TANAGERS AND BLUEBIRDS
“You haven’t had your gym suit on once, Bethikins!” said Natalie
reproachfully.
“Oh, yes, I have; I tried it on the minute it came--the minute I got
off my dress to go to bed the night it came,” Beth corrected herself
with her usual painstaking fidelity to the exact letter of the truth.
“Trying on doesn’t count; you haven’t worn it,” said Alys.
“Trying on counted a lot to me,” Beth corrected her. “It’s like a
bluebird.”
“Funny you said that! Mama said we could be the Tanagers and Bluebirds,
our gym club. All the girls must wear crimson or blue,” cried Natalie.
“All the girls?” echoed Beth inquiringly. “Do you have outside girls in
it? I’d be afraid to try if strange girls come.”
“Our best friends come,” said Alys. “We have a perfectly magnificent
instructor and our gymnasium is better than the other girls have--most
of them haven’t one at all--so mama lets us have the girls here and
form a club.”
“You needn’t be afraid of that lot, Beth,” Dirk said derisively.
“They’re not much at it. I bet you’ll show ’em something after you get
the hang of it. You walk like a kid that could do gym stunts. Yes, they
ask the girls in, but I can’t ask any of the fellows! What do you know
about that? I practice with ’em, ’cause father wants me to get the
lessons when Bob Leonard’s here, but not a boy but me in it! Tanagers
and Bluebirds! Well, I guess! Sparrows, that’s what! I wear black.”
“Who’s Bob Leonard? That can’t be a girl?” asked Beth, suppressing a
desire to laugh.
“It is Mr. Robert Leonard, our teacher,” said Alys, looking severely at
her unabashed brother. “He was a great--athletic, or whatever you call
it----”
“Athlete,” Natalie corrected.
“Athlete, then, at college. His father lost his money and Mr. Leonard
has to teach and do things like that, while he is studying law. Dirk,
mama dislikes you to be impertinent.”
“Who is?” demanded Dirk. “Bob Leonard suits him. You can’t go around
mistering a fine chap like him. He can do anything; he’s awful strong
and clean-cut. Besides, he likes it. Bob Leonard’s the way to speak of
him; I’ll leave it to Beth after she sees him. Girls are the limit!
They think you’re fresh if you don’t mister every one. It’s the people
you like you treat like that, that’s dead easy to see.”
Beth felt a return of the vague regret that she had felt before. Now
that the first dazzling wonder of her new surroundings was somewhat
less blinding she began to wish that Dirk meant a little more to his
sisters. Natalie was sweet temper itself; she did not often find
fault with Dirk, as Alys was only too ready to do at the slightest
provocation. But Natalie treated him with kindly indifference, as if a
small boy mattered little and must be left to himself until he found
his way into big boyhood, when he might matter. Dirk was always on the
defensive toward the girls and often was on the offensive. Beth knew
that the three were really fond of one another, but it troubled her
tender little heart that they sometimes scarcely seemed so.
“I’ll like the gymnasium--if I’m not afraid. Maybe Dirk will start
me in it?” she said with the smile that Dirk inwardly felt was
irresistible. The wistful look in her eyes, born of her regret for the
sharpness Alys and Dirk showed each other, made the boy say promptly:
“I’ll see you through, Beth; you stick to me. I’m a cracker-jack on the
bar, if I do say it.”
“Better get ready, Bethie,” advised Natalie. “Mr. Leonard comes in an
hour.”
Beth ran away on this hint to her own room where she found Frieda
reading. The girl arose when Beth entered and said apologetically:
“I seemed to have nothing to do, Miss Beth, so I was reading a little.
I’ve tightened all the buttons on everything you have ready made and
there’s nothing needs mending yet.”
“I should think those German letters would be as hard to read as it
would be to sew pine boards together,” said Beth, missing the point
of Frieda’s apology. “I’ve got to put on my gymnasium suit, Frieda.
I don’t think I knew it was regular lessons; I thought the gymnasium
was just for fun. Natalie says they’re taught. I’m glad now Aunt Alida
bought the suit. Anything was good enough to play in, but a regular
teacher is different.”
“Oh, sure, Miss Beth,” said Frieda with conviction as she hastened
to get out Beth’s gymnasium uniform, “it’s all different from that.
There’s nothing here that anything you happen to have is good enough
for; it’s all got to be just the way it ought to be.”
“Isn’t that true, Frieda!” cried Beth, struck by this summing up of
what had amazed her.
