We Girls: A Home Story by Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

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"I am sure you could, Ruthie. But I am sure I _wouldn't_ just as lief!
I would liefer you should have all you need without."

"I know that, mother. But it wouldn't be half so good for me!"

"That's something horrid, I know!" exclaimed Barbara, coming in upon
the last word. "It always is, when people talk about its being good
for them. It's sure to be salts or senna, and most likely both."

"O dear me!" said Ruth, suddenly seized with a new perception of
difficulty. Until now, she had only been considering whether she
could, and if Mrs. Holabird would approve. "_Don't_ you--or Rose--call
it names, Barbara, please, will you?"

"Which of us are you most afraid of? For Rosamond's salts and senna
are different from mine, pretty often. I guess it's hers this time, by
your putting her in that anxious parenthesis."

"I'm afraid of your fun, Barbara, and I'm afraid of Rosamond's--"

"Earnest? Well, that is much the more frightful. It is so awfully
quiet and pretty-behaved and positive. But if you're going to retain
me on your side, you'll have to lay the case before me, you know, and
give me a fee. You needn't stand there, bribing the judge beforehand."

Ruth turned right round and kissed Barbara.

"I want you to go with me and see if Mrs. Hadden and Mrs. Lewis
Marchbanks would let me teach the children."

"Teach the children! What?"

"O, music, of course. That's all I know, pretty much. And--make Rose
understand."

"Ruth, you're a duck! I like you for it! But I'm not sure I like
_it_."

"Will you do just those two things?"

"It's a beautiful programme. But suppose we leave out the first part?
I think you could do that alone. It would spoil it if I went. It's
such a nice little spontaneous idea of your own, you see. But if we
made it a regular family delegation--besides, it will take as much as
all me to manage the second. Rosamond is very elegant to-day. Last
night's twilight isn't over. And it's funny _we_'ve plans too; _we_'re
going to give lessons,--differently; we're going to lead off, for
once,--we Holabirds; and I don't know exactly how the music will chime
in. It _may_ make things--Holabirdy."

Rosamond had true perceptions, and she was conscientious. What she
said, therefore, when she was told, was,--

"O dear! I suppose it is right! But--just now! Right things do come in
so terribly askew, like good old Mr. Isosceles, sidling up the broad
aisle of a Sunday! Couldn't you wait awhile, Ruth?"

"And then somebody else would get the chance."

"There's nobody else to be had."

"Nobody knows till somebody starts up. They don't know there's _me_ to
be had yet."

"O Ruth! Don't offer to teach grammar, anyhow!"

"I don't know. I might. I shouldn't _teach_ it 'anyhow.'"

Ruth went off, laughing, happy. She knew she had gamed the home-half
of her point.

Her heart beat a good deal, though, when she went into Mrs.
Marchbanks's library alone, and sat waiting for the lady to come down.

She would rather have gone to Mrs. Hadden first, who was very kind and
old-fashioned, and not so overpoweringly grand. But she had her
justification for her attempt from Mrs. Marchbanks's own lips, and she
must take up her opportunity as it came to her, following her clew
right end first. She meant simply to tell Mrs. Marchbanks how she had
happened to think of it.

"Good morning," said the great lady, graciously, wondering not a
little what had brought the child, in this unceremonious early
fashion, to ask for her.

"I came," said Ruth, after she had answered the good morning, "because
I heard what you were so kind as to say last night about liking my
playing; and that you had nobody just now to teach Lily. I thought,
perhaps, you might be willing to try me; for I should like to do it,
and I think I could show her all I know; and then I could take lessons
myself of Mr. Viertelnote. I've been thinking about it all night."

Ruth Holabird had a direct little fashion of going straight through
whatever crust of outside appearance to that which must respond to
what she had at the moment in herself. She had real _self-possession_;
because she did not let herself be magnetized into a false
consciousness of somebody else's self, and think and speak according
to their notions of things, or her reflected notion of what they would
think of her. She was different from Rosamond in this; Rosamond could
not help _feeling her double_,--Mrs. Grundy's "idea" of her. That was
what Rosamond said herself about it, when Ruth told it all at home.

The response is almost always there to those who go for it; if it is
not, there is no use any way.

Mrs. Marchbanks smiled.

"Does Mrs. Holabird know?"

"O yes; she always knows."

There was a little distance and a touch of business in Mrs.
Marchbanks's manner after this. The child's own impulse had been very
frank and amusing; an authorized seeking of employment was somewhat
different. Still, she was kind enough; the impression had been made;
perhaps Rosamond, with her "just now" feeling, would have been
sensitive to what did not touch Ruth, at the moment, at all.

