Laughing Last, Jane Abbott [the false prince .txt] 📗
- Author: Jane Abbott
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“I ought not to have half for I didn’t find nearly as many as you did.”
“Oh, rats. Take ’em. All you want.” To Mart, who could dig clams faster than old Jake Newberry, an accurate division of their spoils meant nothing. To Sidney who dug awkwardly each clam was a treasure.
Her step lagged as she approached Aunt Achsa’s. She hoped Aunt Achsa would not be home. Then she wondered why she could not be as confidently defiant as Martie; she supposed it was the restraint of the League and the three sisters under whom she had had to live and Martie had not. But it was absurd to feel even apprehensive of Aunt Achsa’s displeasure when Aunt Achsa was such a little thing and so indefinite a relative.
Aunt Achsa was in the kitchen trimming the edge of a pie. She was holding it high on the tips of her fingers and skilfully cutting the crust with a small knife when under it she spied Sidney’s shorn head. She promptly dropped the pie upon the table upside down. A trickle of red cherry juice ran out over the spotless table.
“Why, I swum! Sidney Romley! Wh—what have you gone and done? What’s ever happened to you?”
“My hair was so hot and such a bother. I can swim now and won’t have to sit around for an hour drying it. I hated my braids—” All good arguments which rang true but did not seem to convince Aunt Achsa who continued to stare at Sidney with troubled eyes.
“It’s my hair, Aunt Achsa. If I look a sight it’s my own fault.”
“That ain’t it, child. Only—it’s so sudden. Your—doing it—without a word or—or anything. What’ll your folks say? I—I—kind a wish you’d just told me, you see.”
Sidney laughed with a lightness she did not feel. Aunt Achsa eyes were so reproachful, even hurt. “Why, I did not have time to tell you. I didn’t think of it myself until a few moments ago. And Mart offered to do it for me. It’s such a little thing to make any fuss about.”
The cherry juice went on dripping until a big round stain disfigured the tablecloth and still Aunt Achsa stared at Sidney with troubled eyes.
“It’s a little thing, of course. But I was thinkin’—Sidney, promise your Aunt Achsy you won’t go off and do anything else high-handed like without tellin’ me. I don’t want to be worryin’ or suspicionin’ what you’re up to or havin’ your sisters blame me for something that ain’t just right to their thinkin’. Mebbe we don’t do things same as you do but we know what’s right and what’s wrong same as anyone.” Which was a long and stern speech for Aunt Achsa. She gave a frightened gasp at the end and turned the poor pie right side up.
A dark flush had swept Sidney’s face. There was no such thing as freedom anywhere—there must always be someone in authority somewhere to warn and rebuke, even this absurd little old woman, who seemed so remotely related. She wished she could think of something very withering and at the same time dignified to retort.
“I think I am perfectly capable of knowing what is right and what is wrong and my sisters have perfect confidence in me,” she said slowly and with deep inward satisfaction. Then she added scornfully: “Of course it is very different here and if I don’t seem to get used to it you can’t blame me!” With which she stalked through the parlor to her room and slammed the door.
Aunt Achsa pattered after her.
“Child! Child!” she called through the door. “Here’s a letter for you. I was that taken back when I saw you I forgot to give it you.” She slipped the letter through the inch of opening that Sidney, now tearful, vouchsafed her.
The letter was from Trude. To poor Sidney this was the crowning humiliation; it was exactly as though Trude could look out from the pages and see the mutilated locks. Trude had always loved her hair and had often brushed it for her for the simple delight of fingering its wavy strands. More than once Trude had said: “You’re lucky to have this hair, kid. Look at mine.” Now she would gasp in horror as Aunt Achsa had done. “You should not have done it, Sidney—at least without consulting one of us.” It was not the deed itself even Trude would censure—it was her independence. Oh, how terribly difficult it was to be like Mart!
Trude had written to her almost daily, sketchy letters full of the news of what she was doing at the Whites. Sidney could not know that Trude purposely made them lively and wrote them often because she believed Sidney was homesick. In this letter her concern had reached the height of sacrifice.
“If you’re ready to go home, have had enough of Cape Cod, just say the word, little sister, and I’ll join you at Middletown. Perhaps you have been with Cousin Achsa long enough—you do not want to impose upon her hospitality. She may have other friends she wants to invite to her house. But you must decide at once for Mrs. White is making plans for the next few weeks and will want to know if I am going to be here. She is perfectly wonderful to me and I think she likes to have me here and that I help her a little, but if you want me to join you at home she will understand.
“Why in the world haven’t you written to me? I shall scold you soundly for that when we are together. Be a good girl and remember how much we all love you. I shall expect a letter within three days at most telling me what you want to do.”
