LARRY’S “COMING OUT” PARTY
Mrs. Euphemia Haven was very careful in her choice of words. Not that
her diction was better or worse than most people’s; but she was very
exact in saying just what she meant to say.
Instead of calling to Beth Baldwin that she “wished” to see her or
“needed” to see her, she said “I must.” Behind that expression lay a
rather sharp controversy between her son, Larry, and herself at the
breakfast table that very morning. It was seldom that there was any
friction at all between Mrs. Haven and her son, for she was a very
indulgent mother and Larry was quite unspoiled, despite every chance in
the world for his having been so affected.
She never interfered with his pleasures, seldom with his associates,
and never balked his plans. He, on the other hand, never gave his
mother a moment’s uneasiness, for she was assured that he was a Haven
and would do nothing to smirch the family name.
Mrs. Haven did not blame her son for having been so friendly with the
family on Bemis Street. She, herself, had loved Priscilla Lomis with
all her rather narrow heart when they were young. That Priscilla had
married a mechanic was her mistake; and Mrs. Euphemia had condoned that
mistake for years. But now she had to think of her son’s future. There
were some past associations which she felt might better be ignored by
him now that he was a man. The silly plans in her own and Priscilla
Baldwin’s heads when they were young married women, each with a brand
new baby to think of and talk about, Mrs. Haven long since had thought
best forgotten.
She feared, however, that Priscilla might have remembered. Of course,
that first dear little girl baby of her old friend’s had died; but here
was another girl born into the family of the mechanic----
“And goodness!” thought Mrs. Haven, as Beth Baldwin crossed the street
and drew near at her call, “what a perfect little beauty she is growing
to be!”
Mrs. Euphemia Haven was one of those women who manage a lorgnette very
well indeed. She caught it up now and looked at Beth through it--not
because she really needed this aid to sight, but to cover a sudden
slight confusion that she felt.
“Mercy, Beth! how really pretty you have grown!” was her first audible
comment. “And what a big girl! The other day you were only a little
thing and Larry was playing nurse-girl to you. I expect he remembers
you now as the little black-eyed tot he used to be so devoted to.”
“I presume so, Mrs. Haven,” replied Beth, composedly.
“Why, you must be through school,” went on Mrs. Haven. “Are you working
or do you help your mother?”
“It is work helping in a family of eight, Mrs. Haven,” laughed Beth. “I
have finished high school. But I hope to go to a more advanced school
in the fall.”
“That will be rather difficult, will it not?” suggested Mrs. Haven,
with raised eyebrows.
Beth knew that it was an intimation that Mrs. Haven fully understood
the Baldwin’s financial circumstances. It was not said unkindly; yet,
somehow, Beth felt that it was antagonistic. Her pretty head came up
and she looked rather proudly into the fine eyes of Larry’s mother.
“Yes; it will be very difficult,” she admitted. “But I mean to get
a better education if I have to earn the money myself to pay my way
through school.”
“Dear me!” said Mrs. Haven, smiling. “What a very determined girl!
But--in your case, my dear--is an advanced education really worth
while?”
“I think it is,” and this time Beth flushed. She recognized the
critical note in her questioner’s voice, and she knew what it meant.
“Don’t you think it was worth while for Larry to go to college?”
“Oh!” ejaculated the startled lady. “He--he is a boy.”
“And _I_ am a girl,” Beth laughed. “But I think I have just as much
ambition as any boy.”
The lady laughed too, and said:
“That brings me to the reason I had for hailing you, my dear. Now that
Larry is home for good I want to give him a nice party. The young folk
of Hudsonvale, I am afraid, have almost forgotten him. And, too, he is
ambitious to take his father’s place in the community as a lawyer. We
must introduce him to the older generation likewise. So, when we were
talking it over this morning, he remembered you and told me to be sure
to invite ‘that little Baldwin girl.’ Why!” and Larry’s mother laughed
easily, as though she did not know she had conveyed a sting, “he will
scarcely know you, you have grown so.”
“How kind of him to remember me,” Beth said sweetly.
“Oh, Larry has always looked upon you as a little sister, I
fancy--having been denied any of his own. Now, you will come, of
course? Next Tuesday evening. There will be dancing.”
