THREE LETTERS
The following morning Colonel Wainright called the girl into his study,
and, laying his hand on her shoulder, he said: “Little lassie, why don’t
you try to please your daddy and go to school in the village here at
least until the spring vacation. Then, as you know, you will be able to
return to Mrs. Potter’s seminary, if you wish.”
“If I wish, Colonel Wainright?” the maiden exclaimed. “Why, of course I
wish to go back there this very minute, where I can associate with girls
who are my equals. I am sorry to seem ungrateful to you, Colonel, but I
simply must leave this horrid village. I wish you could have seen the
outlandish girls who called on me yesterday. What would Adelaine Drexel
or Muriel Ellingworth think if they knew I was associating with milkmaids
and—and butter churners!”
Alfred had told the older man about the joke which had been played on
poor Geraldine and he had been much amused. Before he could reply,
however, the door bell rang. “The postman, I expect!” the Colonel said as
he went into the hall.
“Good!” Geraldine exclaimed. “I do hope he has a letter for me from Papa.
It is long past time for my allowance, and I simply must have it.”
There were two letters for the girl, but neither bore the desired
postmark. “Oh, dear, it is so provoking!” she declared, and then she
climbed the stairs to her room. Colonel Wainright did not tell her that
one of his envelopes bore her father’s handwriting. Again in his study,
he opened and read the letter.
“Dear old Pal:—Your report of my little girl is discouraging, but we must
remember that she was brought up without a mother and has undoubtedly
received false ideas of life from her associates, a few of whom I do not
approve. Geraldine had, while in Dorchester, two intimate friends who
were very unlike. Adelaine Drexel is a very nice, wholesome girl, whose
ancestors have been gentry for generations, but my chief reason for
sending my daughter to Sunnyside was to separate her from her chosen
companion, Muriel Ellingworth. Alfred has been much concerned about this
friendship. He has often told me that Muriel, who is pretty in doll
fashion, makes secret engagements with boys of whom her mother would not
approve, and she invites my little girl to join them. Now I want
Geraldine to have boy friends in a frank, open way, but of this sub-rosa
business, my son and I heartily disapprove, and since my daughter hasn’t
a mother to guide her, I decided that nothing would do her as much good
as a winter spent in the wholesome atmosphere of Sunnyside, where the
rich and poor play together in a happy, healthy way.
“Geraldine will feel terribly about it at first, but I am hoping that she
is intrinsically too much like her splendid mother to remain a snob when
she is convinced that among that class she will not find the worth-while
people.
“It was mighty good of you, old pal, to help me out in this matter, but
if you find the task a troublesome one, pack her up and send her to a
good boarding school until I return. I am enclosing a check. Do not give
my little girl much at a time, just sufficient for her needs. Some day I
will do something for you.
“Yours,
“Al.”
The Colonel re-read the letter and then, leaning over the fireplace, he
carefully burned it. The check he placed in his long pocketbook.
“Poor girl,” he mused, as he watched the last bit of white paper charring
among the coals. “How disappointed she will be just at first. She has
many hard lessons to learn, but her father was wise to send her here,
where the girls are all so wholesome and still children at heart.”
Then his pleasant face wrinkled into a smile as he thought of the prank
which those same wholesome girls had played only the day before upon the
poor, unsuspecting city maiden.
“I wonder if she will ever forgive them when she finds out that it was
all a joke. She’ll probably be very indignant at first. Well,” he added,
as he turned away and put on his great coat preparing to take his daily
constitutional into town, “this winter’s experience will prove of what
fiber the girl is really made, and, somehow, in spite of her present
snobbishness and vanity, I have faith in her.”
Meanwhile Geraldine, up in her pleasant room, was seated in an easy chair
close to the fire on the hearth. She was reading the letters, which were
from her two best girl friends.
Out of the first letter that Geraldine opened there fluttered a kodak
picture. A pretty yet weak face smiled out at her. It was Muriel
Ellingworth and it had been taken at the Public Baths. Tom Blakely was
also in the picture and, as Geraldine well knew, Muriel’s mother had
forbidden her daughter to go either with that boy or to the public
bathing pool.
