A DARE
Monday morning, Mr. Ashe left for the West; and the next day, the new
term began.
“It’ll seem odd, not going to Miss Rankin’s room,” Blue Bonnet said,
overtaking Debby on the way to school. “I wonder if she’ll miss us.”
“Some of us,” Debby suggested.
“Alec says, Miss Fellows is ever so jolly.”
“She hasn’t been at it so long,” Debby commented. “Are you taking
French, Blue Bonnet?”
Blue Bonnet nodded. “It has to be that, or German, hasn’t it? Aunt
Lucinda thought I’d better choose French this year. I’ve studied it
some; one of the tutors instituted an hour’s conversation every day,
just after dinner; there used to be--interruptions.”
Blue Bonnet came home that afternoon most enthusiastic; Miss Fellows
was all she ought to be, she shouldn’t have a bit of trouble with her.
“And does the lady in question feel confident regarding you?” Mrs.
Clyde asked.
Blue Bonnet laughed. “She hasn’t said--yet. It’s ever so big a class,
Grandmother; there were a lot of left-overs. French is three times a
week--Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays--Mademoiselle looks awfully
nice! Sarah and Amanda are taking German--isn’t it just like Sarah
to choose the hardest? All the rest of us club members are taking
French--Kitty says she wants to learn how to take ‘French leave’ and,
oh, me, I promised not to be five minutes--they’re all waiting down at
the back gate for me.”
Blue Bonnet dropped her strap of books, ran for her skates, paid a
visit to the cookie jar in the pantry, patted Solomon, and with a
“Good-bye, Grandmother,” was off, leaving Mrs. Clyde feeling as if a
small whirlwind had swept through the quiet house.
* * * * *
What with school, her afternoons on the pond, her evenings of study,
broken by occasional neighborhood gatherings, Blue Bonnet found the
time slipping by very fast. While she missed her uncle greatly, she
was learning more and more how much can be done by letter-writing,
and those were far from doleful letters that traveled every week from
Woodford to the far-away Texas ranch.
The weather held wonderfully; never had the pond been in better
condition than during those January days.
“But the thaw’s bound to come before long,” Debby predicted one
afternoon.
“The snow’s coming first!” Susy pointed to the clouds banking
themselves up above the low line of hills--“Coming before to-morrow
morning, too.”
“Let’s not go in just yet!” Blue Bonnet pleaded, as Susy bent to
unfasten her straps.
“But it’s time!”
“You’re such a prompt-to-the-minute girl, Susy Doyle!” Blue Bonnet
objected. “I’m not ready to go--are you, Kitty?”
“You never are ready,” Debby protested. They four were the only club
members out that afternoon; as Debby insisted later, if only Sarah had
been there it would never have happened.
“I’d like to start right off now and skate and skate without stopping,
until I got to the end of the pond!” Blue Bonnet declared.
“But no one ever does skate up at the upper end of the pond,” Susy
explained; “the ice is always rough up there; besides, it isn’t safe in
ever so many spots.”
“Anyhow, I’d like to try it.” Blue Bonnet was in the mood for
adventure; wasn’t it Friday afternoon? “I mean to ask Alec to go with
me.”
“He’s playing hockey!” Kitty said, looking at a group of boys down
beyond. “He wouldn’t take you if he wasn’t--nor let you go,” she added
mischievously.
“I don’t see how he could very well help that,” Blue Bonnet retorted.
“I believe I’ll try it alone.”
“Blue Bonnet!” Susy gasped.
“I’d like awfully well to see you!” Kitty teased, in what Amanda called
her “aggravating tone.”
“Is that a dare?” Blue Bonnet demanded.
“If you like to call it one.”
Blue Bonnet bent to tighten her skates.
“Blue Bonnet Ashe!” Debby exclaimed. “Are you clean daft! Start up
there at this time of the evening--when you ought to be going home?”
“You don’t know how far it is,” Susy urged.
“No--but I’m going to find out,” Blue Bonnet said.
