She never had any birthday boxes from home, never any Christmas presents, except those that came from the school. While the other girls were clamoring for mail, Harriet stood in the background silent and unexpectant. Miss Sallie picked out her clothes, and Miss Sallie"s standards were utilitarian rather than aesthetic. Harriet, with no exception, was the worst dressed girl in the school. Even her school uniform, which was an exact twin of sixty-three other uniforms, hung upon her with the grace of a meal-bag. Miss Sallie, with provident foresight, always ordered them a size too large in order to allow her to grow and Harriet invariably wore them out, before she had established a fit.
"What on earth becomes of Harriet Gladden during vacation?" Priscilla once wondered on the opening day.
"They keep her on ice through the summer," was Patty"s opinion, "and she never gets entirely thawed out."
As a matter of fact this was, as nearly as possible, what they did do with her. Miss Sallie picked out a quiet, comfortable, healthy farmhouse, and installed Harriet in charge of the farmer"s wife. By the end of three months she was so desperately lonely, that she looked forward with pleasurable excitement to the larger isolation of term time.
Patty, one day, had overheard two of the teachers discussing Harriet, and her reported version had been picturesque.
"Her father hasn"t seen her for years and years. He just chucks her in here and pays the bills."
"I don"t wonder he doesn"t want her at home!" said Priscilla.
"There isn"t any home. Her mother is divorced, and married again, and living in Paris. That was the reason Harriet couldn"t go abroad with the school party last year. Her father was afraid that when she got to Paris, her mother would grab her--not that either of them really wants her, but they like to spite each other."
Priscilla and Conny sat up interestedly. Here was a tragic intrigue, such as you expect to meet only in novels, going on under their very noses.
"You girls who have had a happy home life, cannot imagine the loneliness of a childhood such as Harriet"s," said Patty impressively.
"It"s dreadful!" Conny cried. "Her father must be a perfect _Beast_ not to take any notice of her."
"Harriet has her mother"s eyes," Patty explained. "Her father can"t bear to look at her, because she reminds him of the happy past that is dead forever."
"Did Miss Wadsworth say that?" they demanded in an interested chorus.
"Not in exactly those words," Patty confessed. "I just gathered the outline."
This story, with picturesque additions, lost no time in making the rounds of the school. Had Harriet chosen to play up to the romantic and melancholy role she was cast for, she might have attained popularity of a sort; but Harriet did not have the slightest trace of the histrionic in her make-up. She merely moped about, and continued to be heavy and uninteresting. Other more exciting matters demanded public attention; and Harriet and her blasted childhood were forgotten.
Patty stood on the veranda waving good-by to the last hea.r.s.eful of Christmas travelers, then turned indoors to face an empty three weeks.
As she was listlessly preparing to mount the stairs, Maggie waylaid her with the message:
"Mrs. Trent would like to speak to you in her private study, Miss Patty."
Patty turned back, wondering for just which of her latest activities she was to be called to account. A visit to the Dowager"s private study usually meant that a storm was brewing. She found the four left-behind teachers cosily gathered about the tea table, and to her surprise, was received with four affable smiles.
"Sit down, Patty, and have some tea."
The Dowager motioned her to a chair, while she mingled an inch of tea with three inches of hot water. Miss Sallie furnished a fringed napkin, Miss Jellings presented b.u.t.tered toast, and Miss Wadsworth, salted almonds. Patty blinked dazedly and accepted the offerings. To be waited on by four teachers was an entirely new experience. Her spirits rose considerably as she mentally framed the story for Priscilla"s and Conny"s delectation. When she had ceased to wonder why she was being thus honored, the reason appeared.
"I am sorry, Patty," said the Dowager, "that none of your special friends are to be here this year; but I am sure that you and Margarite and Harriet will get on very happily. Breakfast will be half an hour later than usual, and the rules about bounds will be somewhat relaxed--only of course we must always know where to find you. I shall try to plan a matinee party in the city, and Miss Sallie will take you to spend a day at the farm. The ice is strong enough now for you to skate, and Martin will get out the sleds for you to coast. You must be in the open air as much as possible; and I shall be very pleased if you and Margarite can interest Harriet in out-of-door sports. Speaking of Harriet--"
The Dowager hesitated momentarily, and Patty"s acute understanding realized that at last they were getting at the kernel of the interview.
The tea and toast had been merely wrapping. She listened with a touch of suspicion, while the Dowager lowered her voice with an air of confidence.
"Speaking of Harriet, I should like to enlist your sympathy, Patty. She is very sweet and genuine. A girl that anyone might be proud to have for a friend. But through an accident, such as sometimes happens in a crowded, busy, selfish community, she has been overlooked and left behind. Harriet has never seemed to adjust herself so readily as most girls; and I fear that the poor child is often very lonely. It would be highly gratifying to me if you would make an effort to be friendly with her. I am sure that she will meet your advances half way."
Patty murmured a few polite phrases and retired to dress for dinner, stubbornly resolved to be as distant with Harriet as possible. Her friendship was not a commodity to be bought with tea and b.u.t.tered toast.
The three girls had dinner alone at a little candle-lit table set in a corner of the dining-room, while the four teachers occupied a conveniently distant table in the opposite corner.
