to my comfort."
"Then you are perfectly contented. Sometimes I fancy that I see an
expression on your face that seems to indicate--well, not discontent,
but something of the kind, as if you were a little unhappy."
"Oh, no indeed, Aunt Anna. You are all too kind, and I enjoy every
moment in Boston. Of course I miss poor papa, but he had expected to
leave me for so long a time, that I was prepared, and he himself always
said that he wished me to think of him as only gone away for a time, yet
of course I miss him. But then you and Uncle Thomas have been everything
to me, and so thoughtful. I can't imagine a more delightful room than
this with the view of the river, and these dainty, artistic things about
me, and my own piano and books. You have no idea how I have enjoyed it."
"Well, I am glad that it all pleases you, for perhaps we could not have
done as well for you if Agnes had been at home. You know that this was
her studio, and no other room in the house is so large and cheerful. Now
it has always seemed hard that you could not have kept Eliza with you
this winter; she had been a part of your old life, and you would have
been much happier with some one to talk with about it."
"Of course I should have been glad to have had her with me, but I
couldn't insist on her staying when her brother needed her so much after
the death of his wife. I had such an amusing letter from one of her
little nieces the other day, thanking me for lending them their Aunt
Eliza, and saying that they did not know when they could return her."
"Then she can't come to spend the summer at Stormbridge?"
"I do not exactly know, for Eliza has not written to me herself; but I
half believe that it is better for me to do without a maid; I feel ever
so much more independent, although naturally I _do_ miss Eliza."
Mrs. Barlow smiled at the philosophic tone which
Julia had assumed, for she had quietly made her own observations on the
state of Julia's mind when at the very beginning of her stay in Boston
Eliza had been called away.
"Another year you may need somebody, even if you cannot have Eliza. The
older a girl grows the more stitches there are to be taken for her, and
next season you will have less time than at present to do things for
yourself."
"But I like this feeling of independence, or rather I like to feel that
I have to depend almost entirely on myself; I am just so much more of a
person than I should be if I had Eliza to wait on me constantly, as I
used to."
"A certain amount of independence in a young girl is a good thing,"
replied Mrs. Barlow, "and I am glad that yours takes a somewhat
different form from Brenda's. I wonder, for example, where she is this
afternoon. She had an appointment at her dressmaker's, but when I went
there to make a suggestion or two about her new coat, they told me that
she had not been there, and here it is near dinner-time with no sign of
Brenda. Probably she is with Belle or some of the girls, but still I do
not like her going off in this way."
While Mrs. Barlow was speaking Julia hoped that she would not ask her if
she had seen Brenda, and fortunately she did not do so. To be sure,
Julia had nothing special to tell, and indeed had not her aunt spoken of
the broken appointment at the dressmaker's, she might have mentioned the
glimpse of Brenda that she had had down town, but now she began to
suspect that something was wrong, at least it was strange that Brenda
should have deceived her mother about the dressmaking appointment. The
dressmaker's rooms were not down town, so that it was not this
appointment that had taken her to the neighborhood of Winter street.
"But where have you been, yourself, this afternoon, Julia?" asked Mrs.
Barlow; and Julia told her of her visit to the Rosas, and of the plans
that Miss South had suggested for raising them out of their present
trouble. "I am afraid that Brenda won't agree with her," she said, "for
she has the idea that the one thing needful is to give Mrs. Rosa a large
sum of money to spend just as she likes."
"Brenda isn't very practical," replied Mrs. Barlow. "I only wish that
she had your common sense; or if she were more like Agnes, it would be
better, for although Agnes is an artist, she is decidedly practical."
"Oh, Brenda is so much younger," said Julia apologetically.
"Yes, I know it, that is undoubtedly one reason for her heedlessness,
but it sometimes seems as if her wilfulness increases every day. I am
afraid, too, that she has not always been considerate of you; I have
been wishing to speak of this for a long time, though it is not an easy
thing to do. It would pain me very much to have you feel that any of
us--even Brenda had been inhospitable."
