Oh, dear! I am tired to-night. I have been ironing all day,—and I’m only seventeen.
I stood in the kitchen doorway and listened
Sunday, January 11.
You haven’t any idea how poor we are. It is half funny and half terrible,—trying to keep house for a family of six people on seven dollars a week! Just at first it did not seem impossible. There was a false impetus, so to speak; coal in the cellar, coffee, oatmeal, flour, etc., in the kitchen cupboard. For a while we were even able to keep up a semblance of our usual table, and Miss Brown did not seem to suspect. But she must find out soon. Will she leave us when she knows? What shall we do, if she does? Each meal is a crisis. I grow quite white and shaky before sounding the bell.
Mother still refuses to draw anything from the bank, and we can’t borrow of Uncle George, either; because he was so hateful after the Hancocks left, and said things about father that it will be hard to forgive. If we had Haze’s salary, we might advertise the rooms more often;—but, as things stand, it is impossible, on account of that dreadful dollar.
Why did he have to lose so much money,—dear Haze,—when he had made such sacrifices to earn something, just for us? Why did Mrs. Hudson have to go, and the Hancocks, too? Oh, I do try to be brave; but to-night I feel rebellious,—and worried! I don’t dare go to bed, though Ernie has been asleep this last half-hour. I wish I were more like her,—hopeful and full of expedients.
“The one thing that will do this family any good,” she remarked the other morning, as she stood in the dining-room window waiting for the postman to come down the block,—“is a legacy. I have given up all hope of the Dump-Cart Contract. It simply can’t be found. But why shouldn’t a rich relation, of whom we’ve never heard, die and leave us his wealth? Such things have been known to happen.”
And now, absurdly, we are all expecting it! Even mother starts at the sound of the familiar whistle, and some one of us rushes breathless to the door to glower through the letters that are handed in. Heaven knows why!—for we haven’t any rich relation except Uncle George. I suppose it just shows how desperate we are.
Saturday is pay-day, and we younger ones have acquired the habit of gulping our breakfast on that particular morning, and leaving the table as expeditiously as possible; so as to give Miss Brown, who is very delicate where money matters are concerned, an early opportunity to settle.
“Will she do it? will she say she is going to leave?” we whisper anxiously to one another, as we hang over the basement banisters. And Haze can’t make up his mind to go downtown till he knows.
Yesterday morning we had a dreadful fright. Miss Brown came down a little late. Her expression was troubled, almost severe. When she put her pocket handkerchief into her lap, we made sure that her purse was not concealed, as usual, among the folds.
“May I be excused, mother dear?” piped Ernie,—though she had only just begun her oaten-meal. “I want to go up to the nursery and sit with Robin.”
Haze and I followed as quickly as we could, and then the waiting began. It seemed as if mother and Miss Brown would never be done. We could hear their voices in low, earnest discussion.
“Gosh!” exclaimed Hazard. “The game is up.”
But it wasn’t. Miss Brown had had facial neuralgia during the night. She was asking mother for remedies. She could not make up her mind whether it would be wise to put off the shopping trip that she had planned. Her purse was with her as usual. Saved again!
And the funny thing is, once we get those seven dollars, we feel quite rich for a few hours, mother and I.—
“What shall we have for to-morrow morning’s breakfast?” one asks the other magnificently. “I notice that grape-fruit are selling two for twenty-five cents.”
“Scallops would make a nice change,” comes the cheerful reply. “Grape-fruit, scallops, and corn-muffins!”
Not that we ever commit ourselves to any such extravagance; but the little flight is exhilarating, and the final compromise on oranges and fish-cakes not too abrupt. It is true,—we are fed from day to day like the sparrows. If we can only wait and have patience, I suppose things will come out right in the end. And I said that I wanted to be good this year. Well, I believe I could be on ten dollars more a week.
Friday, January 16.
This afternoon a lady called to look at rooms.
She had a little girl with her, perhaps a couple of years older than Robin. She said that she had been recommended to us,—by Mrs. Hudson!
Ernie let them in, and galloped upstairs to tell mother. You can imagine our excitement.
