Part 9 (1/2)
”It's just a shame,” said Eleanor. ”We've been saving that trip all the fall, so that Mary could go.”
”Let's just go without her,” suggested Katherine rebelliously. ”There can't be many more nice days.”
But Betty shook her head. ”We don't want to hurt her feelings. She's a dear, even if she does act queerly this week. Besides, every one of us but Roberta and Madeline has that written lesson in English 10 to-morrow, and we ought to study. I'm scared to death over it.”
”So am I,” agreed Katherine sadly. ”I suppose we'd better wait.”
”But we can go walking,” said Madeline to Roberta, and Roberta, more hurt than any of the rest by her idol's strange conduct, silently a.s.sented.
They were scuffling gaily through the fallen leaves on an unfrequented road through the woods, when they heard a carriage coming swiftly up behind them and turned to see--of all persons--Mary Brooks, who hated driving, and Dr. Hinsdale. Mary was talking gaily and looked quite reconciled to her fate, and Dr. Hinsdale was leaving the horses very much to themselves in the pleasant absorption of watching Mary's face.
Indeed so interested were the pair in each other that they almost pa.s.sed the two astonished girls standing by the roadside, without recognizing them at all. But just as she whirled past, Mary saw them, and leaned back to wave her hand and smile her ”beamish” smile at the unwitting discoverers of her secret.
It was dusk and nearly dinner time before Dr. Hinsdale drew his horses up in front of the house around the corner, but Mary's ”little friends”
gave up dressing, without a qualm, and even risked missing their soup to sit, lined up in an accusing row on her bed and her window-box, ready to greet her when she stumbled into her dark room and lit her gas.
”Oh, girls! What a start you gave me!” she cried, suddenly perceiving her visitors. ”I suppose you think I'm perfectly horrid,” she went on hastily, ”but truly I couldn't help it. When a faculty asks you to go driving, you can't tell him that you hate it--and I couldn't for the life of me sc.r.a.pe up a previous engagement.”
”Speaking of engagements”--began Madeline provokingly.
”All's fair in love, Mary,” Katherine broke in. ”You're perfectly excusable. We all think so.”
”Who said anything about love?” demanded Mary, stooping to brush an imaginary speck of dust from her skirt.
”Next time,” advised Rachel laughingly, ”you'd better take us into your confidence. You've given yourself a lot of unnecessary bother, and us quite a little worry, though we don't mind that now.”
”Why didn't you tell us that he spent the summer at the same place that you did?” asked little Helen Adams.
Mary started. ”Who told you that?” she demanded anxiously.
”n.o.body but Lucile,” explained Betty in soothing tones. ”She visited there for a week, and this afternoon just by chance she happened to speak of seeing him. It fitted in beautifully, you see. She doesn't know you were there too, so it's all right.”
Mary gave a relieved little sigh, and then, turning suddenly, fell upon the row of pitiless inquisitors, embracing as many as possible and smiling benignly at the rest. ”Oh, girls, he's a dear,” she said. ”He's worth twenty of the gilded youths you meet out in society.” She drew back hastily. ”But we're only good friends,” she declared. ”He's been down a few times to spend Sunday--that was how I heard about the lecture--but he comes to see father as much as to see me--and--and you mustn't gossip.”
”We won't,” Katherine promised for them all. ”You can trust us. We always seem to have a faculty romance or two on our hands. We're getting used to it.”
”But it's not a romance,” wailed Mary. ”He took me walking and driving because mother asks him to dinner. We're nothing but jolly good friends.”
”Nothing but jolly good friends--”
That was the last thing Mary said when, late the next afternoon, her ”little friends” waved her off for home.
”Isn't she just about the last person you'd select for a professor's wife?” said Helen, as Mary's stylish little figure, poised on the rear platform of the train, swung out of sight around a curve.
”No, indeed she isn't,” declared Roberta loyally. ”She'll be a fine one.
She's awfully clever, only she makes people think she isn't, because she knows how to put on her clothes.”
”And it's one mission of the modern college girl,” announced Madeline oracularly, ”to show the people aforesaid that the two things can go together. Let's go to Smuggler's Notch Monday to celebrate.”