HOME AGAIN
THREE busy days in London, and it was all over but the voyage
home. Billy and the crew and John and Mr. Morton had left by different
routes the evening after the race, so only Mr. Dwight was on hand to
wave the girls off at their boat-train. They were all tired from trying
to see too much and shop too hard just at the last, and Babe was of
course forlorn with only a long steamer letter to console her for
John’s absence. So nobody minded lying about on deck for the first day
or two, and after that a real storm added a sad chapter to the girls’
seagoing experiences, keeping all but the dauntless Babbie close in
their berths for the rest of the voyage.
On the last morning Babbie and Marie got all their charges upon deck,
where they lay, rather pale and listless from their long confinement,
enjoying the air and the sunshine.
“Mummie dear,” began Babbie gaily, “do you know what I think? I think
that, if you want to keep your reputation as a chaperon, you’d better
spruce up your young charges before you return them to their adoring
families.”
Mrs. Hildreth smiled faintly. “I have a chance, haven’t I, since
Babe’s mother and Betty’s father have both had to give up meeting
the boat, and John and his father are in Boston. How shall I do it,
daughter? What is the most effective method of sprucing up storm-tossed
collegians?”
“Send them to Harding to recuperate for a day or two,” answered Babbie
with suspicious promptness. “The freshman rains will be just over and
Mary’s house will be settled, and it will be simply scrumptious seeing
her and Georgia Ames and everybody, won’t it, girls?”
“Rather,” agreed Babe. “We could wire Roberta to meet us there, and
give her her gargoyle and Mary her Flemish lamp. That would be a great
saving of expressage.”
“And we could display Babe, the tamed and affianced man-hater,” laughed
Betty. “Only--I’m in a dreadful hurry to get home.”
“What’s a day?” demanded Babbie. “We can run up this afternoon. Bob’s
going to be at the boat, and we’ll drag her along as a beautiful
impromptu feature. Honestly, I don’t think you girls ought to start on
a long journey west without getting rested a little; it would make you
horribly land-sick. Wouldn’t it, mother?”
“It might,” admitted Mrs. Hildreth, smilingly. “But seriously, girls,
I meant to treat you all to a side-trip to one of Babbie’s adored
villages, and we stayed on in Paris so long that I lost my opportunity.
So if you’d like to substitute Harding, I want you all to go as
Babbie’s guests.”
“I was just going to say that I hadn’t any money,” Babe explained
smilingly. “I shall have just exactly a quarter left after I’ve paid my
steamer fees. But when the mail comes I shall have enough for my ticket
home, because I told father to send it. And I thought possibly that
knowing me he might put in something extra,” she added hopefully.
“You could have borrowed of me,” Betty told her proudly. “I’m so
pleased to think that I can give father back my whole ‘emergency
fund,’ as he called the extra that he gave me to have in case I
needed it. Nan always spends her emergency fund; she says it attracts
emergencies instead of keeping them away. But I didn’t quite know
whether you could honestly call a trip to Harding an emergency or not.”
“You don’t have to,” put in Babbie summarily. “You’re to call it an
adorable little out-of-the-way village. Now who packed the gargoyles
for Bob and Roberta, and where is Mary’s lamp? You two be thinking
while I find the purser and borrow a time-table of Harding trains.”
So it happened that the three travelers, reinforced by Bob Parker and
Georgia Ames, dined sumptuously at Cuyler’s and invaded the Hinsdale
mansion in time to catch Mary, enveloped in a big gingham apron,
washing dishes.
“The cook took French leave this afternoon,” she explained cheerfully,
when the noisy greetings were over, “and we couldn’t have much of
anything for dinner because she took my cook-book with her, the wretch!
I’ve sent my husband off to buy another, so I can find out about
boiling the eggs for breakfast. You wipe, Betty; and Bob, you and Babe
go down cellar and find some drift-wood for the library fire. It’s
piled up near the furnace. Georgia, you can be putting away the dishes.”
“The same old Mary!” laughed Bob. “Does your husband enjoy being
ordered around?”
