At Boarding School with the Tucker Twins. Speed Nell
of the water. Father belonged to a huge family, all of them great visitors, but so far as I knew, no children among them. All kinds of old maids: rich and poor, gentle and stern, soft and hard, big and little, they all managed once a year to pay their dear cousin, Dr. Allison, a visit at Bracken. I did not mind their coming. The soft ones seemed to have been little girls once, which was something. I used to think when I was quite a little thing that the hard ones must have been little boys, because of the statement in my Mother Goose that little boys were made of "Snaps and snails and puppy dog tails," – not nice soft collie pups' tails, either, but the tight, hard kind that grew on Cousin Park Garnett's pug.
Cousin Park Garnett was the rich, hard one whom I visited in Richmond the winter before. On her annual visitation to us she had remarked to my father:
"Cousin James, are Page's teeth sound? White teeth like that are, as a rule, not very strong. Her mouth is so enormous you had better look to it that her teeth are preserved," and she pursed up her own thin lips and put on her green persimmon expression.
"Perfectly sound, I think, Cousin Park. Of course her teeth must be preserved. As for her mouth being big, she'll grow up to it." But the outcome of the conversation was that I had to visit Cousin Park and take in the dentist. Think of the combination! Cousin Park took me to the Woman's Club in the afternoon where we listened to a lecture on "The Influence of Slavic Literature on the Culture of the Day." I was longing for the movies but managed to keep my big mouth shut and listen to the lecture, so I could tell Father about it and make him laugh. I stayed in Richmond three days and did not speak to one single soul under fifty. Even the dentist was old and tottering, so shaky that I was afraid he would fall into my mouth.
I saw loads of nice girls my own age skating on the sidewalk or walking arm-in-arm chattering away very happily, but Cousin Park didn't know who they were or did know and knew nothing to their credit. I was glad to get back to Bracken where there were no girls to know. There were at least the dogs at Bracken that I could talk to and race over the hills with. Even Cousin Park could not doubt their royal pedigrees.
It was dear little Cousin Sue Lee who persuaded Father and me both that I ought to go to boarding school. Cousin Sue was the best of all Father's female relatives. She was gentle and poor and had a job in the Congressional Library in Washington. With all her gentleness, she was sprightly and had plenty of what Father called "Lee spunk"; and with all her poverty, she wore the sweetest clothes and always brought me a lovely present every year and a nice shawl for Mammy or a black silk waist or something or other to delight the old woman's heart. Cousin Park never gave me anything, – not that I wanted her to. She would visit us two weeks and then present Mammy with a dime, using all the pomp and ceremony that a twenty-dollar gold piece would have warranted.
"Jimmy," Cousin Sue had said one day (she was the only one of all the cousins who called Father Jimmy), "I know you and Page will think I am an interfering old cat, but that child ought to go to school. I am not going to say a word about her education. She has an excellent education in some things. I have never seen a better read girl of her age. But the time may come when she will regret knowing no French, and she tells me she stopped arithmetic last year and never started algebra."
"Well, what good did algebra ever do you or me?" quizzed Father.
"Now, Jimmy, don't ask such foolish questions. It's just something all of us have to have. What good does your cravat do you? None; it's not even a thing of beauty, but you have to have one all the same."
"Oh, you women," laughed Father, "there's no downing you with argument."
"But as I was saying," continued Cousin Sue, "it is not dear little Page's education I am thinking of. It's something much more important. I want her to know a whole lot of girls and make a million friends. Why, I'm the only young friend the child has, and I am getting to be nearer fifty than forty."
And so we wrote for catalogues of schools and settled on Gresham. And Cousin Sue sent for a bolt of nainsook and yards and yards of lace and insertion and made up a whole lot of pretty underclothes for me.
"Girls need a lot of things in this day and generation," I heard her say to Father. "A great deal more than they used to when I was young. I am determined Page shall not go off to school looking like an 'Orphan Annie.'"
"But, Sue, your holiday won't do you any good if you spend it all sewing on the machine for my child," objected Father.
"We'll get in Miss Pinky Davis to help and in a week's time Page will have enough clothes to last her until she gets married, – that is, if she does not follow the traditions of the family and be an old maid."
It was a pretty well known fact that Cousin Sue had been a belle in her day, and even now when she came back to visit in the County several weather-beaten bachelor farmers would manage to have business at Bracken. I have always noticed that an old maid who is so from choice does not mind joking about it, but the others do.
A country doctor is seldom a bloated bond-holder; so Cousin Sue and I ordered, with great care and economy, the necessary things from New York: suit, hat, gloves, shoes, up-to-date shirt waists and plenty of middies, a raincoat, umbrella, etc.
"Now, my dear," said my sweet cousin, "you can be perfectly sure that your outfit is appropriate at least. Your clothes are stylish, well-made and suitable to your age. I have always felt that young people's clothes should be so right that they do not have to think about them."
As I sped away on the train to Richmond, I remembered what Cousin Sue had said before she went back to the grind in Washington, and had a feeling of intense satisfaction that my little trunk in the baggage car held such a complete wardrobe that I would not have to bother my head about it any more. Up to this summer, clothes had been my abomination, but I had at last waked up to the fact that it made some difference how I looked; and now I was going to look all right without any trouble to myself.
Train pulling into Richmond and still not a tear! "What is the matter with you, Page Allison? When girls leave their childhood's home in books they always weep suds. Don't you love your home as much as a stick of a heroine in a book?" I knew I loved my home, but somehow it was so delightful to be going somewhere and maybe getting to know a million people, as Cousin Sue said I must.
An hour's wait in Richmond! I rechecked my trunk, having purchased a ticket to Gresham; then I seated myself to possess my soul in patience until the 10.20 train should be called. The station in Richmond was familiar enough to me, as Father and I took some kind of a trip every year and always had to come through Richmond. As I have said before, I attended to tickets and baggage when I traveled with Father, so I was not in the least nervous over doing it now.
"I must keep my eye open for girls who are likely to be going to Gresham," I thought. "They'll all have on dark blue suits." That was a rule of the school, the dark blue suit. "There's one now! But can she be going?" And I thought of what Cousin Sue had said of "Orphan Annie."
The girl was seated opposite me in the waiting room. She had just come up the steps lugging a huge telescope, stretched to its greatest capacity, and looking nervously around had sunk on a bench. She searched feverishly through a shabby little hand-bag she was carrying and having satisfied herself that the ticket she had just purchased was safe she seemed to be trying to compose herself; but one could see with half an eye that she was nervous and frightened. She glanced uneasily at the clock every few minutes and constantly compared with it an Ingersoll watch which each time she had to search for in her bag. Several trains were called and every time she got up and made a rush for the gates, but each time came back to her seat opposite me.
Her blue dress was evidently homemade. The skirt dragged in the back and the jacket was too short for the prevailing fashion. Her hat had been worn as mourning and still had a little fold of crêpe around the edge, making a suitable setting for that tear-stained face. I couldn't tell whether she was pretty or not, her features were so swollen with weeping. Helen of Troy herself looked homely crying, I am sure. I noticed that her throat was milk white and that the thick plait of hair that hung down her back, mercifully concealing somewhat the crooked seams of the ill-made jacket, was as yellow as ripe wheat.
"Poor thing," I thought, "I believe I'll speak to her and see if I can cheer her up some." But my philanthropic resolution was forgotten because of the entrance into the waiting