Nancy Of Paradise Cottage Part 11

"Is everyone here?" She looked about her, and closing the book she had been toying with led the way into the dining-room beyond, where the ten or twelve small tables, with their snowy covers, and softly shaded candles gave the room more the appearance of a quiet restaurant than the ordinary school refectory.

Charlotte Spencer sat with Nancy at a table near Miss Leland's; while Alma found herself separated from her sister, and relegated to another table where she was completely marooned among five strange girls.

Charlotte introduced Nancy to a sallow maiden with prominent front teeth, named Allison Maitland, to a statuesque brunette named Katherine Leonard----

"The school beauty," was her brief comment. "And this is Denise Lloyd, sister of Mildred, my roommate. Hope we have soup."

"Are you any relation to Lawrence Prescott, who goes to Williams?"

asked the beautiful Katherine, turning to Nancy with a slightly patronizing air. Nancy vaguely disclaimed a kins.h.i.+p that might have won her Miss Leonard's interest, and thereby quickly lost some of it.

"No, she's not, she says," said Charlotte. "Is he a beau of yours?

'Yes,' replied the girl, a soft blush mantling her damask cheek.

'Naturally he's a beau of mine. Who isn't?' and with this keen retort, she again lost herself in her maiden meditations. But I'll tell you who she is a relation of--she's the thirty-second cousin once removed of 'Prescott's Conquest of Peru'--aren't you, Nancy?"

"Charlotte, you're a scream," said Katherine, with an affected laugh, and turning to Nancy, she went on, speaking in a mincing voice, and always placing her lips as if she were continually guarding against spoiling the symmetry of their perfect cupid's bow. "You know, we always expect Charlotte to say funny things."

"I'm the school buffoon, in other words," commented Charlotte, dryly--evidently not much liking to be marked as a professional humorist. "I'm supposed to be '_so_ amusin', doncherknow'--and consequently, everyone is expected to haw-haw whenever I open my mouth.

But if you listen carefully, you'll be surprised to hear that at times I talk sense. Now, Allison here is the school genius. You'd never suspect it, but she is. I wish to goodness that new waitress would bring me some more bread. It isn't considered stylish around here to have the bread on the table, but I do wish they'd consider my appet.i.te."

"Is that perfectly sweet-looking girl over there your sister?" asked Katherine, indicating Alma, her slightly patronizing air still more p.r.o.nounced.

"Your new rival for the golden apple, Kate," remarked Charlotte, with a grin. "And a blonde, too."

Katherine flushed, and tried to laugh off her annoyance at Charlotte's impish teasing.

"I think she's perfectly lovely."

"Oh, handsome is as handsome does, so they say. The question is has she a beautiful soul. Now, my soul is something wonderful--if it would only show through a bit," murmured Charlotte. "I'm plain, but good, as they say of calico. There's a rumor to the effect that Cleopatra was very ugly; hope it's so. There are two alternatives for an ugly woman--either to be tremendously good and n.o.ble, or to be very, very wicked--I can't make up my mind which career to choose. It's an awful problem."

"I'm going to take muthick lethons thith year, Tharlotte--with Mithter Conthtantini," lisped Denise Lloyd. "Don't you think he'th jutht wonderful?" Denise did not resemble her sister in the least. She was a plump, roly-poly girl of sixteen, still at the giggly, gus.h.i.+ng stage of her life--but much more likable than the haughty Mildred.

She turned to Nancy, with the polite desire of including the new girl in the conversation, and went on with a blush, "Mithter Conthtantini is jutht _wonderful_. Are you going to take muthick lethons? You'd jutht _love_ him! And bethides, if you take muthick, you can drop thience."

"I don't think I could get very far with the piano in one year," said Nancy with a smile.

"Oh, he doethn't teach piano. He teacheth violin."

"And of course, the violin is so much simpler," remarked Charlotte.

"Mr. Constantini has a rolling black eye, and an artistic temperament--inclined to have fits, _I_ think----"

"Fitth, Tharlotte!" cried Denise, in bitter reproach. "Why, he'th jutht _lovely_! He doethn't have fitth at _all_!"

