AT HOME IN THE ORIOLES’ NEST
Miss Elizabeth Edith Randolph,
Miss Cecily Vernon Brook,
At home from four to six.
Invitations in this form were distributed on the next Saturday among the
classmates of the hostesses. The cards were enticingly illustrated with
water-color sketches by Cecily,—two Baltimore orioles on the edge of a
nest, each perched on one foot and holding a tea-cup in the other. The
guests one and all accepted, and at the appointed hour the whole class
gathered in that coziest of rooms.
“Oh, what a gorgeous cake! And I’m starving!” cried Frances. She wisely
seated herself next to the pretty little table on which stood a frosted
birthday cake with fifteen lighted candles, all rose-pink, and also pink
paper baskets filled with bonbons, a tall pitcher of lemonade, and a set
of dainty glasses. Cecily, as queen of the day, cut her cake into twelve
generous slices, while her sister oriole poured the lemonade.
“Now don’t take too long to eat, girls,” said Betty, hospitably. “We
have a scheme to tell you about when you’re through.” But no coaxing
could induce the hostesses to divulge their secret while there was a
crumb of cake or a sip of lemonade to be enjoyed.
“Now for your scheme,” said Phyllis Morton, when the feast was over.
“You tell it, Jean,” said Cecily. “You thought of it.”
“Why, we want to found an order,” said Jean, impressively.
“An order! What on earth do you mean?” asked Mildred Carrington.
“I mean an order like the Knights Templars,” said Jean. “Don’t you know
we read about them in French history? Now don’t laugh, this isn’t just
for fun. We’re in real sober earnest. Why shouldn’t we found an order,—a
society that will bind us together, maybe for all our lives, and anyhow
will help us all through our school life? Don’t you remember that time
in the literature class, when we were studying about the legends of King
Arthur, and Miss Carlton gave us that talk about the battle of life, and
girls fighting like true knights in it?”
“I remember,” said Thekla Hoffman. “You started it up, saying you wished
you’d lived in the days of chivalry. You thought all the battles and
sieges would have been so nice and exciting.”
“I know, and I felt like a goose after I’d said it,” Jean admitted. “But
Miss Carlton said we didn’t need to go back to the days of chivalry for
our battles. She said life was a great long warfare, and we had battles
to fight every day! And don’t you remember she said the girl that always
stood up for what was right, and was always high-minded and honorable,
was a true knight, and she wanted all the Hazelhurst girls to be true
knights? Well, we thought we’d better do what she said, and be knights,
and found an order like the Round Table. Of course, we can’t go on
‘quests’ as they did, but there are plenty of things we can do in
helping to straighten out troubles for one another, and Miss Carlton
says we _can_ right wrongs and better the world.”
“My senses, Jean! Have we got to dress up in armor and cavort on
horseback?” laughed Maud Perry.
“If you please, how are we school-girls going to better the world?”
asked Phyllis. “Be missionaries, and one take America, and one Europe,
and one Asia, and one Africa?”
“Oh, I don’t mean this in a preachy way!” said Jean. “But if life’s one
big war, with battles every day, we’ve got to keep fighting, haven’t we?
Just look at Carol Armstrong and her basket-ball team; don’t they have
to fight _hard_ if they want to win? Well, we can fight hard to stand
well in our lessons, and to help each other, for love of Hazelhurst,
just as the basket-ball teams fight. We can be _girl_ knights.”
“Girl knights! I never heard anything so babyish!” Adela observed to
Frances. “Let’s buy tin swords and rocking-horses!”
Jean colored hotly. “I don’t want to _play_ King Arthur any more than
you do, Adela! I’m not five years old!” she declared. “I haven’t had a
chance to explain. We really _can_ be girl knights. There’s a legend
about a girl knight somewhere; my father told me about her when I was a
little bit of a thing. He said she was a beautiful princess and she
became a knight and she had a magic spear that would overthrow all her
enemies, and a wonderful shield. I used to make up stories about her.”
“Oh! Just tell them that story you told me,” Cecily interrupted.
“Oh, Cecily, no!” Jean protested. “They don’t want to hear my silly old
stories!”
“Yes, they do. Don’t be so shy,” said Cecily.
“Of course we do!” said Maud. “I know _I’ll_ never feel too old for
fairy tales if I live to be eighty.”
