"HAF ANYBODY SEEN MY UMBREL?"
It was the last week in February, and in a few days the school dance was
to be given. One afternoon a dozen or more girls were gathered in Ethel's
room to see her dress which had been sent out from town. It was as dainty
an affair as one could wish to see, and many were the admiring glances
cast upon it, and many the praises it received. Possibly it was a trifle
elaborate for a girl of fifteen, for it was made of delicate white chiffon
over pale yellow satin, and exquisitely embroidered with fine silver
threads. But Ethel looked very lovely in it as she preened herself before
the mirror, and was fully aware of the fact.
"What are you going to wear, Toinette?" she asked.
"I've never worn anything but white yet," answered Toinette. "At Miss
Carter's all my dresses were ordered by Miss Emeline, and she said I ought
not to wear anything else till I was eighteen. I hope Miss Preston won't
say the same."
"I should think you would have hated to have the teachers say just what
you must wear, as well as what you must study. Didn't your father ever
send you any clothes?"
"Papa was too far away to know what I wore or did," answered Toinette,
rather sadly.
"Aren't you glad he is home again?" asked quiet little Helen Burgess, who
somehow always managed to say soothing things when one felt sort of
ruffled up without knowing just why.
"You had better believe I am!" was the emphatic reply. "What will you
wear, Helen?"
"The same thing I always wear, I guess. I haven't much choice in the
matter, you know."
Toinette colored slightly at her thoughtless remark, for she had not
paused to think before speaking. All the girls knew that Helen's purse was
a very slender one, and that it was only by self-sacrifice and close
economy that her parents were able to keep her at such an expensive
school. She made no secret of her lack of money, but worked away bravely
and cheerfully, always sunny, always happy, with the enviable faculty of
invariably saying the right thing at the right time. She had pronounced
artistic tendencies, and Miss Preston was anxious to encourage them in
every possible way. Her great desire was to go to Europe and there see the
originals of the famous paintings of which she read. Each year Miss
Preston went abroad and took with her several of the girls whose parents
could afford such indulgences for them, and Helen longed to be one of
them, although she never for a moment hoped to be.
She did really remarkable work for a girl of her age, and was improving
all the time, but the trip over the sea seemed as far off as a trip to the
moon. Toinette was somewhat of a dilettante, and pottered away with her
water-colors with more or less success. But she admired good work, and was
quick to see that Helen was a hard student, and to respect her for it.
Although so unlike in disposition, as well as position, a warm regard had
sprung up between them, and Toinette spent many hours watching Helen work
away at her drawing. The girl's ambition was to illustrate, and there was
hardly a girl in the school who had not posed for her, and the drawings in
her sketch-book were excellent.
Toinette had never been taught to think much about others, and so it is
not surprising that, while she admired Helen, and wished that she could
have those things she so longed for, it never occurred to her that perhaps
there were other and more fortunate girls who might have helped a trifle
if they chose to do so. That she, herself, had it within her power to do
it never entered her head till the girls began to talk about their new
dresses, and what put it there then would be hard to tell. Nevertheless,
come it did, and when she heard Helen speak so composedly of wearing to
the school dance, _the_ event of the season, in their eyes, the same dress
which had done service for many a little entertainment given through the
winter, and which gave unmistakable signs of having done so, she realized
for the first time what it must mean to be deprived of those things which
she had always accepted as a matter of course.
Still, no definite plans took shape in her head regarding it, and it is
quite possible that none might ever have done so had not something
occurred within a short time which seemed to be the hinge upon which her
whole after-life swung.
As the girls were in the midst of their chatter about the new gowns a tap
came at the door, and Fraulein Palme looked in to ask:
"Haf anyone seen my umbrel? I haf hunt eferywhere for him, and can't see
him anywhere."
"No, Fraulein, we haven't seen it," answered several voices.
"Where did you last have it?" asked Ruth.
"Right away in my room a little while before I am ready to go out. I go
down to the post-office and must get wet without him."
Two or three of the girls went into the hall to look for the missing
umbrella, and others went back to Fraulein's room with her to make a more
exhaustive search. But without success.
"Have you more than one?" asked Edith.
"No, it is but one I haf got. It is very funnee," and poor Fraulein looked
sorely perplexed.
"Take mine, Fraulein. Yours will turn up when you least expect it," said
Toinette.
"What did it look like, Fraulein?" asked Cicely.
"Chust like thees," was the astonishing answer, as absent-minded Fraulein
held forth the missing umbrella, which all that time she had held tightly
clasped in her hand, and which had been the cause of Edith's question as
to whether she had more than one, for she supposed, of course, that the
one Fraulein was so tightly holding must either be one she did not care to
carry, or else one she was about to return to someone from whom she had
probably borrowed it.
The shout which was raised at her reply speedily brought poor Fraulein
back to her senses, and murmuring:
"Ach, so! I think I come _veruckt_," she hurried off down the hall with
the girls' laughter still ringing in her ears.