THE “WATER WAGTAIL”
“I obtained the money from a friend. Payment of the loan need not be
considered until your education at Rivercliff is finished, Beth. This
sum will carry you through your first year in comfort. Meanwhile, as
you say yourself, a way may be opened for you to continue your course
there. ‘Sufficient unto the day.’ Ask no questions.”
Thus said Mrs. Baldwin, in family assembled, when the outcry was made
regarding the suddenly and mysteriously acquired funds with which Beth
was to storm the heights of Rivercliff School.
Mr. Baldwin looked at his wife oddly, but he asked no question--then
or at any subsequent time. When Mrs. Baldwin was as firm as she looked
now, the others dared not be inquisitive.
But as delighted as Beth was at the sudden opening of her prospects,
she felt that a sacrifice of some kind had been made. She feared her
mother and father had done some hard thing for which they might be
troubled all through her school years. She had no suspicion of the
truth--not for a moment.
“But I will learn from other girls at school how to earn money to pay
my way. And I’ll pay mamma back, too,” Beth thought, with but faint
appreciation, after all, of how huge a sum four hundred dollars is, and
how long it would take to earn and save it in any way open to a girl of
fifteen.
Of course, the whole of it did not have to go for tuition and board.
There would be a small sum for what Ella called her older sister’s
“trousseau,” and for pocket-money and incidentals. Rivercliff was a
more expensive school than one or two others Beth had thought of and
she wished she could gain the advantages she craved in some other
institution.
However, a girl with a diploma from Rivercliff had a distinct advantage
over applicants from other schools with the State Board of Education.
And for good reason. Rivercliff was more than a preparatory school
in the usual acceptation of the term. A girl who faithfully took the
courses laid down by Miss Hammersly, the principal, was well fitted for
most places in life.
The summer was not spent idly by Beth. She had not merely resolved to
obtain an education at her parents’ expense. She was ready and willing
to do all in her power to help bring the much desired thing to pass.
She obtained the opportunity of posing on several occasions for an
illustrator for the magazines, who came each summer to a rustic studio
she had built near Hudsonvale. Beth had done this work before, and the
artist paid her fifty cents an hour. It was not an easily won fifty
cents by any means. Retaining the poses as was desired strained the
muscles and tired the mind more than most other work Beth had ever done.
She could crochet, too; but the payment she received for a baby’s
bootees “a fly would starve to death on,” Ella declared--and with
some apparent truth. However, Beth kept busy and happy. That is, she
told herself she was quite, quite happy. But there was one thing that
troubled her mind in secret. Larry Haven had never come to the little
cottage on Bemis Street to see her.
From Mary Devine Beth heard much about Larry. He had established
himself in the office next to Dr. Coldfoot, and----
“Such scrumptious furniture, Beth, you never _did_ see. They say his
mother made him a present of it all--furnished his office right up
to the minute. And he’s got a very splendid sign,” added Mary, with
enthusiasm.
Beth had seen the sign.
“And he comes downtown as brisk as a drug clerk every morning,” giggled
Mary, “and shuts himself into that office--oh, dreadfully busy, he is!”
“I hope he will be,” said Beth, laughing.
Nobody said anything to her about Larry’s not coming to the house. The
children were all busy, and had become so used to his absence that they
did not note its continuance after Larry returned from the law school.
That her old playmate was busy might be an excuse for his seldom
calling; but there was absolutely no excuse, that Beth could imagine,
for his never coming to see them. After the first fortnight following
his party, Beth ceased to mention Larry in the family’s hearing. She
was a girl who could hide her deeper feelings if she so chose; and she
chose now to lead her mother to believe that thought of Larry never
troubled her mind.
However, it did. More than once tears wet her pillow at night while she
lay and wondered why Larry had forsaken her. She did not believe it
could be the seven years’ difference in their ages.
“I don’t care if he does think me a little girl,” she told herself; “he
might, at least, be polite.”
But, in truth, she laid the defection of Larry Haven to his mother. The
why of this was no more clear to her girlish mind than Larry’s neglect;
but she had felt Mrs. Haven’s antagonism so deeply that she could not
fail to take it into consideration now.
