THE SECRET SESSION
"I feel more as though I were getting ready for a funeral than about to
give a dinner for the Eight Originals," sighed Grace Harlowe, as she
joined her mother on the shady front porch, a little white and gold work
bag, which Miss Southard had brought her from Paris, swinging from her
arm. "I can't realize that, within the next week, Nora and Jessica are
actually going to become Mrs. Hippy Wingate and Mrs. Reddy Brooks. It
seems ridiculous. Why it's only yesterday that Jessica's hair hung down
her back in two braids, and Nora wore curls and short dresses."
"I can't imagine Hippy in the role of a dignified bridegroom," smiled
Mrs. Harlowe. "He is far more likely to convulse the wedding party and
upset the whole solemn service than to conduct himself with strict
propriety."
"He insists that he will cover himself with glory if Reddy doesn't look
at him, and Reddy insists that he will sit and stare him out of
countenance. David is to be Hippy's best man and Tom Gray Reddy's, while
Jessica is to be Nora's maid of honor and Nora Jessica's matron of
honor. She's to be married first, you know. Mabel, Anne, Miriam Nesbit,
Eleanor Savelli and I are to be the bridesmaids at both weddings," went
on Grace. "We'll have a reunion of all our friends. The Gibsons are at
home, Judge Putnam and his sister are coming down earlier from the
Adirondacks; then there are Eleanor and her father, Miss Nevin and the
Southards. Every one who has played an active part in our home lives
will be on hand to see the girls married."
"But how can Nora go away on a wedding journey and be Jessica's matron
of honor, too?" asked Mrs. Harlowe.
"She and Jessica went over that point a dozen times. You see Nora's
wedding takes place in the morning. She is going to have a wedding
breakfast, then she and Hippy will go to the mountains for a week. They
will return to Oakdale on the day of Jessica's wedding, and leave for a
long trip west the next morning. That was the best way they could carry
out a compact they made last June to serve as maids of honor for each
other."
Mrs. Harlowe listened to Grace's flow of eager talk with a smile of
content on her fine face. To her fond eyes Grace looked absurdly
immature in her simple frock of white dotted swiss. She was secretly
glad that Overton, rather than marriage, had claimed her alert,
self-reliant daughter for another year. Like every other mother she
wished some day to see Grace happily settled in a home of her own, but
she preferred to think of that someday as being still far distant.
Grace took out of her bag a guest towel she was embroidering. It was the
last of the half dozen towels she had worked for Jessica's hope chest.
She was not fond of needlework. She preferred to spend her spare time
playing golf and tennis, or riding and walking. This, as well as the
hemstitched table cloth and napkins she had completed for Nora, was a
labor of love. Now as she bent painstakingly over her work, she smiled
to herself and wove a tender thread of loyalty and love into the
pattern.
A long clear trill caused her to raise her head quickly and spring to
her feet with, "Here they are, at last!" She ran to meet them.
Three girls, or rather three young women, came loitering through the
gate and up the walk, laughing gayly at something the girl in the center
was relating for their benefit. "Now what has Hippy done?" guessed Grace
shrewdly.
"You might know it was something about him," said Jessica Bright. "This
time it was a case of what was done to him. Tell the lady all over
again, Nora."
"It certainly was funny," dimpled Nora. "You see, Grace, Hippy and Edith
and I were going for a ride, last night, in his new car. We waited and
waited for him and couldn't imagine why he didn't come. About ten
o'clock he came tearing along at a speed that would have made a traffic
officer turn pale. Edith and I were still sitting on the porch. I
pretended I was dreadfully offended until he told me where he had been,
then Edith and I laughed until we almost cried."
"Where had he been?" asked Grace curiously.
The three girls giggled in unison.
"Locked in the cellar," returned Nora mirthfully. "He was all ready to
go for his car when he happened to remember that he wanted a wrench from
the tool chest in the cellar. His father is away this week and there was
no one in the house but the cook. She was all ready to go away for the
evening, too. She didn't know Hippy was in the cellar, so she locked all
the doors, the cellar door included, and went on her way rejoicing.
Hippy said he pounded and shouted and howled and wailed and pounded some
more. Can't you imagine just how funny he must have looked? He couldn't
climb out of the cellar windows, for they are too small and he is too
fat, so he had to stay there until almost ten o'clock. He says he sat on
the cellar steps most of the time and thought of the happy past. At last
the cook came home and when he heard her walking around upstairs he
pounded and shouted again. She thought he was a burglar, just as though
a burglar would make all that noise, and wasn't going to let him out. He
insists that he ruined his voice forever in trying to convince her that
he was himself. He says his frenzied pleadings finally touched her
adamant heart, and she opened the cellar door very cautiously at the
rate of about a sixteenth of an inch per minute."
Grace laughed with the others, as Nora finished. "Poor Hippy," she
commented, "he is always falling into difficulties. I must ask him about
his evening in the cellar."
"Yes, do," urged Nora. "He tried to swear Edith and me to secrecy, but
we refused to be sworn."
"It will make Reddy so happy," laughed Anne.
"Oh, Anne, dear, you don't know how splendid it seems to have you home
again!" exclaimed Grace. "It's just like old times. I can't help feeling
sad though. We thought when we were graduated from high school that our
parting of the ways had come, but now that we are all standing on the
verge of our life work, it seems to me that this is going to be the real
parting. I can't help wondering if things will seem quite the same again
when we gather home next year."
