Part 4 (1/2)
”Oh!” sighed Berta, as she clasped her hands--those thin nervous hands with the long fingers that Robbie Belle admired all the more for their contrast with her own dimpled ones, ”think of hearing Caruso and Sembrich together in grand opera! I could walk all the way on my knees.”
”What!” cried Robbie Belle in wide-eyed astonishment, her spoon half way to her mouth, ”walk seventy miles! And miss the Dinner?”
The graduate fellow at the head of their table looked quite sad as she nodded her pretty head, though to be sure her napkin was hiding her lips.
”Why!” gasped Robbie Belle, freshman, ”but Dinner is to begin at three and last till almost six. And we are going to have salted almonds and nesselrode pudding and raw oysters and chocolate peppermints and turkey and sherbet and macaroons and nuts and celery and Brussels sprouts and everything. We are painting the place-cards this morning and one is for you. It is a shame for you to sacrifice it just to hear grand opera, Miss Bonner. Are you really intending to take the nine o'clock train?”
Again the fellow nodded. Robbie Belle's wondering gaze rested a moment on Berta's gypsy face alight now with an intensity of longing. Deliberately depositing her spoon on one side of her saucer and her b.u.t.tered bit of roll on the other she devoted her entire attention to this marvel.
”I cannot understand,” she said clearly, ”it is only singing. And to-day is Thanksgiving Day. It comes once a year.”
Miss Bonner brushed her napkin across her mouth rather hurriedly and excused herself from the table. Robbie Belle watched her retreating down the long vista of the dining-room.
”Would you honestly choose to go with her if you could, Berta?” she asked, ”grand opera is only something to see and hear and then it is all over.”
”Oh, Robbie Belle!” groaned Berta, ”how about the Dinner? That is only something to eat, and then it is all over too.”
”Why don't you go if you want to?” inquired Robbie Belle as she reflectively picked up her roll again. ”We can invite somebody else to take your place at the table. Bea and Lila are going to the hothouse for smilax and chrysanthemums.”
”Why don't I go?” Berta leaned back and drew a long and melancholy sigh from the bottom of her boots. ”Girls,” she turned to the others who were still lingering over their breakfast, ”she asks why I don't go to hear grand opera. And it costs two dollars railroad fare even on a commutation ticket, and seats are three dollars up, and I have precisely thirty-seven cents to last me till Christmas.”
”Oh,” commented Robbie Belle repentantly, ”I didn't think. I'd love to pay for all of you, only I haven't any money either.”
Berta clutched at her heart and bent double in a bow of grat.i.tude unspeakable. Robbie Belle continued to stare at her thoughtfully. ”If you truly want to, Berta, we might save up and go to the opera some other day. I'm willing.”
”Willing! Dear child! Willing! Behold how she immolates herself upon the altar of friends.h.i.+p! She is willing to go to grand opera and sit listening to sweet sounds from dawn to dark----”
”Oh, Berta!” interrupting in alarm, ”not from dawn to dark really? How about----”
”Luncheon?” the other caught up the sentence tragically. ”Ah, no, but calm thyself, dear one. Be serene--as usual. There is an intermission for luncheon. We could go to a restaurant. It would be a restaurant with a vinegar cruet in the centre of the table and plates of thick bread at each end and lovely little oyster crackers for the soup. Perhaps if you had two dollars extra you might order terrapin.”
”And pickles,” put in Bea generously, ”with striped ice-cream.”
”And angel food with chocolate frosting an inch thick,” contributed Lila.
”It's a long time till spring,” said Robbie Belle regretfully, ”but very likely we will need all that while to save it up.”
As it turned out, they did need all that while to save it up. For beauty-loving Berta with her eternally slim purse and hopelessly meagre account-book, the plan at first seemed only a vision of the moment.
n.o.body can save out of nothing, can she? Robbie Belle, however, had a stubborn fas.h.i.+on of clinging to an idea when once it became fixed. Her ideas, furthermore, were apt to be clean-cut and definite. This is how she reasoned it out:
If a girl receives five dollars a month from home to pay for books and postage and incidentals, she is ent.i.tled to whatever she saves from the allowance. Every time this girl refrains from writing a letter, she has really saved two cents or the value of the stamp, to say nothing of the paper. Whenever she walks down town instead of riding, she has a right to the nickel to add to the fund in the back of her top bureau drawer. If she buys a ten-cent fountain-pen instead of a dollar one, she virtually earns ninety cents. If she rents a grammar for twenty-five cents instead of paying one dollar and a half for a new book, she is a thrifty person who deserves the difference. Every time she declines--mournfully--to drop in at the restaurant for dinner with a crowd of friends, or refuses to join in a waffle-supper, Dutch treat, she is so much nearer being a melancholy and n.o.ble capitalist.
”Yes, that's all right for you,” a.s.sented Berta airily when told of this working theory, ”but supposing you don't have the money to save in the first place? I fail to receive five dollars a month from home or even one dollar invariably; and I always walk to town and never enter the restaurant except to wait while you save ten cents by buying half a pound of caramels when you want to buy a whole pound.”
”They're forty cents a pound, Berta,” objected scrupulous Robbie Belle.
”I really saved twenty cents yesterday, you see.”
”Ah, of course, how distressingly inaccurate of me. And I also--I saved five dollars and fourteen cents by using my wash-stand for a writing-table instead of buying that bargain desk for four dollars and ninety-eight cents. The extra fifteen was saved on the inkwell I did not buy either. I say, Robbie Belle Sanders, let's save the entire sum by denying ourselves that set of Browning we saw last week.”
Robbie Belle looked grieved. ”You always make fun of everything. You act as if you didn't care.”
Berta turned away for a minute, and stood gazing from the window of her little tower room. The window was small and high, but the view was wide and wonderful toward the purple hills in the west. At length she said something under her breath. Robbie Belle heard it and understood. It was only, ”I'm afraid.”