The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted Part 3

Catherine started up in horror.

"O! And I forgot all about helping with supper. What will mother think?"

Algernon watched her hasten away up the hill, and turned toward his own home with some anxiety. He had to coax his mother to take an interest in the new undertaking, and wished the operation over, but he squared his shoulders and determined to do his best and do it that very evening.

Catherine, for her part, spent the evening discussing the plan with her already sympathetic mother.

"It almost takes my breath away, Mother dear," she confided as they sat on the porch in the dusk, watching the fireflies, "the way people fall in with suggestions. It didn't occur to me before that _I_ could start things going. But at college I had only to see that something should be done, and then to say so; and it almost always was done. And I was more surprised than anybody!"

Dr. Helen smiled, and put out her hand to stroke Catherine's head, which rested on her knee.

"They were pretty good ideas, I judge."

"They were perfectly simple ones. Just little things like having the mail-boxes a.s.signed alphabetically, instead of by the numbers of the rooms. It saved the mail girls a lot of work, and Miss Watkins was glad of the suggestion. I helped Alice sort mail, you know,--she does it to help pay her way. And then the little notices on the bulletin board were always getting lost under the big ones, and I was on a Students'

committee and often had notices to post, and I got them to make a rule that all notices should be written on a certain size sheet, and the board looks much neater now. And then there weren't any door-blocks.

Aunt Clara told me that they had them at Va.s.sar, little pads hanging outside your door, with a pencil attached, and if you are out, your callers leave their messages, you know. It seemed as though we needed something like that, for some of us don't like walking into people's rooms, and hunting around for paper. So I started that, and they all took it up in no time. They were only little things, but it was remembering a lot of little things like that that made me dare try to get the library. It's what we need, and I do believe it's going to come easily."

"Mr. Kittredge asked me to-day if I thought you would take the infant cla.s.s in the Sunday-school for the summer. Mrs. Henley is to be away. I told him I'd ask you." Dr. Helen waited.

Catherine was silent a moment.

"Do you know, Mother, it seems as though you just get started doing one thing and you see another one ahead of you. If I am going around asking every one to help the library, I don't see how I can refuse to help when I'm asked! But I never did teach anybody. Who is in the cla.s.s?"

"I asked him that. He says some of the children are rather old for it, but the school is too small, or rather the teachers are too few, to make another cla.s.s. So the ages run from the Osgood twins--"

"O, Peter and Perdita! I do love them. They are such a droll little pair. I beg your pardon, dear. I didn't mean to interrupt. From Peter and Perdita to--to Elsmere, possibly?"

Dr. Helen laughed. "Exactly! Could you undertake Elsmere?"

Catherine sat up straight. "Yes, I could. Elsmere is unlucky, just as Algernon is. Everybody expects to be bored by Algernon and bothered or shocked by Elsmere. I know he is a little 'limb o' Satan,' but if I'm going to take one brother on my shoulders, I might as well take them both. When does Mr. Kittredge want me to begin?"

"Not this week. You can go and see Mrs. Henley and talk it over with her. You're showing a fine public spirit, Daughter mine, but let me suggest that you really can't do much work for the town this summer, especially if you expect to entertain guests! I don't approve of vacations that are busier than the school year!"

"O, the library won't take long to start, if it starts at all. And Algernon will run it and his being busy will give me several extra hours weekly! And the children will only be Sundays. I promised Alice I'd do some Bible study this summer, anyway, and it might as well be done for that. She thought I was something of a heathen because I knew Shakespeare better than the Bible."

"That only means you know Shakespeare very well, however. By the way, would you like that little old set in the guest-room for your library? I put it there, because there wasn't a shelf free anywhere else, and we are rather overstocked with the gentleman's writings in the rest of the house. Clara Lyndesay laughed at finding them there. She says she is going to write an essay some day on guest-room literature, and its implications."

Catherine laughed, too. "It would be delicious if she did. I wish she would write things, Mother, and not just paint pictures. Do you suppose there's any hope of her coming back to this country this summer?"

"I shouldn't be greatly surprised. She plans to spend some weeks on the Isle of Wight, and that is so near this side that perhaps we can lure her over. An aunt left her a place in New England, you know, which she means to fit up for a studio sometime. Father should be coming home now.

Let's go down to the corner and see if we can see him. O, my daughter!"

as Catherine sprang up and took her mother's arm, "how you have grown beyond me!"