“Well, then,” began Jean, twisting her handkerchief nervously, and
looking down, “I made up a story, once, about how the princess came to
be a knight. One day she slipped into the council-hall where her father,
the king, was in council with his knights, and she heard them take a
solemn vow to ride forth on a quest, and right all the wrongs of the
kingdom. And the princess said to herself, ‘I’m going to be a knight,
too!’ But she didn’t have any armor, and when she went to the king and
told him she wished to be a knight, he laughed at her and said she was
only a girl, and girls weren’t strong enough to fight, and there wasn’t
any armor in the whole world that would fit a little slip like her; and
he told her to go and learn the new court dance with her maids of honor,
and embroider some golden tapestry for the council-hall, and let the
knights do the fighting. But the princess was too unhappy to dance, and
she was sick and tired of stupid old tapestry. So instead she ran off
and tried all the suits of armor in the palace, but they were all too
big and heavy,—every one of them. At last she gave up in despair and
went out to her bower of roses, and threw herself down on the ground and
cried. And she said, ‘I’m only a girl, and girls can’t do anything!’ But
while she was crying she suddenly realized that the bower was growing
bright, and she looked up and saw, standing before her, a knight in
white armor. He had a spear that flashed like lightning and a shield
shining like the sun; and he told the princess to kneel down and he
would make her a knight, too, and that though she was only a girl she
should be the greatest knight in the whole kingdom. So she knelt down
and he knighted her, and then he gave her the spear and the shield, and
told her that she would always conquer with that spear, and that while
she carried that shield she couldn’t be wounded. Then he told her to go
and conquer all the king’s enemies; and so she rode out on her quest and
fought and was victorious. At last she came back to her palace in
triumph, and as her father was dead, they made her queen, and at her
coronation the knight in white armor suddenly appeared again, and
crowned her with a crown that shone like the sun; and she became the
greatest queen that ever lived!”
Jean’s head was raised now; there was a flush in her pale cheeks and her
eyes were shining. “There—that’s just a babyish fairy-story, I know,”
she apologized; “but it gave me the idea for our order.”
“There was a real girl knight in history, too,” said Cecily. “Joan of
Arc wore armor and fought and saved France. I’m sure she looked just
like you, Jean. I’m going to call you Joan of Arc! Miss Carlton says we
can fight _our_ troubles and other people’s too. So we’ll help to
conquer the trouble and unhappiness in the world, and that’s the way
we’ll _better_ the world.”
“And we’ll form a society of girl knights,” Jean went on, “and we’ll
have a sword that’ll conquer all our enemies, like the magic spear in
the legend. I like a sword better than a spear, don’t you? It sounds so
victorious! You think of a general leading on to victory with his sword.
Well, we must bind ourselves to love each other always, you know, and
Miss Carlton wants us to be on the lookout to do all the kind things we
can. So our sword will be the sword of love and kind-heartedness. We’ll
have it a silver sword. Father told me that silver is the symbol of love
and gold the symbol of truth. We can call ourselves the Order of the
Silver Sword.”
“Order of the Silver Sword! That sounds splendid!” cried Phyllis.
“And you know King Arthur’s sword was named Excalibur,” said Jean.
“Well, we’ll name our sword Caritas; that’s the Latin for love.”
“Why, _amo_ means to love, child,” Mildred corrected. “_Amo, amas, amat,
amamus, amatis, amant!_”
“_Amo, amas, amat_ means the falling-in-love kind of love,” Jean
explained, “but _caritas_ means the other kind: the higher sort of love.
It means charity and kind-heartedness. I studied it out and then I asked
Miss Carlton. Well, if you like the idea, we’ll be the Order of the
Silver Sword. And the head of the order will be the Queen, and we’ll
elect a new queen every year.”
“Then she’ll be a _president_,” observed Maud.
“Yes, of course; but you have to say _queen_ to make it old-timey. The
president and her knights would sound too funny! And the officers will
be the princesses. The secretary can be the Princess of the Scroll, and
the treasurer can be the Princess of the Treasure. And the rest of us
will be the maids of honor, but we’ll all of us—Queen and all—be girl
knights, warrior maidens.”
“That’s just the thing for me!” broke in Hilda Hastings. “My name means
_battle maid_.”
“Does Hilda mean battle maid? Oh, but that’s just perfect!” exclaimed
Jean. “Battle maid sounds ever so much better than girl knight. Let’s
call ourselves _battle maids_, shall we?”
“But you haven’t said anything about the badges, Jean,” said Betty.
“We’re going to have the darlingest badges!”
“Yes,” said Jean. “You know we must have a shield as well as a sword,
and the two together will make a lovely badge. And don’t you think it
would be beautiful, if the sword’s silver, to have the shield gold?”
“Lovely!” said Thekla.
