MY ROOMMATES.
[Illustration: They made such a racket that a sad, crooked face was
poked into the door.--_Page 48._]
"Heavens, I'm tired of tears!" I thought as my conductor left me with a
significant smile. "I'm actually damp from all of the weeping going on
around me."
A stormy voice was raised in the room that I was about to enter, and I
stopped in the hall, not knowing just what to do.
"Now what did I tell you?" said the stormy, sobbing voice. "Didn't I
tell you all along I was going to make myself just as disagreeable as I
could if you would put someone in with us? Aren't we going to be
miserable enough without you, without having some old stick-in-the-mud
hoisted on us from the country, to sleep in the room with us; and just
as like as not want the window shut at night; and rub her chapped face
all over with mutton-suet? Paugh, I can smell it now, the horrid stuff."
"Now, Dum, cut it out. You don't even know that your roommate gets
chapped," said a whimsical voice.
"The Tuckers!" I exclaimed, but naturally had a delicacy in entering,
after what I had heard Dum say about a roommate from the country. "Could
she know that I am the one?" I asked myself.
"Well, how are Dee and I to fight it out the way you have brought us up
to do if we have got some old mutt in here with us? We might just as
well have left our boxing gloves at home."
"Oh, Dum, you are making it hard for me," said poor Mr. Tucker.
"That's good, I want to make it hard," sobbed the wretched Dum.
"I have told you over and over that I think it best for you and Dee to
have to control yourselves more, and the only way to do it is to realize
how your tantrums affect other people. You are the best old Tweedles in
the world, but you have no self-control. I am surely sorry for your
roommate, whoever she may be."
"Well," broke in Dee, "I think it all depends on who she is. I must say
it is some lottery. Roommates ought to be carefully chosen; one should
not just trust to this grab-bag method."
"Well, how do you know Miss Peyton has not chosen someone she feels will
be suitable? I wish it would turn out to be somebody like the little
girl on the train. Don't you, Tweedles?"
"Yes, yes!" tweedled Tweedles. "But no such luck."
This reassured me and I knocked on the open door. There was perfect
silence, broken only by the sound of Dum's blowing her nose and Mr.
Tucker's clearing his throat; and then a faint little "Come in," from
both girls.
"Oh, it's you! How good of you to come look us up!" exclaimed Mr.
Tucker. "We were afraid it was the hated roommate. Tweedles are treating
me so terribly because I insist on their having a roommate so they can
broaden out a bit and learn to control themselves some, which they will
never do so long as they stay together all the time. I'll leave it to
you, Miss Page, don't you think it will be best?"
"Well, I have a delicacy in saying," laughed I. "You see, I am that
poor unfortunate, despised roommate. This is 117 Carter Hall, isn't it?"
Then all the weeping was turned to laughter and the irrepressible
Tuckers, father and all, grabbed hands and danced around me singing,
"Gayly cheer the bride." They made such a racket that a sad, crooked
face was poked into the door, evidently feeling a duty to admonish, but
Zebedee in his most Zebedeeish humor, sang out in a friendly voice:
"Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance? Will
you, won't you, will you, won't you, won't you join the dance?"
Then the strangest thing happened to that long, sad, crooked face. The
plain features were illuminated by a smile, the person who owned the
face came impulsively into the room, and after she had carefully shut
the door, she caught hold of hands with the crazy trio and the dance
went on; and all of us sang:
"'Will you walk a little faster!' said a whiting to a snail,
'There's a porpoise close behind us and he's treading on my tail.
See how eagerly the lobsters and the turtles all advance!
They are waiting on the shingle--will you come and join the dance?'"
Then the chorus: "Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you
join the dance?"
I refused to play "frog in the middle" any longer and broke into the
dance, soon dropping into the unfamiliar tune but very familiar words of
the Lobster Quadrille. We sang all four of the verses from that immortal
nonsense.
"'What matters it how far we go?' his scaly friend replied,
'There is another shore, you know, upon the other side.
The farther off from England, the nearer is to France.
Then turn not pale, beloved snail, but come and join the dance.'"
The owner of the long, sad, crooked face was also owner of a singularly
clear, true, well-trained voice, and Mr. Tucker's fresh baritone fitted
in finely, while Dum and Dee and I did the best we could with what
Nature had seen fit to endow us in the way of voices. Finally we girls
sank exhausted on the bare, uncovered beds, but Mr. Tucker and the
mysterious visitor stood clasping hands.
"Jeff Tucker, what in Heaven's name are you doing at a young ladies'
boarding school?"
"Entering my girls: Tweedles. And you, Jinny Cox, what are you doing
here?" And Mr. Tucker kept on shaking her hand.
"I teach singing here. Have been here for years. And to think of your
girls being old enough to go to boarding school! It seems only yesterday
that you and dear little Virginia were leading the germans at the
University. I haven't seen you since you married. I meant to write you
when Virginia died, but somehow I just couldn't."
"That was all right, Jinny. I knew how you felt without hearing from
you. She only lived a year, you know. Tweedles were just a few weeks old
when she died." And the dear man who a moment before had been so
cheerily singing the Lobster Quadrille, now wiped his eyes and seemed
given over to melancholy.