“Don’t worry, Susy,” Kitty remarked; “she won’t go very far.”
Blue Bonnet’s eyes flashed. “I’ll go as far as you will, Kitty Clark!”
“‘Is that a dare?’” Kitty quoted; she, too, bent to tighten her skates.
“Come on!” she said; and before Debby or Susy realized it the two were
off.
“Of all the--” Debby took a few steps, then came back to where Susy
still stood, her skates in her hand. “Kitty, or Blue Bonnet, alone, one
might manage to do something with--but together! Come on, Susy--it’s
no use our standing here in the cold; perhaps they’ll turn around
presently. Kitty knows she’s no right letting Blue Bonnet go up there
after dark.”
“Shall we go tell some of the boys?” Susy asked.
But the boys were far down at the other end by now, fighting an
exciting game to a finish. The pond had been thinning rapidly the last
half hour, for, with the coming of night, a cold wind had sprung up.
Debby shivered. “It wouldn’t be much use; by the time we got them those
two foolish girls would be out of call. It’s all that Kitty’s fault!
She just dared Blue Bonnet on.”
At first, Blue Bonnet thoroughly enjoyed that swift rush along through
the gathering dusk; they had the wind at their back, and ahead of
them the pond to themselves. Then the two hours or more already spent
in skating that afternoon began to tell on her, and with the sense
of fast-growing fatigue came equally rapid misgivings. She glanced
sideways at her companion; why wouldn’t Kitty speak! If only she would
admit the foolishness of the undertaking, Blue Bonnet would give in
too, but until Kitty gave in--she would not.
Kitty was thinking the same; she knew, as Blue Bonnet did not, not
only the foolishness, but the risk of what they had undertaken. What
had possessed her to start such a ball rolling? Once started, it went
without saying that she could not be the first to throw up the game.
Blue Bonnet was getting tired already, one could see that, though she
was trying not to show it; and then--
But Kitty reckoned without knowledge.
The pond was growing narrower now, with sharp twists and turns that
made Blue Bonnet think of the brook she and Alec had followed that
August afternoon. The thought of the brook reminded her of Aunt Lucinda.
For just a moment, Blue Bonnet wavered; Aunt Lucinda had gone into town
and would not be back until the nine o’clock train--Grandmother was
alone, and would be worried.
Kitty saw the sudden slackening on Blue Bonnet’s part, and took comfort
from it. “Ready to go back?” she asked, more than a hint of “I told you
how it would be” in her voice.
Blue Bonnet wavered no longer; it was impossible to give in to
Kitty--of all people; Kitty had started it, and it was her place to
make the first move towards turning back.
“I am ready whenever you are,” she answered; “you have only to say the
word.”
“I thought you wanted to go to the very end?”
Blue Bonnet made no answer. Kitty was the--Sarah would never be so
horrid; and then the mere thought of Sarah in connection with such a
foolish performance as this, made Blue Bonnet laugh.
So the two pushed doggedly on through the fast-deepening dusk,
stumbling more than once against snags; tired, cold, hungry, and
miserable, and with the discouraging knowledge that every moment was
taking them further from home.
It seemed to Blue Bonnet as if the pond had no end, but was like some
dreary, enchanted lake in the fairy stories; that she and Kitty, like
the brook, must go on and on forever. It did not seem possible that it
could be the same pond she and the others had skated on so gaily that
afternoon--if it really was that afternoon.
It was quite dark by now. Far away, across the fields, a solitary light
showed in some lonely farmhouse window, and now and then they caught
the sound of a dog barking.
It wouldn’t have been so unbearable, Blue Bonnet thought, if only Kitty
would speak.
And then Kitty did speak--“We shall have to keep close to the bank from
now on--the ice isn’t safe further out--that is, unless you want to
go back?” No one should say that she had not given Blue Bonnet every
opportunity to behave like a reasonable being.
“Do _you_?” Blue Bonnet asked.
