Lizbeth of the Dale Part 13

Elizabeth soon ceased to trouble much even over spelling, and she and Rosie gave themselves up to the fashion of the hour. And every hour had its fashion. For like most rural schools, amongst the girls at least, Forest Glen was a place of fads and fancies.

No one ever knew just how or why a new craze arose, but there was always one on the tapis. At one time it was pickles. No one could hope for any social recognition unless one had a long, green cuc.u.mber pickle in one's dinner-pail--the longer the pickle the higher one's standing. Fads ranged all the way from this gastronomic level to the highly esthetic, where they broke out in a desire for the decorative in the form of peep-shows. A peep-show was an arrangement of flowers and leaves pressed against a piece of gla.s.s and framed in colored tissue-paper. Every girl had one on her desk; even to dirty, unkempt Becky Davis. Elizabeth was not a success at such works of art. She was a wonder at inventing new patterns, and gained recognition from even the big girls by suggesting a design of tiny, scarlet maple leaves, green moss, and gold thread. But when it came to construction, she left that to Rosie and took to drawing new designs on her slate.

No one could compete with Rosie anyway. She had something new and more elaborate each morning.

But the craze for peep-shows was superseded early in Miss Hillary's reign by an entirely new fad, such as had never manifested itself before in any marked degree in the school. Miss Hillary, quite unwittingly, started it herself.

It was a warm, languorous afternoon in October, and time hung as heavily over the heads of the pupils as the mists hung over the amethyst hollows and sunny hills of Forest Glen. It was Thursday and Miss Hillary was writing at her desk. Lottie Price, the biggest girl in school and the most curious and observing, wrote a note to Teenie Johnstone to say she bet anything the teacher was writing to her fellow. Lottie knew, because Miss Hillary often looked straight at you and didn't see you at all. That was a sure sign. In the back seat, John Gordon and the Pretender, as everyone now called Charles Stuart, were silently but busily whittling away, constructing part of a wonderful new kind of ground-hog trap. Elizabeth had filled one side of her slate with an elaborate picture of a castle on a hill, a stream, a lake, a ship, and an endless vista of town and road and church-spire stretching away into the distance. She had never heard of that school of artists that painted the cla.s.sic landscapes, but she belonged to them as surely as any of the old Italian masters. She was now drawing Mrs. Jarvis in a trained gown standing on the steps of the castle, while Elizabeth Joan of Arc Jarvis Gordon, blowing a bugle, came riding down a perpendicular mountain-path on a stiff-legged steed. Rosie had just housecleaned her desk for the second time that day. She had rubbed all the ink-spots off the top and put a new paper frill around the ink-well. She was re-arranging her books once more and had them in an unsteady pile on the edge of her desk, when Elizabeth leaned over to her side, to display her finished landscape. Rosie's arm came against the toppling pile of books, and they went crashing to the floor.

Miss Hillary looked up. The two culprits sat up very straight and made a frantic show of figuring on their slates. For Jessie had reported no letter that morning, and who knew what might happen? The teacher arose frowning, and Rosie made a desperate dive towards the truant books, but Miss Hillary stopped her. Then, to the amazement and relief of the two tremblers, she began to rebuke, not Rosie, but Joel Davis! Joel was a big, sleepy, fat boy who sat opposite the two little girls, and the books had bounced over towards his seat. No boy was a gentleman, Miss Hillary stated, who would allow a lady to pick up anything that had fallen. She was grieved, after all the lessons she had given in manners and morals, to find that one of her pupils could be so lacking in refinement. Joel would, therefore, please gather up Rosie Carrick's books, and put them on her desk, as a gentleman should always do for a lady.