“Hush!” whispered Ernie, as she and I crouched behind the half-closed nursery door, listening with all our ears. “She told me the location was what she wanted. Oh, Elizabeth! Elizabeth!”
At that moment the lady swept on her way downstairs.
“The terms seem reasonable enough,” we heard her observe, “and the room is sunny and pleasant. I should want a comfortable cot placed in it for Lilian,”—the little girl. “You have children of your own, Mrs. Graham?” Then, stopping in the lower hall,—
“Is that an invalid chair?” she asked, abruptly.
“Yes,” returned mother. “It belongs to my little son;—he is not at all well this winter.”
“And his trouble?” There was no hint of sympathy in the question.
“Hip complaint,” replied mother. “Robin has not been strong since he was a baby.”
“In that case, I am sorry, but it will be impossible to engage the room,” came the unexpected reply. “Lilian is a very sensitive child,—and, naturally, my first consideration. I make it a rule to shield her from every depressing influence. Let me see,—there are three other places on our list. If we hurry, we can make time to visit them this afternoon. Good-day, Mrs. Graham.” The door closed sharply on our prospective boarders.
And this on a Friday,—the bluest day in the week!
Mother’s face was quite white and stern as she came upstairs.
“If you will get dinner, Elizabeth, I’ll stay with Robin,” she said. And she took Bobsie in her arms, and carried him tenderly to the big rocker in the window, while Ernie and I crept, mouse-like, from the room.
“One might have known she was a friend of Mrs. Hudson,” remarked Ernie, vindictively, as we reached the foot of the basement stairs. “Depressing influence, indeed! I’d like to depress her precious Lilian for her!”
“Oh, Ernie,” I sighed. “It would have meant fifteen dollars more each week!”
We were to have beefsteak for dinner. Mother had gone around earlier in the afternoon to a cheap little butcher shop (we can’t afford our old tradesmen any longer), and bought two pounds,—spending our last forty cents. There were four potatoes in the oven, a few beans on the top of the stove,—but no bread.
“Mother shan’t be disturbed,” I cried. “I’ll run around to the baker’s, myself, and get a loaf. I’ll say that I left my purse at home (which will be perfectly true, and, under the circumstances, eminently sensible!) and that they can charge it. Keep an eye on the steak, Ernie, and the fire. I’ve just put on a couple of sticks of wood.”
“All right,” answered Ernie, from where she sat on the table, dejectedly swinging her legs and muttering over an open Geography. “I’ll watch it.”
Yet when I returned from my errand some few moments later it was to find the kitchen full of smoke. In the middle of the floor pranced Ernie, frantically blowing upon a smutty and spluttering gridiron, while the red flames leapt hungrily through the open top of the stove.
“What have you done?” I cried, snatching the gridiron from Ernie’s blackened fingers. “That steak is burned to a cinder! It’s Friday night. There isn’t any more money. Do you realise what this means?”
“Oh dear! oh dear! I was bounding the British Isles!” wailed Ernie. “And the fire didn’t come up,—till all of a sudden everything began to blaze! Of course, I realise, Elizabeth. Can’t we scrape it, or something?”
“No,” I answered, transferring the hopelessly charred bit of steak to the big blue platter. “It is burned quite through,—and to-morrow is Saturday. How can we expect Miss Brown to keep on paying seven dollars a week,—once she finds out that we are unable to feed her?”
“Then chop off my head and boil it for her old dinner,” sobbed Ernie, entirely overcome by this last, unlooked-for disaster, for which she could not but hold herself responsible. “Nobody’d miss it,—about the house, I mean,—and they used to eat such things once,—in the British Isles!”
“What is the matter?” asked mother, entering the kitchen at this moment with Robin’s tray, and looking from one tragic-faced daughter to the other. “Has anything new happened?”
“The steak is burned,” I explained, briefly. “There are only beans and four potatoes left for dinner.”
“Chop off my head,” reiterated poor little Ernie. “I deserve it. I was bounding the British Isles,—and forgot to watch. I wish, I wish that I’d never been born!”
