Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus Part 3

"It isn't made yet," confessed Grace. "Eva Allen's brother, who is an artist, is illuminating one for me."

"What is your motto, Grace?" asked Tom interestedly.

"'Blessed are they that have found their work,'" repeated Grace, her eyes on the spot where she intended the precious motto to hang. Mrs.

Gray had walked on into the hall, so there was only one pair of eyes to see the sudden tightening of Tom's lips and the look of wistfulness which crept into his face, and that pair of eyes belonged to Elfreda.

"He cares a whole lot more for Grace than she cares for him," was Elfreda's quick appraisal. "At heart, Grace is still a little girl, and will be for a long time to come. I hope when she does wake up it won't be another prince who will do the awakening."

CHAPTER IV

THE SECRET SESSION

"I feel more as though I were getting ready for a funeral than about to give a dinner for the Eight Originals," sighed Grace Harlowe, as she joined her mother on the shady front porch, a little white and gold work bag, which Miss Southard had brought her from Paris, swinging from her arm. "I can't realize that, within the next week, Nora and Jessica are actually going to become Mrs. Hippy Wingate and Mrs. Reddy Brooks. It seems ridiculous. Why it's only yesterday that Jessica's hair hung down her back in two braids, and Nora wore curls and short dresses."

"I can't imagine Hippy in the role of a dignified bridegroom," smiled Mrs. Harlowe. "He is far more likely to convulse the wedding party and upset the whole solemn service than to conduct himself with strict propriety."

"He insists that he will cover himself with glory if Reddy doesn't look at him, and Reddy insists that he will sit and stare him out of countenance. David is to be Hippy's best man and Tom Gray Reddy's, while Jessica is to be Nora's maid of honor and Nora Jessica's matron of honor. She's to be married first, you know. Mabel, Anne, Miriam Nesbit, Eleanor Savelli and I are to be the bridesmaids at both weddings," went on Grace. "We'll have a reunion of all our friends. The Gibsons are at home, Judge Putnam and his sister are coming down earlier from the Adirondacks; then there are Eleanor and her father, Miss Nevin and the Southards. Every one who has played an active part in our home lives will be on hand to see the girls married."

"But how can Nora go away on a wedding journey and be Jessica's matron of honor, too?" asked Mrs. Harlowe.

"She and Jessica went over that point a dozen times. You see Nora's wedding takes place in the morning. She is going to have a wedding breakfast, then she and Hippy will go to the mountains for a week. They will return to Oakdale on the day of Jessica's wedding, and leave for a long trip west the next morning. That was the best way they could carry out a compact they made last June to serve as maids of honor for each other."

Mrs. Harlowe listened to Grace's flow of eager talk with a smile of content on her fine face. To her fond eyes Grace looked absurdly immature in her simple frock of white dotted swiss. She was secretly glad that Overton, rather than marriage, had claimed her alert, self-reliant daughter for another year. Like every other mother she wished some day to see Grace happily settled in a home of her own, but she preferred to think of that someday as being still far distant.

Grace took out of her bag a guest towel she was embroidering. It was the last of the half dozen towels she had worked for Jessica's hope chest.

She was not fond of needlework. She preferred to spend her spare time playing golf and tennis, or riding and walking. This, as well as the hemst.i.tched table cloth and napkins she had completed for Nora, was a labor of love. Now as she bent painstakingly over her work, she smiled to herself and wove a tender thread of loyalty and love into the pattern.

A long clear trill caused her to raise her head quickly and spring to her feet with, "Here they are, at last!" She ran to meet them.

Three girls, or rather three young women, came loitering through the gate and up the walk, laughing gayly at something the girl in the center was relating for their benefit. "Now what has Hippy done?" guessed Grace shrewdly.

"You might know it was something about him," said Jessica Bright. "This time it was a case of what was done to him. Tell the lady all over again, Nora."

"It certainly was funny," dimpled Nora. "You see, Grace, Hippy and Edith and I were going for a ride, last night, in his new car. We waited and waited for him and couldn't imagine why he didn't come. About ten o'clock he came tearing along at a speed that would have made a traffic officer turn pale. Edith and I were still sitting on the porch. I pretended I was dreadfully offended until he told me where he had been, then Edith and I laughed until we almost cried."

"Where had he been?" asked Grace curiously.

The three girls giggled in unison.

"Locked in the cellar," returned Nora mirthfully. "He was all ready to go for his car when he happened to remember that he wanted a wrench from the tool chest in the cellar. His father is away this week and there was no one in the house but the cook. She was all ready to go away for the evening, too. She didn't know Hippy was in the cellar, so she locked all the doors, the cellar door included, and went on her way rejoicing.