"Oh, no indeed, Aunt Anna, I am not likely to think anything of that
kind. I make allowances for Brenda, and I honestly think that she is
getting to like me better."
"There ought not to be any question of that kind. If it were not for
Belle, Brenda would be inclined to throw herself more upon you, but I am
sure that Belle keeps her stirred up all the time. But there--I ought
not to talk so much about this, at least to you, only I have thought
that I ought to tell you that your uncle and I have feared that you have
had several experiences this winter that were not altogether pleasant,
and I should fail in my duty if I did not express our appreciation of
your patience."
Then rising from her chair, Mrs. Barlow leaned over Julia, and kissed
her on the forehead, saying as she turned to leave the room, "We have
barely time now to get ready for dinner."
Just as Julia opened her door to go down to the library where she
usually talked with her uncle for a few minutes before dinner, she saw
Brenda rushing upstairs to the floor above.
"Where's Brenda?" asked Mr. Barlow, as they took their places at the
table. There was a note of severity in his voice, that Mrs. Barlow and
Julia detected at once.
"Why, she has been out all the afternoon," replied the former; "but I
have sent word for her to hasten downstairs."
At this moment the delinquent entered the dining-room, and took her
place at the table. Although she had changed her street dress, she had
apparently dressed in a great hurry, and her hair looked almost
disheveled, as she had evidently not had time to rearrange it.
Hardly responding to the greetings of her parents and cousin, Brenda
began to talk very rapidly about--well about the subject to which many
of us turn when we are embarrassed,--the weather.
"Yes," said her father, in a kind of general response to her very vague
remarks. "Yes, I will admit that it has been a fine day, almost the
first really springlike day that we have had, that it is a delightful
day to have been out in the open air, but all this does not prevent my
asking you why you should be so late to dinner; you know my rule, and
that I shall have to punish you in some very decided way if this happens
again."
"For once Brenda has no excuse ready," added Mrs. Barlow; "now _I_ am
anxious to know where you have been this afternoon?"
Brenda turned very red before replying, "Oh, Belle and I have been
together."
"I dare say," said Mr. Barlow, "but that does not tell us where you have
been?"
"Any one would think," cried Brenda, almost in tears, "that I was a girl
of ten years of age. I do not know any one who has to account for
everything she does; there is not a girl at school who is watched in
this way."
"Sometimes I think that it would be better if you were under closer
guardianship. Some one has been telling me that you need it."
Brenda flashed a glance at Julia as if she might be the informant, and
Julia rejoiced that she had not even mentioned having seen Brenda down
town.
"You were not at the dressmaker's this afternoon," said Mrs. Barlow
reproachfully.
"I hope that you were not on the bridge, looking at the crews," said Mr.
Barlow.
"No," said Brenda quickly, "I was not. Why did you think of that?"
"Because some one has been telling me that a number of foolish girls are
in the habit of going where the Harvard Bridge is building on fine
afternoons, just as the class crews are out exercising, and that some of
these girls always wave their handkerchiefs, and even cheer, as their
favorites come near--and more than this some one has told me that you
are often to be seen among these girls; now, Brenda, I tell you frankly
that this won't do."
"Oh, papa, you are so particular; a great many girls think that it is
perfectly proper to go there, and no one ever says a word about it. I
wonder who told you; some old maid, I am certain of that."
"No, indeed, no old maid, but a young man, and a student, too. He felt
very sorry that you should be seen there; he says that there is always a
great mixture of people in the crowds on the bridge, and that it must be
far from an agreeable place for a young lady, besides not being a proper
one."
"Well I only wish that I could tell who that young man is," cried
Brenda. "I should call him a perfect goose."
"He is far from that," responded Mr. Barlow; "and I ought to say that I
agree with him thoroughly. I only wish that I had heard about this
before, and now I hope that you will understand, Brenda, that you are
forbidden to go near the Harvard Bridge in the afternoon."