Joel scratched his s.h.a.ggy head in perplexity, and gazed sleepily at his teacher, then at the debris of books and pictures and tissue-paper squares that littered the floor. He muttered growlingly that a kid like Rosie Carrick wasn't no lady anyhow; but he good-naturedly scooped up an armful of the fallen, and without moving himself unduly reached them out towards their owner. The school giggled, poor Rosie blushed, and in a spasm of embarra.s.sment strove to take them. Between them the books once more descended to the floor in an avalanche of gayly-colored cards and papers. Rosie stooped for them, so did Joel, and their heads b.u.mped together. The young gentleman, now blushing as furiously as the young lady, grasped the books in a promiscuous heap and slammed them down upon Rosie's desk with, "There now, b.u.t.ter-fingers." The school laughed aloud, and Rosie curled up behind the pile of books and cried with vexation. Joel Davis was such a horrid, horrid, dirty, fat boy that it was just real nasty mean of Miss Hillary to let him pick up her books, so it was. Elizabeth, all sympathy, patted her comfortingly, and twisted one of Rosie's curls round her fingers as she whispered soothing words.

But Miss Hillary was again talking, and she slid over to her own side of the seat and gave scared attention. It was time she gave another talk upon manners and morals, the teacher declared, and Elizabeth's heart sank. She knew she had no manners to speak of, and on Sundays she was often doubtful of her morals. And when Miss Hillary gave semi-monthly lectures on these two troublesome subjects they caused her acute misery. But to-day the address was chiefly to the boys.

Evidently it was only the masculine side of the school that was lacking in manners and morals. Miss Hillary declared she must strive to inculcate a spirit of chivalry in them, and teach them the proper att.i.tude towards girls.

Elizabeth gave a sigh of relief. This was no concern of hers, except that she devoutly hoped it might make John and the Pretender stop pulling hair. So she gave her attention to softly taking down the longest words the little lecture contained. Miss Hillary had gone sufficiently far on the road of understanding to make this safe. She sometimes even glanced approvingly at her disciple's flying fingers when she uttered a polysyllable of more than usual distinction. Rosie came from behind her shelter of books, and, wiping away her tears, attempted to help Elizabeth. There was a word that Lizzie had missed, she cautioned. Something like "shivering"--a spirit of shivering or "shivaree." But Elizabeth, in the midst of "gallantry," shook her head. That was just chivalry. She knew all about that. It was a glorious word that took in Ivanhoe, and the ladye that went ower the border and awa', and Joan of Arc, yes--and Elizabeth herself. But there was no use trying to explain it to Rosie, for, though Rosie was the dearest dear that ever sat with anybody in school, there were many things that even she did not understand.

Meanwhile, the talk on manners and morals had drawn to a close and Elizabeth went back to her cla.s.sic landscape and Rosie to her house-cleaning. But the effect of the lecture did not end there.

Hector McQueen, who was the handsomest boy in the school, as well as the only one who was really well-behaved, gave Rosie Carrick the tin dipper before he drank himself, at the pump the next day. Wully Johnstone's Johnny followed by opening the gate for Sissy Clegg one morning, which was quite gratuitous, for Sissy always climbed the fence anyway. Soon the older boys were vying with each other in acts of gallantry. The spirit of chivalry had been awakened and it took effect in a way the teacher had not antic.i.p.ated.

For a time Elizabeth was all unconscious of the turn affairs were taking. John and Charles Stuart were not the kind who attracted attention by acts of elaborate politeness, and other boys did not enter into her world. So it was a great surprise to her one morning, when Rosie whispered, as she packed away her latest peep-shows in the desk, that the girls were not going to make any more; they were going to have beaux instead.

"Bows?" queried Elizabeth absently, all absorbed in a winding river, a moat, and a drawbridge. "Aunt Margaret won't let me have one, I know.

Will they wear them on their hair?"

Rosie dived down behind her slate and her curls shook violently with convulsive giggles. Elizabeth had no idea what the joke was, but laughter was always contagious, and she got behind her slate and giggled, too; so loud, indeed, that Miss Hillary--it was Monday and the top-buggy had not come out from Cheemaun--rapped sharply on her desk and looked very severe. The giggles subsided immediately, but when a safe interval had elapsed Rosie explained the nature of the bows, and another spasm ensued.

"What are they going to have them for?" asked Elizabeth, drying her eyes on her pinafore. She could understand one desiring a bow on the hair, but what would be the function, either useful or ornamental, of the kind Rosie indicated was hard to understand.

Rosie twisted one of her curls coyly. "Oh, just because," she explained. "All the girls are getting them."