Hippy said he pounded and shouted and howled and wailed and pounded some more. Can't you imagine just how funny he must have looked? He couldn't climb out of the cellar windows, for they are too small and he is too fat, so he had to stay there until almost ten o'clock. He says he sat on the cellar steps most of the time and thought of the happy past. At last the cook came home and when he heard her walking around upstairs he pounded and shouted again. She thought he was a burglar, just as though a burglar would make all that noise, and wasn't going to let him out. He insists that he ruined his voice forever in trying to convince her that he was himself. He says his frenzied pleadings finally touched her adamant heart, and she opened the cellar door very cautiously at the rate of about a sixteenth of an inch per minute."

Grace laughed with the others, as Nora finished. "Poor Hippy," she commented, "he is always falling into difficulties. I must ask him about his evening in the cellar."

"Yes, do," urged Nora. "He tried to swear Edith and me to secrecy, but we refused to be sworn."

"It will make Reddy so happy," laughed Anne.

"Oh, Anne, dear, you don't know how splendid it seems to have you home again!" exclaimed Grace. "It's just like old times. I can't help feeling sad though. We thought when we were graduated from high school that our parting of the ways had come, but now that we are all standing on the verge of our life work, it seems to me that this is going to be the real parting. I can't help wondering if things will seem quite the same again when we gather home next year."

"Of course they will," declared practical Nora. "Grace Harlowe, don't you dare to grow gloomy and retrospective. We four are chums for life, and not all the weddings and stage careers and Harlowe House positions in the world can change us."

"I know they can't. I won't make any more excursions into the Valley of Doubt," promised Grace.

They had stopped on the walk to talk, now they moved slowly toward the veranda, four abreast, a bright-eyed, happy quartette. Mrs. Harlowe greeted her daughter's friends as affectionately as though they were her own children. "Did you bring your work, girls, or is it to be a case of idle hands?"

"Idle hands!" exclaimed Nora. "Far from it. Jessica has a blouse to finish and I have innumerable initials to embroider."

"I am the only idle one," confessed Anne. "I am sorry to say that I haven't the least desire to be industrious. I prefer to sit with my hands folded and watch the rest of you work. It sounds lazy, doesn't it?"

"Not a bit of it," declared Grace loyally. "You've done your work, Anne.

It's time you took a rest. Make yourselves comfy, girls. Here, give me your hats and parasols. I'll put them in the hall."

In a moment Grace returned, and sitting down by Nora, who had stationed herself in the big porch swing, she picked up her work and began to embroider industriously.

For the s.p.a.ce of half an hour the little company worked busily, keeping up a running accompaniment of merry conversation broken with light laughter. It was Nora's quick eyes which first saw Grace lay down her work with an impatient sigh. An instant later Grace discovered that Nora's industry was flagging. Mrs. Harlowe had just gone into the house.

Anne was leaning back in her chair, her eyes fixed dreamily upon the far horizon, while Jessica, alone, plodded patiently along, too much absorbed in the development of the b.u.t.terfly pattern she was embroidering to note that two of her companions were lagging. A sudden silence fell upon them all. It was broken by Nora's quick tones. "I'll take it all back," she averred. "I'm strictly in favor of idle hands.

Let's put our work away and go for a walk!"

"For this brilliant idea, we thank you," returned Anne, coming out of her dream in a hurry.

"Why not walk over to the old Omnibus House," suggested Grace.

"Brillianter and brillianter," nodded Nora. "What could be more fitting than to make a pilgrimage to the scenes of our high school days? I haven't been there in ages."

"Neither have I," was Grace's quick response. "It's only half-past three. We'll have plenty of time to go there and back before dinner. The boys won't be here until six o'clock. You know that Tom Gray arrived yesterday, I suppose? That makes the Eight Originals complete. We'll have to do without the Plus Two, because Miriam hasn't come home yet and Arnold won't be here until the night before Nora's wedding."

"How I miss Miriam," sighed Grace.

"We never dreamed when we were freshmen that she would ever be our close friend, did we?" asked Nora.

"She's a dear, and no mistake," agreed Jessica. Then, her glance straying to Anne, "What makes Anne look so mysterious?"

Anne smiled. "I'll tell you the most surprising secret you ever heard, but not until we get to the Omnibus House and are seated in a row on the old stone steps behind it."

"Then let's away!" exclaimed Nora. "We won't need our hats. Two parasols will be enough to shade us from the sun."

Five minutes later the four girls trooped down the steps and strolled through the familiar streets in the direction of their old playground.

The afternoon sun beamed so gently and kindly upon them that it was not long before they closed their parasols and walked with their heads uncovered to his tempered rays. To see a bevy of girls walking in the quiet streets of the little city without hats was the commonest sight, and the quartette attracted little attention as they sauntered along.

After leaving Oakdale behind, it was not more than ten minutes' walk across the fields to the quaint old stone house which had been the scene of so many of their high school revels.

"What a lot of good times we have had here," mused Nora reminiscently, as they paused before the quaint old building, that had once been a tavern, and was, goodness knew, how many years old. "Shall you ever forget the time we buried the hatchet?"

"Never!" chorused three emphatic voices.