“Of course,” said Mary sweetly. “He considers it a privilege just as
you always did, Bob. Be sure you bring up plenty of wood.”
Five minutes later Mary divested herself of her apron, unpinned her
train, and explaining sorrowfully that if she sat on the floor it
always attracted faculty callers, established herself in a carved oak
chair and ordered her guests to “fire away.”
“Well, to begin with, Babe’s engaged,” announced Bob.
“Oh, you mean thing!” cried Babe. “I wanted to tell that myself.”
“No, you ought to have let Betty,” declared Babbie with decision, “as
her reward for telling Mr. Morton, you know.”
“All right,” agreed Babe. “You tell the rest, Betty.”
“Somebody tell it quick,” begged Mary plaintively. “I’m dying of
curiosity.”
So Betty “told quick,” and Bob aroused Babe’s wrath by reminding her
how it had all been prophesied just after Mary’s wedding.
“As if that had anything to do with it,” Babe sniffed. “Besides, we’re
not going to be married for a year. You may all be married before
that--Helen Chase Adams may be.”
Then Mary suddenly discovered that the girls had some trunks with them,
and she insisted upon seeing their foreign trophies immediately. So Bob
pulled the drift-wood fire to pieces and the other girls locked doors
and hunted Mary’s wraps, while Mary scribbled a note of explanation to
her husband.
“I’ve said we’d be back here for supper,” she told them. “Roberta ought
to come at nine-thirty and she’s sure to be hungry for gingersnaps.”
On the way they met and annexed Lucile Merrifield and Polly Eastman,
who invited them to sit with the seniors in chapel next morning,
offered them their choice between dinner at Cuyler’s or the Belden,
whose matron, they declared, would be “pleased as punch” to have such
distinguished guests, and reproached Mary hotly for not being willing
to conspire against the ten o’clock rule by inviting them to join her
supper party.
“And the moral of that,” said Mary sadly, “is that only sedate persons
with no wicked little friends in college ought to marry Harding
professors. I hope you’ll remember that before it’s too late, children,
and not fall in love with one. And I hereby invite Lucile, Polly and
Georgia to dinner the very first night I have a cook.”
It was great fun going through the trunks, but it took a long
time, because Mary was constantly being reminded of desert island
experiences, which in turn suggested fresh-air child anecdotes to Bob,
and they got back to Europe again only to be switched off on to Harding
news by Lucile or Georgia. But by running most of the way they managed
to meet Roberta’s train,--which is Harding style, because one never has
time there to waste on an early start.
And after supper, which was also Harding style, the stay-at-homes
promised to be quiet and give the travelers a chance to tell their
adventures, and Dr. Hinsdale considerately retired to his study so that
the talk also might be strictly Harding style.
When she had listened breathlessly to the details of the “real
adventure,” and to snatches of all the others, Mary smiled her “beamish
smile” around the circle. “Well,” she said, “you’ve all lived up to
your Harding reputations, as far as I can see--Babbie the Butterfly,
Madeline the Bohemian, Betty a Benevolent Adventurer.”
“And the moral of that is,” put in Babbie quickly, “what you are at
home, that you will be abroad.”
“Unless you drop all your individuality and become a Tourist, with a
capital T,” added Roberta.
“Or change your spots and turn from a man-hater into a fiancée,”
suggested Bob.
“That’s not changing your spots,” declared Mary wisely. “It’s just
making up your mind, isn’t it, Babe?”
“How in the world did you know that, Mary Brooks?” demanded Babe in
such awe-struck tones that her friends shrieked with laughter, and Dr.
Hinsdale came out from his study to ask about the joke.
The girls had intended to leave early the next afternoon, but when
Georgia Ames appeared, hovering in the Belden House hall, before dinner
was over, and announced that she was giving a gargoyle party for them
that evening, why of course there was nothing to do but insist that
the gargoyle party should be a “small and early,” and rush to the
station to countermand orders for carriages, and find out about making
connections with sleepers at the junction.
“For we’re not so young as we were once,” said Roberta, hugging Betty.
“We don’t have to be met at Harding by the registrar, and we may travel
at night if we like, as long as two go one way and three the other.”