"But you see, my dear, that _your_ having a pupil could not be quite
equal to Mr. Viertelnote's doing the same thing. I mean the one would
not quite provide for the other."

"O no, indeed! I'm in hopes to have two. I mean to go and see Mrs.
Hadden about Reba; and then I might begin first, you know. If I could
teach two quarters, I could take one."

"You have thought it all over. You are quite a little business woman.
Now let us see. I do like your playing, Ruth. I think you have really
a charming style. But whether you could _impart_ it,--that is a
different capacity."

"I am pretty good at showing how," said Ruth. "I think I could make
her understand all I do."

"Well; I should be willing to pay twenty dollars a quarter to any lady
who would bring Lily forward to where you are; if you can do it, I
will pay it to you. If Mrs. Hadden will do the same, you will have two
thirds of Viertelnote's price."

"O, that is so nice!" said Ruth, gratefully. "Then in half a quarter I
could begin. And perhaps in that time I might get another."

"I shall be exceedingly interested in your getting on," said Mrs.
Marchbanks, as Ruth arose to go. She said it very much as she might
have said it to anybody who was going to try to earn money, and whom
she meant to patronize. But Ruth took it singly; she was not two
persons,--one who asked for work and pay, and another who expected to
be treated as if she were privileged above either. She was quite
intent upon her purpose.

If Mrs. Marchbanks had been patron kind, Mrs. Hadden was motherly so.

"You're a dear little thing! When will you begin?" said she.

Ruth's morning was a grand success. She came home with a rapid step,
springing to a soundless rhythm.

She found Rosamond and Barbara and Harry Goldthwaite on the piazza,
winding the rope rings with blue and scarlet and white and purple, and
tying them with knots of ribbon.

Harry had been prompt enough. He had got the rope, and spliced it up
himself, that morning, and had brought the ten rings over, hanging
upon his arms like bangles.

They were still busy when dinner was ready; and Harry stayed at the
first asking.

It was a scrub-day in the kitchen; and Katty came in to take the
plates with her sleeves rolled up, a smooch of stove-polish across her
arm, and a very indiscriminate-colored apron. She put one plate upon
another in a hurry, over knives and forks and remnants, clattered a
good deal, and dropped the salt-spoons.

Rosamond colored and frowned; but talked with a most resolutely
beautiful repose.

Afterward, when it was all over, and Harry had gone, promising to come
next day and bring a stake, painted vermilion and white, with a
little gilt ball on the top of it, she sat by the ivied window in the
brown room with tears in her eyes.

"It is dreadful to live so!" she said, with real feeling. "To have
just one wretched girl to do everything!"

"Especially," said Barbara, without much mercy, "when she always
_will_ do it at dinner-time."

"It's the betwixt and between that I can't bear," said Rose. "To have
to do with people like the Penningtons and the Marchbankses, and to
see their ways; to sit at tables where there is noiseless and perfect
serving, and to know that they think it is the 'mainspring of life'
(that's just what Mrs. Van Alstyne said about it the other day); and
then to have to hitch on so ourselves, knowing just as well what ought
to be as she does,--it's too bad. It's double dealing. I'd rather not
know, or pretend any better. I do wish we _belonged_ somewhere!"

Ruth felt sorry. She always did when Rosamond was hurt with these
things. She knew it came from a very pure, nice sense of what was
beautiful, and a thoroughness of desire for it. She knew she wanted it
_every day_, and that nobody hated shams, or company contrivances,
more heartily. She took great trouble for it; so that when they were
quite alone, and Rosamond could manage, things often went better than
when guests came and divided her attention.

Ruth went over to where she sat.

"Rose, perhaps we _do_ belong just here. Somebody has got to be in the
shading-off, you know. That helps both ways."

"It's a miserable indefiniteness, though."

"No, it isn't," said Barbara, quickly. "It's a good plan, and I like
it. Ruth just hits it. I see now what they mean by 'drawing lines.'
You can't draw them anywhere but in the middle of the stripes. And
people that are _right_ in the middle have to 'toe the mark.' It's the
edge, after all. You can reach a great deal farther by being betwixt
and between. And one girl needn't _always_ be black-leaded, nor drop
all the spoons."

CHAPTER IV.

NEXT THINGS.

