A FAD AND A CHRISTMAS FUND
For a Freshman to start a fad popular enough to spread through the
entire school was an unheard of thing at Warwick Hall, but A.O. Miggs
had that distinction early in the term. Her birthday was in October, and
when she appeared that morning with a zodiac ring on her little finger,
set with a brilliant fire opal, there was a mingled outcry of admiration
and horror.
"Oh, I wouldn't wear an opal for worlds!" cried one superstitious girl.
"They're dreadfully unlucky."
"Not if it is your birthstone," announced A.O., calmly turning her hand
to watch the flashing of red and blue lights in the heart of the gem.
"It's bad luck _not_ to wear one if you were born in October. It says on
the card that came in the box with this:
"'October's child is born for woe
And life's vicissitudes must know,
Unless she wears the opal's charm
To ward off every care and harm.'
"And they say too that you are beloved of the gods and men as long as
you keep your faith in it."
"Then I'll certainly have to get one," laughed Jane Ridgeway, who had
joined the group, "for I am October's child. Let me see it, A.O."
She adjusted her glasses and took the plump little hand in hers for
inspection. "I always have thought that opals are the prettiest of all
the stones. Write the verse out for me, A.O., that's a good child. I'll
send it home for the family to see how important it is that I should be
protected by such a charm."
This from a senior, the dignified and exclusive Miss Ridgeway, put the
seal of approval on the fashion, and when, a week later, she appeared
with a beautiful Hungarian opal surrounded by tiny diamonds, with her
zodiac signs engraved on the wide circle of gold, every girl in school
wanted a birth-month ring.
Elise wrote home asking if agates were expensive, and if she might have
one. Not that she thought they were pretty, but it was the stone for
June, so of course she ought to wear one. The answer came in the shape
of an old heirloom, a Scotch agate that had been handed down in the
family, almost since the days of Malcolm the Second. It had been a
small brooch, worn on the bosom of many a proud MacIntyre dame, but
never had it evoked such interest as when, set in a ring, it was
displayed on Elise's little finger.
After that there was a general demand for a jeweller's catalogue which
appeared in their midst about that time. One page was devoted to
illustrations of such stones with a rhyme for each month. The firm which
issued the catalogue would have been surprised at the rush of orders had
they not had previous dealings with Girls' Schools. The year before
there had been almost as great a demand for tiny gold crosses, and the
year before for huge silver horse-shoes. This year the element of
superstition helped to swell the orders. When the verse said,
"The August born, without this stone,
'Tis said must live unloved and lone,"
of course no girl born in August would think of living a week longer
without a sardonyx, especially when the catalogue offered the genuine
article as low as $2.75. The daughters of April and May, July and
September had to pay more for their privileges, but they did it gladly.
When Cornie Dean read,
"Who wears an emerald all her life
Shall be a loved and honoured wife,"
she sold her pet bangle bracelet that afternoon for ten dollars, and
added half her month's allowance to buy an emerald large enough to hold
some potency.
Mary pored over the catalogue longingly when it came her turn to have
it. She liked her verse:
"Who on this world of ours their eyes
In March first open shall be wise.
In days of peril firm and brave,
And wear a bloodstone to their grave."
When she had considered sizes and prices for awhile she took out her
bank book and Christmas list and began comparing them anxiously. Betty,
coming into the room presently, found her so absorbed in her task that
she did not notice the open letter Betty carried, and the gay samples of
chiffon and silk fluttering from the envelope. She looked up with a
little puckered smile as Betty drew a chair to the opposite side of the
table, asking as she seated herself, "What's the matter? You seem to be
in some difficulty."
"It's just the same old wolf at the door," said Mary, soberly. "I have
enough for this term's expenses, all the necessary things, but there's
nothing for the extras. There isn't a single person I can cut off my
Christmas list. I've put down what I've decided to make for each one,
and what the bare materials will cost, and although I've added it up and
added it down, it always comes out the same; nothing left to get the
ring with."
She sat jabbing her pencil into the paper for a moment. "I wish there
were ways to earn money here as there are at some schools. There are so
many things I need it for. They'll expect me to contribute something to
the mock Christmas tree fund, and I want to get Jack something nice. I
couldn't take his own money to buy him a present even if there were
enough, which there isn't. I've already made him everything I know how
to make, that he can use, and men don't care for things they can't use,
but that are just pretty, as girls do. Just look what a beauty bright of
a watch-fob I've found in this catalogue."