The gargoyle party was as mysterious as Mary Brooks’s historic
hair-raising had been. Mary almost wept when Georgia asked her, and she
was obliged to decline because of a previous dinner engagement--not to
mention the dignity of her position. She solaced herself by making an
elaborate costume for Eugenia Ford, a pretty little freshman who, when
Georgia asked her to the party, thanked her gravely and explained that
if gargoyles had anything to do with gargles she wouldn’t come, because
she never could manage to do it--her throat must be queer. Most of the
other guests professed hapless ignorance of what a gargoyle might be,
but Georgia referred them easily to Bob’s cherished imp, which she
had borrowed for the occasion, together with some post-cards of other
grotesque figures.
“Just run in any time this afternoon, and look them over,” she urged,
“and come in costume to-night, if you can. If not, it doesn’t matter.
Mrs. Hinsdale is going to offer a prize for the best one, though.”
So the chosen few cast English Lit. papers and a possible--nay,
probable--written review in Psych. to the winds, journeyed down-town
to buy masks and draperies, and preëmpted all the desirable perches in
Georgia’s room, marking them with big “Engaged” signs, which came loose
when the wind blew in next time the door was opened, and gave the room
a disconcerting air of having been snowed under, when Georgia got back
to it just before tea.
“But we had to do it,” Eugenia Ford explained, as she helped Georgia
put things to rights for the evening, “because the whole point of a
gargoyle is that it stands somewhere. Lucile Merrifield said so. And
the way you put on your costume makes a difference about where you are
to sit. No, the other way around.”
“Conversely, you mean, my child,” amended Georgia, pleasantly, putting
Mary’s five-pound box of Huyler’s on the chiffonier.
“But that’s got to be cleared off,” objected Eugenia. “That’s Miss Bob
Parker’s place. We all wanted it, but she got it tagged first. Belden
House Annie promised her a step-ladder to climb up by, but she said a
chair would do.”
Georgia sighed and dumped the ornaments of the dresser top, cover and
all, into her upper drawer. “A gargoyle party is a thing that grows on
your hands,” she said sadly. “Let’s go and eat. If there’s anything
else to clear off, we’ll do it later.”
When the gargoyle party opened it was certain that, whether or not it
had grown on Georgia’s hands, it was every bit her room could hold.
Betty and Babbie, who had been too busy enjoying Harding to bother
about costumes, were the only guests who were not wearing some sort of
fantastic disguise. Bob had bought a box of paints and made her own
mask, modeling it and her drapery of brown denim after the imp that
the “B. A.’s Abroad” had given her. Eugenia Ford was a gryphon,--or at
least Mary Brooks said so,--with the most beautiful pair of wings that
had ever appeared at a Harding party. Polly Eastman was the elephant
that sits on the tower of Notre Dame. Georgia had planned to be the
other half of the elephant, in accordance with Harding usage in the
matter of elephants and other four-footed creatures. But at the last
minute she discovered that the Notre Dame elephant wasn’t four-footed.
“Gargoyles never are,” said Lucile wisely--it was she who had pointed
out the mistake. “But never mind, Georgia. You can be one of my two
heads. I was going to be a two-headed beast if I could. Only Vesta
White changed her mind afterward and wanted to be an eagle.”
There were other gargoyles, as impossible to classify as the real ones,
and they squatted in rows on Georgia’s bed and her big window-box,
popped up mysteriously from behind her desk, or lounged in strange
attitudes in her easy chairs. Bob Parker actually did get up on the
chiffonier, off the edge of which she hung in such realistic gargoyle
style that the judges, Babbie and Betty, unhesitatingly awarded her the
prize.
“Not a bit fair,” objected young Eugenia, flapping her beautiful
gryphon’s wings disconsolately. “We should all have looked a lot
grander on chiffoniers.”
“But you weren’t all clever enough to grab the one there was,” put in
Georgia pacifically.
“Having a gargoyle of your own makes you notice the attitudes more,”
declared Bob proudly. “Never mind, Miss Ford. The prize is candy,
and we’ll pass it around while we wait for Georgia’s refreshments to
materialize.”
