BOBBIE, GENERAL MANAGER
BOBBIE
GENERAL MANAGER
_A NOVEL_
BY
OLIVE HIGGINS PROUTY
[Illustration]
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS :: NEW YORK
_Copyright, 1913, by_
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
_All rights reserved including that of translation into foreign
languages, including the Scandinavian._
_TENTH PRINTING_
[Illustration: _March, 1913_]
TO
THE MEMORY OF
MY FATHER
Bobbie, General Manager
CHAPTER I
I am a junior in the H.C.H.S., which stands for Hilton Classical High
School, and am sixteen years old. I live in a big brown house at number
240 Main Street, and my father is a state senator in Boston. I am a
member of the First Congregational Church, which I joined when I was
thirteen, and am captain of the basket-ball team at the high school. I
have travelled as far east as Revere Beach, as far west as the Hoosac
Tunnel, on my way to Aunt Ella's funeral in Adams, and as far south as
New London, Connecticut, where I watched my oldest brother Tom row in
a perfectly stunning eight-oared boat-race on the Thames. I haven't
been north at all. I have had six diseases, including scarlet fever and
typhoid, with which I almost died last year, and as a result of which
am now wearing my hair as short as a child with a Dutch-cut.
I am not pretty, nor a bit popular with the boys. I can't play the
piano, and I never went to dancing-school in my life. Most of my
clothes are as ugly as mud, for I haven't any mother; and my hair has
always been as straight as a stick. They say that the kink that has
appeared in it since the typhoid won't last but a little while, so it
isn't much comfort. In fact, the only real consolation that I have
is a secret conviction which I keep well concealed in the innermost
compartment of my heart. No one knows of its existence except myself,
and I wouldn't be the one to tell of it for anything in the world. It
is on account of it, however, that I am writing the experiences of my
early life. I often think how valuable it would have been if William
Shakespeare had told us about his school-days or Julius Caesar had
described his family and what they used to do when he was a boy of
fifteen. Of course I may not be a genius; but facts point that way.
I hate mathematics, my imagination is vivid, my life is difficult
and full of obstacles, and my handwriting illegible. My Themes are
generally read out loud in English, and my quarterly deportment mark
is frightfully low. Moreover, if I am not a genius I shall be awfully
disappointed. Why, I think I should rather be a genius than to go
to a College Prom. It makes everything so bearable, from a flunk in
geometry, to not being invited to Bessie Jaynes' birthday-party last
week.
My life has not been an easy one. Ever since I can remember I have been
the mother of five children--two of them older and three younger than
myself. They all call me Bobbie for short, but my real name is Lucy
Chenery Vars.
Our house is a big ugly brown affair which Father built when we were
all babies and the business was prosperous. The house has twenty rooms
in it, and on the top an octagon cupola, which I have fixed up with
a fish-net and some old tennis rackets, and call my study. I have a
plaster cast of a skull up here, and a "No Trespassing" sign which
Juliet Adams and I stole out of old Silas Morton's blueberry-pasture.
It looks exactly like a college man's room now and I intend to do all
my writing up here. It is a perfectly lovely place for inspirations!
From my eight little windows I can see all over New England, and at
night every star that shines. It is simply glorious up here in a
thunder-storm, and when I have the trap-door once closed behind me,
with all my cares and troubles shut safely away down below, I feel as
if I could fly with the birds. I ought to write something wonderful.
In the first place I had better state that I haven't anything
distinguishing about me except my experience. I am middling tall--five
feet five inches, to be precise; middling heavy--112 pounds; and am
one of six children--four boys and two girls--without the honour of
being either the oldest or youngest. With Father there are seven of us;
with Nellie and the cook (when we have one) and poor little Dixie, the
horse, there are ten.
Father is a big, quiet, solemn man and is sixty-eight years old. He
is president of the Vars & Company Woollen Mills, has perfectly white
hair, and wears grey and white seersucker coats in the summer. Tom is
the oldest and is in business out West. We're all awfully proud of
Tom. He was a perfect star in college, and is making money hand over
fist with his lumber camps in Michigan. Alec, the next to oldest, is
struggling along in business with Father. Then I come, and next to me
the twins--Oliver and Malcolm, aged fifteen and perfect terrors. Last
is Ruthie; and after her, mother died and so there weren't any more.
