Laughing Last, Jane Abbott [the false prince .txt] 📗

usually tells the ‘precious and personal anecdotes.’ I wasn’t really offended—and I’ll admit most of the girls do treat me a little bit differently—but that’s Miss Downs’ fault; she won’t let them forget that I am Joseph Romley’s daughter. She uses it all the time in her catalogue and when any visitors come to the school it’s dreadful—”

“If you don’t like it why don’t you come to Grace Hall? We’d have no end of fun—”

“Gracious, I’ve never been anywhere. I only go to Miss Downs’ because it’s here at Middletown and because she gives me my tuition on account of Dad—” Sidney bit off her words in a sudden panic lest her admission of poverty shock this lovely creature. It had not, however. The dove-gray eyes had softened again with pity.

“Oh, I see. Of course, poets are always poor. I supposed they usually lived in garrets. I nearly flopped when I saw this big house!” This to comfort Sidney. “Well, it’s too bad you can’t go to Grace. I like the riding best. I have my own horse. Gypsy. She’s a darling. My roommate is the cutest thing. She’s captain of the hockey team and her picture was in the New York Times. Her mother made a dreadful fuss about it but it was too late. And she got a letter from a boy in New York who’d seen the picture—the most exciting letter—”

“Oh, here you are, Pola,” cried a voice behind them and a tall girl elbowed Sidney back into her corner. “Say, Byers will be here at least a half an hour longer. We’ll have time for a dope at that store we passed, if we hurry!”

All boredom vanished, the girl Pola sprang to her feet. She paused only long enough to hold out her hand to Sidney. “Don’t tell anyone that I don’t like Betty Sweets best of all the candy in the world, will you?” she laughed. “And I won’t tell anyone that you loathe poetry.” Then she ran after the tall girl. Sidney felt engulfed in a great and terrible loneliness.

For the next half hour she was only conscious of a fear that Pola and her companion might not get back before Miss Byers discovered their flight. But just as the last eight came out of the study and Miss Byers was lingering for a few words with Mrs. Milliken, Sidney saw two flying figures join the others at the gate. Her little hope that she might have a chance to talk again with Pola or hear her talk was lost in a surge of relief that she was quite safe.

Mrs. Milliken remained after the others had filed down the street. Sidney, troubled by her fib of the headache, wished with all her soul that she would go and strained her ears for any sound from the floor above that might betray Isolde’s activities.

“A lovely thing—to bring those young girls to this spot,” Mrs. Milliken was murmuring as she looked over the register which the League kept very carefully. “Here are some well-known names. Jenkins—probably that’s the iron family. Scott—I wonder if that’s the Scott who’s related to the Astors.” Sidney watched the gloved finger as it traced its way down the page of scrawled signatures.

“Is there a Pola Somebody there?” she asked, hopefully. Mrs. Milliken’s finger ran back up the page.

“No—not that I can find. The girls were very careless—not half of them registered.”

Of course Pola wouldn’t have registered—she had been too bored.

Her survey finished, Mrs. Milliken put the register in its place and regarded Sidney with contemplative eyes.

“Another time, dear lamb, if you receive, tell Isolde to—well, fix you up a little. I must speak to the Committee and plan something suitable for you. Perhaps we have been forgetting that our dear little girl is growing out of her rompers. Oh—and another thing, tell Isolde I was shocked to smell gasoline on your gifted father’s jacket—”

“Trude thought it had moths in it and she soaked it in gasoline,” explained Sidney uncomfortably.

“Oh, she mustn’t do it again. It—it spoiled the atmosphere of everything! I will speak to the dear girls. Give my love to Isolde and tell her to rest. I do not think anyone else will come today for I posted a notice at the clubrooms reserving this date for Grace School.”

With an affectionate leave-taking of her “lamb” Mrs. Milliken rustled off. Sidney slowly shut the door. Out there, beyond the hedge, went Pola and the other laughing girls of Grace Hall, out into a world of fun and adventure. And inside the door—

Pola had dared race off to the corner drug store; Sidney felt certain Pola would dare anything. And she had not even had spunk enough to speak up and tell interfering Mrs. Milliken that Trude and the rest of them would soak everything in gasoline, if they wanted to! Most certainly they were not going to let moths eat them all up alive!

Oh—oh, it was hateful! And Isolde had said they could not escape it; well, she’d find a way!

From abovestairs the three older sisters had witnessed the invasion of their home by the Grace Hall girls.

“It’s perfectly disgusting!” had been Vick’s comment.

Trude was all sympathy for Sidney. “You were cruel, Issy, making Sid receive that mob.”

Isolde reluctantly turned her attention from the faded silks in her lap.

