AN EXCURSION
IT was a Sabbath afternoon in October, sunny and still, with a purple
haze resting on the distant woodlands across the river. A warm odour of
ripe apples floated across the old peach orchard, for a few rare
pippin-trees stood in its midst, flaunting the last of their fruitage
from gnarled limbs, or hiding it in the sear grass underneath.
Here and there groups of bareheaded girls wandered in the sun-flecked
shade, exchanging confidences and stooping now and then to pounce
joyfully upon some apple that had hitherto evaded discovery. Betty, who
had been reading aloud for nearly an hour to a little group under one of
the largest trees, closed her book with a yawn. Lloyd and Kitty leaned
lazily back against the mossy trunk, and Allison, with her arms around
her knees, gazed dreamily across the river. The only one who did not
seem to have fallen under the drowsy spell of the Indian summer
afternoon was Gay. Up in the tree above them, she lay stretched out
along a limb, peering down through the leaves like a saucy squirrel.
"What a Sleepy Hollow tale that was!" she exclaimed. "It just suits the
day, but it has hypnotized all of you. Do wake up and be sociable."
She began breaking off bits of twigs and dropping them down on the heads
below. One struck Lloyd's ear, and she brushed it off impatiently,
thinking it was a bug. Gay laughed and began teasingly:
"There was a young maiden named Lloyd,
Whom reptiles always annoyed.
An innocent worm would cause her to squirm,
And cloyed--toyed--employed--
I'm stuck, Betty. Come to the rescue with a rhyme."
"So with germicide she's overjoyed," supplied Betty, promptly.
"That's all right," said Kitty, waking up. "Let's each make a Limerick.
Five minutes is the limit, and the one that hasn't his little verse
ready when the time is up will have to answer truthfully any question
the others agree to ask."
"No," objected Lloyd. "I'd be suah to be it. I can make the rhymes, but
the lines limp too dreadfully for any use."
"We won't count that," promised Kitty, looking at her chatelaine watch.
"Now, one, two, three! Fire away!"
There was silence for a little space, broken only by the soft cooing of
a far-away dove. Then Betty looked up with a satisfied smile. The
anxious pucker smoothed out of Lloyd's forehead, and Allison nodded her
readiness.
"Lloyd first," called Kitty, looking at her watch again.
A mischievous smile brought the dimples to the Little Colonel's face as
she began:
"There's a girl in our school called Kitty,
Evidently not from the city.
With screeches and squawkin's
She upset the nerves of poah old Hawkins.
Oh, her behaviour was not at all pretty."
A burst of laughter greeted Lloyd's attempt at verse-making, for the
subject which she had chosen recalled one of Kitty's outbreaks the first
week of school, when the temptation to upset Hawkins's dignity was more
than she could resist. No one of them who had seen Hawkins's wild exit
from the linen closet the night she hid on the top shelf, and raised
his hair with her blood-curdling moans and spectral warnings (having
blown out his candle from above), could think of the occurrence without
laughing till the tears came to their eyes.
"Now, Allison," said Kitty, when the final giggle had died away. "It's
your turn." Allison referred to the lines she had scribbled on the back
of a magazine:
"There is a young maiden, they say,
Who grows more beloved every day.
When we talk or we ramble, there's always a scramble
To be next to the maid who is _Gay_."
"Whew! Thanks awfully!" came the embarrassed exclamation from the boughs
above, and Betty cried, in surprise: "Why, I wrote about her, too. I
said:
"Like the bow on the strings when she plays,
So she crosses with music our days.
Our hearts doth she tune to the gladness of June,
And the smile that brings sunshine is Gay's."
"My dear, that's no Limerick, that's poetry!" exclaimed Kitty, and Gay
called down: "It's awfully nice of you, girls, but please change the
subject. I'm so covered with confusion that I'm about to fall off this
limb."
"Well, here's something mean enough to brace you up," answered Kitty.