_I_ was the mother then, and I was only a little over five. Father says
he used to put me on the dictionary in mother's chair at the table
when I was so little that Nellie had to help lift the big silver pot
while I poured the coffee. Well, I've sat there ever since, pushed the
bell, scowled at the twins and performed a mother's duty generally, as
well as I knew how.
It hasn't been easy. Ruthie isn't the kind of little sister who likes
to be petted or cuddled. The twins scorn everything I do or say. The
house is a perfect elephant to run (there are thirty-three steps
between the refrigerator and the kitchen sink) and our washings are
something frightful. Alec says we simply can_not_ afford a laundress,
and the result is that I spend most of my Saturday mornings in
intelligence-offices hunting cooks. Intelligence-offices are dreadful
on inspirations.
Ever since I can remember, the house has been out of repair--certain
doors that won't close, certain windows that have no shades, certain
ceilings that are stained and smoked. It's hard to give the rooms the
proper look when there are paths worn all over the Brussels carpet,
exactly like cow-paths in a pasture, and the stuffed arms of the
furniture in the parlour are worn as bare as the back of a little
baby's head I once saw.
When Tom wrote that he was going to bring Elise, his young bride,
whom we had never laid eyes on, to Hilton on their wedding trip, I
nearly had a Conniption Fit. I thought Tom must have lost his mind.
Any one ought to know what a shock our house would be to the kind of
girl Tom would choose to marry. The concrete walk that leads up to the
front door was dreadfully cracked, and the crevices were filled with
a healthy growth of green grass. The iron fountain in the centre of
the walk was as dry as a desert, and the four iron urns on the square
porch as empty as shells. The ninety feet of elaborate iron fence
that runs in front of the house needed a new coat of paint, and the
little filigree iron edging, standing up like stiffly starched Hamburg
embroidery around the top of the cupola, had a piece knocked out in
front. But Tom _would_ come, so I buckled down and made preparations.
I must explain a little about Tom. It isn't simply because he is the
oldest son that we all look up to him so much. Every one in Hilton
admires Tom. The _Weekly Messenger_ refers to his "brilliant career,"
and the minister at our church calls him "an exceptional young man." He
isn't a genius--he's too successful and everybody likes him too much
for a genius--but he's different from the other young men in Hilton.
When Father picked out some little technical school or other for Tom
to go to, Tom announced that he was awfully sorry but that he had made
up his mind to graduate from the biggest university in the country.
And once there, Tom had a perfectly elegant time! Every one adored
him. I saw him carried off once on the shoulders of a lot of shouting
young men, who were singing his name. Why, I was proud to be Tom Vars'
sister! He was captain of the crew, president of his class, a member of
a whole lot of societies, and when he graduated his name was printed
under the _magna cum laude_ list on the programme (I can show it to you
in my Souvenir Book) which meant that he was a perfect wizard in his
lessons.
Tom graduated the year that Father's business began to look a little
wobbly. Just when Father was looking forward, with a good deal of hope,
to his oldest son's help and coöperation, Tom ran up home for over
Sunday one day in May, and broke the news that after Commencement he
had decided to accept a position from his room-mate's rich uncle in
some wild and woolly lumber camps in Michigan. It just about broke poor
Father's heart. He couldn't enjoy the honours of Tom's Commencement.
But Tom went out West just the same--for Tom always carries out his
plans--he went, smiling and confident, with never a single reference
to Father's silence, ignoring absolutely the sad look in Father's
eyes. He went just as if he were carrying out Father's dearest hope;
and the funny part is, that inside of three years Tom had made Father
so proud of his hard work and steady success that the poor dear man's
disappointment faded away like mist before the sun, as they say in
Shakespeare or the Bible--I forget which. The whole scheme worked like
a charm, as Tom's schemes always do. There was faithful Alec to help
Father; and the rich uncle, who had no son of his own, was simply
aching to get hold of a fine, smart, clean young man like Tom Chenery
Vars to boost up to success.
