"That doesn"t sound very encouraging," murmured Pauline, as Mrs. Boyd went out. "I like people with a little nonsense about them. But I hope better things of Ada, Mrs. Boyd to the contrary notwithstanding. She has a pair of grey eyes that can"t possibly always look sensible. I think they must mellow occasionally into fun and jollity and wholesome nonsense. Well, I"m off to the sh.o.r.e. I want to get that photograph of the Cove this evening, if possible. I"ve set my heart on taking first prize at the Amateur Photographers" Exhibition this fall, and if I can only get that Cove with all its beautiful lights and shadows, it will be the gem of my collection."
Pauline, on her return from the sh.o.r.e, reached the beech lane just as the Embree cows were swinging down it. Behind them came a tall, brown-haired, brown-faced girl in a neat print dress. Her hat was hung over her arm, and the low evening sunlight shone redly over her smooth glossy head. She carried herself with a pretty dignity, but when her eyes met Pauline"s, she looked as if she would smile on the slightest provocation.
Pauline promptly gave her the provocation.
"Good evening, Miss Cameron," she called blithely. "Won"t you please stop a few moments and look me over? I want to see if you think me a likely person for a summer chum."
Ada Cameron did more than smile. She laughed outright and went over to the fence where Pauline was sitting on a stump. She looked down into the merry black eyes of the town girl she had been half envying for a week and said humorously: "Yes, I think you very likely, indeed. But it takes two to make a friendship--like a bargain. If I"m one, you"ll have to be the other."
"I"m the other. Shake," said Pauline, holding out her hand.
That was the beginning of a friendship that made poor Mrs. Wallace groan outwardly as well as inwardly. Pauline and Ada found that they liked each other even more than they had expected to. They walked, rowed, berried and picnicked together. Ada did not go to Mrs. Boyd"s a great deal, for some instinct told her that Mrs. Wallace did not look favourably on her, but Pauline spent half her time at the little, brown, orchard-embowered house at the end of the beech lane where the Embrees lived. She had never met any girl she thought so nice as Ada.
"She is nice every way," she told the unconvinced Aunt Olivia. "She"s clever and well read. She is sensible and frank. She has a sense of humour and a great deal of insight into character--witness her liking for your niece! She can talk interestingly and she can also be silent when silence is becoming. And she has the finest profile I ever saw.
Aunt Olivia, may I ask her to visit me next winter?"
"No, indeed," said Mrs. Wallace, with crushing emphasis. "You surely don"t expect to continue this absurd intimacy past the summer, Pauline?"
"I expect to be Ada"s friend all my life," said Pauline laughingly, but with a little ring of purpose in her voice. "Oh, Aunty, dear, can"t you see that Ada is just the same girl in cotton print that she would be in silk attire? She is really far more distinguished looking than any girl in the Knowles" set."
"Pauline!" said Aunt Olivia, looking as shocked as if Pauline had committed blasphemy.
Pauline laughed again, but she sighed as she went to her room. Aunt Olivia has the kindest heart in the world, she thought. What a pity she isn"t able to see things as they really are! My friendship with Ada can"t be perfect if I can"t invite her to my home. And she is such a dear girl--the first real friend after my own heart that I"ve ever had.
The summer waned, and August burned itself out.
"I suppose you will be going back to town next week? I shall miss you dreadfully," said Ada.
The two girls were in the Embree garden, where Pauline was preparing to take a photograph of Ada standing among the asters, with a great sheaf of them in her arms. Pauline wished she could have said: But you must come and visit me in the winter. Since she could not, she had to content herself with saying: "You won"t miss me any more than I shall miss you. But we"ll correspond, and I hope Aunt Olivia will come to Marwood again next summer."
"I don"t think I shall be here then," said Ada with a sigh. "You see, it is time I was doing something for myself, Pauline. Aunt Jane and Uncle Robert have always been very kind to me, but they have a large family and are not very well off. So I think I"ll try for a situation in one of the Remington stores this fall."
"It"s such a pity you couldn"t have gone to the Academy and studied for a teacher"s licence," said Pauline, who knew what Ada"s ambitions were.
"I should have liked that better, of course," said Ada quietly. "But it is not possible, so I must do my best at the next best thing. Don"t let"s talk of it. It might make me feel blueish and I want to look especially pleasant if I"m going to have my photo taken."
"You couldn"t look anything else," laughed Pauline. "Don"t smile too broadly--I want you to be looking over the asters with a bit of a dream on your face and in your eyes. If the picture turns out as beautiful as I fondly expect, I mean to put it in my exhibition collection under the t.i.tle "A September Dream." There, that"s the very expression. When you look like that, you remind me of somebody I have seen, but I can"t remember who it is. All ready now--don"t move--there, dearie, it is all over."
When Pauline went back to Colchester, she was busy for a month preparing her photographs for the exhibition, while Aunt Olivia renewed her spinning of all the little social webs in which she fondly hoped to entangle the Morgan Knowles and other desirable flies.
When the exhibition was opened, Pauline Palmer"s collection won first prize, and the prettiest picture in it was one called "A September Dream"--a tall girl with a wistful face, standing in an old-fashioned garden with her arms full of asters.