"It's about Maud Minor. It's hateful of me to write it, but I happened
to see her going down the terrace steps and it just popped into my head:
"There is a young lady named Maud,
Whose manners are overmuch thawed.
She'll beat an oil-well. When they'd gushed for a spell
_It_ would take a back seat and applaud."
"What's the matter, Kitty?" asked Betty, "I thought you admired her
immensely."
"I did that first week, but it's just as I say. She gushes over me so,
simply because I am Malcolm's cousin. I know very well that I am not the
dearest, cutest, brightest, most beautiful and angelic being in the
universe, and she isn't sincere when she insists that I am. She overdoes
it, and is so dreadfully effusive that I want to run whenever she comes
near me. I wish she wasn't going on the excursion to-morrow."
"She doesn't worry me," said Gay. "I meet her on her own ground and fire
back her own adjectives at her, doubled and twisted. She has let me
alone for some time."
The discussion of Maud led their thoughts away from Gay's Limerick, and
Kitty forgot to ask for it. They sat in silence again, and the
plaintive calling of the dove sounded several times before any one
spoke.
"It's so sweet and peaceful here," said Betty, softly. "It makes me
think of Lloydsboro Valley. I could shut my eyes and almost believe I
was back in the old Seminary orchard."
"I'm glad we're not," said Allison. "For then we'd miss to-morrow's
excursion. And I like having our holiday on Monday instead of Saturday,
as we did there."
"What excursion are you talking about?" asked Gay, lazily swinging her
foot over the limb.
Betty explained. "We're going to see some rare old books and illuminated
manuscripts. Miss Chilton has a friend in Washington who has one of the
finest private collections in the country, and she offered to take any
of the freshman class who cared to go. Ten of us have accepted the
invitation. We're going to the Congressional Library in the morning,
take lunch at some restaurant, and then call on this lady early in the
afternoon. It will be the only chance to see them, as she is going
abroad very soon, and the house will be closed for the winter."
"There are other things in the collection besides books," said Allison
"Some queer old musical instruments,--a harpsichord and a lute, and an
old violin worth its weight in gold. Some of the most noted violinists
in the world have played on it."
"Oh, I know!" cried Gay, raising herself to a sitting position and
throwing away the core of the apple she had been eating. "That's the
excursion I missed last year when I sprained my ankle. I never was so
disappointed in my life. I'm going right now to ask Miss Chilton to take
me, too. I'm wild to get my fingers on that violin."
Swinging lightly down from the limb to the ground, she twisted around
like a contortionist in a vain attempt to see her back.
"There!" she exclaimed, feeling her belt with a sigh of relief. "For a
wonder there's nothing torn or busted this trip. I must be reforming
Girls, what do you think! I haven't lost a single thing for a whole
week."
"Don't brag," warned Lloyd. "Mom Beck would say you'd bettah scratch on
wood if you don't want yoah luck to change."
Gay shrugged her shoulders at the superstition, but she reached over and
lightly scratched the pencil thrust through Betty's curly hair.
"There goes the first bell for vespers," said Kitty, as they strolled
slowly back toward the Hall, five abreast and arm in arm. With one
accord they began to hum the hymn with which the service always
opened,--"Day is dying in the west."
"It's going to be a fair day to-morrow," prophesied Gay, pausing an
instant on the chapel steps. "There's Miss Chilton. I'll run over and
ask her now."
"It's all right," she whispered several minutes later, when she slipped
into the seat next Lloyd. "I can go. It'll be the greatest kind of a
lark."
As Sybil Green passed through the hall next morning, where the
excursionists were assembling, Gay stopped her and began slowly
revolving on her heels. "Now view me with a critic's eye," she
commanded. "Gaze on me from chapeau to shoe sole, and bear witness that
I am properly girded up for the occasion. See how severely neat and
plain I am. See how beautifully my belts make connection in the back.
Three big, stout safety-pins will surely keep my skirt and shirt-waist
together till nightfall, and there's not a thing about me that I can
possibly lose."