She turned the pages eagerly. "It is a bloodstone. The very thing for
Jack, for his birthday is in March, too, and it is such a dark,
unpretentious stone that he would like it. _But_--it costs eight
dollars."
She said it in an awed tone as if she were naming a small fortune.
"Maybe we can think of some way for you to earn it," said Betty,
encouragingly. "I'll set my wits to work this evening as soon as I've
finished looking over the A class themes. Because none of the girls has
ever done such a thing before in the school is no reason why you should
not. Look! This is what I came in to show you."
It was several pages from Lloyd's last letter, and the samples of some
new dresses she was having made. For a little space the wolf at the door
drew in its claws, and Mary forgot her financial straits. Early in the
term Betty had divined how much the sharing of this correspondence meant
to Mary. She could not fail to see how eagerly she followed the winsome
princess through her gay social season in town, rejoicing over her
popularity, interested in everything she did and wore and treasuring
every mention of her in the home papers. The old Colonel sent Betty the
_Courier-Journal_, and the society page was regularly turned over to
Mary. There was a corner in her scrap-book marked, "My Chum," rapidly
filling with accounts of balls, dinners and house-parties at which she
had been a guest. This last letter had several messages in it for Mary,
so Betty left the page containing them with her, knowing they would be
folded away in the scrap-book with the samples, as soon as her back was
turned.
"I was out at Anchorage for this last week-end," ran one of the
messages. "And it rained so hard one night that what was to have been an
informal dance was turned into an old-fashioned candy-pull. Not more
than half a dozen guests managed to get there. Tell Mary that I tried to
distinguish myself by making some of that Mexican pecan candy that they
used to have such success with at the Wigwam. But it was a flat failure,
and I think I must have left out some important ingredient. Ask her to
please send me the recipe if she can remember it."
"Probably it failed because she didn't have the real Mexican sugar,"
said Mary, at the end of the reading. "It comes in a cone, wrapped in a
queer kind of leaf, so I'm sure she didn't have it. I'll write out the
recipe as soon as I get back from my geometry recitation, and add a
foot-note, explaining about the sugar."
Somehow it was hard for Mary to keep her mind on lines and angles that
next hour. She kept seeing a merry group in the Wigwam kitchen. Lloyd
and Jack and Phil Tremont were all ranged around the white table,
cracking pecans, and picking out the firm full kernels, while Joyce
presided over the bubbling kettle on the stove. She wondered if Lloyd
had enjoyed her grown-up party as much as she had that other one, when
Jack said such utterly ridiculous things in pigeon English, like the old
Chinese vegetable man, and Phil cake-walked and parodied funny
coon-songs till their sides ached with laughing.
At the close of the recitation a hastily scribbled note from Betty was
handed to her.
"I have just found out," it ran, "that Mammy Easter will be unable to
furnish her usual pralines and Christmas sweets to her Warwick Hall
customers this year. Why don't you try your hand at that Mexican candy
Lloyd mentioned. If the girls once get a taste it will be 'advertised by
its loving friends' and you can sell quantities. I am going to the city
this afternoon, and can order the sugar for you. If they wire the order
you ought to be able to get it within a week. _E.S._"
Mary went up stairs two steps at a bound, stepping on the front of her
dress at every other jump, and only saving herself from sprawling
headlong as she reached the top, by catching at A.O., who ran into her
on the way down. She could not get back to her bank book and her
Christmas list soon enough, to see how much cash she had on hand, and
compute how much she dared squeeze out to invest in material.
A week later the Domestic Science room was turned over to her during
recreation hour, and presently a delicious odour began to steal out into
the halls, which set every girl within range to sniffing hungrily. Betty
explained it to several, and there was no need to do anything more.
Every one was on hand for her share when the samples were passed around,
and the new business venture was discussed in every room.
"Wouldn't you like to know Jack Ware?" asked Dorene of Cornie, her mouth
so full of the delicious sweets that she could only mumble. "Any man who
can inspire such adoration in his own sister must be nothing short of a
wonder."
"I feel that I do know him," responded Cornie, "That I am quite well
acquainted with him, in fact. And I quite approve of 'my brother Jack.'
It's queer, too, for usually when you hear a person quoted morning, noon
and night you get so that you want to scream when his name is mentioned.
Now there's Babe Meadows. Will you ever forget the way she rang the
changes on 'my Uncle Willie'? I used to quote that line from Tennyson
under my breath--'_A quinsy choke thy cursèd note!_' It was 'Uncle
Willie says this isn't good form' and 'Uncle Willie says they don't do
that in England' till you got worn to a frazzle having that old
Anglomaniac eternally thrown at your head. But the more Mary quotes Jack
the better you like him."
