The next afternoon at half-past three o'clock Jimmy made his appearance
punctually at Miss Marr's, and was received with great satisfaction by
his cousin.
"It's such luck that you got Hope to come and play with us. I must say
you know how to manage people, Jimmy," cried Dolly, gleefully, after she
had greeted him.
"Play _with_ us! She's coming to play _for_ us, or for me, the Gungl'
waltzes."
"Oh, well, she'll play that duet with me now, and you'll play our
accompaniment."
"I shall do no such thing. I am going to play _your_ accompaniment now.
Miss Benham isn't coming in until four, and after she plays the waltzes
I shall go away. As if I should take advantage of her kindness in such a
manner! And how _you_ can think of doing it, I can't understand, Dolly."
"Yes, now begin to find fault with me!"
"Find fault with you! I should think I might. You do such things, Dolly.
Last night, now, everybody was looking at you."
"Why shouldn't they? A cat may look at a king, and I had an awfully
pretty gown, Jimmy;" and Dolly began to hum the closing bars of the
gavotte.
Jimmy saw how she understood, or _mis_understood things, and burst
out,--
"Look here, Dolly, don't you fancy now that those fellows were thinking
of your good looks and nothing else all the time they watched you. I
know fellows better than you do. I don't say they didn't _like_ your
looks, that they didn't admire you, but I _do_ say they didn't admire
the way you went on."
"'The way I went on'? What do you mean?"
"_You_ know,--the way you giggled, and tossed your head, and 'made
eyes,' as the French people say, at that Armitage fellow. I didn't
happen to be near you to notice what you were doing until the last of
the evening, but that was enough. I knew, by what I _did_ see, how you'd
been going on, for I've seen you at a party before, Dolly."
"Oh, I know what you mean; you mean that I flirt. I've heard that
before, Jimmy. _I_ can't help it if I have more attention than other
girls, just because I'm lively, and know how to talk."
"Flirt! yes, that's what you call it,--that giggling, and tossing your
head, and saying pert things. It's like a girl at a Park Beach
picnic,--what you call 'flirting.' It is vulgar, and that's what all the
fellows I know think of it; and while _you_ think they are paying you
admiring attentions, they're just having fun at your expense; and it
makes me ashamed, for you are my cousin, and--"
"And you are the most conceited boy that ever lived. You think you know
_everything_, and you don't know _any_thing about society. A girl is
always older than a boy in all society matters; everybody says so; and
though you're sixteen, and I'm only fifteen, I'm a whole year ahead of
you,--you're just a _little boy_ to _me_. One of my sister's friends, a
_man_ who knows, said to me, _this_ vacation, that I seemed to be
eighteen rather than fifteen."
Jimmy stared at his cousin for a moment in sheer astonishment; then he
exclaimed,--
"Dolly! what _are_ you thinking of, not to see--"
"Oh, I know what you're going to say,--not to see that it is I who am
conceited."
"And where did you get all that stuff in your head about society; and
what idiot told you you seemed to be eighteen rather than fifteen?"
"It was no idiot," triumphantly; "it was Mr. George Atherton."
"George Atherton. Oh, then it is you who are the idiot not to see that
Mr. Atherton was poking fun at you, or else he meant that you _looked_
eighteen with your height and size altogether. But it is of no use
talking to you, I see that."
"No, it isn't of the slightest use. We've wasted time now,--the time we
ought to be trying this nocturne; and, if you please, Master Jimmy," and
Dolly bowed, with a patronizing air, "we'll begin to play, or we sha'n't
get through before Hope comes in."
Jimmy stared again. He was seeing Dolly in a new phase. Instead of
flying into a passion, instead of turning upon him with tears and
reproaches, she stood her ground with a semblance of cool superiority
that astonished him. What did it mean? Was she getting so spoiled and
puffed up by her vanity that the truths he had placed before her went
for nothing against the flattery that she provoked? He knew that Dolly
was not very finely sensitive, was what he called "dense;" but he had
never thought that her good sense could be obscured by this density to
the extent of making her positively impervious to criticism, as she
seemed to be now. But such really was the fact. Not finely sensitive at
the start, as I have endeavored to show, Dolly was full of
self-confidence, and also full of animal spirits. With such a
combination of qualities, it was not strange that she should be
convinced that her own way was the only right way, and when led by her
vanity through a little additional flattery, this conviction became so
strong that no amount of criticism or opposition could move her. It
would be only through some individual experience, some suffering in
connection with this experience of having her own way, that Dolly would
be likely to have her eyes opened to her own mistakes, and be able to
see where she had blundered and what her blunders meant to others, as
well as herself. Fresh, however, from what she thought her success of
the night before, even Jimmy's words of protest, which usually moved her
either to anger or tears, had no effect upon her. For the time she felt
herself vastly superior to Jimmy in years and judgment, and from this
standpoint she had met his criticism with a calmness that he could not
at first understand. Of course this assumption of superiority was not a
little irritating to Jimmy, modest though he was; and as he sat there
playing the accompaniment to the nocturne, and pausing at almost every
bar to correct Dolly's false notes, he was also pondering over her false
notes in more important directions, and puzzling himself with
suppositions as to her present attitude.
