NEWS INDEED!
“I have a piece of news for you,” said Mr. Fayre, as the family sat at
dinner one night.
“What is it, Dads?” asked Dolly, as her father paused.
He was still silent, and his face looked a little grave as his eyes
rested in turn on his two daughters and on their guest, for Dotty was
still there. After a moment, he said:
“I’m afraid it will hit you hard, Trudy, and I know it will make Dolly
miserable. So I hate to tell you. But it must be told. I’ve been ordered
to Buffalo.”
For a moment the girls didn’t take in just what he meant, then Trudy
cried, “Go to Buffalo! To live? All of us?”
“Well, Trude, I certainly couldn’t leave any of my family behind me.
Mother and I are going, and I guess you girls better come along too.”
Dolly sat looking at her father, her eyes very wide and very blue as she
thought over what he was saying.
“We can’t do it,” she said, finally, and as if she were disposing of the
whole matter: “I can’t go away from Berwick to live.”
“But, Dolly dear, where would you live, here alone? In Treasure House?”
“She can live with me!” exclaimed Dotty, excitedly. “Why, she’ll _have_
to. I won’t let my Dollyrinda go away from Berwick. She’s mine, and I’ve
got to keep her!”
“Is it really true, Father?” asked Trudy, looking very thoughtful. “Must
we go?”
“Yes, dear,” answered Mr. Fayre. “The company has transferred me to the
Buffalo office, and I must obey or leave the road. You know a freight
superintendent is under orders from his superiors.”
“There isn’t anybody superior to you, Daddy,” said Dolly, who was
looking blank and stunned at the news she had heard. “Can’t you tell the
president, or whoever is sending you, that you won’t go?”
“I might, Dolly; but that might mean my entire dismissal, and who’d buy
your hair-ribbons then, my girl?”
“But to Buffalo!” wailed Dolly. “We might as well go to Timbuctoo!”
“It’s awful,” said Trudy, with a long-drawn sigh. “Did you know about
it, Mother?”
“Yes, some days ago. And I knew how sorry you girls would feel. But I
know you’ll brace up and meet the disappointment bravely, for Father’s
sake. He doesn’t want to hurt his girls so, but he can’t help it.”
“What will Bert say?” said Dolly; “won’t he be mad!”
“I don’t think Bert will care as much as you girls,” began Mr. Fayre,
when Dotty interrupted: “My Dollyrinda _shan’t_ go! I won’t have it!
I’ll make my father buy her for me, and keep her here! That’s what I’ll
do!”
“Don’t be silly, Dots,” said Dolly, who was beginning to realise that
this thing was a fact. Apparently her parents had already become used to
the idea, and were regretting it principally on the girls’ account.
“Do you want to go, Father?” Dolly asked. “Would you just as lieve live
in horrid old Buffalo as here in beautiful, lovely Berwick?”
“No, Dolly, I wouldn’t. But I must obey orders.”
“Whose orders?”
“The general manager, child.”
“Why, that’s Mr. Forbes, isn’t it? Bernice Forbes’ father?”
“That’s the man.”
“Is he sending you away?”
“Not directly; that is, not personally. But he and the board of
directors have combined to decree this thing. They consider it an
honour, Dolly. It is a better position, financially, and I have earned
it by my integrity and exemplary behaviour!” Mr. Fayre smiled at his
younger daughter, and was so honestly sorry for her that he didn’t know
what to do.
“Well, Daddy, I can’t stand it,” and Dolly shook her head. “I’ll just
die, that’s all. I couldn’t live anywhere except here. You couldn’t get
me another Treasure House, or another Dotty Rose, or all our crowd at
school, or anything that I have here.”
“But Buffalo may be full of Dotty Roses and Treasure Houses and school
crowds, that are heaps nicer than the Berwick variety!” Mr. Fayre tried
to speak gaily, but at these words Dolly burst into tears and Dotty
followed suit.
The family left the table, and though they tried to have calm and
general conversation the effort was vain, and very soon the Two D’s went
off up-stairs.
They went to Dolly’s pretty bedroom, and here their woe broke out
afresh.