Beth was one of those loyal souls who seldom make friends save after
due consideration, and who cling to their friendships, once made,
through fair weather and foul. She felt about Larry just as she would
have felt about an older brother. He was just as necessary to her
complete happiness as Marcus was.
After their intimate talk at the party, Beth felt that her mind and
Larry’s were a good deal in accord--especially on the question of the
advancement of her schooling. So she hoped he would continue to show
his interest in the wonderful (to her) prospect of Rivercliff. She had
no assurance that Larry even knew she was surely going to school until
the afternoon came for her departure from Hudsonvale.
It was an event, indeed, for one of the Baldwins to go away by the
river boat. The _Water Wagtail_ was one of the finest of the fleet
plying up and down the Nessing River, and Mr. Baldwin had obtained for
Beth one of the staterooms for the trip.
The county paper, which ran a page of Hudsonvale news (“in spite of
Mary Devine,” Mr. Baldwin said), had printed a note of Beth’s proposed
departure for school, and the date. Was that how Larry knew? For when
Beth went down to the dock and aboard the _Water Wagtail_, the steward
had just taken a box of cut flowers to her stateroom.
“I declare for’t, Missy,” said the shining-faced negro, “yo’ friend
suttenly has sent yo’ a heap o’ posies.”
“Let me see the card, steward,” she said quickly.
It was Larry’s, and Beth knew that flowers like these grew only in his
mother’s garden--in Hudsonvale, at least.
Her family had trooped aboard after her--with Mary Devine and a dozen
other girls who had been Beth’s friends at the high school. They made
a noisy and jolly party. And how they wondered and exclaimed over the
flower-filled stateroom.
“Why!” cried Mary Devine, “it’s just like a bridal tour you’re starting
on. Aren’t you lucky, B. B.?”
“I surely am,” admitted Beth, smiling.
“But where’s the groom?” asked one of the other girls, slily. “Did he
send the flowers?”
“How ridiculous!” rejoined Mary, scornfully. “It’s the best man who
sends the flowers, not the groom. He has to help smell ’em!”
The party remained on deck while the freight was being run aboard
below. Beth’s glance often swept the littered dock as she talked gaily
to her friends or to the children or to her mother and father. Suddenly
her eyes fixed their gaze upon a tall figure striding down to the dock
from Water Street.
It was Larry. Beth’s heart leaped and the color came and went in her
cheeks. Had there not been so much going on, her excitement must have
been noticed. As it happened, however, not even the girls chanced to
see Larry till he was aboard the boat and was approaching the group.
By that time Beth had quite regained her self-control. She welcomed
Larry with just the degree of warmth her mother displayed--by no means
as joyfully as did Mary Devine. He had to be introduced to the other
girls--re-introduced in some cases. With Mr. and Mrs. Baldwin he was
delightfully cordial. The children--even the twins--welcomed Larry
nicely. Nothing was said about his previous neglect.
When the warning whistle sounded and the party arose to leave, Larry
manoeuvered to get Beth by herself for a moment. They took the outer
deck on one side of the glass-enclosed cabin, while the rest of the
party went the other way to the stair-well.
“Go to it, Beth. I glory in your resolve,” Larry said, in reference
to her plunge into boarding-school life. “Get all there is for you at
Rivercliff.”
“I mean to, Larry,” she said composedly. “And thank you for the
flowers--they are beautiful.”
“Oh, they were the Mater’s idea,” he said hurriedly. “But I have
something here----”
He fumbled in his pocket and brought forth a little box--a jeweler’s
box, Beth knew.
“You won’t want to wear those jolly old corals that belonged to your
Great-grandmother Lomis at every party you go to up there,” Larry said,
more boyish in his confusion than ever, Beth thought. “Here’s something
you can wear right along--to remember me by.”
He thrust the box into her hand. The children came racing to join them.
Beth hid the box quickly in her bag--she knew not why.
She pressed Larry’s hand in farewell. She kissed her mother, her
father, and “all the tribe,” as Ella called the family. The girls waved
their handkerchiefs from the shore.
Larry did not wait as the _Water Wagtail_ pulled out into the stream.
It was his tall form, however, striding up the dock when the steamboat
was really under way that Beth last saw.