In a languid scrawl, the letter assured her “dearest” friend that she was
just terribly missed and suggested that Geraldine run away.
“I do wish I had some money to send to you, poor dear, but I haven’t. I
spent the last penny of my allowance buying a pair of silk stockings.
They are simply adorable! They have open work edged with gold thread, and
of course I had to buy the slippers to match and they have gold buckles.
You remember Mother said positively that I must not have them, and so I
keep them over at Kittie Beverly’s, and when I go out with Tom, I stop
there and put them on. As usual, I was asked what I had done with my
allowance, but I was expecting it and had an answer ready. I said that I
had given it to the poor babies’ milk fund.”
Geraldine dropped the letter in her lap and gazed at the fire. Lying was
repugnant to her. She had always told the truth fearlessly and had taken
the consequences. Then she continued reading the indolent scrawl: “Oh,
Gerry dear, I have another piece of news to tell you. Adelaine Drexel
took it upon herself to preach to me the other day after school. She told
me that if I continued to meet boys and go to public baths and places
like that, she feared that I would be asked to leave the seminary. And
then, if you please, the minx told me that she hoped the advice would be
taken as kindly as it was given. I told her in my best French to mind her
own business, and I haven’t spoken to her since, and if you are _my_
friend, you will snub her too. She is expecting a letter from you, but if
I hear that you have written her I shall know that you have taken her
side against your devoted Duckie Muriel.”
Again Geraldine gazed in the fire. All these dishonorable things looked
so different in cold black and white. When Muriel herself was telling
them in her vivacious, chattery manner, they didn’t seem half so, well,
yes, dishonest was the word, and Geraldine had inherited her father’s
scorn for dishonesty.
With a sigh she opened the other letter and read the pretty, evenly
written words:
“Dear little neighbor who is so far away. You can’t think how lonely it
seems to have the big house next door closed up so tight. Every morning I
go to the window hoping to wave you a greeting in the old way, but all I
see is a drawn curtain and a snow-piled ledge. How suddenly everything
happened! Truly, Geraldine, I do envy you. One can have such a nice time
in a village and I have the dearest cousin living in Sunnyside. You have
often heard me speak of Doris Drexel, but you were away last year when
she visited me. I’ll write a little note of introduction, and I do wish
that you would take it today and call upon my dear Cousin Doris. Tell her
that you are the friend I love most and that we have been chums ever
since our doll days, though truly my doll days aren’t over yet. I have
the tenderest feeling for Peggoty Anne and I tell her all my secrets.
“You will be sorry to hear that Muriel and I are not on speaking terms. I
did not mean to hurt her, but she thinks I did. Now, dear little
neighbor, do write real soon to your loving, lonesome friend.
“Adelaine.”
And so she had to choose between them. How different the two girls were,
she mused. Both sixteen, but one was vain and pretty, thinking only of
clothes and boys, while the other, still a little girl at heart, told
secrets to her doll.
Geraldine smiled as she remembered the Christmas when that doll had first
arrived. What happy times she and Adelaine had had together. They had
been playmates for years, and what a loyal friend her little neighbor had
always been. Springing up from her chair, she opened her desk as she
thought, “I’ll write to Adelaine this very moment and tell her that I am
just as lonely for her as she is for me.”
For the next half hour, the only sound in the room was the crackling of
the fire and the scratching of the pen. Geraldine had made her choice.
When the letter was finished, the girl arose and slipped on her beautiful
blue velvet coat with its deep squirrel fur collar and cuffs and a jaunty
blue velvet cap. Then, going down the hall, she tapped on a closed door.
“Who’s there?” the voice sounded as though it came from the depths of
many cushions, as indeed it did, for Alfred, buried among them on his
lounge, was reading an absorbing story.
“Brother, I wish you would drive me into the village. I have a letter
that I would like to mail today.”
The door was flung open and the lad exclaimed: “I’ll tell you what, Sis!
Let’s walk to town! It’s glorious weather and Dad told me especially that
he wanted us to tramp about the way he did when he was a boy.”
