BIRD CLUBS AND A PRINCESS
“When may I see you alone, Miss Randolph?” Cathalina had slipped through
the front ranks of the girls in the hall after dinner, and leaning close
spoke in low tones.
“Right now, Cathalina,” Miss Randolph drew Cathalina’s hand within her
arm and completed the short distance to her door. “Anything serious?”
“No, Miss Randolph, but I have a puzzle and I thought you might help
me.”
Miss Randolph closed her door and went straight to a low couch where she
lay down and motioned Cathalina to a chair near. “Excuse me, but my head
troubles me a little today and I want to rest.”
Cathalina pushed the chair aside and drew up a small stool on which she
dropped, taking the hand that Miss Randolph stretched out.
“Let me rub your forehead as I do Mamma’s sometimes.”
Miss Randolph closed her eyes a few minutes as she was soothed by
Cathalina’s ministrations. Then she caught Cathalina’s hand and put it
with the other in her own firm, white hand, “Now tell me,” she said.
Cathalina very sincerely loved and admired Miss Randolph and to be here
so intimately talking with the lady of whom some of the girls were in
such terror was rather embarrassing when her first feeling of “poor lady
with a headache” had gone. “It is a rest to have you here, Cathalina,”
Miss Randolph continued, looking so sweet and womanly and kind, as she
waited for Cathalina’s confidences that the young girl felt an affection
even warmer than she had felt before.
“It is not anything, then, that will add to my gray hairs?” Miss
Randolph gave Cathalina a comical look as if to indicate that she was
accustomed to such things.
“No, indeed, Miss Randolph, and perhaps you will think I am silly. It’s
only this. I heard Betty and Isabel and Diane talking about joining the
bird clubs, and Diane and Isabel both said that they’d love to, only it
would be all their people could do this year to meet the regular
expenses, and they did not dare ask for field glasses or even opera
glasses or any more books. Now I’m going to join, and I thought maybe I
could get the textbooks and some others and make a little library for
the East Corridor girls. But I’m afraid to buy glasses for the
girls,—they’re so proud and independent. Why I had a time to get Hilary
to accept a few little presents.”
“Independence of a certain kind is a fine virtue, Cathalina. Has Hilary
glasses?”
“Yes, her aunt sent her some fine ones.”
“Let me think a little. I suppose you would like to buy each of the
other girls a forty or fifty dollar pair?”
Cathalina laughed at Miss Randolph’s tone. “Yes, of course I would, but
I see that I can’t unless I do it ‘unbeknownst,’ as our Katy says, and
anyway they would suspect.”
“How would this plan do? For some time I have thought that we ought to
have a supply of glasses to rent; but some of the girls are so careless
that that fact, together with our lack of funds, has prevented our
getting them. Now how would you like to present the school with a number
of field glasses of moderate price, and perhaps two or three more
expensive ones to be given out at my discretion or given by the science
teachers for special interest or ability? Possibly one or two could be
awarded at the close of the year as prizes.”
“That is the very thing! I’ll write Papa today! Thank you, Miss
Randolph, I might have known that you would take the worry away. And you
can manage it, can’t you, so that Diane and Isabel get some good ones?”
“I surely will if the little princess gives us so much. She ought to
have some reward!”
“‘Princess!’” thought Cathalina, as she went away. “That’s what I’m
going to be, forever and ever!—a fairy princess who will make all sorts
of lovely dreams come true for people!”
Hilary was taken into the secret, and such fun as the girls had for
several weeks, looking at Catalogues and ordering, with the help of the
teacher who had charge of the bird classes, books, glasses and
magazines. For the idea of an East Corridor bird library had expanded
into an extensive addition to the general library of the school and
promised to interest not only Mr. Van Buskirk, but his friends, and
outside of the scientific line in which Cathalina had begun. Mr. Van
Buskirk had sent a check for a thousand dollars, five hundred of which
could be spent by Cathalina, under some direction or oversight. “Let her
do it,” he wrote, “if you think she can, even if she makes some
mistakes. She will have to learn, and I like to see her take the
initiative in some plan for others.” To Cathalina he wrote: “Keep your
eyes open. I am prepared to make quite a contribution to the Greycliff
library when we understand its needs.”
If Greycliff had been beautiful in autumn, it was doubly so now, as the
leaves came out and blossoms decked the outlying meadows. In the wood,
the girls found blue, white and yellow violets. From her window
Cathalina could see the birds flitting about the branches near by and
hear the new and lovely spring songs that came from their happy throats,
“Why,” she exclaimed to Hilary one day after a long tramp when they had
dropped on the beach to rest with a group of girls. “I always loved to
look at the trees and sky and water, but it does make it so much more
fascinating if you go after something.”