Sidney gasped. Her barbered hair, Aunt Achsa, were forgotten for the moment. Go home—leave all her fun and Sunset Lane and Mart—and Lavender? Her consternation gave no room for the thought that two weeks had indeed worked a strange conversion. Why, she would sit right down and write to Trude that she did not want to go home. That was silly!
Then she thought of the hurt on Aunt Achsa’s face only a few moments before when she had flung her angry retort at her. And Aunt Achsa had been so good to her! Why, that cherry pie that had come to such a disastrous end Aunt Achsa was baking just because she had said she adored cherry pies. That was Aunt Achsa’s way of showing affection. That Aunt Achsa had trusted her—she had given her complete freedom in the two last whirlwind weeks because she had trusted her. And how ungrateful, now, Aunt Achsa must think her. Well, she had punished her own self for now, of course, Aunt Achsa would want her to go.
SIDNEY BELONGS
Sidney was too deep in her slough of despond to see that behind Mr. Dugald’s shock of surprise was a smiling admiration of her bobbed head. And even Lavender avowed at once that it “looked swell.” Two hours before Sidney would have gloried in their approval but with Trude’s letter in her pocket and the humiliating memory of her silly retort to Aunt Achsa she was beyond feeling pleasure at anything.
She ate her supper in a heavy silence. Lavender’s and Mr. Dugald’s high spirits seemed to her as unfitting as jazz at a funeral. She kept her eyes carefully away from Aunt Achsa’s face and found a faint solace in only nibbling at the especially delectable supper until Aunt Achsa asked her anxiously if she “wa’n’t well?”
She felt infinitely far removed, too, from the curiosity that had obsessed her throughout the day. It didn’t matter now what Mr. Dugald and Lavender had been doing over there among the sand dunes!
The next morning Lav invited her to go with him while he helped Cap’n Hawkes take a fishing party out to the Mabel T. This was one of the odd jobs Lavender often did around the harbor. Sidney had gone with him twice before and had thoroughly enjoyed it. It was fun to sit in the bow of the old dory and watch the harbor lazily coming to life in the bright morning sun, sails lifting and dipping to the breeze, boats swinging at their moorings, the low roofs of the houses on the shore glistening pink against the higher ridges of sand, the dancing waves, their tips touched with gold. She liked to listen to the noisy chatter of the picnicers, to most of whom everything was as novel as it was to her; the women invariably squealed as they climbed aboard the Mabel T just as she had squealed the first time she boarded the Arabella. And her greatest thrill came when the tourists took her for a native, like Lavender, asking her questions which she invariably answered glibly.
This was probably the last time she would go out in the harbor with Lavender. She thought it, sitting very still behind a barricade of bait pails and baskets. She glared at a tanned girl who was telling her companion that they were going to stay on at the Cape through August. The brightness of the morning only deepened her gloom—she could stand things much better if it were pouring rain.
The fishing party and all the paraphernalia shipped safely aboard the Mabel T, Lavender let the dory drift as Sidney had begged him to do the first time she had gone out. He looked at her anticipating her noisy pleasure only to find her eyes downcast, her face disconsolate.
She felt his glance questioning her and lifted her head.
“I’ve got to go home.”
That he simply stared and said nothing was balm to her. And she caught, too, the strange expression that flashed into the boy’s great dark eyes.
“I got a letter yesterday from Trude. She thinks I’ve stayed long enough—that I am imposing upon Aunt Achsa’s hospitality.”
Still Lavender said nothing. Now he was looking off to where the sails of the Mabel T cut the blue of the sky like the wings of a great bird.
“She wants me to write at once just when I am going.” Which was of course not exactly the way Trude had written and yet was the correct interpretation Sidney now put upon her letter.
And still no word from Lavender.
“I—I hate to go. Dreadfully. Will you miss me the least bit, Lav? I—I mean you and Mart—”
“Oh, hang Mart!” burst out the boy hotly. “Who cares ’bout her? I can fool ’round with her anytime only I don’t want to. I—I—” He stopped short with a queer inarticulate sound and Sidney gasped. Why, Lavender was almost crying!
He really was crying only he was swallowing it all with funny gulps that lifted his crooked shoulders. Sidney’s heart gave a happy leap.
“Oh, Lav, I’m so glad you are sorry that I am going. We have had such fun together and you see I’ve never known any boys before—oh, except the ones I’ve met at parties and things and they’re terribly stupid. But you have been such a peach to me and showed me how to do everything just as though I was a boy. I’ll miss you, too, Lav—”
“Oh, no, you won’t. I mean it isn’t the same,” muttered Lavender, his shoulders quiet now. Across his face settled a sullenness that Sidney had never seen on it. She did not like it; it made him look ugly. She turned away. The boy went on, in a thick voice.
“Y’see, I never do anything with anyone because, well—I’m different. That’s
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