"I wonder how he feels about Mary taking this way to earn his Christmas
present."
"Oh, of course he doesn't know she is doing it, and of course he
wouldn't like it if he did. But he'd have hard work stopping her. She is
as full of energy and determination as a locomotive with a full head of
steam on, and I imagine he's exactly like her. She fondly imagines that
he will be governor of Arizona some day."
"There!" exclaimed Dorene. "That suggests the dandiest thing for us to
put on the mock Christmas tree for her. A Jack-in-the-box! She's always
springing him on an unsuspecting public, and just about as unexpectedly
as those little mannikins bob up. She has used him so often to 'point
her morals and adorn her tales' that every girl in school will see the
joke."
"Well, the future governor of Arizona will get his bloodstone fob all
right as far as my patronage will help," said Cornie, when she had
laughingly applauded Dorene's suggestion. She carefully picked up the
last crumb. "I shall speak for three pounds of this right off. Papa has
such a sweet tooth that he'd a thousand times rather have a box of this
than a dozen silk mufflers and shaving cases and such things that
usually fall to a man's lot at Christmas."
If the girls in this exclusive school thought it strange that one of
their number should start a money-making enterprise, no whisper of it
reached Mary. Her sturdy independence forbade any air of patronage, and
she was such a general favourite that whatever she did was passed over
with a laugh. The few who might have been inclined to criticize found it
an unpopular thing to do. The object for which she was working enlisted
every one's interest. Jack would have ground his teeth with
mortification had he known that every girl in school was interested in
his getting a bloodstone watch-fob in his Christmas stocking, and daily
discussed the means by which it was being procured.
Orders came in rapidly, and Mary spent every spare moment in cracking
pecans, and picking out the kernels so carefully that they fell from the
shells in unbroken halves. It was a tedious undertaking and even her
study hours were encroached upon. Not that she ever neglected a lesson
for the sake of the pecans, for, as she said to Elise, "I've set my
heart on taking the valedictory for Jack's sake, and of course I
couldn't sacrifice that ambition for all the watch-fobs in the
catalogue. He wouldn't want one at that price. But I've found that I can
pick out nuts and learn French verbs at the same time. If you and A.O.
will come up to the Dom. Sci. this afternoon at four thirty, and not let
any of the other girls know, I'll let you scrape the kettle and eat the
scraps that crumble from the corners when I cut the squares. But I can
not let any one in while I'm measuring and boiling. I couldn't afford to
make a mistake."
Promptly at the time set, the girls tapped for admission, for there was
no denying the drawing qualities of Mary's wares. The pun was common
property in the school.
"Elise," said A.O., pausing in her critical tasting, when they had been
at it some time. "I really believe that this is better than Huyler's hot
fudge Sun-balls. And it is lots better than the candy that Lieutenant
Logan sent you last week."
Elise made a face expressing both surprise and reproof. "Considering
that you ate the lion's share of it, Miss Miggs, that speech is neither
pretty nor polite."
"I wonder," continued A.O., paying no attention to her, "if the
Lieutenant knows what a public benefactor he is, when he sends you
bon-bons and books and things." She had enjoyed his many offerings to
Elise as much as the recipient and thought it wise to follow her first
speech with a compliment.
"Well, Agnes Olive, if you feel that you have profited so much by his
benefactions, then you are not playing fair if you don't invite some of
us down to meet your 'special,' when he comes next week. Mary, what do
you think? A.O. has a _suitor_! A boy from home. He is to come next
week, armed with a note from her 'fond payrents,' giving him permission
to call. After talking about him all term and getting my curiosity up to
fever heat about such a paragon as she makes him out to be, she blasts
all my hopes by flatly refusing to let me meet him. Pig!" she made a
grimace of mock disgust at A.O.
"I wouldn't care, if you weren't such an awful tease," admitted A.O.
"But I know how you'll criticize him afterward. You'll make a byword of
everything he said and quote it to me till kingdom come. _You_ know how
it would be, don't you, Mary?" turning to her. "You wouldn't want her
taking notes on everything he said if you had a--a--a friend--"
"'Oh, call it by some better name, for friendship sounds too cold,'"
interrupted Elise.
"Well, I haven't any a--a--whatever it is Elise wants to call it," said
Mary, laughing. "I only wish I had. I've always thought it would be nice
to have one, but I suppose I'll have to go to the end of my days
singing: 'Every lassie has her laddie, Nane they say hae I.' That has
always seemed such a sad song to me."