“So we’ll have the golden shield of truth,” continued Jean. “That will
mean that we’re going to be true to each other, and true to what is
right. And truth is _veritas_ in Latin,—I looked it up. So we’ll name
our shield Veritas. And our badge will be a golden shield with a silver
sword across it; and the motto will be ‘Caritas et Veritas.’”
“Don’t you think it’s a terribly solemn kind of a society?” ventured
Mildred.
“Oh, no, because we’re going to have lots of fun in it, too!” declared
Jean. “We’ll have meetings every week and always get up something jolly
to do. And we can give entertainments for charity. We might act a play
some time!”
“And we must have initiations,” said Betty.
“Initiations are loads of fun,” said Frances. “We can play all sorts of
tricks and scare each other to death!”
The gleam of silver swords and golden shields, the martial tone of the
enterprise, and the prospect of initiations and entertainments kindled
the zeal of the company in general, and from frisky Frances to ponderous
Blanche every one expressed her readiness to enlist.
“Now,” said Cecily, when the recruits had been enrolled, “first of all
we’ll have to call a meeting to elect our officers. Oh, and Jean, do get
us your list of rules! Jean’s written out a beautiful set of rules.”
“I haven’t had time to finish copying them. I’ll do it right away. It
won’t take me five minutes,” said Jean. She whispered something in
Cecily’s ear and left the room.
“I’m going to give out my birthday souvenirs while we’re waiting,” said
Cecily, and she and Betty took from the table the dainty candy baskets
and distributed them among the guests. To the handle of each basket was
tied with a pink ribbon a card bearing the name of the girl who received
it, and an accompanying bit of verse.
“Why, I didn’t know you could write poetry!” exclaimed Phyllis, looking
up from her card.
“P’raps I can and p’raps I can’t,” replied Cecily. “P’raps I promised
not to tell who wrote them!”
“I know who wrote them!” said Hilda. “It was Jean, so you might as well
own up. She’s the only one of us all who could do it.”
“Yes, it was Jean,” said Betty. “_I_ didn’t promise not to tell.”
“She asked me to give out the baskets while she was out of the room,”
said Cecily, “so she wouldn’t have to listen to her own poems.”
“My, isn’t she funny! I should think she’d be so proud she could write!”
said Phyllis. “Just listen to mine, girls, it’s too dear for anything!”
And she read:
“Airy and high,
Under the sky,
Is the nest where the orioles flit and fly.
Sweet Phyllis, rest,
And be a guest
At the afternoon tea in the Orioles’ Nest.”
“Cecily ought to have read hers first, because it’s her birthday,” said
Betty. “Read yours now, Cece,” and Cecily read:
“Saint Cecilia, hail to thee
On this happy day!
May’st thou sorrow never see,
But from every care be free!
May thy life all sunshine be!
Storm-clouds, keep away!
“May the birds their sweetest sing
On this birthday bright!
May good fairies on the wing
All their gifts most royal bring,
And, to crown their offering,
Joyous dreams to-night!”
“Now listen to mine,” said Betty:
“Oh, good Queen Bess, in days of yore,
A shocking temper had!
She stamped her foot upon the floor
Whenever she was mad.
“She frowned a most terrific frown,
And tore her hair so red,
And brought her golden scepter down
On Walter Raleigh’s head!
“But here we have a good Queen Bess
Who rules us with a smile,
Her heart is full of gentleness
And sunshine all the while.
“She ne’er was known to box our ears;
She never pulls our hair.
Then let us give three hearty cheers
For _our_ Queen Bess so fair!”
“Why, that’s simply fine!” exclaimed Maud.
Rhyme after rhyme was read and received praise that would have set the
poet’s pale cheeks glowing again, could she have heard.
“Why don’t you two read _your_ poems?” Cecily demanded of Frances and
Adela, who had sat whispering over their cards without joining in the
applause.
“We Mouses are too ashamed,” said Frances. “Oh, dear! oh, dear! I’m
really and truly ashamed of myself! I made Jean hopping mad yesterday; I
illustrated her composition with giraffes—giraffe’s my name for her, you
know,—she’s so tall and lanky! And now just hear what a duck of a thing
she’s given _me_! I’m going to call her Giraffe the Generous!” And she
read:
“Oh, welcome, bright-eyed Frisky,
You brown and tricksy Mouse!
Come in and nip and taste and sip,
At tea in the Orioles’ house.
“We need you at our party
To frolic and frisk and play,
For the merriest treat would be incomplete
If the Brown Mouse stayed away.”
“Mine’s a dear, too,” said Adela. “Listen:
“O lily-white Mouse, we are glad to see
You have crept from the Mouse Hole to come to our tea!
We know your fondness for sugar and spice
And birthday parties and all things nice.