"I want you to know our girls. This is Virginia," indicating Dum, "and
this, Caroline," meaning Dee. I was rather amused at the fact that
earlier in the day he could not remember their official names, as he
called them. "I named this one Virginia, thinking she was going to have
her mother's eyes, but the little monkey changed them on me and in a
twinkling turned herself into a hazel-eyed monster," and poor Zebedee
forgot to cry any more and began to laugh. "This is the much dreaded
roommate, Miss Page Allison, of Milton, Virginia. The wild orgy which
you so tactfully joined was in honor of the discovery that this young
lady was the roommate."
"Well, girls, I am glad to see all of you and hope we can be great
friends. My name is Jane Cox. I can't remember any one having the
hardihood to call me Jinny for some sixteen or seventeen years. I
haven't danced for at least ten years. I don't know what the management
or the girls would think or say if they knew I had cut up this way. I
don't know what made me do it. I came to the door to stop the racket and
when I saw Jeff Tucker whirling around with three girls singing, 'Will
you, won't you, won't you, will you, will you join the dance?' my
discretion flew to the four winds. I just did have sense enough left to
shut the door. I forgot I was an old maid, teaching singing in a
boarding school."
"It was simply splendid of you to come in and help us out," exclaimed
Dee. Dee was usually the one who knew what to say and when to say it.
Some persons call it tact, but I have always thought it was just a kind
heart that made her know what people wanted her to say. Cousin Sue Lee
was the same kind of natural-born social wonder. "I think your voice is
beautiful, and how on earth did you happen to know our tune?"
"Why, child, your father and I made up that tune on a picnic once years
before you were born. Do you remember, Jeff, when we went to Monticello,
and how it rained? We composed the tune and improvised a Lobster
Quadrille to cheer up the bedraggled crowd. How Virginia did laugh! I
haven't thought of that tune for ages. Perhaps it is because I have not
been with the kind of people who would enjoy 'Alice in Wonderland.'"
"Zebedee has put us to sleep with it ever since we were born," said Dum.
"I mean the tune."
"And I have been reading Alice in Wonderland ever since I was born," I
ventured.
"Well, I'm certainly glad to meet some kindred spirits at Gresham," said
Miss Cox, "and now, girls, I'm going to ask a great favor of the three
of you. I want you to keep to yourselves that I broke loose as I did. I
have hard enough work as it is keeping order during study hour when that
task falls to me, and if the girls ever found out that I was capable of
such high-jinks, I'd lose all control of them." We promised, but I, for
one, thought that the more human you find your pastors and masters to
be, the more apt you are to want to make things easy for them. Miss Jane
Cox was much older than I, but she had yet to learn that wisdom.
"We'll all promise," we declared in unison.
"But please break loose again, sometimes, Jinny," begged Mr. Tucker.
"The idea of your calling yourself an old maid! I bet you are not
thirty-five yet. I'm only thirty-six myself, and, goodness knows, I am
nothing but a kid!"
"Teaching is a very aging occupation," sighed Miss Cox. "I don't mind
the singing, but it's teaching mathematics to the backward pupils that
adds ten years a season to my already full years. Do your girls sing,
Jeffry?"
"Not so's you can notice it. Dum, here, is going to be a great sculptor;
and Dee is uncertain whether she wants to be a trained nurse or a
veterinary surgeon."
"Vet'rinary surgeon? Surely you wouldn't let her go into such a
profession?" exclaimed Miss Cox with her twisted smile.
"Why not? I'll let my girls go into any profession that appeals to them.
Dum loves to make mud pies and Dee loves to nurse sick puppies. Both of
them rather dirty arts, but 'Every man to his taste.'"
Miss Cox had to leave us and go to attend to various duties, but before
going she assured Mr. Tucker that she would take especial care of all
three of his girls. You can fancy what it meant to me to be included. I
almost called him Zebedee, but I was afraid it might make him feel like
the father of triplets, so I refrained.
It was almost time for the train which Mr. Tucker was to catch, as he
intended to take a sleeper back to Richmond that night. I felt the
tactful thing for me to do would be to leave the girls alone with their
father, so I told him good-by and went off to see how Annie Pore was
faring.
I found her sitting in a forlorn heap in one of the neighboring rooms,
her hat and jacket still on; her disreputable telescope in the middle of
the room; and the expression on her face suited to the tragic muse.
"Who's your cellmate, Annie?" said I, bursting in on her.
"I don't know, but I know she will hate me."
"Hate you, indeed! No one could hate you. Why don't you unpack and get
your things in order? I am going to stay with you until Mr. Tucker
leaves, so Tweedles can get a chance to be alone with him for a while. I
am rooming with them, you know. Our room is quite near you and we can
all be real chummy."
The rooms were all perfectly bare and bleak-looking: white walls, white
iron beds, curtainless windows and carpetless floors. The pupils were
supposed to decorate their own rooms if they wanted them decorated.
Annie Pore had been put into a two-girl room a bit smaller than the one
assigned to the Tuckers and me, but otherwise exactly like it.
"I am dreading a roommate," sighed the girl. "I have never slept in the
room with any one in my life."
"Neither have I, but I am crazy about it. Just think what fun it will be
to have some one to talk to and giggle with."
I could not fancy giggling with Annie Pore in her present melancholy
frame of mind, but I was sure that was a phase that would pass and she
would end by being as girlish as the next. She had too keen a sense of
humor to be lost in gloom forever.