She was still turning around and around. "Not a watch, ring, pin, or
bangle! Not even a pocketbook. Miss Chilton is carrying my car-fare,
and my handkerchief is up my sleeve."
"You might lose your balance or your presence of mind," laughed Sybil.
"You'll have to watch her, girls. How spick and span you all look," she
added, as they trooped past, behind Miss Chilton, most of them in
freshly laundered shirt-waist suits, for the Indian summer day was as
warm and sunny as June.
"It would be just about Gay's luck to run into a watering-cart or lean
up against a freshly painted door, in that pretty pongee suit," she
thought, watching them out of sight.
But for once Gay's lucky star was in the ascendant. The trip to the
library left her without spot or wrinkle, and as she followed Miss
Chilton into the restaurant she could not help smiling at her reflection
in the mirror. It looked so trim and neat.
The restaurant was crowded. The waiters rushed back and forth, balancing
their great trays on their finger-tips in a reckless way that made Gay
dodge every time they passed.
"Oh, you needn't laugh," she exclaimed, when some one jokingly called
attention to her. "I'm born to trouble; and I have a feeling that
something is going to happen before the day is over."
Something did happen almost immediately, but not to Gay. Two of the
pompous coloured men collided just as they were passing Miss Chilton's
table. One tray dropped to the floor with a tremendous crash of breaking
dishes. The other was caught dexterously in mid-air, but not before its
contents had turned a somersault and wrought ruin all around it. A bowl
of tomato soup splashed over Lloyd's immaculate shirt-waist and ran in
two long red streaks across the shoulders of her duck jacket, which she
had hung on her chair-post. Her little gasp of dismay was followed by
one from Maud Minor, whose dainty gray silk waist was spattered
plentifully with coffee.
There was a profusion of apologies from the waiters and a momentary
confusion as the wreck was cleared away. In the midst of it, Miss
Chilton was pleased and gratified to hear a low-pitched voice at the
table behind her say: "Those are Warwick Hall girls. I recognize their
chaperon, but I would have known them anywhere from the ladylike way
they treated the affair. So quiet and self-controlled, not a bit of fuss
or excitement, and it probably means that the day's outing will be
spoiled for two of them."
The girls proceeded with their dessert, but Miss Chilton sat
considering.
"If you girls were only familiar with the city," she said at last,
looking at her watch, "I could let you go to some shop and get new
shirt-waists, and you could meet me at my friend's afterward. But even
if you could find your way to the shop, I would be afraid to risk your
finding her house. You would have to change cars and walk a block after
leaving the last one. I must keep my engagement with her promptly, for
she is an extremely busy woman, and has granted this view of her library
as a personal favour to me."
"Do let me take them, Miss Chilton," urged Gay, eagerly. "I'm the only
old girl in the crowd. I learned my way all about town during last
Christmas vacation. We could meet you in time to see part of the things.
All I care for is that violin. _Please_ say yes. I'll be the strictest,
most dignified chaperon you ever heard of."
Miss Chilton laughed at the expression of ferocity which Gay's face
suddenly assumed to convince her that she could play the part she begged
for.
"Really that seems to be the only way out of the difficulty," she
answered. "I'll give you a note to the department store which Madam
Chartley always patronizes, so that you can have your purchases
charged."
"What if we can't find anything to fit," suggested Maud, "and it should
take such a long time to alter them that we'd be too late to meet you?"
Miss Chilton considered again. "It's almost preposterous to imagine
that, but it is always well to provide for every emergency. If anything
unforeseen should happen to delay you, or you can't find the proper
things to make yourselves presentable, just go to the station and take
the first car back to the school. I'll inquire of the ticket agent, and
if you've left a card saying 'gone on,' I'll know that you are safe. If
you've left no word, I'll put these girls on the car for home, and come
back and institute a search for you."
While the others busied themselves with finger-bowls, she wrote a hasty
note on a leaf torn from her memorandum book, which she gave to Maud.
