The Flower Show Ticket
"I call it mean of Mabel."
Jean sat in a crinkled heap on her bedroom floor, and pulled
bad-temperedly with a wire comb at straight unruly hair. It had always
annoyed Mabel that Jean should use a wire comb, when it set her "teeth
on edge even to look at it."
Mabel however was out of the way, well out of it, they decided, and Elma
and Betty had invaded the room belonging to the elder two in order to
condole with Jean.
"Mabel could easily have got another ticket--and said she didn't want
it! Didn't want it, when we're dying to go! And then off she goes,
looking very prim and grown-up, with Cousin Harry."
Jean threw her head back, and began to gather long heavy ends in order
for braiding.
"Just wait till I grow up! I shall soon take it out of Mabel," she
said.
"Oh, girls, girls!"
Mrs. Leighton's voice at the door was very accusing.
"Well, mummy, it was mean. We've always gone together before, and now
Mabel won't go with one of us."
"Not if you behave in this manner," said Mrs. Leighton. "I do not like
any of my girls to be spiteful, you know."
"Spiteful!" exclaimed Jean. She ran rapid fingers in and out the
lengthening braid of hair, till long ends were brought in front. She
put these energetically in her mouth, while she hunted for the ribbon
lying by her.
"Oh, Jean," said Mrs. Leighton, "I've asked you so often not to do
that."
"Sorry, mummy," said Jean, disengaging the ends abruptly.
Mrs. Leighton sat down rather heavily on a chair.
"You didn't say you were sorry for being spiteful," she remarked
gravely.
"Well, mummy, are we spiteful, that's the question?"
Elma sat on a bed, looking specially tragic.
"It's _awful_ to be left out of things now by Mabel," she said.
Betty looked as though she meant to cry.
"Well, I never," said Mrs. Leighton. "You must take your turn. You
don't come wherever your father and I go, or Cuthbert. You know you
don't."
"I think that Cuthbert might occasionally take us, however," said Jean.
"We all went to the flower show last year," wailed Elma.
"Yes, with the parasols papa brought us from London," said Betty. "And
Mabel said it was like carrying four bassinettes in a row, and snapped
hers down and wouldn't put it up till she got separated from us."
"She was growing up even then," said Jean in a melancholy manner.
"Come, come, girls," interrupted Mrs. Leighton. "You may be just the
same when you grow up. I won't allow you to be down on poor Mabel.
Especially when she isn't here to speak for herself."
"When we grow up there will always be one less to tyrannize over," said
Jean. "Honestly, mother, I never would have thought that Mabel could be
so priggish. Do you know why she wouldn't have us? I'm too big and
gawky, and Elma is always saying silly things, and Betty is just a baby.
There you are."
"Well, it isn't very nice of Mabel, but you mustn't believe she means
that," said Mrs. Leighton. "And after all, Mabel must have her little
day. She was very good, let me tell you, very sweet and nice when you
were babies and she just a little thing. She nursed you, Elma and
Betty, often and often, and put you to sleep when your own nurse
couldn't, and she has looked after you all more or less ever since. You
might let her grow up without being worried."
"It's hateful to be called a nuisance," said Jean, somewhat mollified.
"Why do you waste time over it, I wonder," said Mrs. Leighton. "Instead
of moping Jean might be golfing, and Elma and Betty having tea at Miss
Annie's; with nobody at all being nice to your poor old mother."
It dawned on them how selfish they might all be.
"Oh, mummy," cried three reproachful voices.
"Well, Elma likes Miss Grace much better than she does me, and Betty
likes her rabbits, and Jean despises me because I don't play golf. I
lead a very lonely life," said Mrs. Leighton.
"Oh, mummy!"
"My idea, when I came into your room," said Mrs. Leighton, "was to
propose that we might walk into town and get Jean's new hat, and take
tea at Crowther's, and drive home if my poor old leg won't hold out for
walking both ways. But we've wasted so much time in talking about
Mabel----"
"Oh, mummy--Your bonnet, your veil, and your gloves, and do be quick,
mummy," cried Elma. "We're very sorry about Mabel."
They flew in self-reproachful manner to getting her off to her room and
making their own things fly.
"After all, we are a beastly set of prigs," called out Jean to Elma.