Patty commenced the meal by being as monosyllabic as possible; but it was not her natural att.i.tude toward the world, and by the time the veal had arrived (it was Wednesday night) she was laughing whole-heartedly at Kid"s ingenuous conversation. Miss McCoy"s vocabulary was rich in the vernacular of the plains, and in vacation she let herself go. During term time she was forced to curb her discourse, owing to the penny tax on slang. Otherwise, her entire allowance would have gone to swell the public coffers.
It was a relief to let dinner-table conversation flow where it listed; usually, with a teacher in attendance and the route marked out, there was a cramped formality about the meal. French conversation was supposed to occupy the first three courses five nights in the week, and every girl must contribute at least two remarks. It cannot be said that on French nights the dining-room was garrulous. Sat.u.r.day night was devoted to a discussion (in English) of current events, gleaned from a study of the editorials in the morning paper. n.o.body at St. Ursula"s had much time for editorials, and even on an English Sat.u.r.day conversation languished. But the school made up for it on Sunday. This day, being _festa_, they could talk about anything they chose; and sixty-four magpies chattering their utmost, would have been silence in comparison to St. Ursula"s at dinner time on Sunday.
The four days preceding Christmas pa.s.sed with unexpected swiftness. A snow-storm marked the first, followed by three days of glistening sunshine. Martin got out the bobs, and the girls piled in and rode to the wood-lot for evergreens. There were many errands in the village, and the novelty of not always having a teacher at one"s heels, proved in itself diverting.
Patty found the two companions which circ.u.mstances had forced upon her unexpectedly companionable. They skated and coasted and had snow fights; and Harriet, to Patty"s wide-eyed astonishment, a.s.sumed a very appreciable animation. On Christmas Eve they had been out with Martin delivering Christmas baskets to old time proteges of the school; and on the way home, through pure overflowing animal spirits, for a mile or more they had "caught on" the back of the bob, and then tumbled out and run and caught on again, until they finally dove head foremost into the big piled-up drift by the porte-cochere. They shook the snow from their clothes, like puppies from a pond, and laughing and excited trooped indoors. Harriet"s cheeks were red from contact with the snow, her usually prim hair was a tangled ma.s.s about her face, her big dark eyes had lost their mournful look. They were merry, mischievous, girlish eyes. She was not merely pretty, but beautiful, in a wild, unusual gypsyish way that compelled attention.
"I say," Patty whispered to Kid McCoy as they divested themselves of rubbers and leggins in the lower hall. "Look at Harriet! Isn"t she pretty?"
"Golly!" murmured the Kid. "If she knew enough to play up to her looks, she"d be the ravingest beauty in all the school."
"Let"s make her!" said Patty.
At the top of the stairs they met Osaki with a hammer and chisel.
"I open two box," he observed. "One Mees Margarite McCoy. One Mees Patty Wyatt."
"Hooray!" cried the Kid, starting at a gallop for her room in the South Wing.
A Christmas box to Kid McCoy meant a lavish wealth of new possessions out of all proportion to her desserts. She owned a bachelor guardian who was subject to fits of such erratic generosity that the Dowager had regularly to remind him that Margarite was but a school girl with simple tastes. Fortunately he always forgot this warning before the next Christmas--or else he knew Kid too well to believe it--and the boxes continued to come.
Patty had also started without ceremony for Paradise Alley, when she became aware of deserted Harriet, slowly trailing down the dim length of Lark Lane. She ran back and grasped her by an elbow.
"Come on, Harry! And help me open my box."
Harriet"s face flushed with sudden pleasure; it was the first time, in the five and a half years of her school career, that she had ever achieved the dignity of a nickname. She accompanied Patty with some degree of eagerness. The next best thing to receiving a Christmas box of your own, is to be present at the reception of a friend"s.
It was a big square wooden box, packed to the brim with smaller boxes and parcels tied with ribbon and holly, and tucked into every crevice funny surprises. You could picture, just from looking at it, the kind of home that it came from, filled with jokes and nonsense and love.
"It"s the first Christmas I"ve ever spent away from home," said Patty, with the suggestion of a quiver in her voice.
But her momentary soberness did not last; the business of exploration was too absorbing to allow any divided emotion. Harriet sat on the edge of the bed and watched in silence, while Patty gaily strewed the floor with tissue paper and scarlet ribbon. She unpacked a wide a.s.sortment of gloves and books and trinkets, each with a message of love. Even the cook had baked a Christmas cake with a fancy top. And little Tommy, in wobbly uphill printing, had labeled an elephant filled with candy, "FOR DERE CISTER FROM TOM."
Patty laughed happily as she plumped a chocolate into her mouth, and dropped the elephant into Harriet"s lap.
"Aren"t they dears to go to such a lot of trouble? I tell you, it pays to stay away sometimes, they think such a lot more of you! This is from Mother," she added, as she pried off the cover of a big dressmaker"s box, and lifted out a filmy dancing frock of pink crepe.
"Isn"t it perfectly sweet?" she demanded, "and I didn"t need it a bit!
Don"t you love to get things you don"t need?"
"I never do," said Harriet.
Patty was already deep in another parcel.
"From Daddy, with all the love in the world," she read. "Dear old Dad!