So nibble your candies; no cat will molest
The Mouse that is safe in the Orioles’ Nest.”
“I’ll tell you why she’s so nice to you,” said Cecily. “It’s because
she’s using the sword Caritas! And you’ll have to stop teasing her after
this if you wish to belong to the order! I’m going to tell her we’re all
through; and please everybody be nice to her when she comes back.” She
left the Orioles’ Nest and went upstairs to Jean’s room, “Castle
Afterglow,” as Jean had sentimentally named it while gazing out at a
sunset. Cecily walked in, stopped short and stared, the spectacle which
met her astonished gaze banishing all thought of battle maids and their
silver swords.
“Why Jean!” she exclaimed, “what on earth are you doing? Are you
house-cleaning?” For Jean was sitting on the floor of Castle Afterglow,
surrounded by all her worldly goods. Dresses and school-books,
petticoats and writing pads, shoes and ribbons, Sunday hat and tennis
racket, all lay in one chaos. Bureau drawers were tilted forward, empty
and threatening to fall out. The desk had been emptied and a snowfall of
papers was sprinkled about the room. Jean met Cecily’s amused look with
a glare.
“I’ve been robbed!” she said, in a tragic tone.
“Robbed?” cried Cecily.
“Yes, robbed, robbed, _robbed_!” Jean repeated. “And I know who did it,
too!”
“Who?” asked Cecily, thinking of the new housemaid.
“That contemptible Adela Mears!”
“Jean, are you crazy! The idea of any girl at our school stealing! You
ought to be ashamed of yourself!”
“_I_ call it stealing, to come into my room when nobody’s here and take
away my book!”
“Oh, is that all? She borrowed a book?”
“_Borrowed!_ She _stole_ it to torment me, and I’ll never forgive her!”
“What book was it?”
“The book with all my writings,” moaned the authoress of fourteen.
“The book she saw you writing in when she hid in your closet?” asked
Cecily.
Jean nodded disconsolately. “I’d scribbled the rules for the order in
the end of the book, and I hadn’t quite finished copying them out nicely
to read to the girls when I had to go down to the party. And when I came
upstairs just now, to finish them, I found the book was gone.” Then she
started to her feet. “I’m going for Adela this very minute!”
Cecily caught Jean and held her tight. “Wait, _please_ wait!” she
begged. “I don’t believe she’s taken it at all. It’s probably under some
of your things.”
“No, it’s not,” answered Jean, as Cecily began to fish in the
conglomerate mass on the floor. “I’ve hunted through everything. And I
know it’s Adela, because she’s been simply crazy to find out what’s in
my book. I’d _die_ before I’d show it to _her_. Oh, the mean, hateful
thing! I’m going for her!”
But Cecily caught her again. “Please! Jean, please!” she begged. “You
don’t want to spoil our party, do you? Let me go for you, and if she
_has_ taken it I’ll make her give it back. But if _you_ fly at her and
then you find she hasn’t, you’ll feel so silly.”
“She _has_ taken it.”
“Well, any way, let me go for you, and you pick up your things. Miss
Sargent will give you a big scolding if she finds your room like this.”
Jean knelt down again amid the chaos, but she asked anxiously: “_You_
won’t look at my book if you find it, will you?”
“I should think not!” answered Cecily, indignantly. “But why are you so
afraid to have anybody see it?”
“Why, Cecily, it has all my most secret thoughts!” replied Jean
tragically.
“What do you mean? Is it a journal?”
“I began it as a journal,” said Jean. “But I kept forgetting to write it
up. So I began putting in all kinds of stuff; rhymes and stories and
lots of nonsense; and I’ve written some things that I wouldn’t have
anybody see for the world. To think of her reading it all and making fun
of it!”
“Oh, she couldn’t be so mean! And I don’t _much_ think she’s taken it,”
said Cecily, refusing to believe in such villainy; but Jean picked up a
little linen handkerchief.
“Look there!” she cried. “It’s _Frances_!”
Cecily examined the innocent bit of white and saw on the hem “Frances E.
Browne” marked in indelible ink. She looked at it in dismay.
“It was both of them! I’ll speak my mind to them now!”
“No, no! Go to their _room_ first. They must have left it there,” said
Cecily.
“Yes, that’s what I’ll do!” exclaimed Jean. “I’ll get it first and then
I’ll settle them!”
They went down together to the floor below and invaded the Mouse Hole,
searching in every nook, but that precious volume was nowhere to be
seen. “I’m going _now_! I’ll _make_ them give it to me!” Jean’s eyes
flashed fire. She turned and found peeping in at the door, Frances and
Adela.