Mrs. Haven had managed to make Beth feel that she was being patronized;
but the girl was too sensible to take offence. She believed Larry
had really said that he wanted her at his party, and she would not
disappoint her old playfellow.
“I will surely come, Mrs. Haven. Thank you,” she said, as the lady’s
car started.
As Beth told her mother when she arrived home with the eggs, she had
nothing but her graduation dress to wear to Larry’s “coming out” party,
as Beth laughingly designated it, and that frock had been made with the
view to its being her “best-Sunday-go-to-meeting” attire for two years
to come. A new dress was an event in the Baldwin household.
“It’s not just the thing for an evening party, Mamma,” she said
cheerfully. “But we’ll make it do.”
“I really would like to have you look your best when you go to Euphemia
Haven’s,” Mrs. Baldwin answered.
“Of course! I shall scrub my face real clean and comb all the tangles
out of my hair, Mother mine,” laughed Beth. “Why strive to amaze Mrs.
Haven with my fine appearance more than anybody else?”
“Why? Oh well! I want her to see what a very nice girl you are.”
“Thank you, Mamma! She has already told me I am pretty,” and Beth made
a little face at the thought of Mrs. Euphemia Haven’s patronizing way.
Nevertheless, Beth had a desire to look her best if she attended the
“coming out” party. But she wished to astonish another person rather
than the rather haughty Mrs. Euphemia Haven.
That dress had to be thought about--and there were only four days
before the date of the party. Beth was glad she had worn it only on
graduation day. It would not be familiar to anybody but her classmates;
and she fancied that if any of them were at Larry’s party they would be
likely to appear in their graduation dresses, too. For Hudsonvale was
not a very fashionable place.
The frock in question was of a good quality of cream-colored
poplin--then a very popular fabric. It had been made high in the neck,
for low-cut frocks for day wear were not approved in Hudsonvale.
Evening wear was different. Decolleté was expected of any one who was
invited to an evening party.
For a girl of her age Beth Baldwin’s taste was admirable. Yet,
because of her complexion, she could “carry off” oddities in style and
colorings that scarcely any other girl in the village would have dared
attempt.
She was handy, too, with her needle, and she decided to make some
changes and adapt her dress for evening wear. She removed the long
sleeves, and her mother gave her the lace out of her own wedding
gown--so long laid away in camphor--with which she fashioned a soft,
full, puff-like sleeve which reached only half way to her elbow. After
removing the collar and the vest of the frock, she filled in over
the shoulders and across the bust with some of the same pretty lace.
Between the lace and the material of the dress she put beading, and in
this she ran narrow cherry-colored ribbon. She put a rosette on each
shoulder, a large one with streamers over her heart, other ribbons with
very tiny rosettes to tie the puff-like sleeves, and made ready a sash
of broad ribbon of the same hue.
The effect might be a trifle bizarre; but it was very becoming, indeed,
to Beth, and when she put on the frock Monday evening and “tried it
out” on the family, they thought her charming.
“Some class to you,” said the slangy Marcus. “Cricky! you’re the
niftiest looking girl in the town--isn’t she, Pop?”
“She’s what her mother was over again,” said Mr. Baldwin, proudly,
lowering his paper to “peck” at his pretty daughter’s cheek.
“Oh, Mamma! I don’t see why you didn’t have _me_ a dark and delirious
beauty,” groaned Ella, “instead of a washed-out, flaxen-haired,
inconsequential looking little _dowdy_! I hate to go anywhere with our
Beth; she makes me look like _just nothing_.”
The family laughed at the flyaway’s plaint, and Ella added:
“Anyway, I hope Beth will get married long before I get any beaux. I
know I couldn’t keep ’em a minute if they came here and saw Beth.”
“Mercy, Ella!” gasped her mother. “What are you talking about--a child
of eleven?”
Mr. Baldwin laughed heartily. He usually did at his flaxen-haired
daughter’s nonsense. But Ella added:
“I don’t care, Mamma. It should be against the law for one sister to be
so much prettier than the others. Poor little Prissy and me--why, we
haven’t any chance at all!”
“‘Handsome is as handsome does,’ daughter,” quoted Mrs. Baldwin,
contemplating her eldest child with her head on one side.
[Illustration: SHE SNAPPED THE BEAUTIFULLY CARVED NECKLACE AROUND
BETH’S THROAT.
Page 21.]
