Brenda's Ward Part 1

Brenda's Ward.

by Helen Leah Reed.

CHAPTER I

A NEW HOME

"It's simply perfect."

"I thought you would like it, Martine."

"Like it! I should say so, but it isn't 'it,' it's everything,--the room, the house, you, Boston. Really, you don't know how glad I am to be here, Brenda--I mean Mrs. Weston."

"What nonsense!"

"That I should like things?"

"No, that you should call me 'Mrs. Weston.' It's bad enough to be growing old, so don't try to make me feel like a grandmother. Truly, I can't believe that I am a day older than when I was sixteen, and yet when I _was_ sixteen, eighteen seemed the end of everything worth while.

I could not imagine myself old, and serious, and--twenty."

Martine smiled at Brenda's emphasis of the last word, and as she smiled she laid her hand on her friend's arm.

"Come," she said, "just look in this mirror. A person who did not know could not tell which is the older, you or I."

"Again, nonsense!"

Yet even as she spoke Brenda could but admit to herself that Martine had an air of dignity suited to one much older than a girl of seventeen. But if she had thought Martine altogether grown up, she quickly changed her opinion, for at this very moment Martine sank on the floor beside her, and as her laughter re-echoed through the rooms Brenda was driven to say:

"My dear, don't talk to me about being grown up. You act precisely like a child of ten. What in the world is the matter?"

"Nothing, oh nothing; that is, almost nothing. Only look and you will laugh too."

Glancing where Martine pointed, Brenda saw something really amusing.

Before a pier-gla.s.s in the hall a sallow girl with glossy black hair piled high on her head was standing. She wore a pink satin gown that heightened her sallowness. It was cut square in the neck, and her elbow sleeves displayed a pair of skinny arms.

"Who is she?" whispered Martine, recovering her breath.

"Why, that, oh that is Angelina."

Martine, fascinated by the vision in the gla.s.s, continued to watch the strange little figure, bowing, gesticulating, turning now to this side now to that, while her lips moved as if she were talking to herself.

"Who is Angelina?" asked Martine.

"Oh, Angelina, don't you know her? She is to help me for a week while Maggie is away taking care of her sick aunt."

"Do you call that 'helping'?" and again Martine pointed toward the pier-gla.s.s.

"She did not hear me come in; she thought I would ring," replied Brenda.

"She thinks I am still downtown. She was to go to the door and has been waiting to hear me ring."

"Would she go to the door looking like that?"

"Oh, I hope not. She'd probably call through the tube and hurry on a coat, or do something of that kind. Yet no one is ever surprised at Angelina's doings. Let me tell you about her. Years ago Nora and some of the rest of us pulled her little brother Manuel from under the feet of a horse, and in a few days we went to visit the family at the North End.

You can't imagine how poor they were. Then we had a club and worked for a bazaar to raise money to get them out into the country."

"Oh, yes, Amy told me something about that, though it all happened before she knew you, I think she said."

"Well, in the end Angelina became my cousin Julia's protegee. She has learned a great deal about housework at the Mansion School, but she is always yearning for something beyond. Lately she has been taking lessons in elocution."

"That's it, then, she's rehearsing now," cried Martine. "Oh, I hope Maggie will stay away longer than you expect. I think we might have great sport with Angelina."

"My dear," remonstrated Brenda, "remember that for the present you are my ward. I can't have you trifling with Angelina, although she can be very funny."

The sound of voices had at last penetrated Angelina's ears, and she fled to her room.

"Oh, my," she thought, "I wonder if Mrs. Weston saw me?" In her secret heart Angelina hoped that she had been observed.

"And Miss Martine, she's almost as stylish as Mrs. Weston. I wonder what she thought of this dress--gown," she added, correcting herself. "I almost wish I'd been saying that soliloquy out loud. Then I could have asked them if they thought I used just the right inflections and gestures. Perhaps Miss Brenda would let me recite it all to her some time. She's more sympathetic than Miss Julia was. Now I know if I should ask Miss Julia she'd say I mustn't give that recital, and I'm sure she wouldn't approve of this gown. But Miss Brenda, why I shouldn't wonder if she'd go to it herself, and Miss Martine, I've heard how she spends money like water, and she'll probably buy a lot of tickets."

As Angelina fled to her room Martine, rising from the floor, sat down on a divan beside Brenda.

"If you wish to please me, do find another place for Maggie and keep Angelina. She'll be so entertaining, and poor Maggie always looks half ready to cry."

"Oh, I couldn't part with Maggie, and more than a week of Angelina would be too much even for you."

"Well, I will tell you at the end of this week. I am going to work so hard at school that I ought to have as much amus.e.m.e.nt as possible at home. Still I know I am going to be perfectly happy with you this winter, although I can remember the time when I should just have hated to spend a winter in Boston. Even now if it wasn't for you--"

"But you had decided to spend the winter here before you ran across me."

"No, my dear Mrs. Weston, my parents had decided that a year or two of Boston school would be the making of me. They had heard, as you know, of a dragon who had a boarding-house on the hill, who would look after me within an inch of my life. Wasn't it strange, though, that she should have been taken ill this autumn? I suppose you wouldn't let me say 'providential.'"

"Certainly not! She was so ill that she had to go South for the winter."

"Then that is providential for her. How much better the South must be for her than this bleak Boston. Besides, if she had been able to continue her home for helpless Western schoolgirls, I should not have had the delight of sharing your charming apartment."

"Nor should I have had the pleasure of the company of a charming ward."

As Martine courtesied her thanks for this compliment, she backed gracefully, and neither she nor Brenda realized that she was approaching too near a table of bric-a-brac, until it toppled over with a crash.

"Oh what have I done! No wedding presents smashed, I hope." There was a touch of dismay in Martine's voice.

"Not a thing that could break." Brenda's smile was rea.s.suring. "Silver or bra.s.s, everyone of them. That's one thing I have already learned, not to have breakable things, if one values them, within anyone's reach.

It's awfully disagreeable to have to blame anyone for what you could have prevented by a little care, and I never can let anybody replace what she has broken. Maggie is rather a breaker, and so my china and gla.s.s ornaments I set on high shelves."

The noise of the falling table brought Angelina upon the scene. She had made what Martine called a "lightning change," and appeared in a dark gown and spotless collar and cuffs.