"Well, it sounds as if _somebody_ were having fits, to hear all the awful squeaks and groans that come out of the music room, while one of our rising Paganinis is having her lesson. I always imagined that it was poor Mr. Constantini," replied Charlotte, mildly. "Anyway, the point is, that Constantini is a beautiful creature, and consequently a year of violin is considered infinitely more improving than a year of science. Personally, I think that the study of the violin ought to be forbidden under penalty of the law, except in cases of the most acute genius. I think that the playing of one wrong note on the violin ought to be punishable by a heavy fine, and playing two, by imprisonment for life, or longer. There are times when I feel that hanging is far too good for Dolly Parker. She ought to be boiled in oil, until tender----"

Nancy laughed.

"So you take the year of science? That's where I belong, too, I suppose."

"Tharlotte plays the piano jutht beautifully," said Denise. "She compotheth----"

"My brother calls it decomposition," said Charlotte, reddening, as she always did when any of her talents were lauded, and trying to turn it off with a joke.

Miss Leland rose, and the room became silent, since she appeared to be about to make an announcement.

"To-night, girls, there is, of course, no study-hour, and special privileges are extended to you all," she said, in her clear, well-trained voice. "You have an hour for recreation after dinner, and I hope that all the old girls will make a point of helping our new girls to forget that they are not at home. Prayers will be at nine, as usual, and you will not be required to be in your rooms before nine-forty-five. No doubt you all have a great deal to talk about, so I am going to be lenient with you to-night. To-morrow, the regular school regime will be resumed."

"Hooray! Nancy, you and Alma are herewith cordially invited to my room to a negligee party at nine-twenty sharp. I had the good sense to bring a few delicacies with me, leaving my trunk to the tender mercies of the express company." Charlotte rose, and taking Nancy's arm, filed out of the dining-room with the other girls, behind Miss Leland. But in the living-room, a small band of girls fell upon Charlotte.

"Come along, old dear. Some dance-music now. Come on." And they bore her off to the piano, deposited her almost bodily upon the bench, and opened the keyboard. Three others rolled back the rugs from the polished floor, and in a moment a dozen couples were spinning around as gaily as if they were at a ball.

Nancy, a prey to her usual shyness in the midst of strangers, clung close to the piano, where Charlotte, without pausing in her astonis.h.i.+ngly clever playing, reached up, and drew her down on the piano bench, from where she could watch Alma.

Alma's prettiness and natural gaiety was having its usual success. The younger girls crowded around her, the older girls petted her. Even the frigid Mildred made her dance with her. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright again. By some indescribable charm she had walked into instant popularity.

Without a shadow of envy, Nancy watched her, proudly. Alma was easily the prettiest girl in the school--everyone must like her, everything must go smoothly and gaily for her. There were people like that in the world--people who didn't have to be wise or prudent--some kindly providence seemed always to protect them from the consequences of their lack of common sense, just as kindly nature protects the b.u.t.terflies.

The dancers stopped one by one. Some gathered in groups about, the fire, others cl.u.s.tered in the window-seats--one or two practical souls had gone to their rooms to put away some of their things.

Charlotte's nimble fingers began to wander idly among the keys. Nancy watched her curiously, listening in some surprise to the change in the music. She felt an instinctive fondness for this big, whimsical, friendly girl, and knew very well that underneath her nonsense lay a streak of some fine quality that would make an unshakeable foundation for a genuine friends.h.i.+p. She would have liked to talk to Charlotte by herself; but Charlotte was already talking in her own way. She seemed to have quite forgotten Nancy and everyone else in the room, and with her head bent over the keys, she was playing for herself. Little by little, the other girls stopped talking. She did not notice that at all. Nancy listened to her playing in astonishment. It was far beyond anything like ordinary schoolgirl facility. It was full of genuine talent and poetry, now smooth and lyrical, and again as capricious and impish as some of her own moods.

