A HEART TO HEART TALK
True to her word, Ruth dutifully dashed off a short letter to Marian
Selby before retiring that night. The writing of it was after all a mere
formality. Ruth was certain that her cousin would offer no objection to
the presence of a ninth girl at the reunion. In the first place, Marian
would be sure to see matters as she saw them. Then, too, Marian would be
the last person in the world to bar another’s road to happiness.
Her duty done, it but remained to Ruth to inform Blanche that her case
was still under consideration pending the decision of the eighth member
of the Equitable Eight. The following morning she was rather taken aback
when, on going to her door in answer to a persistent rapping, she beheld
Blanche, kimono clad and smiling serene expectation.
“What did they say? Is it all right?” were her eager queries, just above
a whisper.
“Come in, Blanche.” Ruth was perfunctorily polite. She found it
difficult to mask her disapprobation of her early morning caller.
“Oh, I can’t.” Blanche drew back hastily. Knowing Emmy to be within, she
prudently kept to the hall. “I must hurry and dress. I was so worried! I
simply had to come and ask you about things. You see, it means so much
more to me than you can possibly understand,” she continued, simulating
a wistfulness which fell so far short of the mark as to be faintly
patronizing.
Blanche was quite unconscious of this. Ruth, however, sensed it keenly
and it annoyed her. “The girls are willing that you should spend August
with the Equitable Eight,” she made answer, “but we thought it fair to
write to Marian Selby, my cousin, about it. She belongs to the Equitable
Eight, too. I wrote her last night after the meeting. I am going to post
the letter as soon as I have had my breakfast. That is all I can say
until I hear from her.”
A decided frown darkened Blanche’s plump features as she listened to
Ruth. Thrown off her guard by this unlooked for news, she burst forth
pettishly. “I don’t see what difference—”
A flash in Ruth’s brown eyes warned her to caution. “Excuse me,” she
apologized. “It’s not my place to find fault with anything you girls
want to do. It’s sweet in you to go to so much trouble on my account.
When do you expect an answer from your cousin?” This last with scarcely
suppressed eagerness.
“Within three or four days,” replied Ruth briefly. “I’ll let you know as
soon as I hear from her.” Ruth hoped Blanche would take this last
assurance as a courteous protest against further quizzing.
“I am sure you will. I won’t bother you any more about it.” Blanche
sighed and looked meekly grateful. “Thank you ever so much.” She turned
and sped down the hall to her room, leaving Ruth to stare moodily after
her, wondering for the fortieth time, “Is she really sincere?”
Entering her room, her troubled eyes met Emmy’s quizzical glance. From
her position before the dressing table, Emmy had swung about in her
chair at the sound of the closing door. “Well?” she drawled.
“I don’t know whether it’s ‘well’ or not.” Still in her kimono, Ruth
seated herself on her bed, chin in hands. “Blanche didn’t like it at all
when I told her about Marian. She started to fuss, then turned around
and put on a humble face. Now, what made her do that? If she felt
queerly about Marian’s being a stranger to her, then that might explain
it. But it certainly looked as though she was peeved and tried to hide
it for fear of making me cross. I’d far rather she had been frank and
said what she started to say. I hate pretense.”
Emmy shrugged her shoulders. It was on her tongue to say, “Then steer
clear of Blanche Shirly.” Ruth’s dejection forbade it, however. She
realized that her chum was baring her troubled soul in a fashion quite
foreign to herself. It was not Ruth’s way to advocate a measure and then
renege. She understood, if Ruth did not, that the latter’s honest
nature, which bade her distrust Blanche, was warring against her belief
in living up to her obligations as a Torch Bearer.
“Don’t worry about it, Ruth,” Emmy sturdily put away her own doubts in
order to still her friend’s misgivings. “I’m sorry I said anything to
make you doubt Blanche. Let’s agree to believe her honest until she
proves herself a villain. She may give us all an agreeable surprise by
behaving beautifully every minute of the reunion.”
“I hope she will. I wish I could say, ‘I’m sure she will,’ but truly,
I’m not a bit sure of it. No one except you is ever going to know that,
though. It’s splendid in you to—to—” Ruth paused in sudden
embarrassment.
“To accept Blanche so peacefully after what I said the other night,”
supplemented Emmy, smiling.
“Well, yes,” admitted Ruth candidly. “I suppose that was what I really
meant. I didn’t intend to say it so bluntly, though. I might as well own
up that I was more afraid of you than of the others. It was Jane who
surprised me.”
Emmy laughed. “I knew Jane would be up in arms,” she asserted. “She
always takes things more seriously than Sarah or Frances. I wonder that
she ever forgave me for the hateful way I treated Marian. That’s the
reason,” Emmy’s beautiful eyes grew somber, “I am determined to do my
level best for Blanche. I owe it to you and to myself.”
“Aren’t you ever going to forget, Emmy!” Ruth asked almost appealingly.
It was the first time the painful subject had been brought up since that
eventful night at Wanderer’s Roost when Emmy had found her better self.
“No; I don’t think so. I hope not,” was the steady response. “If I did,
I might stumble again, especially if my good little roommate happened to
be far away from me. All year I’ve tried to follow your example and
consider others before myself. That’s the only way to keep out of
mischief.”
“Now it’s you, instead of Jane, who are taking things too seriously,”
cried Ruth, coloring under Emmy’s tribute to herself. “You’ve been a
perfect angel to all the girls here, Emmeline Cerrito. You’ve done all
sorts of kind things and everybody here adores you.”
“Nonsense.” Emmy made a deprecating gesture, as though to discount the
very idea of her own popularity at Hillside.
“It’s the truth,” was Ruth’s stout insistence.
It was indeed true that Emmy had returned to Hillside the previous fall,
a changed girl. Once she had shown merely a bored tolerance of her
fellow students. But she had long since dropped her provoking attitude
for one of kindly interest in her classmates. During the year so nearly
ended, more than one girl owed her a lasting debt of gratitude for some
favor graciously bestowed. There was still left in her enough of the
Emmy of old to draw the line at Blanche and Jeanette. She had never
succeeded in bringing herself to the point of being more than civil to
either, sometimes hardly that. Comparing them to Ruth, whom she made her
model, they were as dross to pure gold.
It was this very distrust and contempt for them which had leaped to the
surface to oppose Ruth when she made plea to her chums for Blanche. The
mere mention of Marian’s name had been sufficient to move Emmy to
withdraw that opposition.
“No breakfast for you and Emmy unless we end this complimentary session
and do a rapid-dressing stunt,” was all she vouchsafed to Ruth’s
emphatic assertion. “Observe the time, oh, noble Torch Bearer, and you
still languishing in your kimono!”
“I am observing it.” Ruth sprang to her feet. Slipping hastily out of
her kimono she proceeded to dress with a speed that quite outstripped
Emmy’s leisurely preparations for the day. “There, I beat you,” she
announced as she deftly fastened the last troublesome hook in place.
“It’s your turn to do a little observing. You still are minus your outer
garments, my dear Miss Cerrito.”
“Not now.” Emmy’s black head emerged triumphantly from the one piece
gown of navy blue broadcloth which she had slid over it, temporarily
eclipsing her lovely face. “Help me fasten my frock. There’s a dear.
Then we must run. The breakfast bell rang at least five minutes ago.”
Their minds now bent on breakfast, nothing further of a confidential
nature passed between them as they began an orderly rush down the
stairs. The little heart to heart talk had, however, done much toward
laying Ruth’s doubts to rest. She mentally reproached herself for having
allowed them to trouble her, and resolved that she would somehow make up
to Blanche for this brief season of distrust.