A TRIBUTE
“But what could Mary mean?”
This question, or at least some variation of it had been Gloria’s
plaint for the better part of a half hour, and Trixy, still patient,
offered another suggestion in answer.
“There is something strange about Mary,” she said this time. “I thought
I noticed it first when she caught a glimpse of a family picture in
Jack’s room. It might have been imagination, we were all under such a
strain, but it seemed to me her pale face betrayed sudden alarm.”
“A picture!”
“Yes. Just a rustic snapshot taken somewhere in the mountains. The
stepmother, father and a couple of queer looking folks. I didn’t
scrutinize it but Mary took it to the light when she thought or
appeared to think no one noticed. She had some motive for studying the
picture.”
“Did she say anything about it?”
“Asked me if I knew who were in the group. Jack was dozing and Miss
Taylor hovered near.”
“I thought I had a first rate mystery in the Pirate’s Daughter, with
her blood stone and the gift of black pearls, but now here comes Mary
moping along, with regular melodrama. Trixy, the plot--thick-ens! Am I
or am I not the gurrull from Barbend?” Gloria rolled down on the floor
and kept rolling until the legs of the table stopped her. Then she lay
flat, arms out straight and eyes closed. Trixy dropped a chocolate drop
so near the receptive mouth it eventually rolled in.
“Oh, lovely-kins!” said the girl on the floor. “Why did I ever promise
Dame Ambition that I’d try for that old prize? I feel like sleeping
until the crack of doom.”
“No wonder. You have had what might be honestly called, a full day. Get
up on the couch and take forty winks. I’ll shake you in time to finish
that important page.”
“Hark! I hear a footstep----”
“Quick! Up on the couch and I won’t let them disturb you.”
Roughly tucked in with the brilliant Navajo blanket, Gloria squeezed
her eyes closed before the door was opened to admit Pat.
“Is she asleep?” asked the red haired one, considerately.
“I hope so,” whispered Trixy. “What a day she has had! Won’t you come
in, Pat?”
“Not if I would disturb her.” A few carefully chosen steps brought Pat
within reach of a chair. “They asked me to bring her this. Every one
chipped in.”
Gloria sat up straight. Her eyes beheld a glorious box that could
contain nothing less sweet than candy.
“Oh!” she gurgled.
“Awake?” Pat’s voice betrayed her hopes.
“I really wasn’t asleep, but _who-all_ sent me this? And why?”
“Why? Say, Glo, Mary tried to pawn her best ring to Janet for her share
in the chipping. Mary always does use up her allowance in advance, but
she was heartbroken not to have any real cash on hand. I mention it to
show the spirit. Glo, we’ll never one of us have a chance after this.”
Pat dug her sport shoes into the rug. “And to think I didn’t even have
sense enough to dip in, get wet and pretend I was for the rescue!
Well, anyways, as Tillie, the milk girl says, there’s the token of our
esteem, and we all hope it won’t make you sick. Maud Hunter selected
it and she is supposed to know what’s what in candy, because her dad
gambles in sugar or eggs or something sweetish.”
Pat had ostentatiously placed the beautiful box in Gloria’s
outstretched hands and was salaaming absurdly.
Trixy beamed. “It was lovely of the girls----”
“And that little Ethel proposed it, she was so tickled to have helped
rub your toes, Glo, or did she hold the soap? Anyways, she’s so
grateful to have had a hand in adjusting your precious person. And say,
girls, how’s Jack?”
“Sleeping, last we heard, and doing all right, we hope,” replied Trixy.
Gloria was fondling the gift appreciatively.
“She’s a lucky stude. I thought it was all over, and I’ll never forget
her face. Honest.” The tone was not now frivolous. “But say, Gloriosa,
how goes the essay? I hear you’re out to win?”
Even with the opportunity of banter made by Pat herself, Gloria
couldn’t find words to say “Run along! I’ve got to work to-night,”
instead she faltered:
“I’m afraid I’ve got an awful lot to do yet. And tomorrow may be a
broken day.”
“The girls working in the contest are to have a free day for it, didn’t
you know?”
“Yes, I knew that, but I expect company,” said Gloria, still admiring
the handsome candy box.
“Oh! May _I_ meet him?”
“You may meet _her_. It’s my near-mother, Jane Morgan. She has
been with me all my life until last year and this,” said Gloria gently.
“And I’m willing to divulge this real secret, right here and now.
Listen! I hope I shall be with her again before many more years, for
my idea of a real life, is the thatched roof, with Jane and dad in the
foreground and an ocean for a hedge.”
“Lov-ell-lee!” thrilled Pat. “And, Glo, I don’t expect you to open up
the candy, so don’t worry about an excuse. I’ll toddle along. What
report shall I make to the committee?”
“Oh, they’re dears, every one of them, and you can tell them I said so.
I wish I wasn’t so busy. I’d invite them all in and we’d celebrate. But
after all, perhaps it will be better to wait until we can fix something
up for Jack. I’ll save the prettiest pieces----”
“Hark! There’s some one coming to make sure I brought it to you and
didn’t break the seal. Give me one little kiss in that clean spot below
the freckle patch. Thanks, Glo dear, and if I live to be a hundred I’ll
never forget this day.”