Geraldine pouted. “Oh, Alfred,” she said, “you know I don’t like to walk,
and certainly you wouldn’t expect me to wade through snow drifts like a
country girl. I do wish I had stayed in the city. When I wanted to go
anywhere, all I had to do was ring for Peters and he brought around the
car.”
The lad was getting into his great coat, and he said wheelingly:
“I feel like taking a hike today, Sis. Try it once, just to please me,
won’t you? Be a good pal.”
Geraldine hesitated. “Well, just this once,” she said. Then Alfred,
happening to look down at her daintily shod feet, laughed gaily. “But, my
dear girl!” he exclaimed. “You certainly couldn’t walk through snow
drifts with those slipper things on. Trot along and put on the hiking
shoes that Dad bought for you, and I’ll see if I can unearth some
leggins.”
“But those shoes are so heavy,” Geraldine protested, “and I’m sure I
don’t know where you could get leggins, whatever they are.”
“Never you mind, Sis, you do as little Alfred asks this once; I’ll be
back in a jiffy.”
True to his word, the lad reappeared as soon as the strong hiking shoes
were on, and triumphantly he held aloft a pair of warm knitted leggins.
“Alfred Morrison,” cried the horrified girl, “do you expect me to wear
those ugly things? Why, I’d be the laughing stock of Dorchester if I
appeared in thick woolen stockings like those.”
“But, Sister mine, geographically speaking, Dorchester and Sunnyside are
so far apart that your exclusive friends are not likely to see you
today.”
At last Geraldine stood arrayed in the first pair of heavy shoes and
leggins she had ever worn. As they were walking along the sparkling
highway, the boy asked, “Who have you been writing to? Dad?”
“No, to Adelaine Drexel. I had a letter from her this morning, and oh,
Buddy, I forgot to tell you, Adelaine writes that she has a first cousin
living in this town. I am so thankful to find that after all there is at
least one girl of my own set in this dreadful place, but what I would
like to know is, why didn’t she call upon me instead of those——”
“Butter churners and milkmaids,” Alfred finished for her.
Geraldine, who had been carefully picking her way through a snowdrift,
trying to step just where her brother did, happened to look up suddenly
and saw the shoulders of the boy ahead shaking with silent laughter.
Before she could ask the cause of this, sleigh bells were heard back of
them and a merry voice called: “Ho there, Alfred Morrison! Through stage
for Sunnyside! Any passengers wish to ride?”
Jack Lee and Bob Angel were beaming down from the high seat of a delivery
sleigh belonging to the father of the latter boy.
Bob often assisted his father after school hours, sometimes acting as
clerk in the busy little grocery, or again doing the rural delivering.
Geraldine was indignant. “Ride with a grocer boy? Indeed not!” she was
thinking. “Probably a brother to one of the milkmaids.” She flushed
angrily when she saw Alfred turn back and answer the salutation with a
hearty, “Hullo there, boys. Sure thing, I’d like to ride! Would you,
Geraldine?”
The girl drew herself up haughtily as she said in a low tone: “A Morrison
ride in a delivery cart? Never.”
Bob, not having heard a word of the conversation, stopped the horse, and
Jack, leaping down from the high seat, snatched off his hat and
acknowledged the introduction to Geraldine with as much courtesy as a
city boy would have done; and what was more, the girl’s eyes, even though
they were disdainful, quickly perceived that Jack was unusually good
looking.
So, too, was the beaming face of the driver, who called pleasantly: “Miss
Morrison, please pardon me for not getting out, but my steed is restless
today. Our conveyance is not a fashionable one, I know, but if you will
honor us, we will gladly take you to your destination.” Geraldine hardly
knew how to reply. This boy seemed nice, but of course he belonged to the
trades-people, and—Bob was again speaking: “Why don’t you let me drive
you over to our house? The girls are having a sewing bee, I think they
call it. Doris Drexel and all the rest of them are there.”
Geraldine looked up brightly: “Thank you,” she said, “I would like to
go.”
If the seven girls seated around the fireplace in the pleasant Angel
library had known that the haughty Geraldine was unconsciously about to
return their call, they would have been filled with consternation for
fear the joke they played upon her would be found out.