And then it was that mother “rose,” buoyantly, unexpectedly, as she can always be depended upon doing, if only the situation is desperate enough.
“Never mind, darlings,” she cried, with an airy little laugh. “Why,—it’s nothing but a beefsteak, after all. We’ll buy another!”
“Another!” I gasped, as if mother were contemplating the purchase of a diamond tiara.
“Another!” wondered Ernie.
“Certainly,” returned mother, quite as though it were the most natural thing in the world she was proposing. “And some pickles, because Miss Brown enjoys them,—and perhaps some chocolate creams!”
“But, mother,” I remonstrated. “It’s Friday night! We have spent our last penny. You surely are not going to borrow of Uncle George,—after the things he’s said!”
“No,” denied mother, succinctly. “There can be no compromise on that score. On the contrary, we’ll reap a little belated benefit from one of dear father’s follies.”
And she led the way to the library (Ernie and I following in a state of stunned but admiring bewilderment), and selected a large, handsomely bound volume from the lowest shelf of the old mahogany bookcase:—
“It is Picturesque Europe,” mother explained. “And your father paid six dollars for it, because the agent was a young widow with pathetic blue eyes, who assured him it would be of invaluable assistance in broadening Hazard’s mind. Haze was two years old at the time, and nobody has read it since;—but it is going to be of some use, at last, and help us to another dinner!”
So she and Ernie hustled into their things, and hurried around the block to the little second-hand bookshop where father used to snoop in happy by-gone days;—and when they returned Ernie was quite beaming and rosy again; for they brought three pounds of steak with them, instead of two, as well as a jar of pickles, and a pound of chocolate creams,—which last was nothing more nor less than a blatant extravagance, and put us all into uproarious spirits for the rest of the evening. And though Mrs. Hudson’s friend was certainly horrid, and it is hard to be so poor that the singeing of a beefsteak threatens dire calamity,—just think how splendid it is to have such a wonder of a mother!
Yes, Haze and I are agreed, there are compensations in every lot.
Wednesday, January 21.
We have formed ourselves into a secret society,—Haze, Ernie, and I. It is called “The Magnanimous Do-Withouts,” and this is the way it happened:
There is never enough to go round at our table any more, though the lowest shelf of the old mahogany bookcase is beginning to show some quite distressing gaps, and naturally Miss Brown has to be helped first and most liberally to everything. What she does not get is just about enough for three,—and, unfortunately, there are five of us.
“It wouldn’t make so much difference,” complained Ernie the other evening, “if only things could be managed with a little more fairness and system. I look fat, I know; but that does not prevent my growing hungry, and I’m tired of pretending that I have no appetite, and being threatened with Robin’s tonic! Good gracious,—I’d like to know what would happen if mother did give it to me! I only refused macaroni this evening because I knew Haze wouldn’t; and if we both took it, there would be nothing left for you. Was it very good, Elizabeth?”
“Yes,” I admitted. “It was nice, dear.”
“And filling?” questioned Ernie. “Of course, I’m sure Haze doesn’t intend to be mean. He has a cough, and a habit of looking sort of pathetic, which takes awfully well with mother; but, all the same, it wouldn’t hurt him to notice, and deny himself something once a week,—now would it?”
“You must remember the wretched luncheons he has, Ernie,” I said.
“But he eats them in St. Paul’s churchyard,” retorted Ernie. “A very pleasant spot. And reads the old epitaphs, and goes in to look at the windows afterward.” Then she poured a little of Robin’s milk into a saucer for Rosebud, and set it down on the hearth.
“No,” she soliloquised. “It isn’t fair, and I’m not going to stand it.”
The following day it happened that we were to have lamb stew with barley for dinner. It set on the back of the stove and simmered gently all the afternoon, while every now and again an appetising whiff would be wafted to the dull cold nursery, where Ernie, Mary Hobart, and Robin were gathered about the sewing table in the window playing “Old Maid” and “Tommy-Come-Tickle-Me.” The tip of poor little Ernie’s nose was quite red, her hands were numb and chilly as she dealt the cards. She did not feel in the least convivial. Indeed, she confessed to me later, that, judging from the symptoms going on inside her, she supposed she must be starving, and had only a few hours more to live.