So little Pat bounced out in time to prevent the invasion of the
approaching stepper.
“Even Jean,” murmured Trixy, referring to the list of donors.
“But I couldn’t trust her, for all of that,” returned Gloria, frankly.
“I think Jean respects popular opinion, and just now it seems to blow
my way. But I wouldn’t care to depend upon it for a night’s lodging.”
“Cynic,” scolded Trixy. “You know, Glo, it’s positively rash to fly in
the face of popularity. But at any rate, sit down and write. You have a
good hour left, and mayhap the diversion hath refreshed thee. Get thee
to thy task, and may Minerva be kind.”
From that time until the bell rang Trixy stalled off five attempts at
intrusion, by actual count. It seemed that even an essay contest, keen
though it was, would not hold down the curious ones.
Gloria soon forgot her own fatigue, however, in her interest of the
subject, and what between hunting up words, verifying vague beliefs in
the great out doors, identifying queer little birds with downy whiskers
over their eyes, (she had found one by the big oak tree, the queerest
bird, that might have been a horned lark, but it was so young the marks
could hardly be accepted as permanent,) these necessary interruptions
rather delayed the actual progress of the last draft of the essay. But
Gloria worked on, unconscious of draw-backs, enjoying the one task that
befell her--original writing on the one original subject: Nature in The
Great Outdoors.
“How come?” inquired Trixy, her own lamp already dimmed.
“Oh, I love it!” breathed Gloria. “The one trouble is, the theme is so
unlimited, unrestricted. I believe one could write two thousand words
on the life of a fern, it is all real, vivid and fascinating.”
“Because you know all about ferns, and hop toads and daddy-long-legs,”
said Trixy. “Now, I would find it simpler to expand on the joy of
home comforts. That’s one thing first rate at Altmount. The beds are
_swell_!”
“And I’ll join you in similar praise directly,” promised Gloria.
“Meanwhile I’ll drop the curtain. There’s no need of keeping you awake
on my work.”
“Well, you know I’d stay awake if it would do you any good, Glo. But
like saying your prayers, essay writing, according to the rules, must
be individually executed. What I did for Jack was just the roughest
suggestion, of course.”
“Poor Jack! I wonder if they’ll let her finish it tomorrow?”
“Likely, if she rests well. Physical exertion is the main restriction.”
Gloria was pondering, deeply, trying to fix up a difficult paragraph.
Trixy heard her sigh and suggested:
“Sleep over it, Glo. If you go to sleep with the snarl on your mind,
you will wake up with it all straightened out. Really. Psychologists
say so. Be careful where you hide your candy. I might walk in my sleep.”
“I wish the girls hadn’t done it.”
“Why?”
“Oh, sort of makes me feel foolish.”
“Silly. You ought to be tickled to death. That’s the loveliest box they
had at Benwick’s. And besides, I’m sure they wanted to show you how
they felt.”
“You mean that the country stigma has been condoned?” There was an even
tone of mockery in this.
“Gloria Doane, you ought to be slapped.” Trixy sat up straight to say
this and Gloria was sitting on the foot of her chum’s bed to rest up
a little before trying to sleep. “You know perfectly well no one ever
considered you--country.”
“Queer what a morbid imagination I have. But never mind, lamb. ’S’all
right. I know you love me and--and I hope I can send a good report to
dad. What else counts? And Jane comes on the morrow! Whew! I’d best be
haymaking, or whatever it is Pat calls getting to sleep. Trixy, don’t
you love little Pat?”
“’Course.”
“And isn’t Mary quaint?”
“’Squaint?”
“Oh, go to sleep, dear, and don’t let my alarm disturb you. I’m putting
it under the big bowl right at my ear. Set for----”
But the monotonous breathing from the alcove made further explanation
unnecessary.
In her own bed Gloria found sleep or did not find it within reach.
Hours, it seemed, she lay there, thinking. She changed line and
paragraph of the essay over and over again, even snapping on her light
to note some subtle phrase that might escape her memory during sleep,
if sleep ever came.
Finally, anxious for rest, she deliberately turned her thoughts to Jack.
Why was she so fearful her stepmother would divulge family matters?
What was so secret about it all?
“And she doesn’t seem to know anything about the black pearls, or
whatever the anonymous necklace is made of,” she decided. That strain
of thought travelled far before the weary girl checked it. Then the new
angle, Mary’s strange remark, came up for investigation.
“Could she have some secret interest in Jack?” Gloria questioned. “I
always fancied she hovered over her, somehow, especially since that day
in the dressing room when the girls openly discussed the loud spoken
Steppy, who had taken Jack away so suddenly.”
For some time vague fancies formed as explaining this sudden interest
of Mary’s. She remembered how outspoken Mary had been in Jack’s
defense. How she had asked more than one girl if she had seen the
Steppy. But no one had.
“And when Trixy came in from the ride,” persisted Gloria’s abused
brain, “she thought she saw someone, who might be Mary, hiding back of
the hedge, just as Jack and the other Rough Riders dashed in?”
“Now why----”
But a welcome confusion checked the answer and mercifully put Gloria’s
faith in the exact science of a well trained little alarm clock.
For a heavy day following was imminent.