She regarded her slender legs admiringly as they appeared, like slender
black stems out of particularly full calyxes, below the puffy dark blue
silk bloomers which she had donned. “I’m afraid my great-aunt Rebecca,
at home, would not think this was a nice costume. She says a great deal
about being feminine in all your ways. Maybe she’d think bloomers were
not feminine--though in the pictures of Turkish ladies they always wear
them and have their heads tied up so you can only see their eyes. They
must think noses and mouths aren’t feminine there.”
Frieda had long ago given up even the hope of following the course of
Beth’s rapid thoughts; she wisely confined herself now to the main
point as she replied:
“Wait till you get the tunic on, Miss Beth. It’s just a regular dress.”
It was and a remarkably pretty one. It fitted the round, childish
slenderness to perfection, falling softly in deep silken pleats
below the knee bands of the doubtful bloomers. Deep Van Dyck points
of lace formed a collar and, reversed, made effective cuffs on the
sleeves. A cap with a jaunty feather was the unnecessary last touch of
completeness.
“It won’t stay on,” said Beth, surveying herself with undisguised
delight in the long mirror. “But it’s the loveliest cap ever! I feel
just like Claverhouse with the Bonnets of Bonny Dundee. You don’t know
about that, do you, Frieda? You couldn’t, because, if you’re German,
you read mostly about the Watch on the Rhine, I suppose. It’s almost
the best of all those splendid things--all those English and Scotch
Middle Ages poems which I’m crazy about.”
Beth began to caper all around the room, watching ecstatically the blue
silken figure that followed her, capering as she did, in the mirrors of
her dresser, dressing table and cheval glass.
“I’m one of the bluebirds, and I feel like flying!” she panted, obeying
an inviting gesture from Frieda to sit before the dressing table and
have her hair made tight for the exercise to come. “Frieda, isn’t it
the very best thing in all the world to be a little girl and jump and
fly around? It’s like ‘We are Seven’--I had that to say in school--‘A
little child, that feels its life in every limb.’ Isn’t it the best
thing, just glorious?”
“It is, Miss Beth, when you’re like that. Some isn’t,” said Frieda,
stooping as if to pick up something. Beth thought her voice had an odd
sound; she squirmed around in her chair and caught the glimmer of the
tears which she had suspected were in Frieda’s eyes.
In an instant warm-hearted Beth was on her feet and had her arms around
her pretty young maid. “Frieda, dear, what is it?” she murmured in the
voice that few had ever resisted in her short life. “What makes you
feel bad? You have to tell me, because you _have_ to, and I want to
know! Please, Frieda!”
“It’s nothing to bother you with, Miss Beth. I didn’t mean to cry ever
so little. It’s my little sister. When I think of her it hurts, and
gymnasium and dancing days I have to think of her,” said Frieda, with a
sudden sob at the end of her sentence.
“What is it, Frieda? Is she one of those you just spoke of who isn’t
like that?” coaxed Beth, so sympathetic that she adopted Frieda’s
grammar.
Frieda nodded. “She’s only nine years old, but she’s that lame she
can’t walk only on crutches, and on them but a little way,” said Frieda.
“How awful! What’s her name, poor, poor Frieda? Can’t any one make her
well?” cried Beth, her own eyes overflowing.
“Her name is Lotta, Miss Beth; we mostly call her Liebchen. It might
be a great surgeon could cure her: the doctors told us it might be,
but---- Well, Miss Beth, you know great surgeons come high, and there’s
many more children besides little Liebchen,” said Frieda.
“Tell Aunt Alida and my uncle!” cried Beth, her face lighting up with
the conviction that nothing more would be necessary. Then, as Frieda
shook her head, Beth cried: “Don’t you know they’d want to know it,
Frieda, and help?”
“I know people don’t want to be bothered with their servants’ troubles,
Miss Beth. I wouldn’t take the liberty. My mother told me never to let
the people I worked for see me look sad. She was at service, too, in
her young days, in Germany. She knows; she worked for hochwohlgeboren
dämen,” said Frieda proudly.
“For what?” cried Beth.
“Hochwohlgeboren--high-well-born ladies. That’s what you call them in
Germany,” explained Frieda.
In spite of her sympathy Beth’s laughter rang out.
“To their faces?” she gasped. “Oh, Frieda, isn’t that funny! When
all we say is just ‘noble ladies’! Well, but your mother didn’t know
kind, dear, sweet Aunt Alida. And Uncle Jim! Look at all the things
they’ve given me--and you to put them on for me! Of course they’ll have
Liebchen cured! I shall tell them about her myself.”