Robin also was restless and inattentive; but Mary Hobart, having lunched comfortably at home, thoroughly enjoyed the game.
“Let’s have another deal,” she cried. “I’ve been Old Maid three times! It’s a shameful slander, and I shan’t go home till my luck changes. Cut, Ernie!”
“It’s getting pretty dark,” hinted Ernie, glancing through the window at the beaconing streetlights. “Won’t your mother worry?”
“Oh, no,” returned Mary, disappointingly. “She knows where I am, and expects me to be late.”
So Robin and Ernie played politely and hungrily on (that stew did smell so good,—um-m!) till at last the gong sounded, and Mary was obliged to go. But even then Ernie must help her into coat and hat, before she could scamper down to join the family in the dining-room.
“Will you have a little stew, Hazard dear?” mother was asking, as Ernie slipped with watchful eyes into her belated place. I had already been served. There were probably three spoonfuls left in the platter. The case was desperate. Ernie, realising this, leaned tragically over, and gave one swift, violent kick beneath the table.
There resounded a smothered shriek from Miss Brown. The warning had miscarried!
“Oh, I beg your pardon!” cries Ernie. “It was Hazard I meant to kick!”
“What in thunder!” retorted Haze. Then, in a sudden burst of hurt enlightenment,—“Ernie, you are a pig! I wasn’t going to take any of your old stew.”
Mother quietly helped the two combatants, apologised to Miss Brown for Ernie’s “awkwardness,” and dined upon dry bread herself. It was later in the kitchen that we gave Haze a talking to,—Ernie and I. He was very repentant, said he really had not noticed the scarcity before (!), and thought Ernie’s idea of a “system” excellent. So the society was organised. We are to take turns saying we do not care for things:—meat, vegetables, or pudding, as the case may be. But,—would you believe it?—this noon at luncheon Miss Brown actually refused a fishcake, remarking that she believed she was suffering from “a slight plethora”!
Perhaps she has suspected all along?—perhaps we need not worry as we do each Saturday morning? Oh, if this is true, what a trump she has been! For she talks politics and the latest novel in the most natural manner in the world, neither complains nor criticises, and seems quite oblivious to our many and obvious shortcomings,—the prim, generous, tactful darling!
Saturday, January 24.
We have had to give Rosebud away, and Ernie and Robin are quite heartbroken. It was because he drank so much of Robin’s milk.
“It seems pretty hard to have to regard a kitten as an extravagance!” muttered Ernie, rebelliously, as she sat in the coal-scuttle this morning, clasping Rosebud to an indignant brown gingham bosom. “Who’s going to tell Bobs, I’d like to know? It’s all very well for mother to say we can’t afford it. There are some things that people ought to afford.”
“He’ll be very happy with Mary Hobart, dear,” I coaxed. “And you know he is growing up, and has an enormous appetite; and he won’t even try to catch mice,—except Robin’s white ones,—and milk is eight cents a quart! Don’t make it any harder for mother. She feels it as much as any of us.”
“Of course, Mary will be delighted,” continued Ernie, bitterly; “and I’ll have to lie, and say it is because we want to make her a handsome present. Chums are pretty disappointing, sometimes,—and I can’t understand Geof, Elizabeth! A boy who has three dollars a week pocket-money could certainly afford to offer to buy a little cat-meat once in a while. Not that we’d let Geoffrey do it, of course; but it would be nice to feel that he wanted to. He used to be so sweet and sympathetic when I was in trouble; and he hardly seems to notice, any more. Why,—he’s not been in to see me for over a week!”
“Perhaps he is busy at school,” I answered. “I’d be glad to think Geof was really studying in earnest.”
“Oh, it isn’t that,” returned Ernie. “He has extra tutoring, I know; but he shirks it whenever he gets the chance, and slips off to keep some appointment with that horrid Jim Hollister and Sam Jacobs. They are not the kind of fellows he ought to go with.” Then, with a swift return to the more immediate and poignant woe,—“Dear Rosebud! dear pussy! It’s too ridiculous,—being so poor one can’t afford to keep a kitten!”