Elizabeth became interested. "Have you one, Rosie?" she whispered, and Rosie tossed her curls and giggled, but gave no answer. Elizabeth looked puzzled. Often Rosie seemed so old and wise and far away, making her feel as if she were Jamie's age.

"How do you get one?" was the next question.

"Oh, my goodness!" giggled Rosie. Such ignorance did not admit of any enlightenment. "They just--come," she explained vaguely.

The Junior Fourth cla.s.s was being called forward and there was no more opportunity for explanations. But, as they pa.s.sed up the aisle, Elizabeth noticed Rosie flirt her curls and glance towards Hector McQueen's seat, and Hector's admiring eyes followed Rosie all the way to her cla.s.s. "Is yours Hector McQueen?" Elizabeth whispered as soon as they reached their scat again, and Rosie nodded radiantly.

Elizabeth was both proud and pleased. She did not know much about boys, apart from John and Malcolm and the Pretender. All outside this list were cla.s.sed in her mind as "other boys," and were an unknown waste. But Hector McQueen, everybody knew, was quite the nicest boy in school. It was just like Rosie to carry off the prize.

As the days went on, Elizabeth, now fully awake to the fashion of the hour, noticed that Rosie had been quite right--"all the girls" had beaux. Even big, untidy Becky Davis was receiving attentions from Noah Clegg, Junior. She furthermore discovered that your beau brought you apples and b.u.t.ter-nuts to school. That you trimmed his hat with colored maple leaves at recess, and always chose him as your partner in games; that he wrote you notes in school, when Miss Hillary was answering her Wednesday letter, and you wrote back; and, above all, that the other girls wrote your name and his side-by-side on a slate, struck out all the common letters, and over the remainder chanted, "Friendship, Love, Hatred, Marriage." If the result on both sides was satisfactory, there was nothing more to be desired.

Elizabeth noticed all this commotion and felt rather forlorn.

Personally she would have preferred very much not to have a beau. It was something quite unnecessary; but then one hated to be different, and she was the only girl in her cla.s.s, except Eppie Turner, who was too shy to speak to a boy, who was in a beauless state. Rosie, in her loyalty, felt Elizabeth's undesirable condition and strove to better it.

"I'll tell you, Lizzie," she advised one day. "You pick out a boy and I'll cancel your names and then you can have him for your fellow."

Elizabeth looked about her reluctantly. This was a most distasteful task. Yet, when pickles were the fad, though green cuc.u.mbers made her deadly sick, she had always had one in her desk; so surely a beau could not be worse. Rosie followed her eyes trying to a.s.sist. "You must have somebody older than yourself," she admonished, as her chum's eyes rested fondly on the row of little fellows in Archie's cla.s.s.

Elizabeth sighed; to have Rosie's little, curly-headed brother d.i.c.ky for one's beau would have been perfectly lovely. She glanced further down the aisle. Rosie indicated those who were "taken." The rights of property were strictly observed and there were no flirts in the Forest Glen School.

Suddenly Rosie exclaimed joyfully: "Why, I know who you'll have, Lizzie, Charles Stuart MacAllister, of course. n.o.body's took him or your John, but you couldn't have your brother." But Elizabeth shook her head hopelessly. No, never, never. She would go down to history as the only unbeaued girl in Forest Glen School forever and ever before she would have Charles Stuart. Why, she had tried him. Yes, she really, truly had, long ago last summer. He'd been her beau for most nearly an hour. But it hadn't worked at all. He had told her she had green eyes right after she had promised to marry him, and she didn't like him anyway. Rosie looked disappointed. Couldn't she just cancel their names anyway? But Elizabeth was obdurate. No, she couldn't.

Besides there was one boy whom she liked just a teenty, weenty bit, if Rosie would promise really, truly she'd never, never tell. Rosie snuggled up to her joyfully, making wholesale promises that sure certain, cross her heart, she'd never think of it again.

Well--Elizabeth made her confession hesitatingly--it was--Charlie Peters.

Rosie drew back with a gasp of dismay and bit her lip. Now every girl in Forest Glen School knew that when another girl took her lower lip between her teeth and looked sideways, girl number one had done or said something requiring a deadly reproof. Elizabeth was startled. "Why not?" she asked anxiously.