In her heart, Kitty knew herself more than ready, but the little demon
that had seemed hovering near her all the afternoon, prompted her to
say, “We haven’t got to the end yet. I thought--”
On they went again, both too tired to skate at all fast. Kitty told
herself that she would never dare anyone like Blue Bonnet Ashe again;
it had proved a veritable boomerang of a dare. Blue Bonnet felt that
once she had got her skates off, she should never want to see them
again. While the realization that ahead of them both waited a probable
very bad quarter of an hour, did not serve to make things any brighter.
And then a little group of bare trees loomed tall and shadowy almost in
front of them, and, a moment later, the end of the pond was reached.
“I know now,” Blue Bonnet dropped wearily down on the snowy bank, “how
Miss Rankin’s beloved Pilgrim Fathers felt when they landed on Plymouth
Rock!”
“You mustn’t do that!” Kitty commanded. “Get up this moment.”
“I simply can’t--just yet. Only I don’t suppose our motive and theirs
for setting out were precisely similar, do you, Kitty?”
“I’m not supposing anything about it! Will you get up? Or do you want
to catch the worst cold you’ve ever had--and have everyone saying it
was _my_ fault?”
“I don’t see how they could say that,” Blue Bonnet got up reluctantly.
“I suppose our next move--is to go back.”
“We can’t go back on the ice--it’s too dark and the wind would be dead
against us all the way.”
Blue Bonnet began working at her skates. “I’m mighty glad of that!”
“Going ’cross lots through the snow won’t be exactly what you might
call fun,” Kitty remarked. “Come on--I don’t know what time we’ll get
home, as it is.”
“Let’s not have ‘Quaker meeting’ going home, Kitty,” Blue Bonnet begged.
“It won’t be ‘Quaker meeting’--once we do get home, I’m thinking,”
Kitty answered; “and I just know mamma will be worried to death.”
“Kitty, why did we do it?” Blue Bonnet asked.
“Maybe we’d better not go into that at present,” Kitty suggested.
“There--it’s beginning to snow!”
It certainly was, in a thorough-going, determined fashion that promised
to last through the night, at the least.
Walking ’cross lots after dark through ankle-deep snow, with the storm
beating in one’s face, was not a particularly pleasant way of passing
the time, Blue Bonnet decided. “Kitty Clark!” she burst out. “If ever
you _dare_ dare me again!”
Kitty laughed. “You didn’t have to take it!”
“You knew I would!”
Kitty pulled off her mittens, blowing on her numbed fingers. “Well, I
got paid in kind, didn’t I? Blue Bonnet, you mustn’t!” For Blue Bonnet
had slipped her muff off, throwing the chain over Kitty’s head.
“Turn and turn about!” she insisted.
“Are you--too utterly fagged out?” Kitty asked presently, real concern
in her voice, as Blue Bonnet stumbled, just saving herself from falling.
“I’m--a bit tired,” Blue Bonnet confessed. “I suppose it’s because
I’m not so used to this sort of thing!” She wondered if Kitty really
did know her way through the dark and storm; to all outward seeming,
they were struggling aimlessly on across fields that had apparently no
boundaries. They had left the friendly little light behind long since;
it seemed as if she and Kitty were quite alone in a world of wind and
snow.
All at once, she came to an abrupt stop. “Kitty, I’ve got to rest!” She
dropped down on the snow in a forlorn little heap.
Kitty longed to follow suit; instead, she gave Blue Bonnet a little
shake. “Blue Bonnet, get up immediately! We’re nearly to the road now;
it won’t be half as hard walking then.”
“I don’t think I care very much whether we are near the road or not,”
Blue Bonnet said wearily; “all I want is to sit still for a while.”
“Blue Bonnet, please! Haven’t you and I both had enough of doing what
_we_ want for one day?”
“I’ve had more than enough,” Blue Bonnet conceded readily, but she did
not get up.
Kitty gave her a second shake, and a harder one. “Blue Bonnet! I got
you into this, and I’ve got to get you out of it! Get up this moment!