"It's just my head that's above you," said Catherine, tucking her mother's arm into her own. "It's the fas.h.i.+on nowadays for girls to be taller than their mothers, but they don't begin to come up to them in mind and manners. Miss Eliot told us so in History!"

"How about their hearts?" asked Dr. Helen.

"I don't know about the other girls', but my heart is just as high as my mother's!" And Catherine bent her head the least little bit, and kissed her mother's cheek, as Dr. Harlow, turning the corner, met them.

CHAPTER THREE

ORGANIZATION

The "stub" train on the Central was due to leave Winsted at 7:30.

Catherine, having reluctantly left the was.h.i.+ng of the breakfast dishes to the reckless Inga, to whom their quaint blue pattern was as naught, hurried down the hill and reached the dingy little station as the train shambled in. Algernon, full of good cheer, because his mother had taken it into her head to approve his undertaking, gallantly helped her aboard, and began at once to show a list of questions he had ready to ask the Hampton librarian.

The train stood still a little longer while a few milk cans were put on, then whistled, puffed and pulled slowly out. Hampton was only a short distance from Winsted, and Catherine and Algernon soon got off the train, and made their way to the library where they were welcomed by the kindly librarian and her young a.s.sistant, who proved to be a Dexter graduate.

The "stub" train meanwhile jogged and jolted on its way, carrying with it, fast asleep, the little "limb o' Satan" known as Elsmere Swinburne.

Elsmere could sleep anywhere on the slightest provocation. Deeming it unwise to make his presence known to his brother until the train was started beyond recall, he had curled up on a seat behind a large family, and while waiting his opportunity had fallen asleep. The conductor, taking him to be one of the overflow from the family in front, paid no attention to him until after they had left. Then he tried to rouse the child.

"Wake up, kid! Here, you've gone past your station. Wake up, I say! Gee!

We're running a sleeper on this train to-day, all right," as Elsmere, lifted by the collar, only sank heavily back on the seat when released.

The conductor, goaded by the jests of the pa.s.sengers, yelled in the boy's ear, to no avail. Just as he was abandoning the task in wrath, the child suddenly popped up, wide awake and interested.

"I want zwieback," he announced.

Mrs. Swinburne, having read in a child-study book that dry food was bone-building, had brought her youngest up on long crumbly strips of zwieback, and he was seldom seen without one.

"What you givin' us?" asked the conductor.

"I want zwieback," answered Elsmere cheerfully, in the persistent tone he had learned to value for its efficacy.

"Where was your ma goin'?" asked the conductor.

"I want zwieback," replied Elsmere.

"Let me try," suggested a soft-voiced little lady. "I talked with his mother quite a bit while she was on. Want to find your mamma, little boy, and go to Grandma's and play with all the pigs and chickies?"

"I want zwieback."

"You talked with the woman, did you?" said the conductor. "Did you find out what her name was?"

"Let me see. Yes. It's Peters. She was talking about going to his folks', two miles out of Edgewater. She'll be worried to death about this one."

"I should think she might be," remarked the conductor grimly, "for fear he'd come back. Here, you young Sweebock, you get off here."

Elsmere obligingly followed to the platform and suffered himself to be given into the custody of the station agent, to whom he presented his pet.i.tion for food.

"A little weak in the upper story," explained the conductor. "His ma had about as many as she could manage and gettin' off at Edgewater she forgot this one. Name's Peters, stayin' with old Mis' Peters, two miles from Edgewater. You wire 'em to meet the express, and then you pa.s.s him back. Tell McWhire not to let him get to sleepin'. He ain't an easy proposition, when he's gone to Bylow, now I tell you," and the conductor of No. 5 swung himself aboard.

Elsmere had the time of his life in the two hours before the arrival of the noon express. The station agent was a sociable soul. He had a guinea-pig in a box, so delightful to observe that Elsmere forgot his desire for zwieback and became conversational. He told the agent the history of the polly-wogs he had raised "till they was all froggies, only one was deaded." He showed the place where he had cut his finger in the mower-lawn. He explained how fond he was of back-horse-saddle-riding, and declared his intention of some day having "frickers," caressing the agent's own sandy growth with great admiration. He tried to perform on the telegraph instrument and cried "Boo" with all his strength at a lady, peering in at the ticket window.

Altogether, Elsmere found traveling very much to his taste. The noon express stopped for a minute, he was thrust aboard the last car, and a few minutes later, according to instructions, the newsboy put him off at Edgewater, with a cheery: