"There ought to be fines, I suppose," Agnes went on. "Let me see, what shall we be fined for? I shall have to get some light upon that, too, but I think it would be a good plan that any girl who voluntarily stirs up a fuss with another at school must pay a fine of not less than one cent. What do you think of that, Celia?"
"I should think that might be a good plan though I expect we shall all turn Quakers if we continue the club."
Agnes laughed. "It does look that way. At all events we are to thank Clara Adams for it all. Her club is founded on unkindness and if we want to be a rival, Mrs. Conway says we must have ours founded on kindness."
"Do you know anything about her club?" asked Jennie.
"I know a little. I believe only girls who live in a certain neighborhood can belong to it. All others are to be turned down, and are to be left out of the plays at recess. It is something like that, I was told. However, we don"t care anything about those poor little sillies.
We shall enjoy ourselves much more. I think we"d better not attend to any business to-day or we shall not have time for anything else. Have you made the minutes, Celia?"
"Yes, I think I have, and if I haven"t everything I can get you to tell me afterwards."
"I suppose we should vote for the officers," said Agnes, after a moment"s thought.
"Oh, no, don"t let"s," said Edna, anxious for the story. "We all want you for president and Celia for secretary, don"t we, girls?"
"All in favor of making Miss Agnes Evans president of the club will please rise," sang out Celia, and every girl arose to her feet. "That"s unanimous enough," said Celia. "Now all in favor of my being secretary will please rise." Another unanimous vote followed this and so the matter was speedily settled.
Then Agnes produced a ma.n.u.script paper and read them the most delightful of stories which was received with great applause. Then she whispered something to Dorothy who nodded understandingly, retired to the back of the attic and returned with two plates, one of delicious little cakes and the other of caramels to which full justice was done.
"What about the places of meeting and the refreshments?" asked Celia.
"It isn"t fair for you always to furnish them and don"t you think we should meet at different houses?"
"Perhaps so, only you see it would be hard for us to go into the city on Sat.u.r.days after coming out on Friday, and you see Jennie lives in town."
"Oh, but Mack can always bring me out in the motor car," said Jennie, "though of course I should love to have you all come in to my house and so would mamma like it."
"Well, we"ll meet at your house, Celia, the next time," said Agnes, "and after that at Mrs. MacDonald"s. We can, can"t we, Margaret?"
"Oh, yes, I am sure she will be perfectly delighted. She is so pleased about the club, anyhow."
"Then in the meantime we can be making up our minds about your house, Jennie," said Agnes.
"I wish we had some little song or a sentence to close with," said Celia.
"We can have. We can do all those things later. I think we have done a great deal for one day, don"t you all think so?"
"Oh, my, yes," was the hearty response. "It has been perfectly lovely."
"We might sing, "Little Drops of Water," for this time," proposed Edna, "as long as we haven"t any special song yet."
"That will do nicely, especially that part about "little deeds of kindness." We"re going to sing. All rise." And the meeting was closed, the members groping their way down the attic stairs which by now were quite dark. But the effect of the club was to be far-reaching as was afterward shown, though it was little suspected at the time of its formation.
CHAPTER IV
A THANKSGIVING DINNER
The first direct effect of the club was far from pleasant to Edna, for she forgot all about studying a certain lesson, and did not remember about it till she and Dorothy met at school on Monday morning, and then she was overcome with fear lest she should be called upon to recite something of which she knew scarcely anything. However, by dint of peeps at the book between whiles, after devoting to it all the time she had before school was called to order, she managed to get through the recitation, yet not without many misgivings and a rapid beating of the heart when Miss Ashurst called upon her. Edna was always such a conscientious child about her lessons that Miss Ashurst rather overlooked the fact that upon this occasion she was not quite as glib as usual, and she took her seat with a feeling of great relief, determining that she would not forget her lessons another Sat.u.r.day.
There was more than one opportunity that day to exercise the rule of the G. R. Club, and the girls of the Neighborhood Club, as they called theirs, were a little surprised at the appearance of good-will shown by the others.
"Oh, I know just what they are up to," Clara Adams told her friends; "they want to get in with us and are being extra sweet. I know that is exactly their trick. Don"t you girls pay any attention to them. Of course we could let Jennie Ramsey in, because she lives on our street, but the others, we couldn"t any more than we could Betty Lowndes or Jessie Hill."
