"Mattie Ball! I have known her since my freshman year at college. Edwin, you remember Mattie Ball, do you not?"
"Of course I do. An excellent student! She had as keen an appreciation of good literature as anyone I know of."
"She used to tell us that she owed everything she knew to her professor of English at Wellington," said Dee, who knew how to say the right thing at the right time, and Professor Green"s pleased countenance was proof of her tact.
Then Mrs. Green had to hear all about Miss Ball and the fire at Gresham, which Tweedles related with great spirit, laying rather too much stress on my bravery in arousing the school.
"I deserve no more credit than did the geese whose hissing aroused the Romans in ancient times," I declared. "Why don"t you tell them how you got Miss Plympton out of the window in her pink pajamas?"
The Greens laughed so heartily at our adventures that we were spurred on to recounting other happenings, telling of the many sc.r.a.pes we had got ourselves in. Claire listened in open-eyed astonishment.
"It must be lovely to go to boarding-school," she said wistfully.
"It sounds lovelier than it is. We tell about the sc.r.a.pes and the fun, but there are lots of times when it is nothing but one stupid thing after another. It"s lots lovelier just to be at home with your father."
Claire shook her head doubtfully, and, remembering her father, we did not wonder at her differing with Dum.
"I have always held that home was the place for girls until they were old enough for college," said Mrs. Green. "That is, if they mean to go to college."
"But we don"t!"
Zebedee and Professor Green had walked on ahead. Louis was sticking close to Dee, so close that Dum whispered to me that he must think she had him on a leash. Claire and Dum and I were having the pleasure of flocking around Mrs. Green.
"You see, we haven"t got a piece of mother among us, and we had to go somewhere, as Zebedee--that"s our father, you know--had his hands so full of us he couldn"t ply his trade of getting out newspapers. Dee and I are some improved since we first were sent off to school, and now that Gresham is burned, we don"t want to break into a new school. I tell you, it is some job to break into a school. Page Allison lives in the country, and she had to go to boarding-school or not at all."
"Well, why don"t you go to college now? Wellington would just suit you, I am sure."
"Somehow I have never been crazy to go to college. I want to do something else. You see, I want to model. I feel as though I just had to get my hands in clay and form things out of it."
"And you?" said the sweet young woman, turning to me.
This Molly Brown of Kentucky certainly had the charm of sympathy. You found yourself telling her all kinds of things that you just couldn"t help telling her. She seemed so interested, and her eyes were so blue and so true.
"Oh, I mean to be a writer!" I blurted out. "That"s the reason I don"t want to go to college. If I am going to write, I had better just write, I think, and not wear myself to a frazzle over higher mathematics."
"That"s the way I used to feel. The only good I could ever get out of that hated study was just knowing I had done my best. My best seemed so feeble by the side of the real mathematicians that it was a constant mortification to me. I used to call mathematics my hair shirt. No matter how well I got along in other things, I was always conscious of a kind of irritation that I was going to fail in that. I just did squeeze through in the end, and that was by dint of wet towels around my head and coaching and encouragement from my friends. I think it is quite natural to dislike a subject that always makes you appear at your worst.
Certainly we are not fond of people who put us in that position!"
I might have known our new friend would hate mathematics. I have never yet been attracted very much by any woman who did get along very well in it, except, of course, Miss c.o.x. I don"t mean to say that female mathematicians cannot be just as lovely and charming as any other females, but I mean that I have never hit it off with them, somehow.
"What are you going to write?" asked Claire.
"Write short stories and long novels, when I find myself. I"m still flopping around in a sea of words. Don"t you write, Mrs. Green? It seems to me Miss Ball said you did."
"Yes, I write a little--that is, I write a lot, but I have published only a little. I send and send to magazine after magazine. Every mail is an event to me--either it brings back a ma.n.u.script or it doesn"t bring one, and sometimes it brings an acceptance slip, and then I carry on like one demented. Edwin says he is jealous of the postman and wishes Uncle Sam would have women deliver the mail."
"It must be wonderful to get into a magazine. My only taste of it is seeing myself in print in our school paper. Don"t you write poetry, Mrs.
Green?"
"Well, I have melted into verse, but I think prose is more in my line.
The first money I ever made was a prize for a real estate advertis.e.m.e.nt in poetry, and of course after that I thought that I must "lisp in numbers" on all occasions; but it was always lisping. And you--do you write poetry, too?"
"Yes, she does," broke in Dum; "and Zebedee thinks it is bully poetry.
He said he was astonished that she could do it. And he is a newspaper writer and knows."
"I am sure he does. Some day we will have a tournament of poetry, and you will show me yours and I will show you mine. And you, Miss Gaillard?
Are you counting upon going to college?"
Mrs. Green turned to Claire, who had been very quiet as we strolled along Church Street, on our way to Washington Park, which is a small enclosure by the City Hall.
"Oh, no, I--I will not pursue my studies any more. I keep house for my father, who does not approve of higher education for women," and the girl sighed in spite of herself. "I could not go, anyhow," she continued, "as Louis and papa need me at home."
Not one word of lack of money, which we knew was an insurmountable obstacle with the Gaillards, but I believe a Charlestonian would as soon speak of lack of ancestry as lack of money. Money is simply something they don"t mention except in the bosom of the family. They don"t mention ancestry much, either; not nearly as much as Virginians do. They seem to take for granted that anyone they are on speaking terms with must be well born or how did they get to be on speaking terms?
The Gaillards left us at Washington Park as Claire thought she must hurry back to her papa, who no doubt by that time was in a fret and a fume over her long, unexplained absence. Mr. Gaillard was the type of man who thought a woman"s place was in her home from morning until night, and any little excursion she might make from her home must be in pursuit of his, the male"s, happiness. Claire promised to see the Misses Laurens and find out from them if we could get board in their very exclusive home. Louis asked to be allowed to take us to other points of interest on the morrow, and with feelings of mutual esteem we parted.
CHAPTER X
THE HEAVENLY VISION
That little park in the heart of Charleston is a very delightful spot.
It is a tiny park, but every inch of it seems teeming with interest, historical and poetical. In the center is the shaft erected by the Washington Light Infantry to their dead in "61-"65. The obelisk is in three sections of granite, representing the three companies. On the steps of the square pedestal are cut the twelve great battles of the war.
Zebedee dared us to recite them, but we fell down most woefully, except Dum, who named all but Secessionville.
Little darkies were playing on the steps, running around the shaft and shouting with glee as they b.u.mped their hard heads together and rolled down the steps.
"Black rascals!" exclaimed Zebedee. "If it had not been for you, that monument need never have been erected."
But the little imps kept up their game with renewed glee, hoping to attract the attention of the tourists. Tourists were simply made of pennies, in the minds of the Charleston pickaninnies. Seeing we had noticed them, they flocked to where we had settled ourselves on some benches facing the monument and began in their peculiar South Carolina lingo to demand something of us--what it was it took some penetration to discover. There were five of them, about the raggedest little monkeys I ever saw. Their clothes stayed on by some miracle of modesty, but every now and then a streak of shiny black flesh could be glimpsed through the interstices. (I got that word from Professor Green, which I put down in my notebook for safekeeping.)
"Do" white fo"ks wan" we-all sin" li"l" song?"
"What?" from all of us.
"Sin" li"l" song! La, la, la, tim chummy loo!" and the blackest and sa.s.siest and most dilapidated of them all opened his big mouth with its gleaming teeth and let forth a quaint chant.
"Oh, sing us a little song?" and we laughed aloud.
"Why, yes, we do," a.s.sented Professor Green, "but don"t get too close.
The acoustics would be better from a short distance, I am sure."
"Edwin is enough of a Yankee not to like darkies coming too close,"
laughed Mrs. Green. "You know a Northerner"s interest in the race is purely theoretical. When it comes right down to it, we Southerners are the only ones who really understand them. I remember what one of the leaders of the negroes said: "A Northerner loves the negro but has no use for a n.i.g.g.e.r, while a Southerner can"t stand the negro but will do anything on earth for a n.i.g.g.e.r.""