That was the part we found next to impossible to explain to Robin.
“I don’t know what you mean,” he sobbed, after the first outburst of violent grief was over. “I like Rosebud to drink my milk, Elizabeth. It’s good for him.”
“But it’s good for you, too, Bobsie dear,” I said. “And you are sick, and Rosebud isn’t. Mother can’t afford to buy more than one quart a day,—you know that.”
“What’s ‘afford’?” questioned Robin.
“It means that we haven’t the money. We are poor, dear.”
Robin looked at me out of wondering tear-wet eyes. “Poor?” he echoed;—“like the people in stories? Oh, Ellie!”
Then he sighed, and soothed my hand, and was very sweet and patient all the rest of the afternoon. He even bade good-bye to Rosebud with fond stoical precision, patting the kitten on the head, and remarking: “It is best that we should part!” Dear, loving, little fellow! I really believe the information came to him as quite a shock. But fancy his having to be told!
When Haze came up from tending the furnace to-night his face was even more care-lined and anxious than usual.
“How much is there left?” I asked,—the inevitable question.
“If we’re careful it may last till the middle of next week,” returned Hazard, grimly. “Then, I suppose, we’ll begin pawning the spoons. Odd world,—hey?”
Certainly, it is hard for Hazey. One can’t blame him for occasional bitterness. He is working faithfully and well in uncongenial surroundings, and has not had a cent of pay for weeks; while Geof, who is showered with the very advantages for which Haze so ardently longs, seems sullenly determined to make no use of them. Oh, the contrast is cruel! But mother says the struggle is bringing out a new manliness and self-reliance in Haze that are a daily surprise and joy to her. Roses again,—dear mother!
But something had better hurry up and happen soon!
Wednesday, January 28.
He thought he saw a Banker’s Clerk
Descending from the ’bus;
He looked again, and found it was
A Hippopotamus.
“If this should stay to dine,” he said,
“There won’t be much for us!”
We did not think it was a Banker’s Clerk, but a Boarder! Robin, sitting in the wicker rocker in the window, spied him first.
“Hurrah!” he piped in his shrill little treble. “I just know that big fat man is coming here! He is going to ring our door-bell, and engage all the empty rooms! See, if he doesn’t.”—
And the prophecy came true! It was almost like the relief of Lucknow.
“All on a sudden the garrison utter a jubilant shout!”
For, oh! I don’t know how much longer we could have held out.
It was day before yesterday that it happened. I had wakened with a start in the early, chill, grey morning, trying dully to remember how many potatoes still remained in the bottom of the vegetable box, and whether there was coffee enough to tide us through the week. It was certain that the coal would not last. Should we begin pawning the spoons then,—as Haze predicted,—or, maybe, mother’s watch?
And, suddenly, it seemed as if life were not worth living any longer. I did not feel as if I could get up and make my way, candle in hand, down the narrow kitchen stairs to an arctic basement, and a sordid round of housework. It was Monday, too! The very thought made my back ache and my head swim;—but mother must not suspect, because I had persuaded her that the washing was not too much for me; in fact, that I rather enjoyed it!
And, to be sure, at the very beginning it had not seemed so bad. Novelty lent spice. With the optimism of ignorance I determined that mind as well as muscles should be exercised. While scrubbing I would learn French poetry.
So, with sleeves rolled above the elbow, the soap-suds splashing in my hot face, I rubbed, rinsed, and wringered, murmuring the while:—
O Richard! ? mon roi!
L’univers t’abandonne;
Sur la terre il n’est donc que moi
Qui s’intéresse à ta personne!
or in more romantic vein,—
L’aube nait et ta porte est close!
Ma belle, pourquoi sommeiller?
A l’heure où s’éveille la rose
Ne vas-tu pas te réveiller?
But this particular morning there was no enthusiasm left. My brain was dull, my tongue stumbled and tripped over the most familiar lines, I could not control my thoughts. Haze had a cough, and nothing but a sweet potato sandwich for luncheon,—the struggle was too unfair, too hopeless!—till, actually, I caught myself weeping into the washtub, bedewing the family linen with splashing tears.
Certainly, things did look black. It was over a month since the Hancocks had left us, nearly two since we bade farewell to Mrs. Hudson. Even mother was beginning to show the strain. She looked worn and worried. As for me, I was tired of the dish-washing, the sweeping, the dusting; everything to be done afresh each day. I had not touched my mandolin for weeks. My hands, then puffed and scarlet, would be stiff and cracked on the morrow. I held them up and looked at them.
Which brought the thought of Meta, and the old inevitable contrast. That very evening she was going to a party;—a pretty, informal affair, consisting of charades, a supper, and a dance. How care-free her life was! How happily exempt from sordid considerations! She was surrounded by attention, gayety, admiration,—I would love such things, too!
A great fat tear rolled off the tip of my nose, and splashed down on Robin’s little striped pajamas.
“Come, come,” I told myself. “This is ridiculous! Cheer up, child, and repeat Horatius, if you can’t remember any French.”
But even Macaulay’s stirring lines, with which Haze and I have heartened each other since nursery days, seemed to have lost their magic.
“Lars Porsena of Clusium,——”
I began; and ended on a sob. Till, quite unexpectedly, without the least premeditation, I found myself murmuring instead:—
“O Lord, raise up, we pray Thee, Thy power, and come among us, and with great might succour us; that whereas, through our sins and wickedness, we are sore let and hindered in running the race that is set before us, Thy bountiful grace and mercy may speedily help and deliver us;...”
It was the beautiful collect for the Fourth Sunday in Advent. There seemed nothing incongruous in repeating it above a washtub, either! Instantly I dried my tears. “Whereas, through our sins and wickedness, we are sore let and hindered in running the race that is set before us!” That was the whole trouble! Parties, indeed! attention! What did they matter to a girl blessed with the dearest family in the world to love and work for? My back stopped aching. I thought of little patient Robin upstairs in the big rocker, “pertending” to play with his “friends,”—how his pale cheeks would flush with pleasure if I could manage to hang out the clothes in time to sit with him a few moments before lunch. It was worth trying for! And so I did;—and it was that very morning, if you please, that Bobsie, looking down the street, uttered his jubilant shout:—
“A Boarder! A Boarder!”
His name is Mr. Lysle. He has a square, bland face, a portly presence, and a heavy artillery voice. It was Ernie who dubbed him “the Hippopotamus.” He has rented our three empty rooms at the biggest price we have yet received for them; and he and his wife and his sister will move in on Saturday! Oh, how beautiful!—that we should have been so “speedily helped and delivered.”
“My brave little Elizabeth,” said mother to me late this evening, “you have been such a comfort, such a support! But it is over now, dear. We will send to-morrow for Rose to come back. We will order furnace coal, and—we haven’t drawn on our bank account!”
Then she kissed me, and I blushed for very shame. For I have not been brave,—you know that, old diary,—at least not inside. How I wish that I might look back, and honestly feel that I have earned mother’s precious praise!
Friday, February 6.
School politics have been exciting these last few weeks, though in the stress and strain of home affairs I have had no time to report them. But Ernie has taken them very seriously, and for her sake we are glad the end has come. Yesterday the Sixth Grammar Grade was promoted, and the prize-winner’s name read aloud from the platform. Can you guess who it was?
Let me take the matter up where I dropped it. Though naturally much discouraged and depressed by her sudden fall from grace that fatal composition day, Ernie bravely determined to retrieve her shattered fortunes. In this resolve she was supported by Mary Hobart, Hatty Walker, and a host of other friends.
“It was nothing but a ghastly accident,” they urged, “helped along by Lulu Jennings; and, though, of course, a couple of failures will pull down your per cent., they need not entirely ruin it. You are cleverer than Lulu. Look at arithmetic alone, and the Visiting Board’s problems! She hasn’t solved one of them.”
“We can’t hold her entirely responsible for that,” returned Ernie, quaintly. “I am quite sure he never intended they should be solved.”
“But you have worked out answers to them,” retorted Mary.
