The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted Part 12

"Why, Max! Didn't you ever take _Wide-Awake_?"

"The magazine? Sure thing. What of it? Does Catherine want us to subscribe? After an ivory manicure set or a lawn-mower premium?"

"No, no. Listen, Max, and any of the rest of you who are so ignorant as not to know about the Wide Awake girls. Hannah Eldred advertised for friends once, and Catherine and a little girl in Germany and one out West answered. And the German one proved to be the daughter of a long-lost friend of Hannah's mother, and the one out West turned up at Dexter, rooming next door, when she went there, and now she rooms with Catherine. Did you ever hear such a tale in your life? If you were to read such a string of facts in a book, you wouldn't believe it."

"No more you would," commented Max. "I'm not at all sure I believe it, as it is. Are they all coming at once, Catherine?"

"Not quite. Hannah and Frieda will be here in a week or two, and Alice as soon after as she can. They are all of them the _dearest_ girls!"

"Pretty?" asked Archie.

"Wait and see," laughed Catherine. "They'll make their own impression, but I want you all to be friends as we are."

"We'll do our best to entertain them," said Bert. "Distinguished foreigners don't come our way every day. I move you, Madam President, that we make these Wide Awake young ladies honorary members of the Club."

The motion was put and carried with a round of applause, and a few minutes later the Boat Club meeting was informally adjourned.

Algernon, reaching home at midnight, stole into his brother's room and hung the bird-hoop near his bedside. With characteristic perverseness Elsmere, a sound sleeper by day, was easily wakened at night, and, as Algernon slipped out of the room, he sat up and watched the birds bobbing in the moonlight. Presently he dropped back on his pillow, sleepily content.

"Springs!" he said, "like Algy walks."

PART TWO

THE COMING OF FRIEDA

CHAPTER EIGHT

A FORTUNATE MEETING

On the day of Polly's party, far away in the village of Ventnor on the Isle of Wight, some one was thinking of the young people of Winsted and their library undertaking.

A tall woman walked swiftly along the road toward Freshwater, enjoying its charming variety, the sudden glimpses of sea beyond the chalk cliffs, the quaint cottages and lanes, and at a certain bend the trees she loved better than all the rest, with ivy running over the ground and up the mighty trunks. There was a radiance about Clara Lyndesay which seemed to make whatever she looked upon more beautiful than it had been before. No one had ever been able to a.n.a.lyze it, to decide how much was due to the sunny hair, how much to the blue eyes, and the smile that suggested sweet wistful things that never could be told, and how much to her own deep inner peace. "The beauty of you certainly helps the goodness make its impression," Dr. Helen said to her once, "and yet I am half inclined to believe that it is the goodness that makes the beauty!"

Just now there was no a.n.a.lyst at hand, no one, in fact, but a stout small boy, driving a butcher's cart. He felt the force of the charm, however uncritically, and grabbed his cap from his head as he drew up beside the lady.

"The landlady down there asked me to give you these here, thank you!" He handed out two letters, and then clucked to his horse in an embarra.s.sed fas.h.i.+on as Miss Lyndesay thanked him.

"They came after you left, and she said you'd be wanting them, thank you!" And he drove on, leaving the source of his emotion quite unconscious of him or it, intent upon opening the first of the letters.

"They are too long to read as I walk," she said, and chose a comfortable secluded spot to sit. "Let me think. It was a year ago in March that I saw Hannah first, there at Three Gables, when she had just come back from Germany, and was homesick and missed her mother so. She did Catherine as much good as Catherine did her. They are a pair of charming children, as different as April and October. I think I will save Hannah's letter for the last. It's sure to be exciting, and Catherine's should be read in a calm spirit." Accordingly she opened Catherine's and glancing with a smile over the tabulated statement of the health of the various members of the family, regularly included since her complaint that no such information was ever granted her, began to read the letter proper:

"_Dearest Aunt Clara:_

"Algernon is away at a district meeting. I believe that is what he calls it. He is quite elated over the opportunity and Polly and I are taking charge of the library while he is gone. I hardly see Algernon any more.

He is so busy all the time, and he is simply sought after. People seem to think he is an infallible authority, now that he is librarian, and he does seem to know everything. He reads everything and has an intelligent way of telling what you want to know. I'm quite impressed by him, myself. Of course, he talks technicalities a lot, and he acts grieved sometimes because the rest of us don't take the library quite so seriously as he does. The others are rather tired of it by now, except Polly and Bertha and Agnes. I really enjoy it, and I come in often nowadays, because I know when Hannah and Frieda get here, I won't have so much time for it. The children are fond of Algernon and he remembers the funny things they say and tells them--(it's the first time he ever had anything amusing to say on any subject!)--Peter Osgood wanted _The Wail of the Sandal Swag_, and a little girl asked for _Timothy Squst_. (If that's how you spell it. It rhymed with 'crust.') The children aren't the only funny ones. A man came in this afternoon and asked for _Edith Breed_, and it proved he wanted _He That Eateth Bread With Me_, and one forlorn-looking creature handed me a slip of paper with _Doan the Dark_ written on it, and she meant _Joan of Arc!_

"_Later._ I had to stop there to wait on a whole group. I don't understand why they always come in hordes. They don't seem to be connected at all, but there are always times when there is no one here and then suddenly an influx.