The very day after the exhibition was opened the Morgan Knowles"
automobile stopped at the Wallace door. Mrs. Wallace was out, but it was Pauline whom stately Mrs. Morgan Knowles asked for. Pauline was at that moment buried in her darkroom developing photographs, and she ran down just as she was--a fact which would have mortified Mrs. Wallace exceedingly if she had ever known it. But Mrs. Morgan Knowles did not seem to mind at all. She liked Pauline"s simplicity of manner. It was more than she had expected from the aunt"s rather vulgar affectations.
"I have called to ask you who the original of the photograph "A September Dream" in your exhibit was, Miss Palmer," she said graciously. "The resemblance to a very dear childhood friend of mine is so startling that I am sure it cannot be accidental."
"That is a photograph of Ada Cameron, a friend whom I met this summer up in Marwood," said Pauline.
"Ada Cameron! She must be Ada Frame"s daughter, then," exclaimed Mrs.
Knowles in excitement. Then, seeing Pauline"s puzzled face, she explained: "Years ago, when I was a child, I always spent my summers on the farm of my uncle, John Frame. My cousin, Ada Frame, was the dearest friend I ever had, but after we grew up we saw nothing of each other, for I went with my parents to Europe for several years, and Ada married a neighbour"s son, Alec Cameron, and went out west. Her father, who was my only living relative other than my parents, died, and I never heard anything more of Ada until about eight years ago, when somebody told me she was dead and had left no family. That part of the report cannot have been true if this girl is her daughter."
"I believe she is," said Pauline quickly. "Ada was born out west and lived there until she was eight years old, when her parents died and she was sent east to her father"s half-sister. And Ada looks like you--she always reminded me of somebody I had seen, but I never could decide who it was before. Oh, I hope it is true, for Ada is such a sweet girl, Mrs. Knowles."
"She couldn"t be anything else if she is Ada Frame"s daughter," said Mrs. Knowles. "My husband will investigate the matter at once, and if this girl is Ada"s child we shall hope to find a daughter in her, as we have none of our own."
"What will Aunt Olivia say!" said Pauline with wickedly dancing eyes when Mrs. Knowles had gone.
Aunt Olivia was too much overcome to say anything. That good lady felt rather foolish when it was proved that the girl she had so despised was Mrs. Morgan Knowles" cousin and was going to be adopted by her.
But to hear Aunt Olivia talk now, you would suppose that she and not Pauline had discovered Ada.
The latter sought Pauline out as soon as she came to Colchester, and the summer friendship proved a life-long one and was, for the Wallaces, the open sesame to the enchanted ground of the Knowles"
"set."
"So everybody concerned is happy," said Pauline. "Ada is going to college and so am I, and Aunt Olivia is on the same committee as Mrs.
Knowles for the big church bazaar. What about my "low tastes" now, Aunt Olivia?"
"Well, who would ever have supposed that a girl who drove cows to pasture was connected with the Morgan Knowles?" said poor Aunt Olivia piteously.
The Growing Up of Cornelia
January First.
Aunt Jemima gave me this diary for a Christmas present. It"s just the sort of gift a person named Jemima would be likely to make.
I can"t imagine why Aunt Jemima thought I should like a diary.
Probably she didn"t think about it at all. I suppose it happened to be the first thing she saw when she started out to do her Christmas duty by me, and so she bought it. I"m sure I"m the last girl in the world to keep a diary. I"m not a bit sentimental and I never have time for soul outpourings. It"s jollier to be out skating or snowshoeing or just tramping around. And besides, nothing ever happens to me worth writing in a diary.
Still, since Aunt Jemima gave it to me, I"m going to get the good out of it. I don"t believe in wasting even a diary. Father ... it would be easier to write "Dad," but Dad sounds disrespectful in a diary ...
says I have a streak of old Grandmother Marshall"s economical nature in me. So I"m going to write in this book whenever I have anything that might, by any stretch of imagination, be supposed worth while.
Jen and Alice and Sue would have plenty to write about, I dare say.
They certainly seem to have jolly times ... and as for the men ... but there! People say men are interesting. They may be. But I shall never get well enough acquainted with any of them to find out.
Mother says it is high time I gave up my tomboy ways and came "out"
too, because I am eighteen. I coaxed off this winter. It wasn"t very hard, because no mother with three older unmarried girls on her hands would be very anxious to bring out a fourth. The girls took my part and advised Mother to let me be a child as long as possible. Mother yielded for this time, but said I must be brought out next winter or people would talk. Oh, I hate the thought of it! People might talk about my not being brought out, but they will talk far more about the blunders I shall make.
The doleful fact is, I"m too wretchedly shy and awkward to live. It fills my soul with terror to think of donning long dresses and putting my hair up and going into society. I can"t talk and men frighten me to death. I fall over things as it is, and what will it be with long dresses? As far back as I can remember it has been my one aim and object in life to escape company. Oh, if only one need never grow up!
If I could only go back four years and stay there!
Mother laments over it muchly. She says she doesn"t know what she has done to have such a shy, unpresentable daughter. _I_ know. She married Grandmother Marshall"s son, and Grandmother Marshall was as shy as she was economical. Mother triumphed over heredity with Jen and Sue and Alice, but it came off best with me. The other girls are noted for their grace and tact. But I"m the black sheep and always will be. It wouldn"t worry me so much if they"d leave me alone and stop nagging me. "Oh, for a lodge in some vast wilderness," where there were no men, no parties, no dinners ... just quant.i.ties of dogs and horses and skating ponds and woods! I need never put on long dresses then, but just be a jolly little girl forever.
However, I"ve got one beautiful year before me yet, and I mean to make the most of it.