“Sidney might as well realize with what we have to put up. Then perhaps she will not be so discontented with her own easy lot—”

From where she squatted on the floor, a huge mending basket balanced on her knees, Trude regarded Isolde with troubled eyes. Her forehead puckered with little criss-cross wrinkles. Of the three older girls Trude had the least claim to beauty; from constant exposure her skin had acquired a ruddiness like a boy’s which made her blue eyes paler by contrast; her hair had been cut after an attack of scarlet fever and had grown in so slowly that she wore it shingle-bobbed which added to the suggestion of boyishness about her; there was an ungirlish sturdiness and squareness to her build—one instinctively looked to her shoulders to carry burdens. Yet withal there was about her a lovableness infinitely more winning than Vick’s Grecian beauty or Isolde’s interesting personality—a lovableness and a loyalty that urged her on now to champion poor Sidney and yet made it the harder for her to express to the others what she felt deep in her heart.

“Stop a minute and think, Issy. Didn’t we used to feel discontented lots of times and fuss about things between ourselves? We knew—though we didn’t exactly ever say it—that we had to be different, on account of Dad. We couldn’t ever bother him, for fear we’d spoil his work. Of course it was all worth while and doesn’t make much difference—now, but, Issy, Sid doesn’t have to put up with what we did—” Trude stopped suddenly. It seemed dreadful to say: “Dad isn’t writing any poems now.” She felt the pang of loss in her tender heart that always came when she thought of her father, with his bursts of impatience and his twitching nose and his long hours in the study with the door closed, and then his great indulgence and boyish demonstrativeness when some work that had been tormenting was completed and off or when some unexpected acceptance came with an accompanying check. She blinked back some tears. “You know I wouldn’t talk like this to anyone outside of us, but, just among us—I wish we could let Sidney do the things we didn’t do when we were her age.”

“Trude, I have never heard you talk so foolishly. I’m sure our lot isn’t so tragic that Sid can’t share it. She has nice friends and goes to Miss Downs and hasn’t a responsibility in the world—”

“Sometimes we get tired of the brand of our best friends and want a change—even yearn for responsibility!”

“I’d say we’d spoiled her enough—she doesn’t need any more.”

“Isolde, you simply don’t want to understand me! Goodness knows I preach contentment the loudest—but— Are we going to live like this all our lives? Look at us, huddled up here, now, because the Saturdays belong to the League. Issy, you and I can go on because we got broken in to it years ago. Vick won’t, of course—” (flashing a smile at the disinterested Victoria) “but little Sid—She’s fifteen now. She has two more years at Miss Downs’. She may want college—or—or something—different——”

Isolde lifted her shoulders with an impatient shrug. Isolde’s thin shoulders were very expressive and had a way of communicating her thoughts more effectively than mere words. They silenced Trude, now.

“Do you think it’s a kindness to encourage Sid to want things that we simply can’t afford to give her? You ought to know that we can’t live a bit differently—you keep our accounts.”

Trude groaned. In any argument they always came back to that; their poverty was like the old wall outside that closed them around. If poor little Sid dreamed dreams it would be as it had been with her. Isolde was quite right—it might be no kindness to the child to let her want things—like college. Yet, though silenced, Trude was not satisfied; there were surely things one could want that could surmount even the ugly wall of poverty.

Vick broke into the pause.

“While we’re considering Sid, what are we going to do with her this summer? If she’s going to have fits like she had this morning it’ll be pleasant having her round with nothing to do. Of course if Godmother Jocelyn makes good on her promise to take me to Banff I won’t have to worry but—”

“Trude, have you written to Huldah asking her if she can come for July and August? Prof. Deering wrote last week suggesting that I spend the summer with them in their cottage on Lake Michigan. I can more than pay my board by helping Professor Deering with his book and that will relieve Mrs. Deering so that she can play with the children. It will be a change for me—”

“Some change, I’d say,” laughed Vicky. “A crabby professor and an overworked wife and two crying babies—”

“Professor Deering isn’t crabbed at all, Vick; he’s a dear and the babies are adorable and Mrs. Deering wrote that the bungalow is right on the water and that she’s going to reduce the housework to almost nothing.”

“It would be nice, Isolde. Why hadn’t you told us of the plan? I had better postpone going to New York. Aunt Edith White will invite me some other time.”

“You mustn’t do anything of the sort,” remonstrated Isolde quickly. “If you do I’ll write to Mrs. Deering and tell her I cannot come. You didn’t go to New York at Easter when Aunt Edith White invited you and she may think you don’t like to go.”

“It seems terribly selfish for us to go away and leave Sid with Huldah in this lonely old house.”

“She adores Huldah and she has her chums—”

“And she’ll have the Egg to spend—” from Vick.

“But there’s such a sameness. And the League brings so many more people—”

“Trude, you’re positively silly about Sid. When we were fifteen—”

“Just the same, I don’t want to be the one to tell her the three of us are going away to have a good time and leave her here with Huldah all summer—”

“I’ll tell her,” declared Isolde, firmly. “And I’ll try to make her understand she is very well off. Sidney really owes more to the League than the rest of us do for we could take care of ourselves. I think we ought to make her appreciate that fact. Vick, look out, quick! Did I hear Mrs. Milliken saying goodby?”

“Yes, there she goes!” cried