Glory and Diantha were awakened from their rosy dreams by a sharp
voice calling, "Fire! Fire!" They started up in affright, only to
find little Timmie perched on the foot of the bed, crying
monotonously, "Fire! Fire!" and interspersing his fire-alarm with
brisk drummings of his crutch against the footboard. But though he
had alarmed the girls, he himself did not look alarmed.
"Fire! Fire! Fi--"
"Timothy Leavitt, where is it? Tell me quick!" his sister gasped
breathlessly.
"In the kitchen. Fire! Fire! Fi--"
"The kitchen? What part of it?--where?"
"In the stove. _I_ built it," Timmie said in an aggrieved tone, but
his eyes were glinting with mischief sparks. "I built it hours ago,
an' you didn't get up--an' you _didn't_ get up! I didn't s'pose we'd
ever have breakfast unless I wokened you up."
"You bad little boy! So you went and made us think there was a fire?"
"Well, there is--I built it, so there!"
Glory was still laughing periodically over their fright, when they
got to the station to take the train. She had the picture of
innocent-faced Timmie still in her mind, and the monotonous drumming
of his little crutch, between his alarms, in her ears.
"'Fire! Fire! Fire! Fire!'" she sang laughingly. "Didn't the little
scamp give us a fine scare, though! But he woke us up!"
"Oh, yes, he woke us up," answered the Other Girl, grimly.
After morning recitations, the Principal of the Centre Town Seminary
had a caller in her office. It was Glory, with a pretty little air of
pleading about her. She came in, in answer to the Principal's "Come,"
and stood, a suppliant, in the doorway.
"Are you busy? Ought I to go away?" she asked. "You see, I've got
quite a lot to say."
"Then say it, my dear," the Principal smiled pleasantly. "Sit down in
that chair and begin."
"Well, then--oh, Miss Sweetwater, can't my friend graduate with me? I
mean, if you let me graduate--or if you _don't_ let me--I mean can't
she graduate, anyway? She is a splendid scholar, and--and she needs
to graduate somewhere! You'll let her, won't you?"
The Principal smiled. "Who is your friend, Glory?" she asked.
"She's Diantha Leavitt, and she works in the rubber factory, and
studies just awfully at home, and I help her some going and coming on
the train."
"Oh, she is not one of the Seminary girls, then? She has never been
here? Dear child, how do you think she can graduate if she has never
been here to school?"
Glory's eager face fell. "I didn't know but you'd let her," she said,
slowly. "She's just as smart as can be. I'm just sure she can pass
the examinations. It would mean so much to Diantha to pass. I'm sorry
I troubled you, Miss Sweetwater--I didn't know."
But the kind-hearted Principal detained Glory and drew out the whole
wistful little story of the Other Girl. At the end, she said, "I am
glad to know of her. Such a girl must be encouraged. I will keep
mindful of her and see if I cannot help her in some way."
"Thank you. I hope you can help her. She wants to do so much if she
can ever get to earning. It seems as though almost anyone could learn
if they had a mother to help, and a Tiny Tim. There's an Aunt Hope. I
can do it for her. I'm glad I've got to work. And thanks to Di, I do
not stand so bad a show of graduating--with a great deal of honor,
too. Dear old Di!"
More of the late winter days snowed past, and there came, by and by,
hints of spring--faint suggestions of green in the bare, brown spots,
whiffs of spring tonic in the air and clear little bird-calls
overhead. New courage was born in Glory's heart and the Other Girl's,
and both studied harder and harder with each day that went by. The
Crosspatch Conductor took note of the two brown heads bent over the
book and wondered behind his grim mask.
"What is it, anyhow?" he asked one day, late in the spring, stopping
before them in the aisle.
The two pairs of eyes met his laughingly. "Oh--things. Splendid
things!" Glory said. "Certificates and diplomas some day, and sick
folks with glad faces, and little boys with twin legs! Isn't that
enough to 'pay'?"
"Umph!" the Crosspatch Conductor muttered in his beard, and strode on
down the aisle. But he beckoned Glory aside that night on the home
trip and questioned her about the Other Girl. Glory told him the
whole story in a few hurried words.
"That's why she's studying so hard," she wound up, out of breath.
"She wants to get it all and some day be a teacher."