Think how worried they must be at home about us!”
“Grandmother will be worried,” Blue Bonnet agreed. “Aunt Lucinda isn’t
at home; but I don’t seem to mind about that, either, now--I’m so
tired.”
“Then I’ll sit down too!” Kitty dropped down beside Blue Bonnet. “I
might as well sit as stand.”
Blue Bonnet roused herself impatiently. “What a provoking girl you are!
Come on, then! Only you might let me rest.”
Kitty drew a deep sigh of thankfulness when, a few yards further on,
they stumbled against the last fence, over which the snow was drifting
fast. “It won’t be nearly so hard now,” she repeated, as they managed
to scramble over it into the road.
A moment or so later, Kitty cried eagerly--“Blue Bonnet, listen!”
From down the road came the jingling of bells, coming nearer every
moment; then a voice called, “Halloa! Halloa, there! Anyone about?”
“It’s Jim Parker!” Kitty cried joyously. “Here we are!” she called back.
“Well of all the tom-fool scrapes!” Jim drew his horse up with a jerk.
“What do you mean by this, Kitty Clark! Setting the whole place by the
ears!”
“It was just as much my fault!” Blue Bonnet protested.
“Well, we won’t stand here scrapping about that!” Jim bundled the two
into the bottom of the box sleigh most unceremoniously, piling buffalo
robes thick about them. “There’s blame enough to go shares on and have
some left over.”
“Please don’t scold!” Kitty pleaded. “We’re dreadfully sorry, and if
you knew how tired and hungry we were!”
Jim took up the reins--“And so you ought to be!” He was a big, hearty
fellow of twenty, who had been pulling Kitty out of scrapes ever since
she had been big enough to get into them,--and Kitty had begun early.
“How did you know where we were,--did Debby tell?” Kitty asked. Blue
Bonnet cared neither to ask, nor answer questions.
“Why,” Jim explained, “when you didn’t come home your mother sent over
to our place, thinking you must be there. Amanda hadn’t seen you since
school; then Mrs. Clyde sent her Delia down to your place, in search
of Blue Bonnet. Debby’d gone out to supper with Susy, and by the time
we’d got ’round to the Doyles and found out where you had started for,
it was getting pretty late, and some of the seniors were more or less
anxious. Your father hadn’t got in yet. Some of the boys started up the
pond with lanterns, and I came this way, thinking it barely possible
you might have developed enough sense not to try to come back on the
ice.”
“Is everyone dreadfully worried?” Kitty asked.
“Worried enough! That end of the pond isn’t the safest place,
particularly after dark.”
Kitty subsided. When Jim, who was her staunch ally, used that tone
towards her, matters must be pretty serious.
Never had the lights of the village, blinking at them through the snow,
seemed more friendly or more welcome to the two nestled under the
buffalo robes in the bottom of the Parker box sleigh.
Jim was blowing the horn he had brought, three good blasts.
“That means we’re found!” Kitty’s voice was trembling; some realization
of what those blasts meant to those here at home had come to her.
Blue Bonnet roused herself. “Kitty, didn’t it almost seem--out
there--in the snow--”
“Don’t!” Kitty dropped her face on Blue Bonnet’s shoulder.
It was not at all the sort of welcome they should have received,
Dr. Clark declared afterwards; but then, as Kitty pointed out, he
was the first to reach the sleigh--having heard the news on his way
home--taking her into his own cutter, and on home to an exceedingly
anxious mother, while Jim turned into the Clyde drive.
There Solomon met them, scrambling into the sleigh, and diving in
among the robes, licking his mistress’ face, her ears--only stopping,
momentarily, to bark in most ungrateful manner at Jim in his great fur
coat.
“Here we are! All safe and sound!” Jim said, cheerily, as Mrs. Clyde
came forward from the open doorway, just within which, Delia and Katie
hovered excitedly. It was Delia’s and Katie’s firm conviction that
“that Kitty” was to blame for the whole affair, it being “just like
her.”