She raised her head, and looked at Nancy with an absent-minded smile.

"Like music?" Nancy nodded.

"I believe you really do. You aren't just saying so, are you? Well, I like you--ever so much. Listen, don't get the idea that everything I say is meant to be funny--sometimes--I'm very serious--you wouldn't believe it, would you?"

CHAPTER IX

A QUARREL

You had your choice, at Miss Leland's, between studying, and doing what the large majority of the girls did; namely, making friends, reading novels during your study periods, and leaving it to Providence to decide whether you pa.s.sed your examinations or not. The teachers were lenient souls, with the exception of Miss Drinkwater, the Latin teacher, who was unreasonably irritable when her pupils came to cla.s.s armed with the seraphic smiles of ignorance, and a number of convincing excuses, which invariably failed to convince Miss Drinkwater. In consequence, very few of the girls pursued their studies in that cla.s.sic tongue longer than the first month. "What point was there in doing so?" they argued coolly; none of them had any aspirations toward college, and nearly all of them harbored a dread of learning anything that might show on the surface, and thereby discourage the attentions of the college youths which were of infinitely more importance in their eyes, as indeed, in the eyes of their fond mothers, likewise, than the attainment of the scholarly graces.

Miss Leland's was one of those schools inst.i.tuted primarily to meet the necessity of our young plutocrats for mingling with their own peculiar kind--"forming advantageous connections," it is called--the question of education was secondary if not quite negligible. The daughters of steel magnates came from Pittsburgh to meet the daughters of railroad magnates from New York, and incidentally to meet one another's brothers, at the small social functions which Miss Leland gave ostensibly for the purpose of developing in her charges an easy poise and the most correct drawing-room manners.

The girls, for the most part, regarded lessons as a wholly unnecessary adjunct to their school duties, and treated them as such. And this was all very well indeed, so far as they were concerned. From school they would plunge into the whirl of their debutante season, and from that into marriage--it was all clearly mapped out for them, and the shadow of any serious doubt as to the course of their careers never fell across their serenely trustful indolence.

There is something peculiarly vitiating in such an atmosphere.

Pleasure was regarded not merely as an embroidery on the sober fustian of life, but as the very warp and woof of it; where the most sober consideration was that of winning popularity and the opportunity of social advantages, where the clothes to be bought and the parties to be given during the holidays were already the subject of endless absorbing discussions.

The effect of all this on each of the Prescotts was diametrically opposed. Alma had adapted herself to it as easily as to a new cloak.

Not having any stubborn notions of her own, she was as malleable to such an environment as a piece of modelling clay in warm water.

Pretty, good-humored, easily led, she swam into a rather meaningless popularity inside of four days. This Nancy was glad of, but her satisfaction was not unmixed. She saw Alma gradually undergoing a change that threatened to damage her own steadying influence over her sister, and to divide their sympathies. Alma was only too ready, and too well suited temperamentally, to lose sight of the difference between her own circ.u.mstances, and those of the girls with whom she was now a.s.sociated. Indeed the very fact that she could do so, while Nancy could not, lay at the root of the problem that had begun to worry Nancy. Aside from minor changes in Alma, such as, for instance, a new little affectedness of manner, unconsciously borrowed from Mildred Lloyd, and her use of Mildred's particular slang phrases, Nancy had noticed in her sister at times a tinge of impatience, and a little air of superiority, with which Alma unwillingly listened to her when she tried to talk to her seriously. Nancy began to feel, unhappily, that Alma was coming to resent her efforts to guide her and advise her in regard to various small matters, and worst of all, that Alma was privately beginning to look upon her as rather unnecessarily serious, and even old-maidish.

It was impossible for Nancy to lose the feeling that she had that her mother had made a mistake in sending them to Miss Leland's, which gave them little or nothing that they could use, and was very likely to affect even her own steady vision of their circ.u.mstances and opportunities. She was continually trying to counteract the consequences of this mistake; but Alma was less than willing to take her point of view.