BOBBY'S BLAME DAY
Dr. George Wright was making a name for himself in his chosen
profession. Older men were beginning to look upon him as an authority on
nervous cases and now he had been asked to come in as partner in a
sanitarium starting in the capital city of Virginia. Certainly he had
been very successful in his treatment of Robert Carter's case, so
successful that even Mrs. Carter could not but admire him. She was still
very much in awe of him, but he had her respect and she depended upon
him. The daughters felt the same way without the awe. Douglas and Nan
and Lucy were openly extravagant in their praise of him. Helen was a
little more guarded in her expressions of admiration, but she had a
sincere liking for him and deep gratitude not only for what he had done
for her father but for his service to her.
She could never forget that it was Dr. Wright who had brought her to her
senses when her father was first taken ill, making her see herself as a
selfish, extravagant, vain girl. It takes some generosity of spirit to
like the person who makes you see the error of your ways, but Helen
Carter had that generosity. There were times when her cheeks burned at
the memory of what Dr. Wright must have thought of her. How silly he
must have found her, how childish!
After the experience in the mountains when the rattlesnake bit her on
the heel and Dr. Wright had come to her assistance with first aid to the
injured, which in the case of a snake bite means sucking the wound,
Helen began to realize that what the young physician thought of her made
a great deal of difference to her. His approval was something worth
gaining.
Douglas had not told her she had written the letter to Dr. Wright as
Bobby's employer. She had a feeling that her dignity as teacher was
involved and she must not confide in her family. She was waiting, hoping
to hear from him, rather expecting him to write to Bobby and call him
to account for his misdemeanors.
Bobby had been especially unruly all week. There was nothing he had not
thought of doing in the way of mischief, and thinking mischief was
almost identical with doing mischief where Bobby Carter was concerned.
The deed was no sooner conceived than accomplished and the other
children, who were inclined to be naughty, thought up extra things for
him to do.
Putting a piece of rubber on the stove was certainly not Bobby's idea,
nor slipping chestnut burrs in the desk-seats while the girls were not
looking, causing howls of anguish when they inadvertently sat down on
the same. Bobby manfully took the blame for all of these things,
however, confidently certain that no punishment worth speaking of would
be meted out to him.
"He is honest, at least," sighed Douglas, "and owns up every time."
Friday afternoon on the way home she felt that maybe Nan's name for
their place was a good one. She was almost a dead warrior if not quite
one.
"Oh, for a Valkyrie to bear me to Valhalla!"
Bobby was trudging along by her side looking as though butter would not
melt in his mouth. What a sturdy little fellow he was growing to be!
Douglas looked down on his jaunty, erect figure.
"Bobby, you are getting right fat."
Bobby slapped his pockets. "That ain't fat, that's blame pay!"
"Blame pay! What on earth?"
"Oh, them is the gif's I gits fer saying I done it ev'y time you asks us
to hol' up our han's who done it."
"Oh, Bobby!"
"You see, the big fellers say you ain't man enough to whup 'em an' you
is too soft to whup me, so I don't run no risk nohow. This is a top
string I got for 'tendin' like I put the rubber on the stove,--this here
is a big apple I got for not fillin' the girls' desks with chestnut
burrs,--this here pile er oak balls I come mighty near not gettin'. I
sho' did want to turn the fleas loose on Minnie Brice but the big boys
was afraid I might not be able to open the little purse right and so one
of them done it."
"Fleas on Minnie Brice?"
"Yes, you never did fin' out about it, so I didn't have to own up. You
know what a funny thin neck Minnie's got, just like a mud turkle, and
how she wears a stiff collar kinder like a shell and it sets out all
around, fur out from her neck?"
"Yes, I know," said Douglas, struggling with a laugh.
"Well, the fellers caught some fleas off'n ol' Blitz's houn' dog an'
then they put 'em in a teensy money purse with a tight clasp, an' while
Minnie was leaning over studying her joggerfy, Tim Tenser dumped 'em all
down her back."
"Poor Minnie! No wonder she missed all of her lessons today. I could not
imagine what was the matter with her. Bobby, you wouldn't have done such
a cruel thing as that surely!"
"Shoo! That ain't nothin'. It might 'a' been toads, 'cep'n the little
ones is all growed up big now. We are a-savin' up the toad joke 'til
spring. First the fellers said I didn't 'serve no blame money 'cause
Minnie jes' cried when she missed her lessons an' didn't scratch none,
only wiggled, an' teacher never did ask us to hol' up our han's who done
it. But Ned Beatty said I was a dead game spo't an' I took the chanst
an' I mus' have my blood money, an' so I got all these here oak balls."
"Bobby, do you realize that you must take all of these blame gifts back
to the boys?"
"Blamed if I will!"
"Please don't talk that way! Don't say: 'Blamed if you will.'"
