LETTERS.
For a few days all of Shirley’s extra time, except enough for outdoor
exercises, which she took in a general way, was spent in catching up
and in reciting her missed lessons. She would not risk putting it
off. There was much less of it than she had expected, she wrote to
the dear folks in Europe, from whom she had received the longed-for
fat letter. To them alone she repeated a few complimentary remarks
from her teachers in proof that she was “getting along all right,” as
she told her parents. All the happy details left to be told about the
trip she related as well as her impressions of the school, but not a
word did she say about finding her double in existence. Why tell it,
she thought. To Dick, however, it made the main subject and Shirley
chuckled as she started in on a letter to him.
It was Friday night and Madge, who was preparing to go with Cad to the
library, asked what she was laughing about. “What I’m going to write
to Dick,” replied Shirley. “Dick is my cousin, who was along on this
summer trip with his father and mother. Perhaps I was the one who was
‘along,’ though. They all took care of me.”
Madge looked interested, but hurried off, as Shirley had told her
that this was her great opportunity to catch up and write home. The
usual Friday night affairs had not begun so early in the year. Lessons
could be divided between now and Saturday, though the boat trip was in
prospect for the seniors.
“My dear Dick,” wrote Shirley: “You will, perhaps, know what has
happened from my writing to you. Otherwise, I will frankly say, I would
not think that I had time thus early in my school career. Think of it,
Richard,--I am a senior, with all the glories of the position! And by
the way, the school is all that I had hoped to find it and more. There
are ever so many pretty fine girls here, too, from all appearances,
though I do not know many of them yet, and you are invited now to our
‘Prom’ in the spring. It will be at a week end and you can come as well
as not. Plan for it and mystify your fraternity friends accordingly.
“You will remember, if you can spare the thoughts from your exciting
rushes and affairs of your own opening weeks, that you were laughing
at me once, right after I saw my ‘double’ on the Pacific coast. (I
hear you laugh and say--a big place to see her in). You said, ‘Don’t
worry, Shirley. I prophesy that you will see her again and find out
about her. She will probably be waiting for you at school. Notify me at
once,’--and a lot more of nonsense that we both immediately forgot.
“But the joke of it is, Dick, that she really was ‘waiting for me’
here. It has been a shock to both of us, and she has not come near me
to meet me yet, a whole week, or almost. I don’t blame her. Her name
is Sidney Thorne and her parents are wealthy people of Chicago, a fact
which we very well guessed at from my experience there. Looking exactly
like me, of course she is all that one could desire,--in a double. I
will tell you more anon. Tell Cousin Molly, if you like, but I am not
going to write it to Dad and Mother, or to Aunt Anne, for the simple
reason that they will think it an annoyance to me, which it isn’t, that
is, not much of one, and rather funny. And I want them to feel that my
year is almost a perfect one, since they have all done so much toward
making it so. Oh, I may change my mind, of course, for I’m so used to
telling Mother everything; but my best judgment is to wait.
“A fine time to you. May you get all the new boys that you want for the
frat and have a marvellous time of it. And don’t have too serious a
case until after you see some of these girls!”
Shirley laughed again as she folded her letter to Dick. For a moment
she almost regretted being away from those scenes of college life.
“Now, Auntie,” she said, choosing the most perfect sheets of her best
writing paper for her letter to Aunt Anne.
“Dearest Great-Aunt,” began the letter. “You would be pleased to death
to see this beautiful, beautiful place. At night I can hear the waves
lapping the shore and the cool breeze comes into our windows. We have
had bright days, and you know how blue the sky and lake can be, with
the ‘bright sparkles’ on the water. The school campus, or the wood,
goes right up to the shore. Tomorrow we are to have a ride in the
school launch, which is called the Westlake. It is big and handsome.
The seniors are to go, and perhaps some others. Madge Whitney, my
room-mate, did not know and it has not been announced yet.
“I do not know where you and Mother and Father could have found a
school that I should like so well. After the big trip, I did hate to
be penned in anywhere, in spite of always liking school more or less.
