We Girls, Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney [100 best novels of all time .txt] 📗

it for Barbara had been on the lawn, before tea.

Barbara was a magnificent croquet-player. She and Harry Goldthwaite were on one side, and they led off their whole party, going nonchalantly through wicket after wicket, as if they could not help it; and after they had well distanced the rest, just toling each other along over the ground, till they were rovers together, and came down into the general field again with havoc to the enemy, and the whole game in their hands on their own part.

"It was a handsome thing to see, for once," Dakie Thayne said; "but they might make much of it, for it wouldn't do to let them play on the same side again."

It was while they were off, apart down the slope, just croqueted away for the time, to come up again with tremendous charge presently, that Harry asked her if she knew the game of "ship-coil."

Barbara shook her head. What was it?

"It is a pretty thing. The officers of a Russian frigate showed it to us. They play it with rings made of spliced rope; we had them plain enough, but you might make them as gay as you liked. There are ten rings, and each player throws them all at each turn. The object is to string them up over a stake, from which you stand at a certain distance. Whatever number you make counts up for your side, and you play as many rounds as you may agree upon."

Barbara thought a minute, and then looked up quickly.

"Have you told anybody else of that?"

"Not here. I haven't thought of it for a good while."

"Would you just please, then," said Barbara in a hurry, as somebody came down toward them in pursuit of a ball, "to hush up, and let me have it all to myself for a while? And then," she added, as the stray ball was driven up the lawn again, and the player went away after it, "come some day and help us get it up at Westover? it's such a thing, you see, to get anything that's new."

"I see. To be sure. You shall have the State Right,--isn't that what they make over for patent concerns? And we'll have something famous out of it. They're getting tired of croquet, or thinking they ought to be, which is the same thing." It was Barbara's turn now; she hit Harry Goldthwaite's ball with one of her precise little taps, and, putting the two beside each other with her mallet, sent them up rollicking into the thick of the fight, where the final hand-to-hand struggle was taking place between the last two wickets and the stake. Everybody was there in a bunch when she came; in a minute everybody of the opposing party was everywhere else, and she and Harry had it between them again. She played out two balls, and then, accidentally, her own. After one "distant, random gun," from the discomfited foe, Harry rolled quietly up against the wand, and the game was over.

It was then and there that a frank, hearty liking and alliance was re-established between Harry Goldthwaite and Barbara, upon an old remembered basis of ten years ago, when he had gone away to school and given her half his marbles for a parting keepsake,--"as he might have done," we told her, "to any other boy."

"Ruth hasn't had a good time," said mother, softly, standing in her door, looking through at the girls laying away ribbons and pulling down hair, and chattering as only girls in their teens do chatter at bedtime.

Ruth was in her white window-chair, one foot up on a cricket; and, as if she could not get into that place without her considering-fit coming over her, she sat with her one unlaced boot in her hand, and her eyes away out over the moonlighted fields.

"She played all the evening, nearly. She always does," said Barbara.

"Why, I had a splendid time!" cried Ruth, coming down upon them out of her cloud with flat contradiction. "And I'm sure I didn't play all the evening. Mrs. Van Alstyne sang Tennyson's 'Brook,' aunt; and the music _splashes_ so in it! It did really seem as if she were spattering it all over the room, and it wasn't a bit of matter!"

"The time was so good, then, that it has made you sober," said Mrs. Holabird, coming and putting her hand on the back of the white chair. "I've known good times do that."

"It has given me ever so much thinking to do; besides that brook in my head, 'going on forever--ever! _go_-ing-on-forever!'" And Ruth broke into the joyous refrain of the song as she ended.

"I shall come to you for a great long talk to-morrow morning, mother!" Ruth said again, turning her head and touching her lips to the mother-hand on her chair. She did not always say "mother," you see; it was only when she wanted a very dear word.

"We'll wind the rings with all the pretty-colored stuffs we can find in the bottomless piece-bag," Barbara was saying, at the same moment, in the room beyond. "And you can bring out your old ribbon-box for the bowing-up, Rosamond. It's a charity to clear out your glory-holes once in a while. It's going to be just--splend-umphant!"

"If you don't go and talk about it," said Rosamond. "We _must_ keep the new of it to ourselves."

"As if I needed!" cried Barbara, indignantly. "When I hushed up Harry Goldthwaite, and went round all the rest of the evening without doing anything but just give you that awful little pinch!"

"That was bad enough," said Rosamond, quietly; she never got cross or inelegantly excited about anything. "But I _do_ think the girls will like it. And we might have tea out on the broad piazza."

"That is bare floor too," said Barbara, mischievously.

Now, our dining-room had not yet even the English drugget. The dark new boards would do for summer weather, mother said. "If it had been real oak, polished!" Rosamond thought. "But hard-pine was kitcheny."