“Miss Beth, you mustn’t, really!” cried Frieda alarmed. “They might
be angry with me for talking to you; they might think I told you about
my sister to get you to ask them to help her, and as sure as I stand
here I never thought of it! Please don’t tell them, Miss Beth dear. You
don’t understand how life is here, yet. It might cost me my place to
have told you about my family and got you interested. I can’t always
get such a good place as this, Miss Beth--and I’d hate to leave you, if
you’ll let me say that much.”
“I’d hate to have you, Frieda!” cried Beth giving her maid a warm
little impetuous hug. “I think you’re the nicest girl! And you’re
young and pretty. I like Anna Mary, of course, but I really don’t know
what I’d do if I had to have such a solemn, rather frightening person
to wait on me. Don’t you worry one bit, Frieda. You’ll see! The gym
club is the Tanagers and Bluebirds. That’s what the girls are called.
And I’m one of the bluebirds. Don’t you know the bluebird stands for
happiness? Well, then! I’m going to be a real bluebird. But it will be
Uncle Jim and Aunt Alida who will be more really bluebirds than I can
be, because they can have Liebchen cured. I just know it will all turn
out like a story. My! Aunt Rebecca isn’t one bit right! She is sort of
afraid of money, but it’s like having a big, bottomless fairy chest
that you can dip into and bring up most anything, for anybody! Does
Liebchen speak English, or is she too young to have learned it?”
“She was born in America, Miss Beth. I was only six years old when I
came here,” replied Frieda.
Beth was half-way to the door, suddenly realizing that she might be
late in the gymnasium. She paused to say:
“Isn’t that strange, Frieda? It must mix up families dreadfully to
come to America. Queer to be German and have an American sister! You
see if you don’t have a well-and-strong American sister! I’m sure the
bluebird name is going to work.” With which this particular little
bluebird flew out of the room, her short, full silken skirt fanned
out by the opening of the door until it took only a slight effort of
imagination to see her wings.
At the door of the gymnasium Beth paused. The hum of voices, the
pounding of heavy weights, the muffled pad of feet told her that while
she had been getting ready and talking to Frieda the girls, of whom
she was considerably afraid, had arrived. Summoning her courage she
opened the door gently and slipped in through the smallest opening that
allowed her to do so.
The scene before her was so pretty that Beth forgot all about the
timid Bluebird hovering on its threshold. Sixteen girls in various
shades and designs of warm red and brilliant blue costumes were
running, fencing, tumbling, perching on horizontal bars, swinging
dumb-bells, stretching their flexible young muscles in all sorts of
ways to get them into order for the real business of the day. Among
them, in a sense, but quite apart, stood Dirk in black, his black silk
jersey ornamented with a monogram combining the blues and red of the
club colors. Dirk’s expression was disdainful, yet Beth saw at a glance
that he was enjoying his boyish sense of superiority over inferior
girls. He was the first to espy Beth and beckoned to her frantically
to hurry on. A tall young man, splendidly vigorous and strong, with a
friendly, jolly face Beth guessed was Mr. Leonard, the instructor. She
felt immediately that he was full of a big-boyishness which justified
Dirk in saying that it was suitable to call him “Bob” Leonard. Dirk
came over to escort Beth into the room; he meant to carry out his
promise and see her through.
Natalie swung down from a bar on which she had been perched, like
a great tanager in her vivid scarlet gymnasium suit. Natalie was
perpetually taking away her little cousin’s breath by her tropical
beauty, seen in a new setting. Beth looked at her now quite overawed,
and Natalie laughed, pleased by the adoration she saw in those honest
blue-gray eyes.
“Come along, Cozbeth! Isn’t that a nice name? Not Elizabeth, but Cousin
Elizabeth, then just little Cozbeth! Come along, Bethie dear, and get
acquainted with the girls and everything,” Natalie said, joining Dirk
and Beth. She led the way across the floor to Mr. Leonard.
“Mr. Leonard, this is a new bluebird we’ve captured. My cousin, Beth
Bristead, from Massachusetts. Beth, this is Mr. Leonard who teaches us
more than we are clever enough to learn,” said Natalie.
Beth smiled back with her ready friendliness to the friendly smile
Mr. Leonard bent upon her. But she found time to notice how grown up
Natalie’s little speech sounded and to think that Natalie had inherited
from Aunt Alida her pretty tact, as well as her dark eyes.
“Now, face the music, Cozbeth!” whispered Natalie, wheeling Beth
around toward the girls. “Tanagers and Bluebirds, here’s the new
Bluebird. Some of you know her already. I’m not going to introduce you
all separately. This is my cousin, Beth Bristead, and she’s our duck,
as well as our Yankee bluebird.”
Beth’s face was crimson, but she smiled bravely, trying to conquer her
shyness.
“We’ll begin now that your cousin has come, Miss Natalie,” said Mr.
Leonard.
“Oh, were you all waiting for me? Isn’t that dreadful!” cried Beth.
“But, Natalie, I had to talk to Frieda. Her little sister’s lame and I
want to tell Aunt Alida----”
“Mama isn’t here, Beth dear. We have to do our ‘gymsticks’ now. That’s
what Dirk called gymnastics when he was a little tot,” said Natalie,
disengaging herself, now that she had done her duty by Beth, and going
to join the older girls, her special chums.
“I’m going to start Beth in, Mr. Leonard; you can go on with the
class,” said Dirk.
“That’s right. She can begin with the simple exercises, you know, and
watch the others. Dirk can start you just as well as I can, little new
Bluebird,” said Mr. Leonard, moving away with that merry smile of his
which won Beth’s instant affection.
“Isn’t he nice!” she cried fervently. “You don’t call him Bob when you
speak to him, do you?”
Dirk hastily scanned Beth’s face for the rebuke that was farthest from
her thoughts. Not seeing it, he shrugged his shoulders and said easily:
“You can’t do that, you know, unless you had settled with him to do
it. ’Twouldn’t go here in class, anyway. But no fellow would tag such a
dandy chap as he is with mister when you talked about him. Nice! Well,
I just guess! He’s the jimmest of all the jim dandies you ever saw!”
The class had fallen into line and Mr. Leonard, altering his mind,
beckoned Beth and Dirk to join it. He put them through a rapid sword
practice, with short sticks instead of more dangerous weapons, right
and left, forward thrusts, falling back, advancing, one hand on hip,
the other making swift play with the wands.
At first Beth was awkward, half afraid, but in five minutes this had
gone from her, and she was almost keeping up with the older, more
experienced girls. Her muscles were supple and sound, thanks to her
freedom to romp and play in her old Massachusetts country village life.
That life was now seeming more and more like a dream as the new life in
this great city grew familiar.
Alys was especially good in this practice. There was a cat-like grace
about Alys and she moved as quickly, almost as lithely as a cat.
She, too, was a “Bluebird” but in pale blue. Aunt Alida chose shades
for Alys which harmonized with her delicacy of coloring and which
emphasized the whiteness of her fair skin.
After this exercise Mr. Leonard took his pupils through trapeze
exercises which made Beth gasp with an admiration that held fear of the
day when she should be expected to attempt such feats.
Dirk did not allow her long to admire them; he forced Beth into laying
the foundations of her athletic education. He was much surprised to
find her his equal in climbing.
“Goodness, that’s nothing!” panted Beth when Dirk expressed this
surprise. She sat easily on a swinging bar, her arms around its
supporting ropes, while she tightened her slipping hair ribbons and
readjusted the cap which was secretly her pride and which Dirk could
not persuade her to lay aside.
“At Aunt Rebecca’s Janie and I climbed everything we could get up.
I have been in trees almost half the time in summer; seems as much,
anyway. I always could climb, but you ought to see Janie! She isn’t as
plump as I am; she isn’t plump one bit; she’s thin. She goes up into
anything like a squirrel. We play the loveliest things, Dirk; I know
you’d like them. And you’d like Janie. She’s my best friend. She’s just
as nice as she can be. I wish Janie was here in New York, too!”
“Are all the girls nice down there?” asked Dirk. “I’ll bet I wouldn’t
like Janie any better, anyhow!”
“I’m glad you like me, Dirk, because we’re cousins and because I like
you and I love loving, anyway,” said Beth, not evading the compliment.
“But Janie is lovely. I suppose all the girls aren’t nice anywhere;
there are some at home I don’t care about. Janie and I think it can’t
be wrong not to like girls who aren’t the kind you are meant to
like. Janie has a very nice mother, so she thinks that’s the reason
I like her. But I haven’t any mother at all. Of course Aunt Rebecca
has brought me up very carefully. I think she’s brought me up more
carefully than a mother would. Mothers don’t seem to have to be so
careful as great-aunts do; it comes kind of easy to them to bring up
their children, sort of mixing petting and punishing. Aunt Rebecca
never petted. I used to wish she would, a little, but now I’m glad she
didn’t because I know she doesn’t miss me as a petting person would
miss a little girl they’d brought up.”
