"Blue Bonnet--you mustn"t go to pieces like this--it"s dreadful! Try to calm yourself and think of your lines. You"ll be all right in a minute--just as soon as you"re on the stage. I know you"re going to do well. This awful nervousness is a part of the game--it"s the artistic temperament."
And so it proved. Blue Bonnet had scarcely spoken her first line before fear fled to the winds. Her own personality fell from her like a mantle.
She was Oonah, the bewitching little Irish maiden, on her way from Dublin to make her home with her grandmother in the country. In her hand she held the "twig of thorn," which, having been plucked on the first day of spring, had thrown her under the spell of the fairies. Around her shoulders she wore the peasant"s cape with its quaint, becoming hood, and as she threw it off there was a smothered exclamation from the audience, for the vision was one of startling loveliness. Her hair was caught loosely and hung in many ringlets; her eyes were large and luminous with the excitement of the moment, and her pretty brogue--slaved over for weeks--captivated all listeners.
Blue Bonnet, quite unaware of her triumph, was overwhelmed at the end of the performance to hear her name called uproariously from the audience and fled to the far end of the wings, from which she was rescued unceremoniously by two insistent fairies, who brought her to the footlights to acknowledge the tribute of friends and admirers.
But it was after the play, when the teachers had left the room, and the chairs had been drawn around the table that the real fun of the evening began. It was then that the presidents of the two cla.s.ses made speeches that were masterpieces of diplomatic art, and the Seniors contributed their share of entertainment with rare stunts. The eccentricities of teachers were taken off in a way that convulsed the entire gathering; the Junior cla.s.s song was sung for the first time, and midnight crept on without any one dreaming of its approach until faithful John, the janitor, announced it from the door exactly on the stroke of twelve.
With sighs and regrets that anything so altogether heavenly as a "spread" should have an end, the girls moved out of the old gymnasium sorrowfully, realizing that one of their happiest evenings had pa.s.sed into history.
CHAPTER XXI
THE LAMBS" FROLIC
School-days cannot last forever. The fact was borne in on Annabel Jackson as she sat in her room one afternoon shortly before Commencement. It wasn"t going to be such an easy thing to tear up root and leave Miss North"s after four years as she had imagined. How was she ever going to get along without the girls? There was Sue--dear old, impulsive, warm-hearted Sue, companion in so many escapades. And Ruth, and Wee Watts--Blue Bonnet, too! The parting was going to be especially hard with Blue Bonnet. _She_ would in all probability disappear on the Texas ranch, and except for an occasional Christmas greeting or birthday card, pa.s.s out of her life altogether.
There were the teachers also,--Mrs. White and Professor Howe and Madam de Cartier--and, yes--even Miss North, austere and dignified and unapproachable as she was, would be missed out of the little world; a world she had grown to love very dearly, despite its limitations, its frequent vexations.
"Mercy! you look as if you"d lost your last friend, Annabel," Ruth Biddle commented from her seat by the window, where she was doing her best to stop a runner in a silk stocking.
"I have, I"m afraid--or will," Annabel answered dolefully. "Do you realize that in just fifteen days we shall be saying good-by to these old walls, forever--you and I? I didn"t think it was going to be so hard, Ruth. Doesn"t it break you all up when you think of it? Do you relish the idea of other girls having this room next year--hanging their things in our closets; planning feasts and frolics behind barred doors while we pa.s.s on to the ranks of "young women?" The idea doesn"t appeal to me as much as I thought it was going to."
Ruth bit off her thread and regarded the room a moment in silence.
"Wonder where they"ll keep their provisions," she said, eyes toward the box couch which had secluded many a staple article. "Do you suppose they"ll find the refrigerator, and know enough to make black curtains for the transoms?"
A gleam shot from Annabel"s roguish eyes to Ruth"s.
"Let"s put them on," she said. "Write a letter and will them our secrets. We can hide it in the refrigerator."
The refrigerator--a loose brick discovered one day just under the window on the outside wall--had proved a boon to Annabel and Ruth. By the least bit of digging from the inside a pa.s.sage had been made, large enough to accommodate a bottle of milk, a pint of ice cream or any other delicacy that required cold storage. It had been necessary to cut the wall paper, and the plastering, of course,--a daring thing to do, but the girls had felt no great qualm of conscience.
An elaborate calendar covered the aperture. It had been observed many times by visitors that the calendar hung low, but Annabel was always quick to remark that there was no other place, the room, being full to overflowing with pictures, pennants, etc. A truth which could not be gainsaid.