"Well, it seems to me if they are good enough for Jennie Ramsey to go with they are good enough for us," returned Nellie Haskell.
"No, I"m not going to have them," replied Clara, "and if you choose to go over to them, Nellie Haskell, you can just make up your mind that I"ll have no more to do with you." So Nellie succ.u.mbed although she did smile upon Dorothy when the two met and was most pleasant when Edna offered to show her about one of the lessons.
Agnes advised that the girls make no secret of their club. "It is nothing to be ashamed of, I am sure," she said, "and if any of the girls want to join it I am sure they are quite welcome to." And indeed it did appeal so strongly to some of the older girls that before the week was out several new members were enrolled, and it was decided to change the time of meeting to Friday afternoon so that those in the city might have their convenience considered while the girls living in the country could easily stay in till a later hour.
The little girls felt themselves rather overpowered by the coming into their ranks of so many older members, but on the other hand they felt not a little flattered at being important enough to belong to the same club, so as the rule worked both ways it made it all right, especially as Betty Lowndes and others were admitted and were no older than themselves.
"They may have more in number," said Clara when she was told of how the club was increasing, "but we are more exclusive, my mother says."
This remark made its impression as Clara intended it should, though Nellie looked wistfully across at where half a dozen little girls were joyously eating their lunch and discussing the good times the elder girls were planning. "You know," Agnes had told them, "if you want to become a junior branch of the same club it will be perfectly easy for you to do it. At the end of a month you can decide, though Helen Darby and Florence Gittings agree with me that there is no reason why we shouldn"t all hang together. It will be more convenient for one thing and we can take turns in arranging the entertainment part. I don"t see why we all shouldn"t enjoy some of the same kind of things."
"Oh, we"d much rather stay in," replied Edna. "At least I would."
"I would! I would!" came from all the others.
Although there is a high and marked difference between fifteen and eight or nine, in most matters, in this of the club there appeared to be a harmony which put them all on the same footing. The older sisters were more ready to help the younger ones with their lessons while the younger ones were more eager to run on errands or to wait on the older ones, in consequence there was a benefit all around.
Of course Miss Ashurst and Mr. Horner were by no means unaware of what was going on and they smiled to see how pleasant an atmosphere prevailed in the school all except in the unfortunate Neighborhood Club which they would have gladly disbanded. "It will probably die of its own discontent," said Miss Ashurst to the princ.i.p.al, "I give it just three months to exist for the girls are dropping out one by one."
Mr. Homer smiled and nodded his head. He was a man of few words yet very little escaped his keen eyes.
The next meeting of the G. R."s was even more successful than the first.
A number of things were discussed and the little girls learned many things that they had not known before.
"Suppose Clara Adams did want to come into the club or wanted to be friends I suppose we"d have to be kind to her," said Dorothy, a little regretfully.
"Of course you"d have to be kind to her," said Helen Darby, "but you wouldn"t have to clasp her around the neck and hang on her words, nor even visit her. One can be kind without being intimate."
This was putting it in rather a new light and the little girls looked at one another. They had not easily distinguished the difference before this.
"The same way about Mr. Horner," Helen went on, "you don"t have to get down and tie his shoes, but if you do have a chance to do something to make things pleasanter for him, why just trot along and do it." And Helen nodded her head emphatically.
"Dear oh, me," sighed Florence, "we are getting our standards way up. I should probably fall all over myself if I attempted to do anything for him. I am almost scared to death at the mere thought."
"He won"t bite you," replied Helen, "and you don"t have to get close enough to him to comb his eyebrows. What I mean is that we can "be diligent and studious" as the old copy-books used to have it, speak well of his school, and not carry tales home that will make our families think we are martyrs and that he is an ogre, or someone to be feared constantly."
"Helen Darby! I"d like to know who has been giving you all these new ideas," said Florence.
"Why, I think Mrs. Conway started them by the way she talked to Agnes, and I have a modest claim to some brains of my own, so I thought out the rest and talked it over with father who put things very clearly before me, and showed me that school-girls are half the time silly geese who seem to think their teachers are created for the mere purpose of making their lives miserable. Father said that the shoe was usually on the other foot, and that the girls were much more liable to make the teachers" lives miserable. That set me a-thinking. Let me remark in pa.s.sing that father says he thinks our club is great, and he wants to have a hand in furnishing the entertaining some time."