“Oh,” wailed Dolly, “I can’t leave this room, this pretty, sweet, lovely
room, and go to old Buffalo, to sleep in an attic with rats gnawing me!”
“Why would you do that?” and Dotty stopped midway of a sob to understand
this dire prognostication.
“Well, it’s as bad as that, whatever it is.”
“But if your father gets more money, more salary, you know, maybe you’ll
have a grand house, like the Forbeses.”
“I don’t want a grand house. If it’s in Buffalo at all, I’d just as
lieve have the ratty attic as anything else!” and Dolly renewed her
weeping. She rocked her plump body back and forth in paroxysms of woe,
and wailed out new horrors as they came to her distorted imagination.
“_I_ know the sort of girls they’ll have there. All wearing shirtwaists
and old ribbon bands round their foreheads! Oh, I know!”
“How do you know?” and Dotty’s admiration rose at these strange
revelations.
“Oh, I sort of see them, the horrid bunch! I hate to see girls of our
age in shirtwaists, and I _know_ they’ll all have them. And the boys
will be horrid, too. Not nice, like our brothers and Tad and Tod, but
all sort of outgrown!”
“My! Buffalo must be an awful place!”
“It isn’t only Buffalo, it’s _any_ place in the United States, except
Berwick. Don’t you see it, Dotty? Don’t you _know_ it must be so? And if
not just as I’ve described, it’s something equally worse!”
“Yes, I s’pose so,” returned Dotty, awed by this instinctive knowledge
of Dolly’s.
“But I’ve got to go, all the same. So I’ve got to make up my mind to
it.”
“You shan’t go, and you shan’t make up your mind to it! I won’t have it.
Say, Doll, how about this? If you do go,—you visit me six months every
year, and I’ll visit you six months.”
“No; if I go, I shall give you up entirely, and get a new chum up there.
I can’t have my most intimate friend a million miles away. And you know
our people wouldn’t agree to that six months business.”
“You’ll get a new chum! Dorinda Fayre, I think you’re the most awful
girl I ever saw! I believe you _want_ to go to your horrid old Buffalo,
and have a girl with a shirtwaist on, for your intimate friend, and a
band around her forehead!”
“Oh, hush up, Dotty! I didn’t mean that, and you know it! But I’m beside
myself, I don’t know what I’m saying!”
And then the two girls gave way to such desperate and uncontrollable
sobbing, that Trudy heard them and came to their room.
“Dolly! Dolly!” she exclaimed. “Oh, you poor little girl! Don’t cry so,
darling. Try to stop,—you’ll make yourself ill. Dotty, be quiet, dear.”
Trudy’s soft voice calmed the turbulent ones a little, and she went on
talking.
“Listen, Dollykins. I don’t want to leave Berwick, either. I have lots
of friends here—”
“And beaux,” put in Dotty, suddenly realising Trudy’s trials, too.
“Yes,” Trudy agreed, smiling, “and beaux. But probably beaux grow in
Buffalo, and friends of other sorts too. Now, I don’t in the least
undervalue what it means to you two girls to part, but, Dolly, it can’t
be helped. Father has to go. Now, oughtn’t we to help him, by
unselfishly forgetting our wishes, and going cheerfully? That’s the only
way we can help Dad, and I think it’s our duty to do it.”
“I know it is,” sobbed Dolly, “but I always _did_ hate to do my duty!”
“But you always do it,” and Trudy smiled at her little sister. “I’ve
never known you to shirk a duty because you hated to do it.”
“But I never had such a big, horrid, awful bad duty before.”
“No; and that’s all the more reason why you must meet this one bravely.
Now, don’t think any more about the whole thing to-night. Go to bed and
to sleep, and to-morrow things will look brighter.”
The girls both felt sure they would lie awake all night, but so
exhausted were they by their strenuous grief, they fell asleep before
they knew it.
But Dolly woke early in the dawn of morning, and she lay there in her
pretty green room, thinking it out. And somehow, her thinking cheered
her, for at rising time, Dotty awoke to see a smiling Dolly bending over
her.
“Wake up, old sleepyhead! Get your eyes open, and rise to greet the
morn!”