“Do you play with boys down there?” asked Dirk diffidently.
“No,” said truthful Beth, “not really. Parties don’t count. Of course
when you ask girls to a party you have to ask boys too, though I never
could see why. Boys are----” Beth stopped short. The speech she thus
checked would not have carried out her resolution to be especially nice
to Dirk.
“Boys are no good,” Dirk finished for her with some bitterness. “That’s
what Nat and Alys think and they don’t try not to show it, like you.
Nat isn’t so bad, but Alys! I’d be sorry for boys if they weren’t as
nice as some girls!”
“They are, Dirk; they truly are!” cried Beth eagerly. “That’s just it!
It’s _some_ boys and _some_ girls, both ways, nice and not nice! It
isn’t _all_ boys and _all_ girls, either way. I think you’re ever so
nice; I think you’re nice as a boy and not just as a cousin. And I’m
sure Alys does, too, only sometimes sisters and brothers get into a way
of fussing; I’ve noticed that at home. Don’t you tease Alys?” suggested
Beth gently.
“Sure thing,” admitted Dirk promptly. “But she’s the kind you want to.
I started in to tease you, but after you held your tongue that Sunday
and got me out of a scrape I didn’t want to any more, you can bet your
last on that! You’re the kind you don’t want to tease. Alys is looking
for trouble with me so she gets it. I’d hate to bother you, Beth,
honest. You don’t get mad; you look so surprised and sorry it’s no fun.”
“You bother me when you bother Alys, Dirk dear,” said Beth, seeing her
chance.
“Honest? Oh, come off! What do you care?” stammered Dirk.
“I love loving; I just said so,” laughed Beth, tactfully trying not to
seem to preach. “It’s such a fairy-land in this house it worries me if
you and Alys aren’t just as cozy together as Queen Mab and--and--King
Mab! Who was the king of fairy-land?”
“Never heard. Oberon,” said Dirk in one breath. “Look here, Beth, if
you’ll kind of stick up for me I’ll do it--stop teasing Alys, I mean.
Only I’ve got to have a chum in this house. And if Alys gets funny I
think I might get back one or two at her.”
“Oh, I’ll be a chum; I’d like to,” cried Beth. “Natalie is too big for
me and Alys is older than I am, more--less--Alys seems older than she
is. I miss Janie; Janie and Tabby, though Poppy is a lovely kitten.
That’s a bargain, Dirk. And I sha’n’t be half so nervous when I know
you aren’t going to be mean to Alys.”
Dirk looked at Beth’s round, rosy, placid face and laughed outright.
“Are you nervous, Beth?” he asked.
“When people are rather scrappy around the place it makes you feel
as if a thunder-shower was coming up. It’s a nervous thing to expect
snappings,” returned Beth, laughing too, as she uncoiled her arms and
prepared to descend from the swing.
Dirk followed her and took her down the room to initiate her in the use
of dumb-bells. He was much pleased to find that she could not swing one
of more than half the weight of his greatest dumb-bell. He looked up to
this sweet cousin at such a rate that it restored his manly sense of
superiority to find her muscular strength unequal to his own.
The Tanagers and Bluebirds ended with a game of basket-ball, red
against blue. Beth had never seen the game, so could not serve her side
well this first time. She asked that Dirk might play instead of her and
his baseball skill so well fitted him for this game that the Bluebirds
won. Beth saw with pleasure that Alys smiled approval on her brother
who had helped her side to victory.
“Gymnasium isn’t so bad, is it, Bethie?” asked Natalie, when all the
girls transformed by street clothing had gone. The maids attendant on
her cousins’ friends had appeared from somewhere below stairs at the
end of the afternoon’s exercise to get the pretty maidens out of the
tanager and bluebird plumage into the costumes of ordinary mortals. It
still oppressed Beth’s simple soul to find all the world served to such
a degree.
“It isn’t bad at all; it’s perfectly splendid. And I wasn’t afraid
after the first, because nobody noticed me. Dirk and I had quite a nice
time. And Mr. Leonard you couldn’t be afraid of because there’s nothing
about him that is one bit frightening,” said Beth.
“I’m glad you like him, Bethie; we all do,” said Natalie. “You like
everything and everybody, Cozbeth. I never saw such a honey pot.”