Rosamond's ship-coil party was a great success. It resolved itself
into Rosamond's party, although Barbara had had the first thought of
it; for Rosamond quietly took the management of all that was to be
delicately and gracefully arranged, and to have the true tone of high
propriety.

Barbara made the little white rolls; Rosamond and Ruth beat up the
cake; mother attended to the boiling of the tongues, and, when it was
time, to the making of the delicious coffee; all together we gave all
sorts of pleasant touches to the brown room, and set the round table
(the old cover could be "shied" out of sight now, as Stephen said, and
replaced with the white glistening damask for the tea) in the corner
between the southwest windows that opened upon the broad piazza.

The table was bright with pretty silver--not too much--and best glass
and delicate porcelain with a tiny thread of gold; and the rolls and
the thin strips of tongue cut lengthwise, so rich and tender that a
fork could manage them, and the large raspberries, black and red and
white, were upon plates and dishes of real Indian, white and golden
brown.

The wide sashes were thrown up, and there were light chairs outside;
Mrs. Holabird would give the guests tea and coffee, and Ruth and
Barbara would sit in the window-seats and do the waiting, back and
forth, and Dakie Thayne and Harry Goldthwaite would help.

Katty held her office as a sinecure that day; looked on admiringly,
forgot half her regular work, felt as if she had somehow done wonders
without realizing the process, and pronounced that it was "no throuble
at ahl to have company."

But before the tea was the new game.

It was a bold stroke for us Holabirds. Originating was usually done
higher up; as the Papal Council gives forth new spiritual inventions
for the joyful acceptance of believers, who may by no means invent in
their turn and offer to the Council. One could hardly tell how it
would fall out,--whether the Haddens and the Marchbankses would take
to it, or whether it would drop right there.

"They _may_ 'take it off your hands, my dear,'" suggested the
remorseless Barbara. Somebody had offered to do that once for Mrs.
Holabird, when her husband had had an interest in a ship in the Baltic
trade, and some furs had come home, richer than we had quite expected.

Rose was loftily silent; she would not have _said_ that to her very
self; but she had her little quiet instincts of holding on,--through
Harry Goldthwaite, chiefly; it was his novelty.

Does this seem _very_ bare worldly scheming among young girls who
should simply have been having a good time? We should not tell you if
we did not know; it _begins_ right there among them, in just such
things as these; and our day and our life are full of it.

The Marchbanks set had a way of taking things off people's hands, as
soon as they were proved worth while. People like the Holabirds could
not be taking this pains every day; making their cakes and their
coffee, and setting their tea-table in their parlor; putting aside all
that was shabby or inadequate, for a few special hours, and turning
all the family resources upon a point, to serve an occasion. But if
anything new or bright were so produced that could be transplanted, it
was so easy to receive it among the established and every-day
elegances of a freer living, give it a wider introduction, and so
adopt and repeat and centralize it that the originators should fairly
forget they had ever begun it. And why would not this be honor enough?
Invention must always pass over to the capital that can handle it.

The new game charmed them all. The girls had the best of it, for the
young men always gathered up the rings and brought them to each in
turn. It was very pretty to receive both hands full of the gayly
wreathed and knotted hoops, to hold them slidden along one arm like
garlands, to pass them lightly from hand to hand again, and to toss
them one by one through the air with a motion of more or less
inevitable grace; and the excitement of hope or of success grew with
each succeeding trial.

They could not help liking it, even the most fastidious; they might
venture upon liking it, for it was a game with an origin and
references. It was an officers' game, on board great naval ships; it
had proper and sufficient antecedents. It would do.

By the time they stopped playing in the twilight, and went up the wide
end steps upon the deep, open platform, where coffee and biscuits
began to be fragrant, Rosamond knew that her party was as nice as if
it had been anybody's else whoever; that they were all having as
genuinely good a time as if they had not come "westover" to get it.

And everybody does like a delicious tea, such as is far more sure and
very different from hands like Mrs. Holabird's and her daughters, than
from those of a city confectioner and the most professed of private
cooks.

It all went off and ended in a glory,--the glory of the sun pouring
great backward floods of light and color all up to the summer zenith,
and of the softly falling and changing shade, and the slow
forth-coming of the stars: and Ruth gave them music, and by and by
they had a little German, out there on the long, wide esplanade. It
was the one magnificence of their house,--this high, spacious terrace;
Rosamond was thankful every day that Grandfather Holabird _had_ to
build the wood-house under it.

After this, Westover began to grow to be more of a centre than our
home, cheery and full of girl-life as it was, had ever been able to
become before.