Then she handed a card to Gay.
"You are the pilot, so here is my friend's address on this card. I've
marked the line of cars you're to take, and the avenue where you
change."
"Better let Lloyd take it," suggested Kitty. But, with a saucy grimace,
Gay folded it and slipped it under her belt.
"There!" she said, fastening it with a big black pin she borrowed from
Allison. "I've woven that pin in and out, first in the ribbon and then
through the card, till it's as tight as if it had grown there."
"Can't you take us down an alley?" asked Lloyd. "It mawtifies me
dreadfully to have to go down the street looking like this."
"The car-line that passes this door goes directly to the department
store," answered Gay. "It's only a few blocks away, but we'll take it.
That tomato soup on you certainly does look gory."
Maud had taken the veil from her hat and thrown it over her shoulders in
a way to hide the coffee stains. "Never mind," she said, carelessly, as
they left the restaurant. "Just hold your head up and sail along with
your most princess-like air, and people will be so busy admiring you
that they won't have time to look at your soupy waist."
"Ugh! It smells so greasy and horrid," sniffed the Little Colonel,
ignoring Maud's remark. "It's just like dishwatah and bacon rinds. I
want to get away from it as soon as possible."
"Misses' white shirt-waists?" repeated the saleswoman in the big
department store, when they reached it a few minutes later. "Certainly.
Here is something pretty. The newest fall goods."
She led them to a counter piled high with boxes, and they made a hasty
selection. Some alteration was needed in the collar of the one Lloyd
chose, and in the sleeves of Maud's. While they waited in the
fitting-room, turning over some back numbers of fashion-plates and
magazines, Gay amused herself by wandering around the millinery
department, trying on hats. Presently she found one so becoming that she
ran back to them, delighted.
"It isn't once in a thousand years that I find a picture hat that looks
well with my pug nose!" she cried. "But gaze on this!"
She revolved slowly before them, so radiantly pleased over her discovery
that she looked unusually pretty. Both girls exclaimed over its
becomingness. Then Lloyd's gaze wandered from the airy structure of
chiffon and flowers down Gay's back to her waist-line.
"Mercy, child!" she exclaimed. "You've lost your belt. Every one of
those three safety-pins is showing, and they each look a foot long!"
Gay's hand flew wildly to the back of her dress, but she felt in vain
for a belt under which to hide the pins. She turned toward them with a
hopeless drooping of the shoulders.
"_How_ did I lose it?" she demanded, helplessly. "It had the safest,
strongest kind of a clasp. When do you suppose I did it, and where? I
must have been a sight parading the street this way like an animated
pincushion."
She passed her hand over the obtrusive pins again. "I certainly had it
on when we left the restaurant. Yes, and after we got on the car to come
here, for I remember just after you paid the fare I ran my fingers down
inside of it to make sure that Miss Chilton's card was still safely
pinned to it."
Then she rolled up her eyes and fell limply back against the wall.
"Girls!" she exclaimed, in a despairing voice, "the card is lost with
it, too. I've no more idea than the man in the moon where Miss Chilton's
friend lives, or what her name is, or what car-line to take to get
there. Do either of you remember hearing her say anything that would
throw any light on the subject?"
Neither Lloyd nor Maud could remember, and the three stood staring at
each other with startled faces.
"Maybe you dropped your belt coming up in the elevator," suggested Maud.
"You might inquire. As soon as we get our clothes on, we'll help you
hunt."
Gay flew to lay aside the picture hat for her own, and, with her hands
clutching her dress to hide the unsightly safety-pins, started on her
search through the store.
"We came straight past the ribbon counter and the embroideries to the
silks, and then we turned here and took the elevator," she said to
herself, retracing her steps. But inquiries of the elevator boy and
every clerk along the line failed to elicit any information about the
lost belt.
"No, it was only an ordinary belt that no one would look at the second
time," she explained to those who asked for a description. "Just dark
blue ribbon with a plain oxidized silver clasp. But there was an address
pinned to it that is very important for me to find."
