A FLOCK
of
GIRLS AND BOYS.
by NORA PERRY,
Author Of "Hope Benham," "Lyrics And Legends,"
"A Rosebud Garden Of Girls," Etc.
Illustrated by
CHARLOTTE TIFFANY PARKER.
1895.
[Frontispiece: That little Smith girl]
CONTENTS
THAT LITTLE SMITH GIRL
THE EGG BOY
MAJOR MOLLY'S CHRISTMAS PROMISE
POLLY'S VALENTINE
SIBYL'S SLIPPER
A LITTLE BOARDING-SCHOOL SAMARITAN
ESTHER BODN
BECKY
ALLY
AN APRIL FOOL
THE THANKSGIVING GUEST
ILLUSTRATIONS.
THAT LITTLE SMITH GIRL
"MISS PELHAM! MISS MARGARET PELHAM!"
WALLULA CLAPPED HER HANDS WITH DELIGHT
A VERY PRETTY PAIR
SIBYL'S REFLECTIONS
A TALL, HANDSOME WOMAN SMILED A GREETING
SHE WAS ADDRESSING MONSIEUR BAUDOUIN
THE PRETTY LITTLE BASKET OF GREEN AND WHITE PAPER
AS THE FRESH ARRIVALS APPEARED
THAT LITTLE SMITH GIRL.
CHAPTER I.
"The Pelhams are coming next month."
"Who are the Pelhams?"
Miss Agnes Brendon gave a little upward lift to her small pert nose as
she exclaimed:
"Tilly Morris, you don't mean to say that you don't know who the Pelhams
are?"
Tilly, thus addressed, lifted up _her_ nose as she replied,--
"I do mean to say just that."
"Why, where have you lived?" was the next wondering question.
"In the wilds of New York City," answered Tilly, sarcastically.
"Where the sacred stiffies of Boston are unknown," cried Dora Robson,
with a laugh.
"But the Pelhams,--I thought that everybody knew of the Pelhams at
least," Agnes remarked, with a glance at Tilly that plainly expressed a
doubt of her denial. Tilly caught the glance, and, still further
irritated, cried impulsively,--
"Well, I never heard of them! Why should I? What have they done, pray
tell, that everybody should know of them?"
"'Done'? I don't know as they've done anything. It's what they are. They
are very rich and aristocratic people. Why, the Pelhams belong to one of
the oldest families of Boston."
"What do I care for that?" said Tilly, tipping her head backward until
it bumped against the wall of the house with a sounding bang, whereat
Dora Robson gave a little giggle and exclaimed,--
"Mercy, Tilly, I heard it crack!"
Then another girl giggled,--it was another of the Robsons,--Dora's
Cousin Amy; and after the giggle she said saucily,--
"Tilly's head is full of cracks already. I think we'd better call her
'Crack Brain;' we'll put it C.B., for short."
"You'd better call her L.H.,--'Level Head,'" a voice--a boy's
voice--called out here.
The group of girls looked at one another in startled surprise.
"Who--what!" Then Dora Robson, glancing over the piazza railing,
exclaimed,--
"It's Will Wentworth. He's in the hammock! What do you mean, Willie, by
hiding up like that, right under our noses, and listening to our
secrets?"
"Hiding up? Well, I like that! I'd been out here for half an hour or
more when you girls came to this end of the piazza."
"What in the world have you been doing for an hour in a hammock? I
didn't know as you could keep still so long. Oh, you've got a book. Let
me see it."
"You wouldn't care anything about it; it's a boy's book."
"Let me see it."
Will held up the book.
"Oh, 'Jack Hall'!"
"Of course, I knew you wouldn't care anything for a book that's full of
boy's sports," returned Will.
"I know one girl that does," responded Dora, laughing and nodding her
head.
"Who is she?" asked Will, looking incredulous.
"'T ain't me," answered Dora, more truthfully than grammatically.
"No, I guess not; and I guess you don't know any such girl."
Dora wheeled around and called, "Tilly, Tilly Morris! Come here and
prove to this conceited, contradicting boy that I'm telling the truth."
"Oh, it's Tilly Morris, eh?" sung out Will.
"Yes," answered Tilly, turning and looking down at the occupant of the
hammock; "I think 'Jack Hall' is the jolliest kind of a book. I've read
it twice."
Will jerked himself up into a sitting posture, as he ejaculated in
pleased astonishment,--
"Come, I say now!"
