A Flock of Girls and Boys Part 25

"For pity's sake, what do you mean?"

"You may well say 'for _pity's_ sake;'" and then Laura burst forth and repeated, word for word, the conversation that had transpired between Esther and herself, concluding with, "And you--_you_, Kitty, are to blame for this, for it is you who have prejudiced the girls against Esther with your talk about McVane Street and the foreigners in that neighborhood."

"I? Just my little fun about McVane Street and your sunset tea there?"

"Yes, just your little fun! I know what your fun is! Oh, Kitty, Kitty, I _did_ think you had a kind heart! But to be the means of hurting anybody, as you have hurt Esther,--it is--it is--"

"Laura, Laura, don't," as Laura here broke down in a little fit of sobbing. "Of course I didn't know--I didn't think. Oh, dear, I'll tell the girls I didn't mean a word I said,--that I'm the biggest liar in town; that Esther is an heiress; that--that--oh, I'll do or say anything, if you'll only stop crying, Laura. There, there," as Laura tried to stifle a fresh sob, "that's right, take my handkerchief,--yours is sopping wet, and--My goodness, there comes Maud Aplin--she _must_ not see us sniffing and sobbing like this, she'll say we've had a quarrel.

Here, let us go into the little recitation-room, quick now, before she sees us."

And into the little recitation-room Laura was very willing to go and hide her tear-stained face from inquisitive eyes, while Kitty, penitent and overcome more by the spectacle of these tears than by a sense of her own shortcomings, followed briskly after, with this cheerful little running fire of remarks, anent the Art Club lecturer: "I'm just crazy--_crazy_ to see this Monsieur Baudouin; for what do you think Flo Aplin says? That he is a real viscomte or marquis, or something of that sort, but that he came into his t.i.tle only a year or two ago, and is much prouder of his reputation as an art authority and critic and his name, Pierre Baudouin,--it's his own name, you know,--and he won his reputation under that. The Aplins met him last year in Paris. Windlow Aplin, who is studying art there, just swears by him, and says the artists dote on him, and Flo says he is perfectly elegant. Etching is his great fad now, and he is going to lecture this afternoon on etching and etchers. Oh, I'm just crazy to see and hear him, aren't you?"

Laura had by this time conquered her tears, thanks to Kitty's adroitness, and, with a half-humorous, half-grateful appreciation of this adroitness, she thought to herself as she walked round to the Art Club with Kitty that afternoon, "Kitty _has_ a good heart, after all."

The Art Club hall was quite full as they entered; but there were seats well down in front, and there they found most of the school girls under Miss Milwood's charge. Esther was one of this party; and Kitty made a great point of leaning forward and bowing to her with much graciousness.

The next moment she was whispering to Laura, "There, didn't I behave prettily to Esther this time? You'll see now--" But at that instant a slender dark-eyed gentleman, accompanied by one of the artists, was seen coming rapidly up the aisle, and, "Look, look, there he is!" cried Kitty, "and _isn't_ he elegant?"

And Laura looking, as she was told, found no reason to disagree with this comment.

"But I _do_ hope," whispered the irrepressible Kitty again, as Monsieur Baudouin ascended the platform,--"I _do_ hope he is as interesting as he looks; appearances are deceitful sometimes." But no one of that audience found Pierre Baudouin's appearance deceitful. He was more than interesting,--he was enthralling as he went on with his almost loving consideration of his subject, setting before his hearers, in a melodious voice and very good English, some of the results of his great knowledge and experience. You could have heard a pin drop, as the saying goes, so spell-bound was the audience; and at the end there was a warm outburst of applause, and then a gathering about him, as he left the platform, of the various artists, and others who were eager to speak with him. He was standing with this little group, when Laura, watching and listening just outside of it, heard him say, "There is a remarkable etching that I wish I could show you, for it proves completely the theory I have just placed before you. I saw it but once, in the artist's own studio, as I was pa.s.sing through Munich. When a little later I heard that the artist was dead, and his effects for sale, I tried to buy the etching, but was told that it had been given to a friend, a Mr. John Wybern. Since then, I have learned that Mr. Wybern has also died, and I started again on my search; but it has been fruitless so far, though I still hope I may come across it, and be able, if not to add it to my collection, to examine it again. The artist, by the way, is the same one that painted that remarkable picture, 'Rebecca the Jewess.'"

Laura turned hastily around to look for Esther. She had not to look far.

Esther was just behind her. "Esther, did you hear?" she asked.

Esther nodded.

"Do you know about the etching?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: She was addressing Monsieur Baudouin]

"Yes, it hangs in our parlor. I wish I dared go forward now and tell him."

"Oh, Esther, do, do!"

But Esther hung back. Then Laura obeyed an impulse that forever after filled her with astonishment. She pressed forward, and, before she had time to think twice, was addressing Monsieur Baudouin, and telling him what she knew.

"What! you can tell me where this etching is? You can take me to it?" he exclaimed, with a sort of joyful incredulity.

Laura answered by turning to Esther and saying. "This young lady can tell you more about it. The etching is in the possession of her family."

"Ah, and this young lady is--"

Laura reached back, seized Esther's hand, and pulled her to her side.

"Is Miss Bodn."