"Well, wasn't you a-talkin' that way? Didn't you say, 'blame gif's,'
with your own mouth? I'd like to know why I have to take them back."
"Well, you got them for taking the blame and now you no longer take the
blame but have told on the ones who did the naughty things."
"But I ain't a-tellin' teacher! I'm a-tellin' my own sister Douglas.
You ain't teacher 'cep'n when you is in school."
"Oh, so that is the way you look at it! I suppose you think I am not
your own sister while I am teacher, either, and when you worry me sick
at school it is only teacher and not Douglas you are distressing so
much," and Douglas sat down on the roadside and burst out crying.
Now Douglas Carter was no weeper. I doubt if her little brother had ever
seen her shed a tear in all of his seven years. And he, Robert Carter,
Jr., had done this thing! He had made his sister Douglas cry. When she
was playing teacher, she had feelings just as much as she did when she
turned into his sister Douglas again. And what was this thing she was
saying about his having to give back the blood money? Had he told on the
boys after having received pay for taking the blame? Why, that was a
low-down, sneaky trick!
"Don't cry, Douglas, please don't cry! I'm a-gonter take back all the
things--'cep'n the apple--I done et into that a leetle bit."
But the flood gates were opened and Douglas could not stop crying. Like
most persons who cry with difficulty, when she once began she kept it
up. Now she was crying for all the times she might have cried. She had
had enough to make her cry but had held in. She was crying now for all
the days and nights of anxiety she had spent in thinking of her sick
father; she was crying for the stern way in which she had been forced to
deal with her mother over extravagancies; she was crying for having to
make Helen understand that there was no money for clothes; she was
crying for having to be the adamant sister who forced Nan and Lucy to go
on to school; she was crying because her own dream of college was to
come to nothing; she was crying very little because of Bobby's
naughtiness, but he, of course, thought that it was all because of him.
One of her biggest grievances was against herself: why had she been so
priggish with her cousin, Lewis Somerville? Last August he had come to
her on the eve of his enlistment to go with the troops to the Mexican
border and had plead so earnestly with her to try to love him just a
little bit and to let him go off engaged to her, and she had turned him
down with absurd talk of friendship and the like. He had astonished her
when he made love to her, but she knew perfectly well in her heart of
hearts that it would have astonished her a great deal more if he had
made love to someone else.
No doubt that was what he was doing that minute: making love to someone
else. A young man who looked like a Greek god was not going to be turned
down by every girl. How good Lewis had always been to her and how well
he had understood her! He thought she was cold and unfeeling now, she
just knew he did. She had received no letters from him for weeks, at
least it seemed weeks. Oh well, if he wanted to make love to other
girls, why she wasn't going to be the one to care!
"Douglas, I hear a auto a-comin'. If'n you don't stop bawlin' folks will
see you."
A car was coming! She could hear its chug as it climbed the hill half a
mile off.
"Please wet my handkerchief in that little branch so I can wash my
face," she begged Bobby, while she smoothed her ruffled hair and wished
she had one of Helen's precious dorines to powder her red nose.
"Yo' hankcher is as wet as water already. I don't see what you want it
any wetter for," said Bobby, who might have quoted: "'Too much of water
hast thou, my poor Ophelia,'" had he known his Hamlet.
"I ain't a-gonter be bad no mo', Douglas," declared Bobby as he brought
the little handkerchief back from the brook dripping wet. "You mos'
cried yo' face away, didn't you, Dug?" and with that Douglas had to
laugh.
"Feel better now?" he said with quite the big brother air. "That there
car is jes' roun' the bend. I reckon if you turn yo' face away the folks
in it won't know you is been a-bawlin'."
The car slowed up, then stopped when the driver recognized Douglas, and
Count de Lestis sprang out to greet her. The signs of the recent storm
were still visible on her pretty face in spite of all the water Bobby
had brought from the brook. Douglas tried to hold her head down so the
count could not see her disfigured countenance, but such floods of
weeping could not but be noticed.
"My dear Miss Carter, you are in distress!" He looked so truly grieved
and anxious that already Douglas felt somewhat comforted. Sympathy is a
great balm.
"It is nothing! I am a foolish, weak girl."
"Not that! You are very intelligent and far from weak. Are you not the
staunch ally? The poor Kaiser would not find you weak."
"I done it all! I made her cry!" declared Bobby.
The count looked at the youngster, amused. "And so! Do little American
gentlemen make their sisters cry?" Bobby hung his head. "Well, come on
and let me take you home, and then I'll take your sister for a little
ride and wipe all the tears away with the wind."
"Let me go riding, too. I don't want to go home."
"No, not this time. My little red car doesn't like to take for long
rides boys who make their sisters cry."