"Of course they will," declared practical Nora. "Grace Harlowe, don't
you dare to grow gloomy and retrospective. We four are chums for life,
and not all the weddings and stage careers and Harlowe House positions
in the world can change us."
"I know they can't. I won't make any more excursions into the Valley of
Doubt," promised Grace.
They had stopped on the walk to talk, now they moved slowly toward the
veranda, four abreast, a bright-eyed, happy quartette. Mrs. Harlowe
greeted her daughter's friends as affectionately as though they were her
own children. "Did you bring your work, girls, or is it to be a case of
idle hands?"
"Idle hands!" exclaimed Nora. "Far from it. Jessica has a blouse to
finish and I have innumerable initials to embroider."
"I am the only idle one," confessed Anne. "I am sorry to say that I
haven't the least desire to be industrious. I prefer to sit with my
hands folded and watch the rest of you work. It sounds lazy, doesn't
it?"
"Not a bit of it," declared Grace loyally. "You've done your work, Anne.
It's time you took a rest. Make yourselves comfy, girls. Here, give me
your hats and parasols. I'll put them in the hall."
In a moment Grace returned, and sitting down by Nora, who had stationed
herself in the big porch swing, she picked up her work and began to
embroider industriously.
For the space of half an hour the little company worked busily, keeping
up a running accompaniment of merry conversation broken with light
laughter. It was Nora's quick eyes which first saw Grace lay down her
work with an impatient sigh. An instant later Grace discovered that
Nora's industry was flagging. Mrs. Harlowe had just gone into the house.
Anne was leaning back in her chair, her eyes fixed dreamily upon the far
horizon, while Jessica, alone, plodded patiently along, too much
absorbed in the development of the butterfly pattern she was
embroidering to note that two of her companions were lagging. A sudden
silence fell upon them all. It was broken by Nora's quick tones. "I'll
take it all back," she averred. "I'm strictly in favor of idle hands.
Let's put our work away and go for a walk!"
"For this brilliant idea, we thank you," returned Anne, coming out of
her dream in a hurry.
"Why not walk over to the old Omnibus House," suggested Grace.
"Brillianter and brillianter," nodded Nora. "What could be more fitting
than to make a pilgrimage to the scenes of our high school days? I
haven't been there in ages."
"Neither have I," was Grace's quick response. "It's only half-past
three. We'll have plenty of time to go there and back before dinner. The
boys won't be here until six o'clock. You know that Tom Gray arrived
yesterday, I suppose? That makes the Eight Originals complete. We'll
have to do without the Plus Two, because Miriam hasn't come home yet and
Arnold won't be here until the night before Nora's wedding."
"How I miss Miriam," sighed Grace.
"We never dreamed when we were freshmen that she would ever be our close
friend, did we?" asked Nora.
"She's a dear, and no mistake," agreed Jessica. Then, her glance
straying to Anne, "What makes Anne look so mysterious?"
Anne smiled. "I'll tell you the most surprising secret you ever heard,
but not until we get to the Omnibus House and are seated in a row on the
old stone steps behind it."
"Then let's away!" exclaimed Nora. "We won't need our hats. Two parasols
will be enough to shade us from the sun."
Five minutes later the four girls trooped down the steps and strolled
through the familiar streets in the direction of their old playground.
The afternoon sun beamed so gently and kindly upon them that it was not
long before they closed their parasols and walked with their heads
uncovered to his tempered rays. To see a bevy of girls walking in the
quiet streets of the little city without hats was the commonest sight,
and the quartette attracted little attention as they sauntered along.
After leaving Oakdale behind, it was not more than ten minutes' walk
across the fields to the quaint old stone house which had been the scene
of so many of their high school revels.
"What a lot of good times we have had here," mused Nora reminiscently,
as they paused before the quaint old building, that had once been a
tavern, and was, goodness knew, how many years old. "Shall you ever
forget the time we buried the hatchet?"
"Never!" chorused three emphatic voices.
"Wasn't Julia Crosby too ridiculous for words?" declared Jessica. Her
smile of recollection was reflected in the faces of her friends.
"That reminds me," remarked Nora, "I have something to tell you girls
too."
"Let's have a 'secret' session," proposed Jessica. "Every one who wishes
to attend must be ready to tell a secret the moment we sit down on the
steps."
"'A secret is a secret, only, when known to three persons, two of which
are dead,'" quoted Anne mischievously.
"These secrets mustn't be the heart-to-heart,
keep-it-to-yourself-forever kind," stipulated Nora. "They mustn't be of
the complex variety either. Dark secrets are also strictly tabooed from
this session."
"Stop laying down rules and regulations," laughed Grace, "and let us
form our secret row. I am eaten up with curiosity to know what Anne and
Nora know."
"Are you eligible?" quizzed Nora. "That is the important question. Anne,
you must head the row. You began this session."
Anne complied obediently.
Nora sat down beside her.
Grace stood eyeing Nora thoughtfully. Then her eyes sparkled. "I'm
eligible," she announced as she made a third.
"So am I," declared Jessica a trifle soberly, taking her place at the
other end of the row.
"Ladies and no gentlemen," announced Nora, rising and bowing profoundly
to the three girls, "the great secret session of the four inseparables
is about to begin. Remember, you are not limited to one secret. If you
happen to know several, now is the time to tell them. Go ahead, Anne."
Nora seated herself again and with the eyes of her chums fixed
expectantly upon her, Anne began the secret session.