“You haven’t forgotten your Harding manners, Bob,” said Betty severely.
“No, you don’t any of you act a bit like alums,” declared a tall
junior, taking off her mask to breathe.
“You lovely thing!” cried Bob, scrambling down from the chiffonier to
give the appreciative junior first choice of the prize candy.
And then the gargoyles had a dance and a parade, and delicious “eats,”
on which Georgia had rashly spent all that was left of her month’s
allowance. And after that, when the five 19--’s were having the very
best time of all, just sitting around talking and realizing what a
dear, dear place Harding was, it was time to pull Bob out of her
beloved costume and rush for trains.
Later in the evening the five classmates sat in the station at the
junction, Babe and Betty waiting to go west, Bob, Babbie and Roberta
bound for New York.
Babbie looked critically at Babe and Betty. “I shall tell mother that
it worked,” she said. “You went to bed at three, and got up at seven
this morning to go canoeing. You’ve eaten four meals to-day and as many
ices. You’ve been horseback and trolley-riding. You’ve made dozens of
calls. It’s now ten p. m., and you’re fresh as the daisies in Oban.
How’s that for the Harding cure?”
“Don’t you feel exactly as if it was some June?” demanded Bob. “Not
last June, but a regular June, you know, and we were all just going
home for the summer.”
“Exactly,” agreed everybody, and then a sleepy silence settled upon the
group.
“What were those things we had in the ‘Rise of the Drama’ course?”
asked Betty Wales suddenly. “Not intervals, but something like that.”
“You mean Interludes, don’t you?” asked Roberta. “They came right after
the Moralities.”
Betty nodded. “That’s what this summer has been--an Interlude.”
“With Babe for the fascinating heroine,” put in Babbie.
“Yes,” agreed Betty hastily. “And when I get home to-morrow the real
business of life is going to begin.”
“Act I, Scene I, Life of Betty Wales, B. A.,” said Roberta. “Doesn’t
that sound serious? But it won’t be. You’ll play tennis with Nan, and
go to dances with your brother and other people’s brothers, and amuse
that darling little sister of yours, and be nice to everybody who needs
it, just as you always have, except that you won’t be home on a snippy
little vacation.”
“Oh, I hope so,” said Betty, laughing at Roberta’s choice of details.
“But then I want to do something that counts, too.”
“You’re always doing things that count,” Babe declared, giving her a
loving little squeeze.
“That was just fun,” Betty reminded her for the hundredth time at least.
“But if fun counts, it counts,” declared Roberta. “Just ask Madeline
Ayres if it doesn’t. If you can make fun out of hard work, then,
according to Madeline, you really know how to live.”
“But we’re not the working contingent,” objected Babbie. “K. and Rachel
and Helen are the workers.”
“They are!” breathed Bob indignantly. “Just try taking care of certain
fresh-air youngsters for two weeks.”
“Or typewriting most particular briefs for your most particular
father, who always wants things in a terrific hurry,” added Roberta.
Betty considered. “I’ve helped in little ways of course, but I never
did any one big thing. I’m going to now, though.”
“Here’s to a winter of hard work!” cried Babe. “I shall have to sew,
and I hate it.”
“But you must make fun out of it all the same,” Betty told her, with
the flash of gay courage in her eyes that had won over Mr. Morton. “I
shall, no matter what happens, and whatever we do, think of the fun
we’ll have talking it over when we all get together again. Oh, is that
our train, Babe?” And with her curls flying and her eyes dancing with
eagerness Betty Wales turned merrily from her happy summer’s Interlude
to “the real business of life.”
THE END
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
--Minor corrections (addition or deletion) of double quote marks have
been made on pages 188, 196, 230 and 317, to conform to accepted
usage.
--Splended, on page 153, has been changed to splendid.
--Cooperation, on page 218, has been changed to coöperation, to
conform to other occurrences in this e-book.
--On page 270, Louxembourg has been changed to Luxembourg.
--All other hyphenation and variant and archaic spellings have been
retained as typeset.
--Illustrations have been moved to avoid interrupting paragraphs.