"And I think I ought to have a biscuit-coloured straw, don't you?"
It was one of a series of encounters with which the new tactics of Mabel
invaded the family. Mrs. Leighton's gentle rule was sorely tried for
quite a long time in this way. Although she reasoned with the younger
girls on the side of Mabel, she took Mabel severely to task for her
behaviour over the flower show.
"It wasn't nice of you," she told her, "to cut off any little invitation
for your sisters. You must not begin by being selfish, you know. There
are few enough things happening here not to spread the opportunities.
Jean wouldn't have troubled you. She may be at the gawky stage, but she
makes plenty of friends."
Mrs. Leighton could be very impartial in her judgments.
But Mabel was hurt. She preserved a superior air, which became
extremely annoying to the girls.
The greatest crime that she committed was when Jean, amiably engaging
her in conversation in the old way, asked, "And how was Adelaide Maud
dressed?"
Mabel turned in a very studied manner and stared past Jean and every
one.
"I don't think I observed Adelaide Maud," she said.
This was more than human beings could stand.
"I think it's most ir--ir----"
"Oh, find the word first and talk afterwards," said Mabel grandly. "You
kids get on one's nerves."
"Kids--nerves," cried Jean faintly. "I think Mabel is taking brain
fever."
Elma left the room abruptly, much on the verge of tears, and she tried
to find solace in her dictionary. The word was "irrelevant"--yet did not
seem to fit the occasion at all. What would Miss Annie or Miss Grace
do, if a sister had turned old and strange in a few days like that?
What would mother have done? Mother's sisters always complimented each
other when they met. They never quarrelled. Of course they never could
have quarrelled. "Forgive and forget," Aunt Katharine once had said had
always been their motto. Forgiving seemed very easy--but forgetting with
Adelaide Maud in the question--what an impossibility! Miss Annie had an
axiom that when you felt worried about one matter the correct thing to
do was to think about another. Elma thought and thought, but everything
worked round to the traitorous remark of Mabel's about Adelaide Maud.
It seemed as though her head could hold nothing else but that one idea
about Adelaide Maud, until suddenly it dawned on her that it was really
rather fine and grand of Mabel that she should talk in this negligent
manner of any one so magnificent. This reflection gave her the greatest
possible comfort. To be condescending, even in a mere frame of mind, to
the Story Book Girls seemed like the swineherd becoming a prince. Elma
began to think how jolly it would be to hear Mabel saying, "You know, my
dear Helen, I don't think you ought to wear heliotrope, it hardly suits
you." There was something very delicious in having Mabel starchy and
proud after all. Elma heard her coming upstairs to her bedroom to dress
for dinner just then. The fall of the footsteps seemed to suggest that
some of the starchiness had departed from Mabel. Much of the quality of
sympathy which had produced such a person as Miss Grace, was to be found
in Elma. Jean and Betty had hardened their two little hearts to the
consistency of flint over the behaviour of Mabel, but the mere fact that
Elma thought her footsteps seemed to flag and become tired roused her to
chivalrous eagerness towards making it up. She went into Mabel's room
and sat on the window seat. It was a long, low, pleasant couch let into
a wide window looking on the lawn and gardens at the front of the house.
The sun poured in on Elma, who forgot the habits of upright behaviour
which she exhibited at Miss Annie's, and sprawled there with her fingers
on the cord of the blind.
Mabel drew her hatpins out of fair braids in an admiring yet
disconsolate manner. She took a hand glass and had first a side view,
then a back view of the new effect, patted little stray locks into
place, and ruffled out others.
"What's up, Mabs? You don't look en--thusiastic," asked Elma.
"It's papa. After my lovely day too. He wants me to play that Mozart
thing with Betty to-night. Mozart and Betty! Isn't it stale? I hate
Mozart, and I hate drumming away at silly things with Betty." A very
discontented sigh accompanied these remarks.
"I really don't see why I should always be tacked on to Betty or to Jean
or you. I haven't a minute to myself."
"Oh, Mabs, you've had a lovely day!"
The words broke out in an accusing manner. Elma had certainly intended
to comfort Mabel, yet immediately began by expostulating with her.
Mabel turned round, with her seventeenth birthday present, a fine
silver-backed brush, in her hand.