"Not to the bridge at all!" cried Brenda, in a most doleful voice. "Why,
I can't see the harm."
"Well, I can, and that is enough."
"You can go to the races themselves, Brenda, when they actually come
off," interposed Mrs. Barlow, "but if you think it over, you will see
good reasons for not hanging about the bridge, as a boy might, merely to
see the crews pass."
Brenda made no attempt at further argument, and one result of the little
discussion that there had been about the bridge and the crews was to
divert her father and mother from asking further questions about the way
in which she had spent this particular afternoon. She was rather
relieved when the evening passed without Julia's referring to having
seen her down town. She was almost sure that Julia and Miss South had
recognized her, and Belle and she were in dread lest in this way her
father and mother should learn that she and her rather mischievous
friend had gone alone to a matinee.
For this was now Brenda's secret,--she had not only gone down town
alone, but she had gone to the Music Hall without an older person
accompanying her. With parents as indulgent as hers there seemed no need
for her to try to secure forbidden pleasures. Nor would she probably
have done this but for Belle. It had been the study of Belle's life to
get what she wished in a clandestine way. Her stern old grandmother was
constantly forbidding her to do this thing or that, and her commands
were often really unreasonable. No one was quicker to detect this than
Belle herself, and it was on this ground that she often excused her own
disobedience. "Why even mamma does not expect me to mind everything that
grandmamma says," and as her mother was rather timid, as well as
half-ill all the time, she gave her self-possessed daughter very few
commands of her own.
"I don't believe that I should be so ready to disobey mamma," Belle
would say to Brenda when the latter on occasions remonstrated with her,
"but with grandmamma it is different, for I do not consider that she has
any right to lay down the law as she does."
Nevertheless when Brenda and Belle sat in the front row in the large
Music Hall--for Brenda had bought expensive seats--both girls felt that
old Mrs. Gregg was pretty nearly right in saying that places of
amusement were not proper for a young girl. They had both been at
similar performances before, but always some older person had selected
the entertainment. This one, which they themselves had chosen from the
glaring posters decorating the bill-boards of the city, and from the
conversation of the Harvard freshman of their acquaintance was
altogether different from anything that they had seen. It was advertised
as an exhibition of ventriloquists, but it had a general air of
vulgarity that was extremely displeasing to them. Brenda wished more
than once that she had not joined Belle in this adventure. She did not
like the loud jokes, and the scant costumes of the performers, and she
hoped that there was no one in the audience who would recognize her. Of
course there were times when she laughed at the funny things on the
stage--for who could help it--but many of the jokes and the incidents at
which the rest of the audience laughed the loudest fell rather flat on
the ears of the two young girls. This was as it should be, for neither
of the two was anything worse than heedless and a little too fond of
having her own way. In Belle this wilfulness took the form of a
willingness to use subterfuge, both in word or deed to gain her own way.
Brenda did not follow her very closely in this direction, although there
was danger that her conscience would be dulled, before she realized it,
under Belle's influence. Brenda indeed felt so uncomfortable during the
performance, that if she could have done so without observation, she
would have left the hall. But she did not quite dare to go out in the
face of the great audience, and besides when she made the suggestion to
Belle, the latter would not hear of her going. "No, indeed," she had
said, "why should we go. You are a regular baby, Brenda; it isn't so
very bad, only a little vulgar, and just see what crowds of people there
are here, and some of them seem just as good as we are, and you know I
read you that newspaper clipping that said that this was one of the
successes of the year. You and I are not used to this kind of thing, but
dear me! we can't expect to stay children all our lives." So Brenda sat
there with an uneasy conscience, wondering what her mother would say, or
her father--or Julia who never by any chance did anything that she ought
not to do.