"And you're helping her," the Crosspatch Conductor said, gruffly.
"Mercy, no! She's helping me. That's why _I'm_ studying so hard! I
don't see what you mean--oh! In the very beginning, you mean? _That?_
I'd forgotten there ever was a time when I helped her. I s'pose I
might have a little, at first."
The conductor put his big hand on Glory's shoulder with a touch as
light and caressing as that of a woman.
"You're the right kind, both o' you," he said. "It never comes amiss
to help anybody. I've half a mind to try a little of it myself. See
here, don't you tell her and go to raising hopes, but it kind of
seems to me as though I knew a place where she could teach right
away. I know a boy who hasn't any mother that wants to learn things.
She'd make a pretty good sort of a teacher for a little feller who
can never go outdoors and get the sunshine, and all that, now
wouldn't she?"
"Oh, are you sure there is such a boy? Can you get him for Diantha?
Would it pay her money--lots of it?"
"Easy! Easy! Don't go too fast. It wouldn't pay her a fortune, 'cause
fortunes ain't found like hazel nuts, growing on bushes. But it ought
to pay her pretty tolerable. I'm sure enough about the boy;" and a
sad look came into the conductor's eyes. "He hasn't any mother, you
see, and it's pretty hard for the little chap."
"Is he your boy?" asked Glory, putting her little hand on the
conductor's sleeve and looking sympathetically up into the grave
eyes.
The conductor nodded. "He's mine, and his grandmother says he ought
to be learning things--poor Dan! That girl over there wouldn't be a
very bad one to help him get hold, now would she?"
"Oh! Oh! Oh! What will she say? Why, if I had a little boy and he
couldn't go out into the sunshine, and he wanted to learn, I'd rather
have Diantha's little finger to help him with than the whole of some
folks. You don't know Di."
The conductor laughed. "I guess I haven't been watching you two this
winter without finding out something," he said, his eyes holding a
twinkle. Then the old, gruff manner came back to him and he added
brusquely, "But there, don't you go to countin' the chickens before
they're hatched. I'll have to talk with grandma first; maybe she'd
rather have a sort of circumspect person."
"But your Danny wouldn't--you said his name was Dan," said Glory, her
face one sea of dimples, and her eyes like diamonds. "'Most seems as
if a little boy who couldn't go out in the sunshine ought to have the
one he'd like best with him. He wouldn't care much for a--a
circumspect person, would he?" asked Glory, a merry twinkle in her
eyes.
"There now, you go along!" said the conductor, laughing in spite of
himself.
But Glory did not "go along" until she had caught the big hand and
squeezed it between her soft little palms as it was extended to help
her down to the Douglas platform.
That night Glory could hardly wait to get to Aunt Hope.
"Oh, auntie, won't it be splendid if she gets that place!" she cried
when she had unfolded the beautiful plan at which the conductor had
hinted.
"But you mustn't set your heart on it, Glory. The grandmother may not
think that so young a girl will do for the boy."
"She will when she sees Diantha, auntie--I am just sure of it. Di is
so strong and helpful, and so cheery, and so full of courage, and
never thinks of herself, but always of others."
"Well, dear, we will leave it in the good Father's hands, and just
ask him to bring it out in the way that is best for all."
* * * * *
June and all its glory was touching the world, and the sweet air,
full of the perfume of rose and honeysuckle, crept in and fanned two
faces close together on the sofa pillows.
"Auntie, you haven't called me 'Little Disappointment' this ever so
long," Glory said suddenly after a long silence. "Is it a good sign?
I thought--well--maybe it was."
"Dear child!" Aunt Hope's arms were round Glory, holding her in their
feeble, loving clasp. "Dear child, did I ever call you that? Are you
sure? Well, I shall never do it again, dear, as long as we twain
shall live! Do you want a new name, Glory?"
"Yes'm, please," murmured the girl.
"Then you are my Little Ambition, and God bless you, dear!"
After that it was still again, and the cool darkness wrapped them in
softly. They could hear the solemn tick-tock of the clock across the
room. It was the same clock that used to say reproachful things to
Glory when she was a little child and had been naughty. Once she had
climbed on a chair and stopped its accusing tongue, because she could
not bear it any longer. It was talking to Glory now, and she could
not make it say anything but "Dear--child! dear--child!" over and
over, solemnly. It was Aunt Hope's voice it was trying to imitate.