"Splendid!" Ruth cried, with more enthusiasm than she was wont to show, and got out paper and pencil immediately.
"Better get ink, Ruth. Who ever heard of a last will and testament being written in pencil? Here! let me do it."
For a minute Annabel scratched away busily, and this is what Ruth read over her shoulder:
"TO THE NEXT OCCUPANTS OF THIS ROOM
"GREETINGS!
"To you, whoever you may be (we hope the best ever), Ruth Biddle of Scranton, Pennsylvania, and Annabel Jackson of Nashville, Tennessee, former occupants, do bequeath our good will, our confidence, our social standing (which is thrown in gratis along with the most expensive room in the school), and do entrust to your everlasting protection such of our possessions as you may find useful and necessary. The black cloths, which you will find in this secret hiding-place, fit the transoms over the door and in the bathroom. The candles you will find convenient for midnight feasts and orgies; the refrigerator indispensable for cold storage; the box couch excellent for provisions, such as Nabiscos, crackers and cookies. To you also we do bequeath the residue of our estate: the wicker tea-table; the picture of the Queen Louise; the china cat on the mantel-piece, which has proved an invaluable mascot. This together with our best wishes, congratulations, and the hope that you will continue to dispense hospitality and radiate good cheer and comfort from these portals.
"Signed: "Witnessed by:"
"You don"t mean to say you"re going to give your tea-table to utter strangers, do you, Annabel?" Ruth asked in surprise.
"I don"t mean to pay storage or freight on it. Certainly I"m going to leave it."
"And the Queen Louise? I thought you adored her!"
"I did once, but she makes me so nervous, eternally coming down those stairs, gazing off into the distance as if she were treading on air. I"m getting terribly tired of her."
"And the cat? You remember the day you bought that, Annabel? You were about the most homesick person in Boston. You said it looked like your own "Lady Jane Grey" at home, and you cuddled it half the night. I don"t see how you can part with it."
"Oh, it goes with the room," Annabel answered indifferently. "You know yourself it"s kept away mice. We"ve never had _one_, and look at Wee Watts" room, and the sky parlor--"
A knock interrupted further history.
Blue Bonnet put her head inside.
"Girls!" she said excitedly, "we"re going to get our three days" cut, and oh, guess what"s happened! Patty Paine"s mother"s here--we just left her down in the reception-room, and she"s invited us all--the Lambs--down to her summer home in Maine at a place called Sargentville.
They have a cottage there, and she"s going down and will take us, and Miss North says we can go."
Annabel pulled Blue Bonnet into the room and looked at her skeptically.
"Really, Blue Bonnet? Do you mean it?"
"Of course I mean it. And Annabel--isn"t it too splendid?--every one of the Lambs has brought her average up to eighty, so we can all go! We are to leave Friday and get back early Monday morning. Patty"s perfectly wild about it, and her mother"s a dear."
Blue Bonnet hurried off to bear the good tidings, but the news had preceded her. In Patty"s room a group of girls chatted excitedly.
"Oh, Blue Bonnet, have you heard the news? We"re to go--"
"I should say I have," Blue Bonnet interrupted. "I came to tell you."
"Well, Angela got ahead of you. Come in. Patty will be up in a minute.
She and her mother are making arrangements with Miss North. Isn"t it too utterly splendid?"
"And Fairview Cottage is the most ideal spot in the world," Angela put in dreamily. "I"m so glad that it is full moon time. There"s a place around Sargentville called Caterpillar Hill, with the most fascinating road winding up to it. I loved it so that I wrote an ode to it last year when I visited Patty."
"Will the family all be there?" Sue inquired.
"I fancy not," Angela said. Being Patty"s room-mate, she was well up on the Paine affairs. "Mrs. Paine is going down to open the cottage for the summer. The servants all went yesterday. Patty says she"s going to try to get the boys to come up over Sunday, but she isn"t at all sure they can--they"re at Yale, you know."
"The boys" were Patty"s two brothers, who were studying law at Yale.
"Isn"t Sargentville the place where Ben Billings" family have a summer home?" Sue inquired quite casually; but the remark brought a laugh. Ben Billings, despite his very ordinary name, and Sue"s particular aversion to it, had sailed into her ken with meteor-like brilliancy. She had changed her opinion of him since the visit to Harvard, and was the object of considerable teasing. Such rhymes as the following had found their way to her desk and room often:
"Her home is in the Middle West; But what"s the difference, pray, With Harvard, dear old Harvard, Scarce five miles away?"