The next thing Blue Bonnet knew, Jim was carrying her indoors, robes
and all, depositing her in the big armchair Grandmother drew forward.
“There!” he said. “You’re home now and it’s up to someone to keep you
here for one while!”
Blue Bonnet tried to say thank you, but made rather a failure of it; it
was all she could do just then to fight back a sudden desire to cry. It
was so good to be at home again--where it was warm and light and there
were people about.
Grandmother seemed to understand, for she asked no questions; and
before many minutes Blue Bonnet found herself in bed, with hot water
bottles everywhere.
And then, quite unexpectedly, the doctor appeared; explaining that
he thought he would look in and see how this second member of the
exploring party was getting on.
“I’m all right!” Blue Bonnet told him, as he took her hand in his.
“Please, Dr. Clark, it was my fault--not Kitty’s!”
“Time enough to-morrow to discuss that side of the question,” the
doctor said. “What you’ve got to do now is to get in all the sleep you
can.”
Blue Bonnet looked up at him with troubled eyes. “But every time I shut
my eyes, I keep seeing--” she broke, abruptly.
“We’ll soon remedy that!” the doctor answered, taking out his medicine
case.
“You are all so good to me!” Blue Bonnet told Grandmother, when the
doctor had gone. “And you shouldn’t be, because--”
“We won’t go into that ‘because’ to-night, dear,” Mrs. Clyde bent to
kiss the flushed face. “You must go to sleep now, as the doctor said.”
It was still snowing when Blue Bonnet woke the next morning. Down
below, the hall clock was striking nine. It was a good thing that
it was Saturday, Blue Bonnet thought; she felt stiff and tired. She
wondered if Aunt Lucinda had been kept in town by the storm. Aunt
Lucinda would have the right to be vexed with her this time; Blue
Bonnet moved restlessly--she didn’t want to think about last night.
Why, someone must have slept over there on her lounge! Surely,
Grandmother hadn’t--Aunt Lucinda was coming upstairs now.
“Have you been awake long, Blue Bonnet?” Miss Lucinda asked. She sat
down on the side of the bed, laying a hand over the one Blue Bonnet
held out to her; she looked grave, but not at all--lectury, Blue Bonnet
decided.
“I only just woke up, I’ll get right up,” the girl said.
Miss Lucinda shook her head. “Breakfast first, and then--if the doctor
says you may--we’ll talk about the getting up.”
“But I don’t need the doctor!” Blue Bonnet protested.
She had little appetite for the daintily prepared breakfast Miss
Lucinda brought her presently. “I ought not to have these dishes
this morning,” she insisted, touching the pretty sprigged cup and
saucer,--“I ought not to have anything nice.”
Miss Lucinda smiled. “Dr. Clark has been known to give very unpleasant
doses; it is possible that he may give you something very far from
nice.”
“I hope he says I may get up,” Blue Bonnet said. “I hate lying in bed.”
“Then it should prove excellent discipline,” Miss Lucinda suggested,
shaking out her pillow and making her comfortable in a way Blue Bonnet
found very pleasant.
“Did you sleep in here on the lounge last night, Aunt Lucinda?” she
asked.
“Yes,” Miss Lucinda answered; she was putting the room to rights now.
Blue Bonnet watched her interestedly. “How easily you do things--so
quickly and without a bit of fuss,” she said. “There comes the
doctor--I know he’ll say I’m foolish--lying here.”
What the doctor said, among other things, was that, in his opinion,
Woodford had the unenviable distinction at that moment of containing
two as headstrong and foolish young persons as it had ever been his lot
to run across. And he ended by prescribing a day’s quiet in bed for
Blue Bonnet; after which, he and Aunt Lucinda went downstairs together.
“A little cold, a good deal of fatigue, and considerable nervous
excitement,” the doctor told Mrs. Clyde and Miss Lucinda. “She isn’t as
rugged as some of our Woodford girls,” he added, “and this is her first
New England winter. Quiet and coddling will bring her around all right.”