Glory laughed out softly, under her breath.
"What is it, dear child?"
"Dear--child! dear--child!" echoed the clock solemnly.
"I've got to get up and stop that clock!" Glory said.
* * * * *
The week before the graduating exercises at the Centre Town
Seminary, Glory had another of her "ideas," and of course she carried
it to Aunt Hope.
"Why not?" she said, when she had introduced it to her. "It would be
like one of Tiny Tim's plays. He could go, too, and help us 'play'
it, don't you see? I think I should enjoy graduating better if
Diantha 'played graduate' with me. The teacher wouldn't care if she
sat with me down on the end seat. I don't believe she ever had a
white dress in her life--a soft, thin, floaty one."
"Would you like to have hers just like yours, Glory?"
"Just, auntie. She's the--the _friendest_ friend I ever had," Glory
said simply. "I'd like to have her close when I'm there getting ready
to read."
And so it came about that graduation day found the Other Girl beside
Glory, in a beautiful white dress that lay about her in soft, sheer
folds. The Other Girl's face above it was shining and rapt. This was
almost like graduating herself. On the other side of Glory sat Tiny
Tim, in the conscious pride of his best suit. There was no little
crutch in sight. Timmie had hidden it under the seat. He was playing
"Uncrutchit."
"You can't see--an'thing, can you?" he whispered anxiously to the
Other Girl, across Glory's lap.
"Not a splinter of it, Timmie."
"An' you don't see where my legs don't match, do you?"
"No, not a single bit."
"That's all right, then." Timmie's brow smoothed with relief. He was
silent a moment, and then his little whispering voice again, this
time to Glory:
"Say, isn't this just splendid! I'm playin', an' Di's playin'. You're
the only one that's _it_, honest true."
Another silence. Then, "Say, I'm sorry I wokened you up that time,
screamin' 'Fire!'"
Glory laughed down into the repentant little face. "I'll forgive you,
Timmie," she whispered. And then the exercises began and the air was
full of a blast of jubilant music.
When it was all over, the three went back to Little Douglas together
on the train. There was to be a bit of a banquet in Aunt Hope's room.
Glory had a neat white parchment roll in her hand, and she held it
shyly, as if she had not had time to get very well acquainted with
it.
"To think this is a diploma with Gloria Wetherell in Latin inside
it!" she cried.
"To think this is a beautiful white dress with _me_ inside!" answered
the Other Girl. "Do you know--oh, do you _know_, it doesn't smell of
rubber at all? There isn't a whiff about it; it's just sweet and
dainty and--_other-folksy_."
On the train the Crosspatch Conductor drew Glory aside a moment. His
eyes rested first on the parchment roll.
"Got it, didn't you? Good! Well, I've got it too. She's
consented--grandma has. I've told her all about the other one, and
what you said, and it's going to be all right. We won't tell her yet
until we get kind of used to it ourselves, don't you see?"
"Oh, I'm so glad!" cried Glory, clasping her hands. "I don't believe
I ever can keep it. To think she'll leave that old rubber factory and
be in a nice, pleasant home all the time, and help her folks, and be
having some of her dreams come true. I wonder what she will say!"
"I thought we'd get her over to the house and have Danny tell her.
He's a great one for setting things out."
"You're the best man I ever knew in the wide world!" said Glory. "But
I can't keep it very long--you mustn't expect me to."
The conductor laughed. "All right--all right. I'll get grandma to
write. I've got her address. One of the men down at the factory told
me a good deal about her. There are many ways of finding out about
folks when one sets about it."
"Well, you'll never find out anything about Diantha but what's nice,"
said Glory. "Oh! I'm so glad!" And not a happier girl than Gloria
Wetherell could have been found in all that region.
As to the Other Girl, her heart nearly burst with its weight of
happiness when she found out what was in store for her.
"It's Glory's doings. She has just glorified my whole life, and
helped me to find the rainbow. And Timmie!--won't I find a rainbow
for him too, bless him! And some day his legs shall be twins, if
working can do it."
End of Project Gutenberg's Glory and the Other Girl, by Annie Hamilton Donnell