“Oh, yes! that’s what Mr. Monkey said to the poor little Hippopotamus
baby. He found little Hippo crying beside a still pool,” said the
vivacious Ella, “and asked him what the matter was.
“‘Oh, nuffin,’ said the Hippo, ‘only I never saw myself in a mirror
before!’
“And, of course, Mr. Monkey said just what you did now, Mamma. But poor
little Hippo knew that he couldn’t act handsome enough in a thousand
years to overcome the handicap of the awful looks Nature had given him.”
Through the laughter of Mr. Baldwin and Marcus, Ferd, the blond twin,
spoke up stoutly:
“I don’t care if they _do_ call me ‘Blondy.’ I wouldn’t be black, like
Fred.”
“I’m certainly glad I’m a bruin, like our Beth,” said his twin, loftily.
“‘Bruin!’”
“A bear that boy certainly is!”
“Goodness, Frederick,” said Ella, amid the laughter of the family. “You
mean brunette.”
Fred did not take laughter kindly. “I know what I mean,” he growled.
“I’m glad my complexion is like Beth’s.”
“Goodness, it isn’t!” cried the flyaway sister, suddenly. “You haven’t
washed your face since supper, Frederick Baldwin! Come out to the
kitchen sink with me this very minute!”
Mrs. Baldwin had left the room while this conversation was in progress.
Now she returned with a little square box that the children seldom
saw. It was usually locked away in the safe in the bedroom occupied by
Mr. and Mrs. Baldwin.
“Oh, Mamma!” gasped Beth, suspecting what was coming.
“Hello, Mother!” said Mr. Baldwin, with twinkling eye. “Getting out the
‘family jewels?’”
“Oh, Mamma!” shrieked Ella, racing in from the kitchen, dragging Fred
with one hand and waving the washcloth in the other like a very limp
banner. “_Not Great-grandmother Lomis’ corals?_”
Beth flushed and paled, her eyes shining like stars as she watched
her mother unlock the little box with the key that always hung about
her neck under her gown. Great-grandmother Lomis’ corals was the one
heirloom that had been handed down to Mrs. Baldwin’s generation. They
were as precious in the eyes of her daughters as the Queen of Sheba’s
pearls.
“You’re never going to let me wear _those_ to Larry’s ‘coming out’
party?” Beth finally gasped.
Her mother’s face was serious. “You are the eldest, my dear. The
corals will be yours some day--yours to do with just what you please.
Great-grandmother Lomis declared in her will that the corals should
always be given to the eldest daughter, and from her to _her_ eldest
daughter. This is an entail that the male heirs have nothing to do
with,” and she laughed.
“They may be sold or otherwise disposed of for the benefit of the
eldest daughter of each generation. If Beth wants to wear them to
Euphemia’s---- There!”
She snapped the thin, beautifully carved, blood-red necklace around
Beth’s throat. The deeper hue of the corals contrasted beautifully with
the brighter ribbons, and against the dark loveliness of Beth’s skin
the necklace had never shone to better advantage.
There was a pin, too; and Mrs. Baldwin swiftly snipped off the big
rosette at Beth’s bosom and caught the filmy lace together there with
the beautiful pin instead.
The corals set off the girl’s beauty wonderfully. There was an
alluring, Eastern quality to it that now, enhanced by the old-fashioned
jewelry, made Beth seem more mature than she really was.
Yet she was only a simple, sweet child, after all. She possessed
a better figure than most girls of her age, and had a demure,
self-possessed manner that might have led strangers to think her older
than she was. In mind and heart, however, though thoughtful to a
degree, Beth was a child.
“That’s mighty scrumptious--that’s what _I_ call it,” declared Marcus.
Perhaps Mr. Baldwin thought so too; for the next evening, when Beth was
ready to start for the Haven house, a taxicab stopped at the door.
“Papa Baldwin! What extravagance!” exclaimed his wife.
“It’s not considered quite the thing, I believe,” he said drily, “for
a young lady to walk to a party wearing three or four hundred dollars’
worth of jewelry.”
Not until then did Mrs. Baldwin wonder if she were doing wrong to
allow Beth to wear the family heirloom. But it was too late to say no.
Beth kissed her hand to the watching family from the taxicab--the man
shut the door, and in a moment the machine rolled away from the little
cottage on Bemis Street.