The floor-walker obligingly joined in the search, going to the door and
scanning the pavement and the street-crossing at which they had left the
car, but to no purpose.
"I can buy a new belt and have it charged," she said to Lloyd, when she
came back to report, "but there is no way to get the lost address. If I
could only remember the name, I could look for it in the directory, but
I never heard it. Miss Chilton always spoke of the lady as 'my friend.'"
"I heard her speak it once," said Lloyd, "but I can't remembah it now."
"Go over the alphabet," suggested Maud. "Say all the names you can think
of beginning with A and then B, and so on. Maybe you will stumble across
one that you recognize as the right one."
Lloyd shook her head. "No, it was an unusual name, a long
foreign-sounding one. I wondahed at the time how she could trip it off
her tongue so easily."
"Then we're lost! Hopelessly, helplessly undone!" moaned Gay. "All our
lovely outing spoiled! You won't get to see the books, nor I the violin.
I know you are hating me horribly. There's nothing to do but go back to
Warwick Hall, and leave a note with the ticket agent for Miss Chilton."
The tears stood in her eyes, and she looked so broken-hearted that Lloyd
put her arms around her, insisting that it didn't make a mite of
difference to her. That she didn't care much for the old books, anyhow,
and for her not to grieve about it another minute.
Maud's face darkened as she listened. Presently she said: "I don't care
particularly about the books, either, but I don't see any use of our
losing the entire holiday. You know your way about the city, Gay; I have
some car-fare in my purse, and so has Lloyd. We can go larking by
ourselves."
The dressmaker came back with Maud's waist. She put it on, and Gay went
for her belt. While Lloyd was still waiting for her waist, Maud
sauntered out of the fitting-room, and asked permission to use the
telephone. She was still using it when Gay joined them.
"Wait a minute," Maud called to her invisible auditor, and, still
holding the receiver, turned toward the girls.
"Such grand luck!" she exclaimed, in a low tone. "I just happened to
think of a young fellow I know here in town--Charlie Downs. He is always
ready for anything going, and, when I telephoned him the predicament we
are in, he said right away he would meet us down here and take us all to
the matinee."
"Charlie Downs," echoed Gay. "I never heard of him."
"That doesn't make any difference," Maud answered, hurriedly. Then, in a
still lower tone, with her back to the telephone: "He's all right. He's
a sort of a distant relative of mine,--that is, his cousin married into
our family. I can vouch for Charlie. He's a young medical student, and
he's in old Doctor Spencer's office. Everybody knows Doctor Spencer, one
of the finest specialists in the country."
She turned toward the telephone again, but Gay stopped her. "It's out of
the question, Maud, for us to accept such an invitation. It's kind of
him to ask us, but you're in my charge, and I'll have to take the
responsibility of refusing."
"Well, I never heard the like of that!" said Maud, angrily, looking down
on Gay in such a scornful, disgusted way that Lloyd would have laughed
had the situation not been so tragic. Gay, trying to be commanding,
reminded her of an anxious little hen, ruffling its feathers because the
obstinate duckling in its brood refused to come out of the water.
"Madam Chartley wouldn't like it," urged Gay.
"Then she should have made rules to that effect. You know there's not a
single one that would stand in the way of our doing this."
"Yes, there is. It's an unwritten one, but it's the one law of the Hall
that Madam expects every one to live up to."
"May I ask what?" Maud's tone was freezingly polite.
"The motto under the crest. It's on everything you know, the old earl's
teacups, the stationery, and everything--'Keep tryst.'"
"Fiddlesticks for the old earl's teacups!" said Maud, shrugging her
shoulders. "It's unreasonable to expect us to keep tryst with Miss
Chilton now."
"Not that," said Gay, ready to cry. "We're to keep tryst with what she
expects of us. She expects us to do the right thing under all
circumstances, and you know the right thing now is to go home. We were
recognized at the restaurant as Warwick Hall girls, and we might be
again at the matinee. What would people think of the school if they saw
three of the girls there with a strange young man without a chaperon?"