It was a habit, you know. But here, right on the lake, you get an
impression of space just about as you would on the sea-shore. The
waves aren’t as big, nor are they salty,--but it is different and
lovely. Thank you for your part in it, to begin with!
“I have had no trouble in making up the lessons that I missed. The
teachers all helped me to start in. The dean, Miss Irving, is dignified
and not easy to become acquainted with, but deans have to be that way,
I suppose, or the girls would run all over them. You know how it is at
home. I do not know anybody real well yet, but I am not homesick. It is
just another big adventure on top of all that I had this summer.
“My room-mate is a real dear sort of a girl. She is Madge Whitney
and has the blackest of hair and the bluest of eyes, a real Irish
combination, and one of the other girls, such a funny, nice one that
Madge calls ‘Cad’ (Caroline Scott), sometimes calls Madge ‘Irish.’ Cad
says Madge ought to have my eyes, or I ought to have Madge’s hair,
instead of being all mixed up the way we are. There will be plenty of
good times, you can see. Tomorrow we are to have a ride on the school
launch, which will be a great treat. There was nothing special on for
tonight so I thought that I must get a word in to you and ‘the folks’
and Dick. I’ll study a little after I get this letter finished. I am
sending it home, for I think that you will be there by that time, as
nearly as I could understand your card, which was not the clearest that
you ever wrote, my dear aunt,--no disrespect intended! I’ll write as
often as I can, but it is going to be a busy life. I can see that you
were wise when you gave me that box of correspondence cards and told me
to write often if not so much at a time. But I’ll get a real letter off
every once in a while.
“Oh, yes,--my room is on the second floor, which isn’t much of a climb
to any one used to the mountains this summer. Some of the girls are in
suites with a study room, but this, as you know, shares a bath with
girls in another single room, on the other side of it (the bathroom).
We are on the other side of the building from the lake, though we get
the breezes just the same, and we look out on trees and campus and
pretty shrubbery. But you know how it is from the pictures in the
catalogue.”
A very little more Shirley added, then folded the letter and put it in
its envelope, sighing as she did so, for she thought of all the girls
to whom she must write at least once. Dozens of cards she had sent home
from different places, and jolly, friendly cards they were, for Shirley
could write a good message in small space when she tried. But there
would be more to tell that the girls in the senior class of the home
high school would enjoy after Shirley became better acquainted and had
a greater supply of real boarding-school lore to impart.
Putting home, her people, and even her present surroundings, including
her “double,” out of her mind with determination, Shirley plunged into
her lessons, in which she was still absorbed when Madge came back from
the library.
“Say, Shirley,” said Madge as she entered. “Hope Holland says that they
want you to do something on the program of the classical club that
meets next week. She said that anybody who can ‘walk away with Virgil’
the way you do should be able to step right in on our programs. I told
her that I thought your father was a teacher or something from what you
said about his having you read some Virgil with him. Was that right?”
“Yes, he is,” demurely Shirley replied. “Why, yes, I suppose I could do
something. What do they want?”
“I guess they’ll let you do anything you wanted to, for the program
committee is having a time to think up things.”
Shirley thought a moment. “I brought some of my old themes and things,”
she said, “and there is a short one on Latin poetry that might do,
since we are all studying Virgil now.”
“Just the thing! May I run back to tell Hope that you will? She is
worrying about it. Nobody wants to do anything, and we are supposed to
have a decent program.”
“Of course I will do it. It certainly will not be much trouble to get
up and read something that I’ve already written.”
“Does your father teach Latin?”
“Yes. You see why I have to get my Latin lessons, don’t you?” Shirley
was laughing, and Madge nodded brightly at her as she ran off to tell
Hope that Shirley had something on Latin poetry and that it probably
was good because her father taught Latin.
Study hours had been over for a little while. Shirley piled up her
books, undressed and was in bed when Madge came back. That night she
dreamed that her father and mother came back from their trip across
the waters, met Sidney Thorne and thought that she was their daughter.
Sidney went off with them happily and none of them paid any attention
to Shirley’s cries, while Shirley looked down at herself and saw that
she was all wrapped up like an Egyptian mummy!