Stolen sweets are apt to taste a little bitter, and when the performance
was over, Brenda and Belle went out with the crowd. On the way out rough
people, or people whom Belle called "rough," pushed against them, while
one or two rude boys made saucy remarks to the young girls who seemed
conscious of being in the wrong place. It wasn't at all an agreeable
experience, especially as they were both wondering if any of their
friends were likely to see them.
Then there was that chance glimpse of Julia and Miss South, and the
rather silly action on the part of Brenda and Belle of hiding in the
doorway. Really they needed all the consolation they could get from
their visit to the confectioner's around the corner. There they drank
great glasses of chocolate, sipping the whipped cream at the top, as if
they were young ladies of twenty loitering in the shops after the
symphony. As they stirred the chocolate with their long spoons, and
lingered on the settee at the end of the shop to watch the lively young
men and women who were constantly coming in and out to buy bonbons, or
to get refreshment, they forgot all that had been disagreeable at the
music hall, and for the time being imagined that they were young ladies
themselves. Yet when Brenda reached home with hardly time to dress for
dinner, conscience began to prick again.
XXIII
ALMOST READY
Now however slowly time appears to pass, the end of any period of
waiting is sure to come, and its last days or hours generally seem to
melt away. Thus, when The Four realized that less than two weeks lay
between a certain April afternoon when they met to sew, and the day
appointed for the opening of the Bazaar, they began to feel a little
nervous. "I wish that we hadn't set any particular day," exclaimed
Brenda, "we might just have waited until we were all ready, and then
we----"
"Oh, Brenda, how unpractical you are," cried Edith, "that would have
been perfectly ridiculous. You know that we have to advertise a little,
and engage music and people to help us, and make all kinds of
arrangements."
"Oh, I dare say," responded the unpractical Brenda, "but still it takes
all the fun out of it to think that we must be ready by a particular
day; I feel exactly as if some one were driving me on, and you know that
is not pleasant."
"Oh, nonsense," interposed Nora, with a smile. "Just think how long we
were working without any special object. I am sure that we had all the
time we wished, and we had hardly a thing to show for it. For my own
part I shall be awfully glad to have the Bazaar over with. The weather
is altogether too fine to waste indoors on fancy work, but until we have
that money for Manuel I suppose that none of us will feel free to do as
she likes in the afternoons. There are so many things to attend to that
I don't see how we are ever to get ready even in two weeks."
Now the plans for the Bazaar had received much attention from the older
persons in the families of the young workers, and the encouragement that
they had had from their elders was now their chief incentive. Edith's
mother had offered them the use of a large drawing-room in her house
which was just adapted to an affair of this kind. It was a long room
with hard wood floor, intended really for dancing. Its walls, paneled
with mirrors, would reflect the tables of fancy work in such a way, as
to make it seem "as if we had twice as much as we really have," said
Brenda. As to other things there was a great deal to be decided. Brenda
and Belle wished a small orchestra engaged to play during the evening of
the Bazaar, and furnish music for dancing at the close of the sale.
Edith and Nora were afraid that this would eat up too much of their
profits, but Brenda was very decided in her views. "You can't expect
that we are not to have any fun out of it ourselves, after all the
trouble we've had, and I know that there is going to be plenty of money
for the Rosas. We shall make lots out of the flower table; we have
quantities of plants and cut flowers promised us from the greenhouses of
our friends--just quantities, and then the refreshment table, and--well
you know yourselves that we shall have more than we can sell."
"What good will that do?" enquired the practical Nora. "We can't make
much out of things that we can't sell."
"Oh, I mean sell in the regular way; of course we'll have an auction,
and get ever so much in that way. I shouldn't wonder if we should have
more than $500 to give to Mrs. Rosa."
"Don't count your chickens too soon, Brenda," said Belle; "suppose it
should rain on the day of the sale, or suppose,----"
"Oh, how tiresome you are!" cried the sanguine Brenda, "you are just as
bad as the others, and it's quite as much your Bazaar as mine, and if it
doesn't succeed, you'll be just as much to blame."