They were in the last passages of the piece, and Dolly was listening to
his corrections in an absent-minded way that exasperated him, when the
door opened, and there was Hope, with her violin, followed by Myra
Donaldson, who was to play her accompaniment. Dolly did not wait to
finish the bar she was scraping at, but jumped up at sight of Hope, with
a "Oh, there you are, and you've got that dear little violin. Isn't it a
beauty, Jimmy? See here!" and with one of her quick, confident
movements, she took the instrument--one could almost say she snatched
it--from Hope's hands, and held it out to her cousin, pointing to the
shape and the beautiful red coloring with its dark veining, repeating,
as she did so,--
"See! isn't it beautiful?"
She was turning it over, when Jimmy said, with a certain quick, sharp
note in his voice,--
"I hope you'll excuse my cousin, Miss Benham; she has been so used to
handling her own violin carelessly she forgets that other people may
feel differently with regard to their instruments; and--"
"Jimmy is as cross as two sticks this morning, Hope; he's done nothing
but lecture me ever since he came in," Dolly declared airily; but at the
same moment she gave the violin back into its owner's hands, to the
owner's great relief, who could not help glancing gratefully at Jimmy as
she received it. This glance of gratitude did more to restore Jimmy's
good-humor, that had been so sorely disturbed, than anything else could
have done; "for," he said to himself, "she doesn't think I'm exactly
like Dolly if I _am_ her cousin, and, in spite of Dolly, I believe we
should be first-rate friends if we saw more of each other."
He was still more convinced of this possible friendliness as he listened
to Hope's playing,--as he saw how thorough an artist she was, how she
loved and lived in her music, when the violin was in her hands. No silly
little tricks about her, no showing off in her pose and expression like
some girl-players he had seen,--like Dolly, for instance,--and yet how
pretty she was, with that smooth, brown hair ruffling out around her
forehead, and the color coming and going, and the brown eyes, too,
coming and going, as it were, in their expression, as she played. As
pretty as Dolly _and not thinking_ about it,--not thinking about it a
bit, as she stood there, an image of grace, her chin bent lovingly down
to her violin, her skilful hands evoking such exquisite strains. And
those waltzes! Were there any that were ever written fuller of perfect
melody? So absorbed was Jimmy in all this listening and looking, he
quite forgot that he had meant to run away directly after Hope had
played. Dolly saw that he had forgotten; and while he was yet in the
tide of his enthusiastic thanks for the Gungl' waltzes, she slipped the
duet she had brought down with her on the music-rack, and said,--
[Illustration: "SHE STOOD THERE AN IMAGE OF GRACE, HER CHIN BENT LOVINGLY
DOWN TO HER VIOLIN"]
"Now, Hope, do just try this with me."
"Dolly--Miss Benham must be tired; she must want to rest," broke in
Jimmy, his face flushing, his tone revealing his mortification.
Hope saw the flush, and noted the tone. She could not add to his
mortification, and going back to the music-stand, she said quietly,--
"Oh, it is one of those pretty folk-songs. Yes, I'll try it with you;
I'm not tired."
And so it was in this way that Kate Van der Berg's prophecy was
fulfilled.
"I knew it would come about, I knew it, I knew it!" cried Kate,
triumphantly, when Myra Donaldson told her what had happened, "for I
never saw such a persistent girl in my life as Dorothea,--so persistent
and so thick-skinned."
"But Hope couldn't help giving in to her," explained Myra; "she was so
sorry for Dorothea's cousin."
"Of course. I do wonder if Dorothea was clever enough to see that,--to
plan it, perhaps."
"No, I don't think she planned it, and I don't think she saw in the
least why Hope gave in to her. She probably thought Hope had the leisure
just then, and felt like it."
"Well, she _is_ the queerest girl; but her cousin is a dear little
fellow. My brother Schuyler and Peter Van Loon like him immensely.
Schuyler likes him so much he wants to get him to come up and visit us
this summer. I hope he will; he knows everything about a boat, and that
means a great deal in the way of a good time with us."
"Why don't _you_ invite Dorothea to come up with him?"
"Yes, why don't I?" and Kate laughed. Then all at once she burst out
seriously: "How she _did_ go on at the party; and look here, Myra, I'll
tell you something if you won't speak of it to any one,--any one but
Hope,--I've told Hope."
