there _that_ shoe is on, but I can't say there's any
special advantage in it. Just hear the water sloshing about when I walk!
It's a wonder I won't take cold out of this, but I won't--I never do
when I've had a good time. Girls, keep close to me because I'm the most
awful object that ever got on a street car and I'd much rather walk only
I wouldn't get home for two or three days, I guess, and these wet shoes
would have dissolved like paper long before that."
They climbed the fences with less agility than they had displayed in
getting over them in the first place, and they were a tired lot of girls
when they reached the car track and threw themselves on the grass beside
it.
"I hear a singing on the rails," sighed Peggy, "but I'm too stiff to get
up. Somebody wave to the car. Mercy, here it is already coming around
the corner. There, keep close to me, somebody on each side,--oh, what
will the people on there think of Andrews?"
When they clambered into the car and the whole bedraggled crowd of
recent water-sprites sank into their seats, a motherly woman from across
the aisle looked up and stared at them in a kind of fascinated horror.
Her appraising glance missed nothing from their mud bordered skirts and
soppy shoes to their flying, tangled hair.
She turned in some disgust to a woman who sat beside her. "Isn't it
terrible how hoydenish some girls are?" she asked audibly. "Now those
poor little spectacles across the aisle--somebody ought to keep watch of
them. I wish you might have seen the lovely group of girls that rode on
my car a few hours ago when I was coming out this way. Quite different
from this messy little party. They were all in white, as sweet as dolls
and so adorably radiant and clean and spiritual looking. They made me
think of angels. Dear, dear, I shall never forget the picture they made!
You would not know that those little tomboys opposite belonged to the
same species even!"
And the motherly looking woman wondered why the tomboys all burst into a
fit of uncontrollable giggling.