"Mees _Bodn_!" he repeated with a start. "Mees _Bodn_! Ah, pardon me, do you spell this name B-o-w-d-o-i-n?"

"You do, you do," as Esther answered in the affirmative; "and, pardon again, are you related to one Henri--Henry, you call it here--Henry Pierre Bowdoin?"

"My father's name was Henry Pierre Bowdoin."

"Then, Mademoiselle," and Monsieur Baudouin stretched out his hand, and a smile lit up his face, "you must be a relation of mine; and three years ago, when I was in this country, and tried to find the American branch of our family that spelled its name Bowdoin and was called Bodn, but which was originally Baudouin, the old Huguenot name, I was told it had died out. Where were you then, Mademoiselle?"

"In Munich, where my mother and I had lived with my uncle John Wybern, since my father's death, years ago."

"Your uncle! John Wybern was your uncle? So--so is it possible, is it possible? And I find the two objects I have been hunting, so far apart, together! It is most astonis.h.i.+ng and yet most simple. And your mother--your mother is living? Yes, and you will give me your address, that I may hasten to pay my respects to her;" and Monsieur whipped out a little note-book and wrote down, probably with greater satisfaction than it had ever been written before, "McVane Street."

"Most astonis.h.i.+ng and yet most simple," as Monsieur had truly said; yet to the flock of Miss Milwood's girls, who, well down to the front, had lost nothing of this surprising interview, it was only "most astonis.h.i.+ng," and to some of them most humiliating and mortifying. Kitty Grant was the first to voice this mortification, by turning upon them and saying, as Esther disappeared with Monsieur Baudouin, "Say, girls, how do you feel now? _I_ feel like one of Cinderella's sisters. Laura now--Laura, where are you?" But Laura had also disappeared. She wanted to be by herself and think it over. But what of Esther,--Esther, who had been neglected and disregarded and despised? What of Esther, as she stood there, and as she walked away with Monsieur Baudouin? Esther was the least astonished of them all, for years ago she had been familiar with the facts of her paternal family history, and knew that she was a descendant of Pierre Baudouin, a French Huguenot, who had fled to America to escape religious persecution, and knew that the name Baudouin had suffered a change to Bowdoin; knew, too, that as Bowdoin it had been made ill.u.s.trious in America's annals, and worn the honors of the highest offices of the State. She knew all this; but she knew also that this was long ago, and that her father was the last of his name in America, and when he died, after a wasting illness that exhausted his fortune, there was little thought given to the fact that the old Huguenot root still existed in France, though half-playful, half-serious mention had now and then been made of the kinsfolk in France they would sometime go to seek.

All this Esther had stored away in her memory, so that when Monsieur Baudouin announced himself as the kinsman from France, it was more like a long-antic.i.p.ated event than a surprise. And all this she told to Laura in the days that followed,--those dear, delightful days, when there was no difficulty put in the way of going to McVane Street; when McVane Street, indeed, according to Kitty, became quite the fas.h.i.+on with the artists flocking to see the wonderful etching, and Monsieur Baudouin holding forth upon its merits to them as he made himself at home with his American kinsfolk, who were now discovered to be such charming folk.

Laura sometimes in these days blazed up with indignation and disgust as she noted the sudden attentions that were bestowed upon Esther and her mother. No one now spoke of emigrants and foreigners in connection with these dwellers on McVane Street. Jack Brooks himself seemed to forget that David Wybern looked like a Jew, even before it was found that David and all of his people were of the most unmixed Puritan stock!

"And I, too," thought Laura,--"I, too, muddled and mistook things as I shouldn't, if Esther and her mother had lived in a different quarter. If they had lived anywhere over the hill, should I have fancied, though they _were_ so poor, that Mrs. Bowdoin must have been a professional model? No, no, I should have thought at once, what I _know_ now, that the artist was her friend, and that she sat to him as a friendly favor, like any other lady."

But while Laura thus scourged herself with the rest, Esther and her mother had set her apart from all the rest for their special love and confidence,--a love and confidence that are as fresh to-day as when the mother and daughter sailed away with Monsieur Baudouin, a year ago, to visit their French kinsfolk.

BECKY.

CHAPTER I.

"Number five!" called out shrilly and impatiently the saleswoman at the lace counter in a great dry-goods establishment. The call was repeated in a still more impatient tone before there was any response; then there rushed up a girl of ten or eleven, whose big black eyes looked forth fearlessly, some people said impudently, from a little peaked face, so thin and small that it seemed all eyes, and in the neighborhood where the child lived she was often nicknamed "Eyes."

"Why didn't you come when you were first called?" asked the saleswoman, angrily.

"Couldn't; I'se waitin' for somethin'," answered the child, coolly.

"You were staring at and list'nin' to those ladies at the ribbon counter; I saw you," retorted the saleswoman.

"Well, I tole yer, I'se waitin' for somethin'," the girl answered, showing two rows of teeth in a mischievous grin.

A younger saleswoman, standing near, giggled.

"Don't laugh at her, Lizzie," rebuked the elder; "she's getting too big for her boots with her impudence."

"They ain't boots; they're shoes." And a thin little leg was thrust forward to show a foot encased in a shabby old shoe much too large for it.

Then, like a flash, the "imp," as the saleswoman often termed her, seized the parcel that was ready for her, and darted off with it.