Whenever Tom had a holiday, except Christmas when he came home, he
spent it in Chicago with his room-mate or the uncle. That is how he
happened to fall in with such a lot of fashionable people--not that Tom
ever boasted that his friends were fashionable, for Tom never blows his
own horn--but I knew they were, just the same. He used to send stunning
monograms to Ruthie and me for our collections, torn off from the notes
which his wealthy young-lady friends wrote to him; besides, when he
came home for Christmas he always had a pocketful of kodak pictures
to show us of his life in the West. They weren't _all_ taken in the
lumber camps. Some were snapshots of house-parties, which he'd been on,
and I assure _you_, I always took in the expensive background of these
pictures--carved stone doorways, perfectly elegant houses, lawns kept
like a park, and automobiles with chauffeurs sitting up as stiff as
ramrods. I hadn't much doubt, when Tom wrote that he was engaged to be
married to Miss Elise Hildegarde Parmenter, but that she was an inmate
of one of these millionaire mansions, and I was absolutely convinced
of it when I laid eyes on her photograph--one of those brown carbons a
foot square--and counted the six magnificent plumes on her big drooping
picture-hat. I knew that 240 Main Street, Hilton, Mass., would look
pretty worn and dingy alongside Sunny-lawn-by-the-Lake, which was
engraved in gold letters and hyphens at the top of Miss Parmenter's
heavy grey note-paper.
The minute Tom wrote that he was going to bring his elegant bride to
Hilton I button-holed Father and Alec one day after dinner, and told
those two men that the house had simply _got_ to be done over. It was
disgraceful as it was; it hadn't been painted since I could remember;
it was unworthy of our name. Father reminded me that the reason none
of us went to the wedding (Tom was married in California, on Elise's
father's orange ranch) was to save expense, as I already knew, and
merely to paint the house would cost the price of a ticket or two.
"Let us be ourselves, Lucy," said Father to me, "_ourselves_, child.
If Tom's wife is the right kind of woman, she will look within,
_within_, Lucy."
"Oh," I said, "but the inside is worse than the out, Father. The
wall-paper in the guest-room--"
Father interrupted me gently.
"Within our hearts," he corrected, touching his heavy gold watch-chain
across his chest. "Within our hearts, Lucy."
Father is a perfectly splendid man, but I knew that spotless hearts
wouldn't excuse smoked ceilings; and when, the next day being Sunday,
I saw Father drop his little white sealed envelope, which I knew
contained five perfectly good dollars, into the contribution box, I
didn't believe any heathen girl needed that money more than I.
I am going to tell about that first appearance of Elise's in detail.
But it's got to be after dinner, for fifteen minutes ago the big
whistle on Father's factory spurted out its puff of white steam (I
could see it from my north window before I heard the blast) and Father
and Alec will soon be driving up the hill in the phaeton, with the top
down and the reins slack over faithful Dixie's back. I must be within
calling-distance when Father strikes the Chinese gong at the foot of
the stairs. It's the first thing he always does when he enters the
house at noon. We all recognise his two strokes on each one of the
three notes as surely as his voice or step. Why, that ring of Father's
simply speaks! It is as full of impatience as a motorman ringing for a
truck to get off the track.
Father hates to wait for dinner. By the time he has taken off his
overcoat, and scrubbed up in the wash-room off the hall, he likes us
all to be seated at the table when he comes into the dining-room.
"Hello, chicken," he says to me. "Hello, baby," to Ruth. (He calls
Dixie "baby" too.) "Hello, boys," to the twins. Then he sits down at
the head of the table, opposite me, clears his throat as a signal, and
asks the blessing.
Father's blessing is always the same except when we have company.
I can tell how important the company is by the length of Father's
prayer. When Juliet Adams, my best friend, drops in for supper, she is
served the regular everyday family blessing, but when we have company
important enough to put on the best dishes, or at the first meal that
Tom is with us, Father keeps at it so long that the twins get to
fooling with each other under cover of the tablecloth. I wished Father
would omit the blessing entirely when Elise came, and family prayers
too. They're so old-fashioned nowadays; but I knew better than to
suggest such a preposterous thing. Father is a member of the Standing
Committee at our church, and has a lot of principles.
There he is coming now! I wish he could afford a new carriage. I'm
simply dying for one of those sporty little red-wheeled runabouts!