"No, I won't say a word about it."
"Well, you saw how she carried on,--flirted in that silly, loud way with
Raymond Armitage?"
"Yes."
"Well, what do you think? She--she's carrying on the flirtation still."
"No--no, you don't mean it!"
"I do."
"_How_ is she carrying it on?"
"The next day after the party, the next morning,--that's day before
yesterday,--I was down early, hunting for my carnelian pin; I'd dropped
it somewhere, and I thought it might be in the reception-room, as I
missed it soon after I had left the room to go upstairs the night
before. I found it at last under a chair by the window. It was a little
bent, and I stood at the window trying to straighten it, when I saw
three or four of the Institute boys coming along on their way to school.
One of them was Raymond Armitage; and as he passed by, I heard him say
to the others,--
"'I have a note from my sister that I've got to leave here. Walk on
slowly, and I'll catch up with you.'
"Ann was in the hall dusting, and so his ring was answered immediately;
and as the reception-room door was ajar, I heard him say to her,--
"'Will you give this note to Miss Dorothea Dering?'
"Then I knew that he dropped something, some piece of money, into the
girl's hand, for I could hear her say,--
"'Oh, thank you, sir, I'll go right up with it now,' which she did the
instant she had closed the door."
"Well, if I ever!"
"Wait a minute; this isn't all. Just after luncheon that very day, mamma
called and took me down town to be measured for my new jacket. After
that was over, I sat waiting in the carriage, while mamma went into a
shop to give an order. Michael drew up just beyond to make room for
another carriage, and that brought us right in front of Huyler's; and
there, through the clear glass of the door, I saw Dorothea Dering and
Raymond Armitage laughing and talking together at the ice-cream soda
counter."
"Of all--"
"But wait again; this isn't all. At the same hour after luncheon to-day,
as I came along the corridor past Dorothea's room, I saw Ann standing at
the open door, and whipping out from under her apron what I knew at once
was a box of candy, and I heard her say, 'The same young gentleman as
sent the note, miss.' Now, what do you think of all this?"
"I think it is perfectly disgusting. What are you going to do about it?
Something ought to be done to stop it."
"What _can_ I do?"
"Oughtn't you to tell Miss Marr?"
"Yes, I suppose I ought, if nothing else will do; but I hate to be a
tell-tale. Boys never tell tales of each other. I've got brothers, you
know, and I've heard them talk so much about that. I've heard Schuyler
say that girls grew up to be women gossips because they tattle so much
at school. If I thought it would do any good, I would speak to Dorothea;
but she would resent it, and would very likely tell me, in her blunt
way, that she could manage her own affairs, and that I'd better mind my
own business, or something of that kind."
"Yes, I suppose that she would; but it _is_ our business as well as
hers, when she is doing something that is going to hurt the school. What
did Hope say when you told her about it?"
"She said it ought to be stopped some way, just for that reason,--that
it would hurt the school dreadfully, as well as Dorothea, and nearly
kill Miss Marr."
"Of course it would; it's so vulgar and cheap. When did that cousin of
Dorothea's go back?"
"Yesterday."
"He was staying with some relatives, wasn't he?"
"Yes, cousins, I believe."
"Why couldn't somebody tell _them_? They might stop it; and it must be
stopped, or--you know what Miss Marr _might_ do? She might, you know,
send her home,--expel her at once."
"Yes, I thought of that; and that was one reason I had for not telling
her."
"Oh, it's all so silly! What fun could there be in sneaking off to drink
ice-cream soda with Raymond Armitage?"
"No particular fun in the soda itself. The fun to Dorothea was just the
sneaking off. You can see she thinks she's having 'great larks,' as
she'd call it,--is being independent and having adventures and being a
great flirt, and that Raymond Armitage admires her for it. And Raymond
Armitage is simply laughing in his sleeve at her. Oh, I should think any
girl would have better sense, better taste; and Anna Fleming talks about
her family."
"But she isn't the only one of her family. There's her cousin; look at
him: he's a little gentleman if ever there was one. What would he say to
her if he knew? And just think! there she was back again, playing on her
violin with him as cool as you please, directly after her lark, and no
doubt pluming herself on it."
"I wonder what excuse she made to get off as she did?"
"Excuse? You don't suppose she made any excuse? Not she. She just
skipped out, in the rest hour, when Miss Marr and the other teachers
were off duty; and she managed to come back at the right time. Oh, it
makes me more and more indignant the longer I think of it, for it's a
bigger shame because Miss Marr is so nice about our school parties and
our receptions, and treats us like ladies, and trusts us to _be_ ladies,
and not to deceive her. But hark! it's striking six, and I must get
ready for dinner."