They might have transplanted the game,--they did take slips from
it,--and we might not always have had tickets to our own play; but
they could not transplant Harry Goldthwaite and Dakie Thayne. They
_would_ come over, nearly every day, at morning or evening, and
practise "coil," or make some other plan or errand; and so there came
to be always something going on at the Holabirds', and if the other
girls wanted it, they had to come where it was.

Mrs. Van Alstyne came often; Rosamond grew very intimate with her.

Mrs. Lewis Marchbanks did say, one day, that she thought "the
Holabirds were slightly mistaking their position"; but the remark did
not come round, westover, till long afterward, and meanwhile the
position remained the same.

It was right in the midst of all this that Ruth astonished the family
again, one evening.

"I wish," she said, suddenly, just as if she were not suggesting
something utterly incongruous and disastrous, "that we could ask
Lucilla Waters up here for a little visit."

The girls had a way, in Z----, of spending two or three days together
at each other's houses, neighbors though they were, within easy reach,
and seeing each other almost constantly. Leslie Goldthwaite came up to
the Haddens', or they went down to the Goldthwaites'. The Haddens
would stay over night at the Marchbanks', and on through the next day,
and over night again. There were, indeed, three recognized degrees of
intimacy: that which took tea,--that which came in of a morning and
stayed to lunch,--and that which was kept over night without plan or
ceremony. It had never been very easy for us Holabirds to do such
things without plan; of all things, nearly, in the world, it seemed to
us sometimes beautiful and desirable to be able to live just so as
that we might.

"I wish," said Ruth, "that we could have Lucilla Waters here."

"My gracious!" cried Rosamond, startled into a soft explosion. "What
for?"

"Why, I think she'd like it," answered Ruth.

"Well, I suppose Arctura Fish might 'like it' too," responded Rose, in
a deadly quiet way now, that was the extreme of sarcasm.

Ruth looked puzzled; as if she really considered what Rosamond
suggested, not having thought of it before, and not quite knowing how
to dispose of the thought since she had got it.

Dakie Thayne was there; he sat holding some gold-colored wool for Mrs.
Holabird to wind; she was giving herself the luxury of some pretty
knitting,--making a bright little sofa affghan. Ruth had forgotten him
at the instant, speaking out of a quiet pause and her own intent
thought.

She made up her mind presently,--partly at least,--and spoke again. "I
don't believe," she said, "that it would be the next thing for Arctura
Fish."

Dakie Thayne's eyebrows went up, just that half perceptible line or
two. "Do you think people ought always to have the next thing?" he
asked.

"It seems to me it must be somebody's fault if they don't," replied
Ruth.

"It is a long waiting sometimes to get the next thing," said Dakie
Thayne. "Army men find that out. They grow gray getting it."

"That's where only one _can_ have it at a time," said Ruth. "These
things are different."

"'Next things' interfere occasionally," said Barbara. "Next things up,
and next things down."

"I don't know," said Rose, serenely unconscious and impersonal. "I
suppose people wouldn't naturally--it can't be meant they should--walk
right away from their own opportunities."

Ruth laughed,--not aloud, only a little single breath, over her work.

Dakie Thayne leaned back.

"What,--if you please,--Miss Ruth?"

"I was thinking of the opportunities _down_," Ruth answered.

It was several days after this that the young party drifted together
again, on the Westover lawn. A plan was discussed. Mrs. Van Alstyne
had walked over with Olivia and Adelaide Marchbanks, and it was she
who suggested it.

"Why don't you have regular practisings," said she, "and then a
meeting, for this and the archery you wanted to get up, and games for
a prize? They would do nicely together."

Olivia Marchbanks drew up a little. She had not meant to launch the
project here. Everything need not begin at Westover all at once.

But Dakie Thayne broke in.

"Did you think of that?" said he. "It's a capital idea."

"Ideas are rather apt to be that," said Adelaide Marchbanks. "It is
the carrying out, you see."

"Isn't it pretty nearly carried out already? It is only to organize
what we are doing as it is."

"But the minute you _do_ organize! You don't know how difficult it is
in a place like this. A dozen of us are not enough, and as soon as you
go beyond, there gets to be too much of it. One doesn't know where to
stop."

"Or to skip?" asked Harry Goldthwaite, in such a purely bright,
good-natured way that no one could take it amiss.

"Well, yes, to skip," said Adelaide. "Of course that's it. You don't
go straight on, you know, house by house, when you ask people,--down
the hill and into the town."