Dotty rubbed her half-open black eyes, and strove to remember what was
the matter after all. Then it all came back to her.
“Buffalo!” she said, sitting up in bed. “Buff-a-lo!”
“Never mind Buffalo,” and Dolly kept on smiling. “You wake up, and get
yourself up into Berwick. And if you’ll be a good girl, some day I’ll
tell you something.”
“You’ve been thinking it out!” exclaimed Dotty. “I know you! Don’t deny
it!”
“’Course I’ve been thinking it out. But don’t you tell anybody that I
have. You get dressed, instanter! Do you hear?”
Dotty heard, and obeyed, and soon two calm, serene girls were on their
way down to breakfast.
The subject was not mentioned at the table. The elders purposely avoided
it, and the Two D’s had no desire to discuss it.
It was only as she was starting for school, that Dolly said to her
mother, with a quivering lip, “Mumsie—when—”
“In about a month, dear,” said Mrs. Fayre, kissing the trembling mouth.
“Don’t begin to think about it yet.”
The two D’s started off in silence. After a block or so, Dotty said,
“Shall you tell the girls?”
“No,” said Dolly, shortly. “Don’t mention it, Dot. This afternoon in the
house, I’ll tell you something.”
Dotty could scarcely wait till afternoon, and then when that time
arrived, Dolly decreed that they should learn their lessons first,
before she told the “something.”
“You’re getting terribly good!” grumbled Dotty.
“I know it. I’ve _got_ to be. Perhaps _then_ I’ll get something I want.”
So the two studied like everything, until they both declared they really
knew all the next day’s lessons. They even heard each other some of the
very hardest ones, and then, they sat down together before the fire for
the “something.”
“Here it is,” said Dolly, soberly. “I’m going to get Father let off from
that transfer to Buffalo.”
“You can’t,” said Dotty, with an air of calm conviction.
“I know I can’t, but I’m going to all the same. Father doesn’t want to
go, neither does Mother. Nor Trudy; nor me. So why should we go?”
“’Cause your father is sent.”
“Yes, that’s just it. But I’m going to get him unsent.”
“Amend the Constitution?”
“Just about that. Now, look here, Dot: Who is sending Dad?”
“Mr. Forbes.”
“Of course he is. He’s Father’s boss. Now, who is Mr. Forbes’ boss?”
“The president of the railroad, I s’pose.”
“Not at all. Mr. Forbes is bossed and ruled and absolutely commanded
by—”
“Bernice!”
“Yes, of course. He worships and idolises his motherless girl. And,
listen, now; through Bernice I’m going to get Father repealed,—or
whatever you call it.”
“Can you?”
“I will, whether I can or not.”
“Will your father like it?”
“He won’t know, till it’s all over. And if I fail, which I won’t, he
need never know. I’ve thought it out, and it isn’t wrong; there isn’t a
wrong thing about it. Bernice can make her father do anything in the
world she wants to. I know that. So she can get him to change his mind
about my father, if I can persuade her to do it. I mean, if I can
persuade her to persuade her father.”
“It’s a fine scheme, Dollops, but I can’t seem to see it succeeding.
Bernice can make her father do anything she wants for herself, but this
is different. Why should she bother her father for your father’s sake?”
“I don’t know,” and Dolly looked uncertain; “but I’m going to try to
make her do it, and sumpum tells me I shall conquer in the fight!”
Dolly looked so jubilant, so already victorious, that Dotty hadn’t the
heart to express further doubt. And too, Dotty had great faith in
Dolly’s powers of success when she set to work in earnest. And she
surely was very much in earnest now.
“Aren’t you going to tell Trudy or your mother?”
“No; nobody at all but you. Maybe I’ll tell Bert, when he comes home for
Thanksgiving. He could help me.”
“_I_ can help you! I mean, I will, if you’ll tell me what to do.”
“Indeed you can help me, Dot. I couldn’t do it at all without your help.
See here, you don’t understand yet. If Bernice makes her father do this
thing, it’ll be because she herself wants me to stay in Berwick. And
here’s why. Because,—if Bernice does what I want her to, I’m going to
make her the most popular girl in town!”