“Well, that’s all you know about it, Natalie,” declared Beth earnestly.
“I dislike lots of things and lots of people. But you don’t have
anything or any one here I can dislike. Aunt Rebecca says it uses up a
lot of valuable strength to dislike. She says it’s better to go around
the object you dislike, and try not to see it, than it is to go around
disliking it. What she means is to dislike anything once for all and
drop it. Aunt Rebecca is a lady who never feels half-way, I think. You
know what it says in the Bible about lukewarmness? Well, Aunt Rebecca
won’t ever have that text to think about on the last day.”
Natalie’s laughter rang out so heartily that it brought Alys running to
hear the joke.
“I’d have to repeat the whole speech, and then it wouldn’t be the
same,” sighed Natalie, not trying to explain. “Beth is so much in
earnest and is such an old-fashioned little thing! Bethie, I don’t
believe you were born eleven years ago! You’re exactly like a little
piece of old flowered silk, or one of those samplers, or a cup of
sprigged china that you see in old colonial collections!” cried Natalie
with an inspiration.
“Kind of faded and musty?” suggested Beth with a twinkle. “Besides,
you don’t have to go to colonial collections to see them, Natalie. We
have them at home. Aunt Rebecca has my great-great-great-grandmother
Bristead’s sampler. It has pine trees, baskets of flowers, two kinds
of alphabets and the text about serving the Lord in your youth worked
on it. She signed it, working, you know: Amelia Elizabeth Barlow. She
married great-great-great-grandfather Bristead afterward, of course.
And there is almost all of a sprigged china tea set in our house.”
Alys stared. “Isn’t your great-aunt who brought you up, Beth, quite
poor?” she asked.
Natalie frowned and blushed, but Beth was unconscious of offense.
“You mean how could she have these things, Alys?” Beth said. “Aunt
Rebecca hasn’t much money. I suppose here she would be quite poor,
but there she isn’t. It doesn’t cost much to live there and Aunt
Rebecca has all she wants, I guess. She is the biggest giver there to
things--like the church and missions and those things, you know. She
doesn’t ever spend for little things. I like little things, myself!
Sometimes I think wicked thoughts, like wondering if a perfectly
beautiful dress and hat for me would be nicer than sending to heathens.
Now I’ve had things here lovelier than I ever saw I shall never dare
think wicked thoughts again, because when you’re bad, and don’t get
punished for it, it makes you so ashamed you simply have to be good.
You see it never could seem as though we were poor at home because we
are Bristeads. Aunt Rebecca says: ‘Let the new people have the fine
clothes, Beth; we can afford old ones because everybody knows what the
Bristeads did for their country before the Revolution and all through
it and pretty much ever since.’ Of course I’m glad of what Aunt Rebecca
calls ‘our honorable inheritance,’ but I often think good ancestors
must like to see you in a becoming dress, that hasn’t been turned.
But Aunt Rebecca isn’t poor, Alys. I don’t believe she ever thinks
much about money at all; just spends what she can afford and thinks it
doesn’t matter for her that it’s so little.”
“That’s a long speech, Cozbeth, and it’s a very nice one,” said
Natalie heartily. “I think you’ve told us about what really means fine
ladyhood. But don’t think the Cortlandt side cares too much about
money, either, Bethie. Mama never measures people by a bank book;
neither does father. They’ve always told us to be glad and thankful we
had such a lot entrusted to us, but to remember that it _was_ entrusted
to us, and that it was a tremendous responsibility to face and that
we must never forget that money was only outside; that what we _were_
mattered. Mama is very much the same sort of fine lady your aunt is,
only one has a great deal to do with and the other only a little,
perhaps.”
“Goodness, Natalie, don’t you suppose I know Aunt Alida?” cried Beth,
surprised.
She could not yet see, as Natalie and Alys could, the great importance
that wealth gives. “Really and truly Aunt Alida makes even less fuss
about money than Aunt Rebecca. Aunt Rebecca makes a little tiny fuss
about _not_ making a fuss, and Aunt Alida goes right along, as quiet!
I’m glad she and Uncle Jim are the way they are, because I’m as sure as
sureness they’ll have Liebchen cured!”
“Who in all this world is that?” cried Alys, but Beth shook her head,
laughing.
“I’m going to tell them about her first!” she cried, whisking into her
room like a blithe bluebird into its nest in the crevice of a tree and
closing the door to forbid following and further questioning.