"We talked it over," said Olivia. "And we got as far as the Hobarts."
There Olivia stopped. That was where they had stopped before.

"O yes, the Hobarts; they would be sure to like it," said Leslie
Goldthwaite, quick and pleased.

"Her ups and downs are just like yours," said Dakie Thayne to Ruth
Holabird.

It made Ruth very glad to be told she was at all like Leslie; it gave
her an especially quick pulse of pleasure to have Dakie Thayne say so.
She knew he thought there was hardly any one like Leslie Goldthwaite.

"O, they _won't_ exactly do, you know!" said Adelaide Marchbanks, with
an air of high free-masonry.

"Won't do what?" asked Cadet Thayne, obtusely.

"Suit," replied Olivia, concisely, looking straight forward without
any air at all.

"Really, we have tried it since they came," said Adelaide, "though
what people _come_ for is the question, I think, when there isn't
anything particular to bring them except the neighborhood, and then it
has to be Christian charity in the neighborhood that didn't ask them
to pick them up. Mamma called, after a while; and Mrs. Hobart said she
hoped she would come often, and let _the girls_ run in and be
sociable! And Grace Hobart says '_she_ hasn't got tired of
croquet,--she likes it real well!' They're that sort of people, Mr.
Thayne."

"Oh! that's very bad," said Dakie Thayne, with grave conclusiveness.

"The Haddens had them one night, when we were going to play commerce.
When we asked them up to the table, they held right back, awfully
stiff, and couldn't find anything else to say than,--out quite loud,
across everything,--'O no! they couldn't play commerce; they never
did; father thought it was just like any gambling game!'"

"Plucky, anyhow," said Harry Goldthwaite.

"I don't think they meant to be rude," said Elinor Hadden. "I think
they really felt badly; and that was why it blurted right out so. They
didn't know _what_ to say."

"Evidently," said Olivia. "And one doesn't want to be astonished in
that way very often."

"I shouldn't mind having them," said Elinor, good-naturedly. "They are
kind-hearted people, and they would feel hurt to be left out."

"That is just what stopped us," said Adelaide. "That is just what the
neighborhood is getting to be,--full of people that you don't know
what to do with."

"I don't see why we _need_ to go out of our own set," said Olivia.

"O dear! O dear!"

It broke from Ruth involuntarily. Then she colored up, as they all
turned round upon her; but she was excited, and Ruth's excitements
made her forget that she was Ruth, sometimes, for a moment. It had
been growing in her, from the beginning of the conversation; and now
she caught her breath, and felt her eyes light up. She turned her face
to Leslie Goldthwaite; but although she spoke low she spoke somehow
clearly, even more than she meant, so that they all heard.

"What if the angels had said that before they came down to Bethlehem!"

Then she knew by the hush that _she_ had astonished them, and she grew
frightened; but she stood just so, and would not let her look shrink;
for she still felt just as she did when the words came.

Mrs. Van Alstyne broke the pause with a good-natured laugh.

"We can't go quite back to that, every time," she said. "And we don't
quite set up to be angels. Come,--try one more round."

And with some of the hoops still hanging upon her arm, she turned to
pick up the others. Harry Goldthwaite of course sprang forward to do
it for her; and presently she was tossing them with her peculiar
grace, till the stake was all wreathed with them from bottom to top,
the last hoop hanging itself upon the golden ball; a touch more
dexterous and consummate, it seemed, than if it had fairly slidden
over upon the rest.

[Illustration]

Rosamond knew what a cunning and friendly turn it was; if it had not
been for Mrs. Van Alstyne, Ruth's speech would have broken up the
party. As it was, the game began again, and they stayed an hour
longer.

Not all of them; for as soon as they were fairly engaged, Ruth said to
Leslie Goldthwaite, "I must go now; I ought to have gone before. Reba
will be waiting for me. Just tell them, if they ask."

But Leslie and the cadet walked away with her; slowly, across the
grounds, so that she thought they were going back from the gate; but
they kept on up over the hill.

"Was it very shocking?" asked Ruth, troubled in her mind. "I could
not help it; but I was frightened to death the next minute."

"About as frightened as the man is who stands to his gun in the
front," said Dakie Thayne. "You never flinched."

"They would have thought it was from what I had said," Ruth answered.
"And _that_ was another thing from the _saying_."

"_You_ had something to say, Leslie. It was just on the corner of your
lip. I saw it."

"Yes; but Ruth said it all in one flash. It would have spoiled it if I
had spoken then."

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