The Girl Scouts Rally.
by Katherine Keene Galt.
CHAPTER I
Three little girls sat in a row on the top step of a beautiful home in Louisville. At the right was a dark-haired, fairylike child on whose docked hair a velvet beret, or French officer"s cap, sat jauntily. Her dark eyes were round and thoughtful as she gazed into s.p.a.ce. There was a little wrinkle between her curved black brows.
Beside her, busily knitting on a long red scarf, sat a sparkling little girl whose hazel eyes danced under a fringe of blond curls. Her dainty motions and her pretty way of tossing back her beautiful hair caused people to stop and look at her as they pa.s.sed, but Elise was all unconscious of their admiration. Indeed, she was almost too shy, and few knew how full of fun and laughter she could be.
The third girl wore a businesslike beaver hat over her blond docked hair, and her great eyes, blue and steady, were levelled across Elise, who knitted on in silence, to the dark girl in the velvet cap.
Helen Culver spoke at last. "Well, Rosanna, what are you thinking? Have you any plan at all?"
The dark child spoke. "No, Helen, I can"t think of a thing. It makes me _so_ provoked!"
"Tell me, will you not?" asked Elise in her pretty broken English. She was trying so hard to speak like Rosanna and Helen that she could scarcely be prevailed upon to say anything in French.
Many months had pa.s.sed since Elise, in the care of the kind ladies of the American Red Cross, had come over from France to her adopted guardian, young Mr. Horton. She had grown to be quite American during that time, and was very proud of her attainments. The dark and dreadful past was indeed far behind, and while she sometimes wept for her dear grandmother, who had died in Mr. Horton"s tender arms in the old chateau at home, she loved her foster mother, Mrs. Hargrave, with all her heart.
And with Elise laughing and dancing through it, the great old Hargrave house was changed indeed. While Elise was crossing the ocean, Mrs.
Hargrave had fitted up three rooms for her. There was a sitting-room, that was like the sunny outdoors, with its dainty flowered chintzes, its ivory wicker furniture, its plants and canaries singing in wicker cages.
Then there was a bedroom that simply put you to sleep just to look at it: all blue and silver, like a summer evening. Nothing sang here, but there was a big music box, old as Mrs. Hargrave herself, that tinkled Elise to sleep if she so wished. And the bathroom was papered so that you didn"t look at uninteresting tiles set like blocks when you splashed around in the tub. No; there seemed to be miles and miles of sunny sea-beach with little sh.e.l.ls lying on the wet sand and sea gulls swinging overhead.
Mrs. Hargrave was so delighted with all this when it was finished that it made her discontented with her own sitting-room with its dim old hangings and walnut furniture.
"No wonder I was beginning to grow old," she said to her life-long friend, Mrs. Horton. "No wonder at all! All this dismal old stuff is going up in the attic. I shall bring down my great great-grandmother"s mahogany and have all my wicker furniture cushioned with parrots and roses."
"It sounds dreadful," said Mrs. Horton.
"It won"t be," retorted her friend. "It will be perfectly lovely. Did you know that I can play the piano? I can, and well. I had forgotten it.
I am going to have birds too--not canaries, but four cunning little green love-birds. They are going to have all that bay window for themselves. And I shall have a quarter grand piano put right there."
"I do think you are foolish," said Mrs. Horton, who was a cautious person. "What if this child turns out to be a failure? All you have is my son"s word for it, and what does a boy twenty-four years old know about little girls? You ought to wait and see what sort of a child she is."
"I have faith, my dear," said her friend. "I have been so lonely for so many long years that I feel sure that at last the good Lord is going to send me a real little daughter."
"Cross-eyed perhaps and with a frightful disposition," said Mrs. Horton.
"All children look like angels to Robert."
Mrs. Hargrave was plucky. "Very well, then; I can afford to have her eyes straightened, and I will see what I can do about the temper."
"I won"t tease you any more," said Mrs. Horton. "Robert says the child is charming and good as gold. I know you will be happy with her, and if you find that she is too much of a care for you, you can simply throw her right back on Robert"s hands. I don"t like to have him feel that he has no responsibility in the matter."
Elise proved to be all that Mrs. Hargrave had dreamed, and more. She sang like a bird and Mrs. Hargrave found her old skill returning as she played accompaniments or taught Elise to play on the pretty piano. And the little girl, who was perfectly happy, repaid her over and over in love and a thousand sweet and pretty attentions. Dear Mrs. Hargrave, who had been so lonely that she had not cared particularly whether she lived or died, found herself wishing for many years of life.
The three little girls, Elise, Rosanna, of whom you have perhaps read, and her friend Helen Culver were great friends.
They went to school and studied and played together, and Rosanna and Helen were both Girl Scouts. Elise was to join too, as soon as she could qualify. At present, as Uncle Robert said slangily, she was "stuck on pie." She could not make a crust that could be cut or even _sawed_ apart although she tried to do so with all the earnestness in the world.
