Part 12 (1/2)
”Why, Max! Didn't you ever take _Wide-Awake_?”
”The magazine? Sure thing. What of it? Does Catherine want us to subscribe? After an ivory manicure set or a lawn-mower premium?”
”No, no. Listen, Max, and any of the rest of you who are so ignorant as not to know about the Wide Awake girls. Hannah Eldred advertised for friends once, and Catherine and a little girl in Germany and one out West answered. And the German one proved to be the daughter of a long-lost friend of Hannah's mother, and the one out West turned up at Dexter, rooming next door, when she went there, and now she rooms with Catherine. Did you ever hear such a tale in your life? If you were to read such a string of facts in a book, you wouldn't believe it.”
”No more you would,” commented Max. ”I'm not at all sure I believe it, as it is. Are they all coming at once, Catherine?”
”Not quite. Hannah and Frieda will be here in a week or two, and Alice as soon after as she can. They are all of them the _dearest_ girls!”
”Pretty?” asked Archie.
”Wait and see,” laughed Catherine. ”They'll make their own impression, but I want you all to be friends as we are.”
”We'll do our best to entertain them,” said Bert. ”Distinguished foreigners don't come our way every day. I move you, Madam President, that we make these Wide Awake young ladies honorary members of the Club.”
The motion was put and carried with a round of applause, and a few minutes later the Boat Club meeting was informally adjourned.
Algernon, reaching home at midnight, stole into his brother's room and hung the bird-hoop near his bedside. With characteristic perverseness Elsmere, a sound sleeper by day, was easily wakened at night, and, as Algernon slipped out of the room, he sat up and watched the birds bobbing in the moonlight. Presently he dropped back on his pillow, sleepily content.
”Springs!” he said, ”like Algy walks.”
PART TWO
THE COMING OF FRIEDA
CHAPTER EIGHT
A FORTUNATE MEETING
On the day of Polly's party, far away in the village of Ventnor on the Isle of Wight, some one was thinking of the young people of Winsted and their library undertaking.
A tall woman walked swiftly along the road toward Freshwater, enjoying its charming variety, the sudden glimpses of sea beyond the chalk cliffs, the quaint cottages and lanes, and at a certain bend the trees she loved better than all the rest, with ivy running over the ground and up the mighty trunks. There was a radiance about Clara Lyndesay which seemed to make whatever she looked upon more beautiful than it had been before. No one had ever been able to a.n.a.lyze it, to decide how much was due to the sunny hair, how much to the blue eyes, and the smile that suggested sweet wistful things that never could be told, and how much to her own deep inner peace. ”The beauty of you certainly helps the goodness make its impression,” Dr. Helen said to her once, ”and yet I am half inclined to believe that it is the goodness that makes the beauty!”
Just now there was no a.n.a.lyst at hand, no one, in fact, but a stout small boy, driving a butcher's cart. He felt the force of the charm, however uncritically, and grabbed his cap from his head as he drew up beside the lady.
”The landlady down there asked me to give you these here, thank you!” He handed out two letters, and then clucked to his horse in an embarra.s.sed fas.h.i.+on as Miss Lyndesay thanked him.
”They came after you left, and she said you'd be wanting them, thank you!” And he drove on, leaving the source of his emotion quite unconscious of him or it, intent upon opening the first of the letters.
”They are too long to read as I walk,” she said, and chose a comfortable secluded spot to sit. ”Let me think. It was a year ago in March that I saw Hannah first, there at Three Gables, when she had just come back from Germany, and was homesick and missed her mother so. She did Catherine as much good as Catherine did her. They are a pair of charming children, as different as April and October. I think I will save Hannah's letter for the last. It's sure to be exciting, and Catherine's should be read in a calm spirit.” Accordingly she opened Catherine's and glancing with a smile over the tabulated statement of the health of the various members of the family, regularly included since her complaint that no such information was ever granted her, began to read the letter proper:
”_Dearest Aunt Clara:_
”Algernon is away at a district meeting. I believe that is what he calls it. He is quite elated over the opportunity and Polly and I are taking charge of the library while he is gone. I hardly see Algernon any more.
He is so busy all the time, and he is simply sought after. People seem to think he is an infallible authority, now that he is librarian, and he does seem to know everything. He reads everything and has an intelligent way of telling what you want to know. I'm quite impressed by him, myself. Of course, he talks technicalities a lot, and he acts grieved sometimes because the rest of us don't take the library quite so seriously as he does. The others are rather tired of it by now, except Polly and Bertha and Agnes. I really enjoy it, and I come in often nowadays, because I know when Hannah and Frieda get here, I won't have so much time for it. The children are fond of Algernon and he remembers the funny things they say and tells them--(it's the first time he ever had anything amusing to say on any subject!)--Peter Osgood wanted _The Wail of the Sandal Swag_, and a little girl asked for _Timothy Squst_. (If that's how you spell it. It rhymed with 'crust.') The children aren't the only funny ones. A man came in this afternoon and asked for _Edith Breed_, and it proved he wanted _He That Eateth Bread With Me_, and one forlorn-looking creature handed me a slip of paper with _Doan the Dark_ written on it, and she meant _Joan of Arc!_