"Yes," went on Tilly; "I think it's one of the best books I ever
read,--that part about the boat-race I've read over three or four
times."
"Well, your head _is_ level," cried Will, sitting up still straighter
in the hammock, and regarding Tilly with a look of respect.
"Because I don't care anything for Boston's grand folks and do care for
'Jack Hall'?" laughed Tilly.
"Yes, that's about it," responded Will, with a little grin. "I'm so sick
and tired," he went on, "hearing about 'swells' and money. The best
fellow I know at school is quite poor; and one of the worst of the lot
is what you'd call a swell, and has no end of money."
"There are all kinds of swells, Master Willie. Why, you know perfectly
well that you belong to the swells yourself," retorted Dora.
"I don't!" growled Will.
"Well, I should just like to hear what your cousin Frances would say to
that."
"Oh, Fan!" cried Will, contemptuously.
"If you don't think much of the old Wentworth name--"
"I do think much of it," interrupted Will. "I think so much of it that I
want to live up to it. The old Wentworths were splendid fellows, some of
'em; and all of 'em were jolly and generous and independent. There
wasn't any sneaking little brag and snobbishness in 'em. They 'd have
cut a fellow dead that had come around with that sort of stuff;" and
sixteen-year-old Will nodded his head with an emphatic movement that
showed his approval of this trait in his ancestors.
Dora looked at him curiously; then with a faint smile she said,--
"Your cousin Frances is so proud of those old Wentworths. She's often
told me how grandly they lived, and she's so pleased that her name
Frances is the name of one of the prettiest of the Governor's wives."
"Yes; and one of the prettiest, and I dare say one of the best of 'em,
was a servant-girl in Governor Benning Wentworth's kitchen, and he
married her out of it. Did Fan ever tell you that?" and Will chuckled.
Amy Robson stared at Will with amazement as she exclaimed,--
"Well, I never saw such a queer boy as you are,--to run your own family
down."
"I'm not running 'em down. 'Tisn't running 'em down to say that one of
'em married Martha Hilton. Martha Hilton was a nice girl, though she was
poor and had to work in a kitchen. Plenty of nice girls--farmers'
daughters--worked in that way in those old times; the New England
histories tell you that."
Not one of the girls made any comment or criticism upon this statement,
for Will Wentworth was known to be well up in history; but after a
moment or two of silence, Dora burst forth in this wise,--
"You may talk as you like. Will Wentworth, but you know perfectly well
that you don't think a servant-girl is as good as you are."
"If you mean that I don't think she is of the same class, of course I
don't. She may be a great deal better than I am in other ways, for all
that. In those old days, though, the servant-girls weren't the kind we
have now; they were Americans,--farmers' daughters,--most of 'em."
"Oh, well, you may talk and talk in this grand way, Willie Wentworth;
but you know where you belong, and when the Pelhams come, Tilly'll see
for herself that you are one of the same sort."
"As the Pelhams?"
"Well, what have you got to say about the Pelhams in that scornful way?"
asked Amy, rather indignantly.
"I'm not scornful. I was only going to set you right, and say that the
Pelhams are fashionable folks and the Wentworths are not."
"Oh, I'd like to have your cousin Fanny hear you say that. Fanny thinks
the Wentworths are fully equal to the Pelhams or any one else."
"They are."
"What do you mean, Will Wentworth? You just said--"
"I just said that the Pelhams were fashionable people and the Wentworths
were not, but that doesn't make the Pelhams any better than the
Wentworths. The Pelhams have got more money and like to spend it in that
way,--in being fashionable society folks, I suppose. There are lots of
people who have as much and more money, who won't be fashionable,--they
don't like it."
"Your cousin Fanny says--"
"Fanny's a snob. It makes me sick to hear her talk sometimes. If she
were here now, she'd be full of these Pelhams, and as thick with 'em
when they came, whether they were nice or not. If they were ever so
nice, she'd snub 'em if they were not up in the world,--what you call
'swells.' She never got such stuff as that from the Wentworths."
"There are plenty of people like your cousin," spoke up Tilly, with
sudden emphasis and a fleeting glance at Agnes Brendon.
"Oh, now, Tilly, don't say that," cried Dora, in a funny little
wheedling tone, "don't now; you'll hurt some of our feelings, for we
shall think you mean one of us, and you can't mean that, Tilly
dear,"--the wheedling tone taking on a droll, merry accent,--"you can't,
for you know how independent and high-minded we all are,--how incapable
of such meanness!"