“Yes,” Ernie admitted: “a different answer every day.”
The problems in question were certainly difficult. There were ten of them,—ingeniously composed by “the Visiting Board”; and it was rumoured among the girls that even Miss Horton, herself, could not obtain a correct solution. They were intended for practice-work during the term, on the express understanding that one of the set, no one could predict which, should be included in the final examinations.
Naturally, they were the subject of much and anxious discussion. Lulu Jennings, in particular, suffered agonies of apprehensive doubt. Arithmetic is not her strong point.
“I don’t think it’s fair,” she declared. “He just meant to muddle us. The idea of making up such stuff out of his own head! There isn’t any key, or any way to prove ’em, and the answers are not even in the back of Miss Horton’s teacher’s book. I know, because——”
“Because?” questioned Mary Hobart. And Lulu dropped her eyes, and coloured uncomfortably.
It was after her public disgrace that Ernie wrote out the entire set of problems in a blank-book purchased for the purpose, so that she might study them quietly at home. And how the child did wrestle!—shutting herself in the workshop Saturday after Saturday, till finally she discovered the correct solution! There could be no doubt. Worked out along certain intricate lines the problems could be proved!
The next morning, which happened to be the very day before examination, Ernie carried her precious book down to school.
“Coo-ee!” she yodeled to Mary Hobart, who formed one of a group of chattering girls on the second landing. “I have the answers!”
“Not to the Visiting Board’s problems?” returned Mary, excitedly.
“Yes,” Ernie replied, unable to repress her glee. “They are here!” tapping the book as she spoke. “And they are right, too. They prove!—all those I’ve had time for!”
At that moment Lulu Jennings brushed past the excited pair. Apparently she was deep in conversation with a friend, and noticed nothing.
“If only she guessed!” chuckled Ernestine.
“Well, for goodness’ sake don’t tell her!” warned Mary, the cautious. “I wouldn’t trust that girl with her own grandmother’s plated spoons.”
“Do you take me for a goose?” asked Ernie. “Let’s put our books up, and perhaps we’ll have time to eat an apple before the bell rings. I have a beauty in my blouse!”
So the two girls ran up to the classroom, where they found that Lulu had preceded them, slipped their books into their respective desks, and, returning to the schoolyard, divided the apple.
“I wish I could explain the problems to you, Mary dear,” Ernie said. “But, of course, it wouldn’t be fair. It was quite by chance I hit on the right way. You can imagine my joy! I have only had time to prove the first six, but the others must be right. I’ll work on them at noon.”
However, long before noon, Ernie slipped her hand into her desk to take out the beloved book, and reassure herself by a hasty glance through its pages. She owns several blank-books; one for spelling, a second for “home-work,” and a third for English. These were successively dragged out, and hastily thrust back again. With a queer little shock it became certain that the book containing the solution to the all-important problems was missing!
Ernie was puzzled, startled, but, just at first, she felt no suspicion.
Perhaps she had not put the book into her desk, after all. Perhaps she had dropped it on the landing in the hall. It was impossible to communicate her loss to Mary Hobart, who had been sent to the blackboard to demonstrate a proposition. So Ernie raised her hand and asked Miss Horton’s permission to leave the room to look for something. The request was granted.
Yet a hurried search of the stairways revealed nothing; and the more Ernie reflected, the more anxious she became. She returned to the classroom thoroughly puzzled and distressed.—When what was her amazement to discover the missing book lying in plain view on her desk!
Ernie took it up incredulously,—and was instantly conscious of a faint scent of musk.
She turned to Mary Hobart, who was just about to resume her seat, having finished her work at the board, and fairly hissed:—
“Smell of Lulu, Mary. Smell her! quick!!!”
Mary looked at Ernie in bewilderment. “I don’t want to,” she whispered back. “Why should I, I’d like to know?”
“Go on,” commanded Ernie, too excited to explain. “Smell her! You must!”
So Mary, with a puzzled and somewhat resentful air, inclined her head stiffly toward Lulu Jennings and began to sniff.
“Well?” questioned Ernie, with dilating eyes.
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