"Just now the room is empty again. I wish you could see it. It is a dear little room and now that it is being really used, doesn't have that bare look it had at first. We fixed up a darling Children's Corner, with some child pictures cut from a magazine and framed, and a little round table Polly used to have, and my own little rocker. The window is a sunny one, and the little curtains look so fresh and dainty. Almost always there is some child or other sitting there looking at pictures or reading.

"_Later again._ Dearest, dearest Aunt Clara! My eyes are all full of happy tears. I can't write clearly. I came home from the library a little tired and quite willing to let Polly take it for the evening. And here on the porch was the box, the blessed box, addressed to me. Of course, I wasn't too tired to open it! O, you dear darling! We have needed color in that bare little place so much, and here is this beautiful glowing picture just full of story suggestions. There never was a child born who could look at that, and not go dreaming off into all sorts of fairy tales. It makes me so happy to think you care enough about our little library to give your own beautiful work. I wanted to go right down and hang it, but I called Polly up on the 'phone and she came over, and said I should keep it this evening to look at, and we'd hang it when Algernon comes back to-morrow. She is delighted, too, and Algernon will be, and he will send you a formal letter of thanks, but n.o.body can be so pleased as I am, because you are my almost-truly aunt, you know.

"I do hope you can feel the thanks I'm sending you across all that big salt water!"

Clara Lyndesay's own eyes misted a little.

"That little study isn't deserving of such glowing words," she said to herself. "Now I must see what my other childie has to say. Their letters are growing more similar. Catherine's a.s.sociation with other girls is giving her a more open manner, and Hannah is growing a bit more mature.

Still,--" her eyes fell upon the wild slant of the writing before her, "I suspect she never will be quite grown up, and this particular time she doesn't show the maturity alarmingly! This letter looks as excited as the one she wrote from Dexter when she was upset about sororities last year."

"_Darling Lady Love of Mine:_

"Are you in Ventnor still? Shall you be there the 23d? I don't know what I shall do, if you leave the Isle of Wight before the 27th. I wanted to cable, but father thought it was unnecessary and of course I couldn't afford to do it on my own account. They charge terribly for cabling. And this letter may not reach you till you are gone, or _they_ are. O _dear!_ It just worries me to death to think about it. And there you are so near and I have wanted you and Frieda to meet so long. You may even be pa.s.sing each other on the street or somewhere and not recognizing each other. _Have_ you seen her? You'd surely know her, if you stopped to think, for Mother always said she looks like Mona Lisa and you'd notice Mona Lisa if you saw her. Even if she did have on a sailor suit too big for her, and a funny soup-bowl hat. Only perhaps she doesn't wear such things now. It's two years since I saw her, almost, that is, and I don't know how she dresses.

"Aunt Clara! I was just going to sign my name and read this over and I haven't told you what I was writing for at all. You will think me a dreadful rattlebrain! It's just that we got a post card to-day from the Langes saying that they were on the Isle of Wight for several days, and I thought right away that you simply must meet them. It's such a little island! They wrote from Ryde. O, I'll enclose the postal. It will tell you all about where they are to be, and you will try your very hardest to see them, won't you? You couldn't help loving them, every one, dear Frau Marie and the funny Herr Professor. And nothing is far in England.

"Your loving loving Hannah."

"P. S. I wrote Frieda to look for you."

The blue eyes were full of laughter this time.

"Rattlebrain! I should say so. And of course,--yes, she did forget to enclose the postal. It's a wonder she didn't cable. Now here am I, exhorted to meet three German people of whom I know these facts: Professor Lange of Berlin, the Frau Professor and their daughter Frieda, who looks like Mona Lisa and--perhaps--wears sailor suits too large for her and a funny soup-bowl hat. Were in Ryde some time ago, and, I judge, expected to be on the Isle until the 27th. To-day is the 26th. Well, I'm afraid, Hannah dear, you'll have to learn to keep your head a little better, when you wish to carry out your pleasant ideas. I wonder what she wrote to Frieda."

She rose from her seat on the ivy-covered gra.s.s, and strolled leisurely back toward her hotel. The afternoon light was low and the little church she pa.s.sed on her way seemed more than usually quaint and inviting.

Half-way by, she turned irresolutely, then entered the churchyard.

A local guide was showing a party of tourists about.

Miss Lyndesay was turning away to avoid them, when a deep _"Ach, so!"_ followed by a feminine _"Wunderhubsch! Ganz malerisch!"_ fell on her ear. She looked more closely at the little group. A gentleman in a long linen duster, with a loosely rolled umbrella under his arm, was gazing at the church most earnestly. He stepped back to get a better view, and colliding with a mossy headstone, turned and bowed to it politely with an apology. The little woman at his side paid no attention to him or to the guide, but followed with her eyes a plump young girl in a sailor-suit, who was stooping to gather flowers.

"Frieda," she called, "pluck not those blossoms!"

Miss Lyndesay approached the young girl. Mona Lisa's inscrutable eyes and elusive smile looked up from below an impossible hat.

"I was looking for you, Frieda," said Miss Lyndesay. "But Hannah said you were in Ryde."

"Yesterday, gracious lady," said Frieda, ducking in a courtesy, "but to-day, no. We have sought you, too, and vainly. _Vater_, _Mutterchen_, behold Hannah's beloved lady. We have found ourselves at last!"