“Yes,” assented Hilary. “Now, when I see a bird on the shore I wonder if
it is a duck or a coot or a gull,”—“Or a chicken!” finished Isabel, who
continued with a tale of her own. “The other day I identified the
janitor’s old hen as a grouse! O, yes, I can identify _any_ old thing! I
put down every line and mark I could see,—in my note book, and never
knew any better till it came beating it toward me and clucking! And I
watched ten minutes for one of his old barnyard ducks to come around the
corner of a rock. What business it had down on the shore posing as a
gull or something I could not see.”
“I did worse than that,” said Hilary. “Honestly, girls, I hardly knew a
bluejay from a wren until this spring. So the first week of class I was
trying to get as big a list as possible,”—here several girls looked
interested and nodded their heads as if to say in girls’ parlance, “me,
too!”
“And I saw a bird that seemed to be building a nest around by the engine
house somewhere. He was an awfully pretty looking little chap, all brown
and stripey like the sparrow, and his feathers were so new and bright
that I just knew he must be a new arrival, some kind of a finch, by his
thick bill. I noted down very carefully all his streaks and bars, just
as Isabel did. The only very striking thing about him was a dark patch
on his throat, and I found in my book the description of a
‘black-throated bunting.’ That was it, of course,” and Hilary brought
her fist down on the heap of sand which she had been scraping up as she
talked. “For at least half an hour I was watching, and the longer I
looked the less the black-throated bunting idea would do! And what do
you suppose he was?”
“An English sparrow,” cried Diane, who had been grinning all through the
description. “I did almost the same thing,—the beasts!”
“Yes, I was so mad,” smiled Hilary, “and mortified! But that lively
little fellow was so cute and handsome that I’ve had more patience with
English Sparrows since, for all my disgust that time. I was only too
thankful that I had not handed in my report before I found out what he
was!”
As the days went by, the blossoms fell from the pink and white dreams
that went by the names of plum, peach, apple or pear trees. The leaves
changed from the green mists that shrouded the trees in early May to the
waving foliage which hid the nest-building birds. The boathouse was
opened, the life-saving watchmen out for the season.
Canoeing and rowing began on river and lake, and picnics or beach
parties were common. As Cathalina and Hilary had learned to row the
summer before, many a jolly pull they had, together or with other girls,
particularly Betty Barnes and Lilian North. Lilian had come to be as
“chummy” with Hilary as Betty was with Cathalina, though neither
friendship interfered in the least with the strong affection between
Cathalina and Hilary.
“Hil and Lil,” chanted Cathalina one afternoon when the four were
bobbing on the gentle waves.
“That rhyme may come in handy for your next class song,” suggested
Betty.
“I write no more by sea or shore,” sang Cathalina, losing her stroke and
dashing them all with spray.
“Say it not,” protested Lilian. “How about themes?”
“What is the use of being so practical, Lil?” rejoined Cathalina.
“Father says that poets don’t have to be consistent!”
Betty was leaning over, trailing her hand in the water. “I think I saw a
shark then, or maybe a whale,” she said dreamily.
“Goosey, they don’t have ’em here,” chided Lilian.
Betty looked at her solemnly. “Don’t they? Thank you. Anyway I heard
Mickey—Boathouse,—whatever his name is over there—say that there is an
awful monster in this lake sometimes. It has a long neck, and head like
a snake, and breathes fire, I guess, and,—”
“Don’t Betty!” cried Cathalina, “you give me the shivers and it’s too
glorious this afternoon. Did Mickey say we couldn’t go out beyond the
breakwater?”
“Yes; and it’s on the printed rules, too.”
“All right. Back we go, then.” Cathalina carefully turned the boat and
started shoreward. “Strike up, Lil, do!”
Lilian, who had her guitar, strummed a few chords, feeling for an easy
key, then led off in pathetic tones:—
O, I wish I were a mermaid,
With scales instead of clo’es,
I’d float upon the billows,
Where no one ever goes!
I’d comb my hair and sing of love,
And bat my sea-green eyes,—
O,—I wish I were a mermaid
Beneath the blue lake skies!
Mermaid!
Mermaid!
Slipp’ry, fishy mermaid!
O,—
I wish I were a mermaid,
Beneath the blue lake skies!
O, I wish I were a mermaid,
I’d never read a book,
But hold a pretty mirror
And at my beauty look!
I’d rest me in a coral cave,
Or swim where Neptune rides,—
O,—I wish I were a mermaid
To cleave the foaming tides!
Mermaid!
Mermaid!
Slipp’ry, fishy mermaid!—
O,—
I wish I were a mermaid,
Beneath the blue lake skies.
“That awful minor tune, Lil,” laughed Betty. “Did you make up the words,
too?”
Lilian only nodded assent, having no other means of reply with fingers
and voice both engaged. Betty joined with the rest, earnestly wishing to
be mermaids, and in fine style they glided up to the little dock where
watchful Mickey helped them out and tied up the boat.