Part 3 (1/2)
Catherine started up in horror.
”O! And I forgot all about helping with supper. What will mother think?”
Algernon watched her hasten away up the hill, and turned toward his own home with some anxiety. He had to coax his mother to take an interest in the new undertaking, and wished the operation over, but he squared his shoulders and determined to do his best and do it that very evening.
Catherine, for her part, spent the evening discussing the plan with her already sympathetic mother.
”It almost takes my breath away, Mother dear,” she confided as they sat on the porch in the dusk, watching the fireflies, ”the way people fall in with suggestions. It didn't occur to me before that _I_ could start things going. But at college I had only to see that something should be done, and then to say so; and it almost always was done. And I was more surprised than anybody!”
Dr. Helen smiled, and put out her hand to stroke Catherine's head, which rested on her knee.
”They were pretty good ideas, I judge.”
”They were perfectly simple ones. Just little things like having the mail-boxes a.s.signed alphabetically, instead of by the numbers of the rooms. It saved the mail girls a lot of work, and Miss Watkins was glad of the suggestion. I helped Alice sort mail, you know,--she does it to help pay her way. And then the little notices on the bulletin board were always getting lost under the big ones, and I was on a Students'
committee and often had notices to post, and I got them to make a rule that all notices should be written on a certain size sheet, and the board looks much neater now. And then there weren't any door-blocks.
Aunt Clara told me that they had them at Va.s.sar, little pads hanging outside your door, with a pencil attached, and if you are out, your callers leave their messages, you know. It seemed as though we needed something like that, for some of us don't like walking into people's rooms, and hunting around for paper. So I started that, and they all took it up in no time. They were only little things, but it was remembering a lot of little things like that that made me dare try to get the library. It's what we need, and I do believe it's going to come easily.”
”Mr. Kittredge asked me to-day if I thought you would take the infant cla.s.s in the Sunday-school for the summer. Mrs. Henley is to be away. I told him I'd ask you.” Dr. Helen waited.
Catherine was silent a moment.
”Do you know, Mother, it seems as though you just get started doing one thing and you see another one ahead of you. If I am going around asking every one to help the library, I don't see how I can refuse to help when I'm asked! But I never did teach anybody. Who is in the cla.s.s?”
”I asked him that. He says some of the children are rather old for it, but the school is too small, or rather the teachers are too few, to make another cla.s.s. So the ages run from the Osgood twins--”
”O, Peter and Perdita! I do love them. They are such a droll little pair. I beg your pardon, dear. I didn't mean to interrupt. From Peter and Perdita to--to Elsmere, possibly?”
Dr. Helen laughed. ”Exactly! Could you undertake Elsmere?”
Catherine sat up straight. ”Yes, I could. Elsmere is unlucky, just as Algernon is. Everybody expects to be bored by Algernon and bothered or shocked by Elsmere. I know he is a little 'limb o' Satan,' but if I'm going to take one brother on my shoulders, I might as well take them both. When does Mr. Kittredge want me to begin?”
”Not this week. You can go and see Mrs. Henley and talk it over with her. You're showing a fine public spirit, Daughter mine, but let me suggest that you really can't do much work for the town this summer, especially if you expect to entertain guests! I don't approve of vacations that are busier than the school year!”
”O, the library won't take long to start, if it starts at all. And Algernon will run it and his being busy will give me several extra hours weekly! And the children will only be Sundays. I promised Alice I'd do some Bible study this summer, anyway, and it might as well be done for that. She thought I was something of a heathen because I knew Shakespeare better than the Bible.”
”That only means you know Shakespeare very well, however. By the way, would you like that little old set in the guest-room for your library? I put it there, because there wasn't a shelf free anywhere else, and we are rather overstocked with the gentleman's writings in the rest of the house. Clara Lyndesay laughed at finding them there. She says she is going to write an essay some day on guest-room literature, and its implications.”
Catherine laughed, too. ”It would be delicious if she did. I wish she would write things, Mother, and not just paint pictures. Do you suppose there's any hope of her coming back to this country this summer?”
”I shouldn't be greatly surprised. She plans to spend some weeks on the Isle of Wight, and that is so near this side that perhaps we can lure her over. An aunt left her a place in New England, you know, which she means to fit up for a studio sometime. Father should be coming home now.
Let's go down to the corner and see if we can see him. O, my daughter!”
as Catherine sprang up and took her mother's arm, ”how you have grown beyond me!”
”It's just my head that's above you,” said Catherine, tucking her mother's arm into her own. ”It's the fas.h.i.+on nowadays for girls to be taller than their mothers, but they don't begin to come up to them in mind and manners. Miss Eliot told us so in History!”
”How about their hearts?” asked Dr. Helen.
”I don't know about the other girls', but my heart is just as high as my mother's!” And Catherine bent her head the least little bit, and kissed her mother's cheek, as Dr. Harlow, turning the corner, met them.