So Bobby had to climb meekly in to be ignominiously dumped at the yard
gate while Douglas was whisked off in the count's natty little red
roadster.
"Now you are looking like your beautiful self," he declared, slowing
down his racer and turning to gaze into Douglas's face. "What is it that
made you weep so profusely? Not the little brother. Beautiful damsels do
not weep so much because of little brothers."
Douglas smiled.
"Ah, the sun has come out! Now I am happy. I am so distressed by tears
that I can hardly bear it."
"You must have a very tender heart."
"Yes, perhaps! Now tell me what caused your grief."
How handsome this man was and how kind! He seemed like an old friend. He
really did care what was troubling her and it would be a relief to pour
out all of her foolish griefs. Douglas missed her father's sympathy. She
knew that he was as ready as ever with his love and solicitude for her,
but she felt that she must not add to his worries one iota. Her mother
was out of the question and Helen was too young. Before she knew it, she
was trying to tell Count de Lestis all about it, all but about Lewis
Somerville--somehow that was something she could not mention. Her
grievances sounded very small when she tried to put them into words.
Naturally she could not dwell upon her mother's extravagancies or this
man would think her poor little mother was selfish; Helen was such a
trump, the fact that she longed for stylish clothes certainly was not
enough to make a grown girl sit on the roadside and dissolve in tears;
while Nan and Lucy were commuting to school like little soldiers. It
ended by being a humorous account of Bobby and his blame pay.
Of course the count knew perfectly well that that was not all that
had made this lovely girl give way so to grief. No doubt Bobby's
misbehavior was the last straw, but there had been a heavy load to
carry before Douglas's camel of endurance had got his back broken. He
laughed merrily over the fleas and Douglas forgot all about her worries
and laughed, too.
"Poor little Minnie! She did squirm so, and think of her being too
ladylike to scratch, and how she must have disappointed those bad boys
by refraining!"
"Yes, if all women would just squirm and not scratch it would take much
from the pleasure of teasing them," laughed de Lestis. "What amuses me
is how boys are alike all the world over. The discipline of my school
days was very strict, but a thing like that might have happened among
boys in Berlin as much as here in a rural school in Virginia."
"Berlin! But you are Hungarian!"
"So! So--but Hungarians can go to school in Berlin. Even Americans have
profited by the educational advantages offered there."
Douglas thought her companion's tone sounded a little harsh. She bent
her candid gaze on him and met his glowing eyes. Blue eyes looked
unflinchingly into black until the steering of the red car forced him to
give his attention to the wheel.
"I wish the count's moustache did not turn up quite so much at the
corners," thought the girl. "It makes him look a wee bit like the
Kaiser; of course, though, he is kind and the Kaiser is cruel."
"Perhaps we had better turn around now," she suggested gently, contrite
that even for a moment she had thought this kind friend could resemble
the hated Kaiser.
Certainly the wind had wiped away all traces of the emotional storm from
Douglas's countenance. The young man by her side could but admire the
pure profile presented to him, with its soft, girlish lines but withal a
look of strength and determination. Her loosened hair was like sunlight
and her cheeks had the pink of the Cherokee rose. Profiles were all well
enough, but he would like another look into those eyes as blue as summer
skies after a shower.
"Of course, my dear Miss Carter, I know that the little rascal Bobby
must have been very annoying but I cannot but think that you have not
entrusted to me your real troubles."
Douglas stiffened almost imperceptibly.
"When one finds a beautiful damsel sitting by the roadside in such grief
that her charming face is convulsed with weeping, one cannot but divine
that some affair of the heart has touched her. Tell me, has some bold
cavalier trifled with her affections?"
Douglas stiffened more perceptibly.
"Your father told me of a young cousin, a Mr. Somerville, who is now on
the Mexican border----"
"Father told you! I don't believe it."
"My dear young lady, he only told me there was such a cousin; you have
told me the rest. Now! Now! Don't let your sweet eyes shed another tear
for him. He is not worth it! If he can find amusement in the ladies of
Mexico, who are, when all is told, an untidy lot, why should you worry?
There are other fish in the sea!"
If the Count de Lestis wished to see something more of Douglas's eyes he
had his desire fulfilled now. She turned and once more blue eyes looked
unflinchingly into black. This time the black eyes had a mischievous
gleam and the blue ones looked more like winter ice than summer skies.
"Now I have made you angry." Once more his car took his attention for
the moment.
"Not at all!" icily.
"You wish you had not come with me."
"I appreciate your kindness in bringing me for the drive very much,"
still cold and formal in tone.
"I guessed too well, that is where I sinned."
Douglas was silent, but she still looked at her companion.
"She is like the little Minnie: she squirms but will not scratch."
"I was just thinking," said Douglas, changing the subject with a
swiftness that disarmed the count, "your moustache certainly turns up
at the ends just like Emperor William's."