“And Kitty?” Mrs. Clyde inquired.
“Tired, and I trust--penitent,” Kitty’s father answered.
Blue Bonnet slept most of the day, Solomon mounting guard on the rug
beside her bed. According to calculation, it should have been Saturday,
but never had Solomon known his mistress to spend Saturday in such
peculiar fashion before.
When Blue Bonnet finally awoke, towards late afternoon, feeling
wonderfully rested, she found Grandmother sitting before the fire, her
sewing lying idly in her lap. She looked tired and troubled, Blue
Bonnet told herself, and it was all her fault.
“Grandmother,”--Blue Bonnet sat up in bed, shaking her hair back from
her face--“please, I am ever and ever so sorry! About last night--it
was just a foolish dare that I took up--and was too obstinate to let
drop. I don’t believe, in the beginning, Kitty really meant it for a
dare; she was only teasing. And I might have gone, even if she hadn’t
gone too, but she wouldn’t have gone without me. So it was a good deal
more my fault than hers. Once we’d got started, neither of us would
give in. And then--afterwards, all the way home through the dark--I
kept thinking of what happened last summer--out on the ranch; and
seeing it all over again; and remembering what Uncle Joe said--how it
need never have happened, if the poor, foolish fellow had had the grit
enough _not_ to take a dare. You see, one of the other cowboys dared
him to ride that horse, and he would do it--though Uncle Joe warned him
not to.”
“It should not have taken much ‘grit’ not to take Kitty’s dare last
night, Blue Bonnet,” Mrs. Clyde said, gravely. “A moment’s thought
should have been enough to deter you.”
“Somehow, I never do seem to do my thinking until afterwards,” Blue
Bonnet mourned.
“But ‘afterwards,’ when there had been plenty of time for thought, you
still went on.”
“Y--yes,” Blue Bonnet admitted, “but it didn’t seem as if _I_ could
give in before Kitty did, Grandmother.”
“It is not so many years ago, Blue Bonnet,” Grandmother said, “that a
party of young people went skating up at that end of the pond, against
orders, and that one of them did not come back with the rest.”
“Grandmother! And you had that to think about--all last evening!”
“Yes, Blue Bonnet.”
“I--hate myself! I’ll never take such a silly dare as that was last
night again!”
“It is my experience,” Grandmother observed, “that most dares come
under that description.”
When Aunt Lucinda came up just before supper, bringing messages from
various friends, and a little knot of lemon verbena and heliotrope from
Sarah’s window garden, she found Blue Bonnet looking very sober.
“We shall not have to keep you prisoner to-morrow, my dear,” Miss
Lucinda said. “I expect we shall have numerous callers, even if it is
Sunday.”
Blue Bonnet laid Sarah’s flowers against her face. “I’m sorry the club
couldn’t meet--it’s the first time we’ve missed since starting.” For
a moment or two, she lay looking across at her aunt in the low chair
before the fire; then she asked, suddenly, “Aunt Lucinda, aren’t _you_
going to--say anything to me?”
“Say anything, Blue Bonnet?”
“About--last night?”
“Haven’t you and your grandmother talked things over, Blue Bonnet?”
“Yes,” Blue Bonnet answered, “but Grandmother was just--dear, and I
thought--I don’t mean that you’re not--” Blue Bonnet colored, “only it
does seem as if someone ought to--scold me. It was so horrid of me.”
Miss Lucinda half smiled. “And you consider that my especial
prerogative? No, Blue Bonnet, I am not going to ‘say anything,’ as you
express it, to you. I am going to _ask_ that another time you will give
a little thought to the worry and anxiety your heedlessness is likely
to cause other people. I do not think you realize how troubled your
grandmother was last evening.”
“Oh, I _will_ try,” Blue Bonnet’s voice trembled. “I will, I truly
will, Aunt Lucinda!”
“Solomon,” she confided to him later, as they two were alone in the
firelight, “Solomon, Aunt Lucinda can be such a dear!”