"Oh, oh!" cried Elise, perversely, who seemed to be in a mood for
teasing everybody. She pointed an accusing spoon at her before putting
it back in her mouth.
"What about Phil Tremont, I'd like to know! He saved her from an Indian
once, A.O., out on the desert. It was dreadfully romantic. And when he
was best man at Eugenia Forbes's wedding, and Mary was flower girl, Mary
got the shilling that was in the bride's cake. It was an old English
shilling, coined in the reign of Bloody Mary, with Philip's and Mary's
heads on it. That is a sure sign they were meant for each other. Phil
said right out at the table before everybody that fate had ordered that
he should be the lucky man. Mary has that shilling this blessed minute,
put away in her purse for a pocket piece, and she carries it everywhere
she goes. I saw it yesterday when she was looking in her purse for a
key, and she got as red as--as red as she is this minute."
Elise finished gleefully, elated with the success of her teasing. "My!
How you are blushing, Mary. Look at her, A.O." Her dark eyes twinkled
mischievously as she sang in a meaning tone:
"Amang the train there is a swain
I dearly lo'e mysel'.
But what's his name or where's his hame
I dinna choose to tell."
"I'm not blushing," protested Mary, hotly. "And it is silly to talk that
way when everybody knows that Phil Tremont never cared anything for any
girl except Lloyd Sherman."
"Maybe not at one time," insisted Elise. "And neither did Lieutenant
Logan care about any girl but my beloved sister Allison at one time. I'm
not mentioning names, but you know very well that she's not the one he
is crazy about now. Just wait till fate brings you and Phil together
again. You'll probably meet him during the Christmas vacation if you go
to New York."
Mary made no answer, only thrust a knife under the edge of the candy in
the largest plate, as if her sole interest in life was testing its
hardness. Then she spread out several sheets of paraffine paper with a
great show of indifference. It had its effect on Elise, and she promptly
changed her target back to A.O. There was no fun in teasing when her
arrows made no impression.
Usually A.O. enjoyed it, but she had tangled herself in a web of her own
weaving lately, and for the last few days had been in terror lest Elise
should find her out. Inspired by the picture of the handsome young
lieutenant on Elise's desk, and not wanting to seem behind her room-mate
in romantic experiences, silly little A.O. had drawn on her imagination
for most of the confidences she gave in exchange. When Elise talked of
the lieutenant, A.O. talked of "Jimmy," adding this trait and that grace
until she had built up a beautiful ideal, but a being so different from
the original on which she based her tales, that Jimmy himself would
never have recognized her dashing hero as the bashful fellow he was
accustomed to confront in his mirror.
He had carried her lunch basket when they went to school together, he
had patiently worked the sums on her slate with his big clumsy fingers
when she cried over the mysteries of subtraction. Later, when shy and
overgrown, and too bashful to speak his admiration, he had followed her
around at picnics and parties with a dog-like devotion that touched her.
He had sent her valentines and Christmas cards, and at the last High
School commencement when the graduating exercises marked the parting of
their ways, he had presented her with a photograph album bound in
celluloid, with a bunch of atrociously gaudy pansies and forget-me-nots
painted thereon.
In matching stories with Elise, the album and his awkwardness and his
plodding embarrassed speech somehow slipped into the background, and it
was his devotion and his chivalry she enlarged upon. Elise, impressed by
her hints and allusions, believed in the idealized Jimmy as thoroughly
as A.O. intended she should.
For several days A.O. had been in a quandary, for her mother's last
letter had announced a danger which had never entered her thoughts as
being imminent. "Jimmy Woods will be in Washington soon. He is going up
with his uncle, who has some business at the patent office. I have given
him a note to Madam Chartley, granting him my permission to call on you.
He is in an agony of apprehension over the trip to Warwick Hall. He is
so afraid of meeting strange girls. But I tell him it will be good for
him. It is really amusing to see how interested everybody in town is
over Jimmy's going. Do be kind to the poor fellow for the sake of your
old childish friendship, no matter if he does seem a bit countrified and
odd. He is a dear good boy, and it would never do to let him feel
slighted or unwelcome."
When A.O. read that, much as she liked Jimmy Woods, she wished that the
ground would open and swallow him before he could get to Washington, or
else that it had opened and swallowed her before she drew such a picture
of him for Elise to admire. There were only two ways out of the dilemma
that she could see: confession or a persistent refusal to let her see
him. She must not even be allowed to hang over the banister and watch
him pass through the hall, as she had proposed doing.