The fretful note in Brenda's voice warned her friends that she was
taking things too deeply to heart.
"Why, Brenda, no one is probably going to be to blame, for the Bazaar
will be a great success," interposed the peace-loving Edith. "All we
have to do now is to try our very best to make it go off as well as
possible."
Now the Bazaar was to be the Wednesday of the week following Easter, and
this year Easter fell almost in the middle of April. During the last
days of school preceding the Easter vacation the four did much
canvassing among their friends to see whether all the articles promised
were finished. Of course there were several disappointments. Some girls
who had promised special things either had not finished them or had
forgotten all about them. On the other hand, there were some who had not
only done much more than they had promised themselves, but had collected
many pretty, and even valuable articles from their friends. All the
school girls near the age of the four were invited to assist at the
tables. The four resolved themselves into an executive committee, adding
to their number Julia, and Frances and one or two others. Each of these
girls was to have special charge of a table or department, and she in
turn was to call on others to assist her.
Julia had invited Ruth Roberts as her chief assistant, rather to the
distaste of Frances, who thought that this was going too far out of
their set.
"What do we know about Ruth Roberts?" she had said in a contemptuous
way; "nobody ever heard of her, I am sure, until she came here to
school."
"We have nothing to do with that," replied Nora, to whom the remark
happened to be made. "I dare say that there are a great many good people
in the world of whom we have never heard; I know all that I need to
about Ruth Roberts, that she has good manners and a pleasant
disposition, and an agreeable family. I know, for I have visited
them----" Then, throwing a little emphasis into her voice, she
concluded, "Really, Frances, you are growing very tiresome, and if I
were you I should try to be less narrow-minded. Any one to hear you
talk, would think that no one in the world is worth considering who does
not happen to live in certain streets in your neighborhood."
"Perhaps that is what I do think," answered Frances. "We can't make
intimate friends of every one in the world, and we might as well have
nothing to do with those who are not in our own set. I hate these people
who are always trying to push in."
"If you mean Ruth, you are entirely wrong. She is the last girl in the
world likely to try to push in. She thinks quite as well of herself as
you do of yourself, and I dare say that she had some ancestors, even if
they were not governors of Massachusetts."
Now despite the fact that this speech, when quoted, sounds rather
acrimonious, Frances took no offence at it. She could not afford to
quarrel with so popular a girl as Nora, and besides she knew that the
Gostars had a good claim to the same kind of pride of descent that she
had herself. So, although both girls turned away from each other with an
annoyed expression on their faces, their next meeting was perfectly
amicable.
When Nora repeated this conversation to her mother, Mrs. Gostar smiled.
"If I were you, Nora, I would not take anything that Frances says too
seriously. She has been brought up rather unfortunately."
"But it is so tiresome to have her going around most of the time with
her head in the air, saying, 'Oh, I cannot do this, or I cannot do that,
because I am a Pounder.'"
Mrs. Gostar laughed at this speech, and the gesture and tossing back of
the head with which Nora emphasized it.
"Frances hardly says that, does she?" she enquired.
"Yes, she does, she really does--sometimes," replied Nora, "and I am
sure that she feels like saying it all the time. Of course we all know
that there have been two governors, and one or two generals, and other
people like that in her family somewhere in the dim past. I am sure that
we have heard enough about it. But there is nothing very great about
Frances' own family so far as I have ever heard, and some one told me
that her father could not even get his degree at college. If they hadn't
so much money----"
"There, there," interrupted her mother, "aren't you growing uncharitable
yourself? It is really true that Frances had ancestors who were of great
service to the country, and her family has had position for a long time,
and all the advantages of education. But among your schoolmates and hers
there are probably other girls of good descent, who have had advantages
hardly inferior to those that Frances has enjoyed. They may have names
that are not so well known, and yet their ancestors may have been almost
as useful in building up this country as those of Frances."
"Well," said Nora, "I don't value people for their ancestors, but for
what they are themselves."