"_Have_ I had a lovely day, have I?" she asked. "I've had simply nothing
of the kind. Jean went on so about not going that Cousin Harry seemed
to think I had injured her. He made me feel like a criminal all
afternoon. These navy men like lots of girls round them. One or two
more don't make the difference to them that it makes to us. At least
it's a different kind of difference. A nice one. I think it was
abominable of him. My first chance--and to spoil it, all because of
Jean! It wasn't fair of her."
Elma began to feel her reason rocking with the sudden justice of this
new argument.
"A minute ago, I thought it wasn't fair of you," she said reflectively.
"I can see it will be awfully hard to get us all peacefully grown up.
Betty will have the best of it. I shall simply give in to her right
along the line. I can see that. I really couldn't stand the worry of
it."
"I suppose you wouldn't have gone to the flower show without Jean?"
asked Mabel in rather a scornful way.
"Good gracious, no," said Elma simply. "I should have presented her
with the one and only ticket, just for the sake of peace."
"That's a rotten, weak way to behave," said Mabel, with a touch of
Cuthbert's best manner.
"I know. I don't mean that you should have given her the ticket. You
weren't made to be bullied. I was. I feel it in my bones every time
any one is horrid to me."
"I'm getting tired of giving up to others," said Mabel, still on her
determined tack. "You can't think what it has been during these years.
I mustn't do this and that because of the children. It's always been
like that. And now when I'm longing to go to dances and balls, I've got
to go right off after dinner and play Mozart with Betty. It's all very
well for papa, he hasn't had the work I've had. If I play now, I want
to play something better than a tum-tum accompaniment."
"Mozart isn't tum-tum," said Elma, "and papa has been listening to us
all these years. It must have been very trying."
"Well, all I can say is that, at his time of life, he ought to be saved
from hearing Betty scrape on her fiddle every night as she does
nowadays. Instead, you would think he hadn't had one musical daughter,
he's so keen on the latest."
"Miss Annie says it never does to be selfish," said Elma gravely. "I
think that's being selfish, the way you talk."
Mabel stopped at the unclasping of her waist-belt.
"Miss Annie! Well, I like that! Don't you know there isn't so selfish
a person in the world as Miss Annie. I've heard people say it."
She nodded with two pins in her mouth, then released them as she went
on.
"Miss Annie made up her mind to lie on a nice bed and have Miss Grace
wait on her. And she's done it. There's nothing succeeds like success."
Mabel nodded her head with the wisdom of centuries.
"Oh, Mabs, how can you?" Elma was dreadfully shocked. A vision of poor
martyred Miss Annie, with "something internal," being supposed to like
what was invariably referred to in that household as "the bed of pain,"
to have conferred on herself this dreadful thing from choice and
wilfulness, this vision was an appalling one.
"How can you say such things of Miss Annie? Who would ever go to bed
for all these years for the pleasure of the thing?"
"I would," said Mabel. "Yes, at the present moment, I would. I should
like to have something very pathetic happen to me, so that I should be
obliged to lie in bed like Miss Annie, and have somebody nice and
sympathetic come in and stroke my hand! Cousin Harry, for instance. He
can look so kind and be so comforting when he likes. But, oh! Elma, he
was a beast to-day."
The truth was out at last. Mabel sat suddenly on the couch beside Elma,
and burst into tears.
"I think I hate being grown up," she said, "if people treat you in that
stiff severe way. Nobody ever did it before--ever."
Elma stroked and stroked her hand. "The Leighton lump," as they
interpreted the slightly hysterical quality which made each girl cry
when the other began, rose in riotous disobedience in her throat, and
strangled any further effort at consolation.
"Why don't you say something," wailed Mabel.
"I'm trying not to cry too," at last said Elma.
Then they both laughed.
"I should go right to Cousin Harry and tell him all about it," Elma
managed to counsel at last. "I thought you were a beast--but it's
awfully hard on you. It's awfully hard on all of us--having sisters."
"Yes, isn't it," groaned Mabel.
"Harry is very understanding. Almost as understanding as papa is."
"Papa! _Do_ you think papa understands?"
"Papa understands everything," said Elma. Then a very loyal
recollection of the afternoon they had spent in the cheery presence of
Mrs. Leighton beset her. "Also mamma, I think she's a duck," said Elma.