"I wouldn't trust this high-mindedness," retorted Tilly, wrinkling up
her forehead.
"Now, Tilly, you don't mean that,--you don't mean that you've come all
the way from naughty New York to find such dreadful faults in nice,
primmy New England. The very dogs here are above such things. Look at
Punch there making friends with that little plebeian yellow dog."
"And look at Dandy barking at everybody who isn't well dressed," laughed
Tilly, pointing to a handsome collie, who was vigorously giving voice to
his displeasure at the approach of a workman in shabby clothing.
The Robson girls and Will Wentworth joined in Tilly's laugh; but Agnes
Brendon, who could never see a joke, looked disgusted, and glancing at
the little yellow dog, asked petulantly,--
"Whose dog is it?"
"It belongs to the girl who sits at the corner table," answered Will
Wentworth, "and its name is Pete. I heard the girl call him this
morning."
"What a horrid, vulgar name!" exclaimed Agnes. "It suits the dog,
though; and the people, I suppose, are--"
"Oh, Agnes, look at that horrid worm on your dress!"
Agnes jumped up in a panic, screaming, "Where, where?"
Dora, bending down to brush off the smallest of small caterpillars,
whispered,--
"The girl who owns the yellow dog is in the other hammock. I just saw
her, and she can hear every word you say."
"I don't care if she does hear," said Agnes, without troubling herself
to lower her voice. "You needn't have frightened me with your horrid
worm story, just for that."
Will Wentworth, as he heard this, fell backward into his reclining
position, with an explosive laugh. The next minute he sprang out of the
hammock, and, tucking "Jack Hall" under his arm, was up and off, giving
a sidelong look as he went at the other hammock, which, though only a
few rods away, was half hidden by the foliage of the two low-growing
trees between which it hung. Meeting Tilly and the Robson girls as he
ran around the corner of the house, he said breathlessly,--
"Look here; that girl must have heard everything that we've said."
"Well, there wasn't anything said that concerned her, until Agnes began
about the yellow dog; and I stopped that," said Dora, gleefully.
"She may be acquainted with the Pelhams,--how do we know?" exclaimed
Will, ruefully.
"The Pelhams!" cried Dora and Amy, in one breath.
"Yes, how do we know?" repeated Will.
"That girl who sits over at the corner table with that stuffy old woman,
acquainted with the Pelhams! Oh, Will, if Agnes could hear you!" cried
Dora, with a shout of laughter.
"Well, I can't see what there is to laugh at," broke in Will, huffily.
"Why shouldn't she and the stuffy old woman, as you call her, know the
Pelhams? She's a nice-looking girl, a first-rate looking girl. What's
the matter with her?"
"Matter? I don't know that anything is the matter, except that she
doesn't look like the sort of girl who would be an acquaintance of the
Pelhams. She doesn't look like their kind, you know. She wears the
plainest sort of dresses,--just little straight up and down frocks of
brown or drab, or those white cambric things,--they are more like
baby-slips than anything; and her hats are just the same,--great flat
all-round hats, not a bit of style to them; and she's a girl of fourteen
or fifteen certainly. Do you suppose people of the Pelhams' kind dress
like that?"
Will gave a gruff little sound half under his breath, as he asked
sarcastically,--
"How do people of the Pelham kind dress?"
"Oh, like Dora and Amy, and especially like Agnes,--in the height of the
fashion, you know," Tilly cried laughingly.
"Now, Tilly," expostulated Dora, "neither Amy nor I overdress. We wear
what all girls of our age--girls who are almost young ladies--wear, and
I'm sure you wear the same kind of things."
"Not quite, Dora. I'll own, though, I would if I could; but there's such
a lot of us at home that the money gives out before it goes all 'round,"
said Tilly, frankly, yet rather ruefully.
"I'm sure you look very nice," said Dora, politely. Amy echoed the
polite remark, while Will, eying the three with an attempt at a critical
estimate, thought to himself, "They don't look a bit nicer than that
girl at the corner table."
But Will was too wise to give utterance to this thought. He knew how it
would be received; he knew that the three would laugh at him and say,
"What does a boy know about girl's clothes?"
In the mean time, while all this was going on, what was that girl who
had suggested the talk, that girl who sat at the corner table in the
dining room and who was now lying in a hammock,--what was she doing,
what was she thinking?