Perhaps you girls who are reading this remember Rosanna. If so, you will be glad to know that she grew well and strong again after her accident and continued to be a very happy little girl who was devoted to her grandmother, who in turn was devoted to Rosanna. The beautiful hair that Rosanna had cut off was allowed to stay docked, and that was a great relief to Rosanna, who was always worried by the weight of the long curls that hung over her shoulders like a dark glistening cape. It seemed _such_ fun to be able to shake her head like a pony and send the short, thick mane flying now that it was cut off.
There were three people in Rosanna"s home: her stately grandmother Mrs.
Horton, Uncle Robert, of whom you have heard, and Rosanna herself.
Rosanna had had a maid, of whom she was very fond, but Minnie was at home preparing to marry the young man to whom she had been engaged all through the war. He was at home again, and together they were fitting out a cunning little bungalow in the Highlands. As soon as everything was arranged quite to their satisfaction, they were going to be married, and Minnie vowed that she could never get married unless she could have a real wedding with bridesmaids and all, and she had a scheme! By the way she rolled her eyes and her young man chuckled, it seemed as though it must be a very wonderful scheme indeed, but although all three girls hung around her neck and teased, not another word would she say. Minnie had two little sisters who were about the ages of Rosanna and Elise and Helen, but they did not know what the scheme was either. It was _very_ trying.
Helen Culver no longer lived over Mrs. Horton"s garage and her father no longer drove the Horton cars, but her home was very near in a dear little apartment as sweet and clean and dainty as it could be. Mr.
Culver and Uncle Robert were often together and did a good deal of figuring and drawing but other than guessing that it was something to do with Uncle Robert"s business, the children did not trouble their heads.
Helen was ahead of Rosanna in school. She had had a better chance to start with, as Rosanna had only had private teachers and so had had no reason to strive to forge ahead. There had been no one to get ahead _of_! Now, however, she was studying to such good purpose that she hoped soon to overtake Helen. But it was a hard task, because Helen was a very bright little girl who could and would and _did_ put her best effort in everything she did.
These, then, were the three little girls who sat on Rosanna"s doorstep and smelled the burning leaves and enjoyed the beautiful fall day.
"Rosanna is so good at making plans," said Helen, smiling over at her friend.
"What shall your good plan be for?" asked Elise.
"Don"t you remember, Elise, our telling you about the picnic we had once, and the children who took supper with us?"
"Oh, _oui_--yess, yess!" said Elise, correcting herself hastily.
"And we told you how we took them home and saw poor Gwenny, their sister, who is so lame that she cannot walk at all, and is so good and patient about it? We mean to take you over to see her, now that you can speak English so nicely. She wants to see you so much."
"I would be charm to go," declared Elise, nodding her curly head.
"Well," continued Rosanna, "Gwenny"s mother says that Gwenny could be cured, but that it would cost more than she could ever pay, and it is nothing that she could get done at the free dispensaries. Those are places where very, very poor people can go and get good doctors and nurses and advice without paying anything at all, but Gwenny could not go there.
"She would have to go to a big hospital in Cincinnati and stay for a long while. I thought about asking my grandmother if she would like to send Gwenny there, but just as I was going to speak of it last night, she commenced to talk to Uncle Robert about money, and I heard her tell him that she was never so hard up in her life, and what with the Liberty Loan drives taking all her surplus out of the banks, and the high rate of taxes, she didn"t know what she was going to do. So I couldn"t say a thing."
"The same with ma maman," said Elise. "She calls those same taxes robbers. So you make the plan?"
"That"s just it: I _don"t_," said Rosanna ruefully. "I wish I could think up some way to earn money, a lot of it ourselves."
"Let"s do it!" said Helen in her brisk, decided way.
"But _how_?" questioned Rosanna. "It will take such a lot of money, Helen. Hundreds and hundreds of dollars, maybe _thousands_."
"I should think the thing to do would be to ask a doctor exactly how much it would cost, first of all," said the practical Helen.
"Another thing," said Rosanna, "Gwenny"s family is very proud. They don"t like to feel that people are taking care of them. The a.s.sociated Charities gave Gwenny a chair once, so she could wheel herself around, but it made them feel badly, although Gwenny"s mother said she knew that it was the right thing to accept it."
"She will feel that it is the thing to do if we can pay to have Gwenny cured too," said Helen. "You know how sensible she is, Rosanna. She must realize that everybody knows that she does all she can in this world for her family. I heard mother say she never saw any woman work so hard to keep a home for her children.
"Mother says she never rests. And she is not trained, you know, to do special work like typewriting, or anything that is well paid, so she has to be a practical nurse and things like that."
"Aren"t all nurses practical?" asked Rosanna, a frown of perplexity on her brow.
"Trained nurses are not," replied Helen. "Trained nurses get thirty and forty dollars a week and a practical nurse gets seven or eight, and works harder. But you see she never had a chance to get trained. It takes a long time, like going to school and graduating, only you go to the hospital instead."