The more she persisted in her refusal the more determined Elise was to
see him. A.O. imagined she could feel herself growing thin and pale from
so much lying awake of nights to invent some excuse to circumvent her.
If she only knew what day Jimmy was to be in Washington she could
arrange to meet him there. So she could plan a trip to the dentist with
Miss Gilmer, the trained nurse, as chaperon. She wouldn't have minded
introducing him to Elise if she had never painted him to her in such
glowing colours as her hero. She wished she hadn't told her it was Jimmy
who was coming. She could have called him by his middle name,
Gordon--Mr. Gordon, and passed him off as some ordinary acquaintance in
whom Elise could have no possible interest.
It was a relief when Elise turned her attention to Mary's affairs, and
when she saw that her turn was coming again, she set her teeth together
grimly, determined to make no answer.
Presently, to her surprise, Elise relapsed into silence, and stood
looking out of the window, tapping on the kettle with her spoon in a
preoccupied way. Then she laughed suddenly as if she saw something
funny, and being questioned, refused to give the reason.
"I just thought of something," she said, laughing again. "Something too
funny for words. I'll have to go now," she added, as if the cause of her
mysterious mirth was in some way responsible for her departure.
"Thanks mightily for the candy, Mary. It's the best ever. You're going
to be overflowed with orders, I'm sure. Well, farewell friends and
fellow citizens, I'll see you later."
"What do you suppose it was that made her laugh so," asked A.O.,
suspiciously. "There's always some mischief brewing when she acts that
way. I don't dare leave her by herself a minute for fear she'll plot
something against me. I'll have to be going, too, Mary."
Left to herself, Mary began washing the utensils she had used. By the
time she had removed every trace of her candy-making, the confections
set out on the window sill in the wintry air were firm and hard, all
ready to be wrapped in the squares of paraffine paper and packed in the
boxes waiting for them. She whistled softly as she drew in the plates,
but stopped with a start when she realized that it was Elise's song she
was echoing:
"Amang the train there is a swain
I dearly lo'e mysel'."
"It must be awfully nice," she mused, "to have somebody as devoted to
you as the Lieutenant is to Elise and Jimmy is to A.O. If I were A.O. I
wouldn't care if the whole school came down to meet him. I'd _want_ them
to see him. I made up my mind at Eugenia's wedding that it was safer to
be an old maid, but I'd hate to be one without ever having had an
'affair' like other girls. It must be lovely to be called the Queen of
Hearts like Lloyd, and to have such a train of admirers as Mister Rob
and Mister Malcolm and Phil and all the others."
There was a wistful look in the gray eyes that peered dreamily out of
the window into the gathering dusk of the December twilight. But it was
not the wintry landscape that she saw. It was a big boyish figure,
cake-walking in the little Wigwam kitchen. A handsome young fellow
turning in the highroad to wave his hat with a cheery swing to the
disconsolate little girl who was flapping a farewell to him with her old
white sunbonnet. And then the same face, older grown, smiling at her
through the crowds at the Lloydsboro Valley depot, as he came to her
with outstretched hands, exclaiming, "Good-bye, little Vicar! Think of
the Best Man whenever you look at the Philip on your shilling."
She was thinking of him now so intently that she lost count of the
pieces she had packed into the box she was filling with the squares of
sweets, and had to empty them all out and begin again. But as she
recalled other scenes, especially the time she had overheard a
conversation not intended for her about a turquoise he was offering
Lloyd, she said to herself, "He is for Lloyd. They are just made for
each other, and I am glad that the nicest man I ever knew happens to
like the dearest girl in the world. And I hope if there ever should be
'a swain amang the train' for me, he'll be as near like him as possible.
I don't know where I'd ever meet him, though. Certainly not here and
most positively not in Lone-Rock."
"Not like other girls," she laughed presently, recalling the title of
the book Ethelinda was reading. "That fits me exactly. No Lieutenant, no
Jimmy, and no birthstone ring, and no prospect of ever having any. But I
don't care--much. The candy is a success and Jack is going to have his
bloodstone fob."
With her arms piled full of boxes, she started down to her room. As she
opened the door a burst of music came floating out from the gymnasium
where the carol-singers were practising for the yearly service. This one
was a new carol to her. She did not know the words, but to the swinging
measures other words fitted themselves; some lines which she had read
that morning in a magazine. She sang them softly in time with the
carol-singers as she went on down the stairs:
"For should he come not by the road, and come not by the hill
And come not by the far sea way, _yet come he surely will_.
Close all the roads of all the world, _love's road is open still_."