Ruth went to bed with the rest of her thinking and the brook-music flittering in her brain.

Mrs. Lewis Marchbanks had talked behind her with Jeannie Hadden about her playing. It was not the compliment that excited her so, although they said her touch and expression were wonderful, and that her fingers were like little flying magnets, that couldn't miss the right points. Jeannie Hadden said she liked to _see_ Ruth Holabird play, as well as she did to hear her.

But it was Mrs. Marchbanks's saying that she would give almost anything to have Lily taught such a style; she hardly knew what she should do with her; there was no good teacher in the town who gave lessons at the houses, and Lily was not strong enough to go regularly to Mr. Viertelnote. Besides, she had picked up a story of his being cross, and rapping somebody's fingers, and Lily was very shy and sensitive. She never did herself any justice if she began to be afraid.

Jeannie Hadden said it was just her mother's trouble about Reba, except that Reba was strong enough; only that Mrs. Hadden preferred a teacher to come to the house.

"A good young-lady teacher, to give beginners a desirable style from the very first, is exceedingly needed since Miss Robbyns went away," said Mrs. Marchbanks, to whom just then her sister came and said something, and drew her off.

Ruth's fingers flew over the keys; and it must have been magnetism that guided them, for in her brain quite other quick notes were struck, and ringing out a busy chime of their own.

"If I only could!" she was saying to herself. "If they really would have me, and they would let me at home. Then I could go to Mr. Viertelnote. I think I could do it! I'm almost sure! I could show anybody what I know,--and if they like that!"

It went over and over now, as she lay wakeful in bed, mixed up with the "forever--ever," and the dropping tinkle of that lovely trembling ripple of accompaniment, until the late moon got round to the south and slanted in between the white dimity curtains, and set a glimmering little ghost in the arm-chair.

Ruth came down late to breakfast.

Barbara was pushing back her chair.

"Mother,--or anybody! Do you want any errand down in town? I'm going out for a stramble. A party always has to be walked off next morning."

"And talked off, doesn't it? I'm afraid my errand would need to be with Mrs. Goldthwaite or Mrs. Hadden, wouldn't it?"

"Well, I dare say I shall go in and see Leslie. Rosamond, why can't you come too? It's a sort of nuisance that boy having come home!"

"That 'great six-foot lieutenant'!" parodied Rose.

"I don't care! You said feet didn't signify. And he used to be a boy, when we played with him so."

"I suppose they all used to be," said Rose, demurely.

"Well, I won't go! Because the truth is I did want to see him, about those--patent rights. I dare say they'll come up."

"I've no doubt," said Rosamond.

"I wish you _would_ both go away somewhere," said Ruth, as Mrs. Holabird gave her her coffee. "Because I and mother have got a secret, and I know she wants her last little hot corner of toast."

"I think you are likely to get the last little cold corner," said Mrs. Holabird, as Ruth sat, forgetting her plate, after the other girls had gone away.

"I'm thinking, mother, of a real warm little corner! Something that would just fit in and make everything so nice. It was put into my head last night, and I think it was sent on purpose; it came right up behind me so. Mrs. Lewis Marchbanks and Jeannie Hadden praised my playing; more than I could tell you, really; and Mrs. Marchbanks wants a--" Ruth stopped, and laughed at the word that was coming--"_lady_-teacher for Lily, and so does Mrs. Hadden for Reba. There, mother. It's in _your_ head now! Please turn it over with a nice little think, and tell me you would just as lief, and that you believe perhaps I could!"

By this time Ruth was round behind Mrs. Holabird's chair, with her two hands laid against her cheeks. Mrs. Holabird leaned her face down upon one of the hands, holding it so, caressingly.

"I am sure you could, Ruthie. But I am sure I _wouldn't_ just as lief! I would liefer you should have all you need without."

"I know that, mother. But it wouldn't be half so good for me!"

"That's something horrid, I know!" exclaimed Barbara, coming in upon the last word. "It always is, when people talk about its being good for them. It's sure to be salts or senna, and most likely both."

"O dear me!" said Ruth, suddenly seized with a new perception of difficulty. Until now, she had only been considering whether she could, and if Mrs. Holabird would approve. "_Don't_ you--or Rose--call it names, Barbara, please, will you?"

"Which of us are you most afraid of? For Rosamond's salts and senna are different from mine, pretty often. I guess it's hers this time, by your putting her in that anxious parenthesis."

"I'm afraid of your fun, Barbara, and I'm afraid of Rosamond's--"

"Earnest? Well, that is much the more frightful. It is so awfully quiet and pretty-behaved and positive. But if you're going to retain me on your side, you'll have