"You're the chaperon. If you'd do to take us shopping, you'd do for
that."
"Oh, Maud, don't be unreasonable," urged Gay. "It's entirely different.
Don't be offended, please, but we can't go. It's simply out of the
question."
"Indeed it isn't," answered Maud, turning again to the telephone. "Go
home if you want to, but Lloyd and I will do as we please. I'll accept
for us."
This time Lloyd stopped her. "Wait! Let's telephone out to the Hall and
ask Madam."
Maud shrugged her shoulders. "You know very well she'd say no if you
asked her beforehand." Then the two heard one side of her conversation
over the telephone.
"Hello, Charlie! Sorry to keep you waiting so long."
"The girls are afraid to go."
"What's that?"
"I don't suppose so."
"I'm perfectly willing. I'll ask them."
Then turning again, with the receiver in her hand: "He says that the
matinee will probably be over before the second train out to the Hall,
and, if it isn't, we can leave a little earlier and be at the station
before Miss Chilton gets there, and she need never know but what we've
just been streetcar riding, as we first planned."
"Then that settles it!" exclaimed Lloyd. "If he said that, I wouldn't go
with him for anything in the world."
"Why?" demanded Maud. Her eyes flashed angrily.
"Because--because," stammered Lloyd. "Well, it'll make you mad, but I
can't help it. Papa Jack said one time that an honourable man would
never ask me to do anything clandestine. And it would be sneaking to do
as he proposes."
Maud was white with rage, and the hand that held the receiver trembled.
"Have the goodness to keep your insulting remarks to yourself in the
future, Miss Sherman."
"Please don't go," begged Gay. "I feel so responsible for getting you
home safely, and it _would_ be sneaking, you know, to pretend we'd been
simply trolley-riding when we'd been off with him."
"You're nasty little cats to say such things!" stormed Maud. "I don't
want to have anything more to do with either of you. Go on home and
leave me alone. Hello! Hello, Charlie!"
They heard her make an engagement to meet him at the drug-store on the
next corner. Then she sailed out of the store past them, without a
glance in their direction. Gay began fumbling up her sleeve for her
handkerchief. The tears were gathering too fast to be winked back.
"It's all my fault," she sobbed. "Oh, if I hadn't lost that unlucky
belt. To think that I begged to be a chaperon, and then wasn't fit to be
trusted."
Lloyd tried vainly to comfort her. A little later two
disconsolate-looking girls took the first afternoon train out to Warwick
Hall, and stole up to Lloyd's room. As Betty was with Miss Chilton, no
one knew of their arrival, and they spent several uncomfortable hours
agonizing over the question of what they should say when they were
called to account. They decided at last that they would give no more
information about Maud than that a distant relative had called for her.
At five o'clock, Miss Chilton reached the ticket-office with her little
brood, and found Lloyd's card with the words "gone on" scribbled in one
corner. Lloyd and Gay, watching at the window for their arrival, saw
with sinking hearts that Maud was not with them. They hoped that she
would come on the same train, and would be forced to make her own
explanations. But they were not called upon to explain her
disappearance. Miss Chilton, almost distracted with an attack of
neuralgic headache, went to her room immediately, and sent down word
that she would not appear at dinner.
"She'll surely come on the next train," Gay whispered to Lloyd, but the
whistle sounded at the station, and they watched the clock in vain.
Ample time passed for one to have walked the distance twice from the
station to the Hall, but no one came.
It was half-past six when they filed down to dinner. The halls were
lighted, and all the chandeliers in the great dining-room glowed.
As they passed the window on the stair-landing, Lloyd pressed her face
against the pane and peered out into the darkness. Gay, just behind her,
paused and peered also.
"What do you suppose has happened?" she whispered. "It's as dark as a
pocket, and Maud hasn't come yet."