Rosie looked at her helplessly. Lizzie was so queer about some things.

Poor, dirty Charlie Peters! What in the world had possessed her? He was a quiet, sickly boy, who came from a place away back in the swamp where his father worked a portable saw-mill. He was always unkempt and ragged; his long, straight hair clung round his pale face and his right sleeve hung empty, his arm having been cut off in the mill when he was quite little. Elizabeth could not explain the fascination that poor Charlie's empty sleeve had for her, nor the great compa.s.sion his pale face and his pitiful efforts to write with his left hand raised in her heart. But he aroused far more interest in her mind than all the "other boys" put together. Rosie argued the matter, but at last consented. A dirty, ragged sweetheart was perhaps after all better than none. "Besides it doesn't matter much," she concluded practically. "'Cause it's only to tease you about, and cancel your names." She added cautiously that Lizzie had better not tell anybody else, it would be a secret between them, thus loyally saving her friend from public disgrace.

Elizabeth consented, and Rosie wrote Elizabeth Jarvis Gordon and Charles Henry Peters on her slate and performed the necessary ceremony.

It turned out quite satisfactorily, and Rosie's next duty was to chant the usual incantation over the b.u.t.tons of her friend's pinafore:

"_Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief, Doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief._"

There were just eleven b.u.t.tons, which brought the ominous result, "beggar man." Rosie gave herself up to renewed dismay, but Elizabeth grew more joyful every moment. It would be very romantic to marry a beggar man, and likely poor Charlie would have to be one, seeing he was so sick and had only one arm. It would be just like the story in the _Chronicle_, of the lovely Lady Evelina, who ran away with the coachman, and he turned out a count! She accordingly set to work at her slate, and drew a picture of herself riding up in all her grandeur of velvet-cloak, armor, and spear to rescue a ragged, one-armed boy from an enemy's camp. Elizabeth's instincts were right, the touch of self-sacrifice she dimly divined was necessary to make an act of perfect heroism.

For the next few days Rosie lived in distress, lest Elizabeth's unfortunate love affair became public and both she and her chum be disgraced. But, before disaster could descend, Elizabeth's clouded destiny changed to one of dazzling splendor in the most miraculous way.

One morning there appeared in school, with Noah Clegg, Junior, a new boy; a wonderfully handsome boy, in a black velvet suit and broad white collar, altogether such a magnificent creature as had never before been seen in Forest Glen.

He had not been in school ten minutes before everybody knew all about him, Hannah Clegg proudly giving the information. He was from Cheemaun. His name was Horace Oliver, and his father was a rich lumberman. The Cleggs had supplied Mrs. Oliver with fresh b.u.t.ter and eggs for years, and Hannah herself had been at their house, which was a very magnificent mansion on the hill overlooking the lake. He had a sister older than himself, whose name was Madeline, and she had four silk dresses besides dozens of other kinds. And this Horace had been sick, so when Hannah's father and mother went into town with the b.u.t.ter and eggs on Sat.u.r.day they had brought him back with them to stay on the farm and drink plenty of milk until he should get strong again.

The new boy was the center of interest during the morning. The girls were all admiration, and the Cleggs rose in popular favor, to be the envied of all the school. Enthusiasm amongst the boys was much milder.

John Gordon and Charles Stuart MacAllister were scarcely enthusiastic at all. John privately informed his friend that any fellow of twelve--and he must be that if he wasn't thirteen--who would wear a white collar and velvet rig-up like that to school must be a baa-lamb, and ought to stay home and sit on his mother's knee. The Pretender discovered, to their further disgust, that the stranger could play a piano. This innocent accomplishment raised a strange feeling of irritation in the breast of Charles Stuart. He mentally resolved to watch the new boy, and if he showed signs of becoming too popular he would take him out behind the woodshed and settle him.

But to the school, as a whole, the new boy was all that could be desired. Even Miss Hillary shared in the popular adulation and smiled upon him at every chance. He was such a nice boy, no teacher could resist him. He had evidently been brought up on morals and manners, for when Miss Hillary dropped her brush he sprang from his seat and handed it to her before she could stoop for it.

Altogether things went very pleasantly that first day, so pleasantly that in the afternoon Lottie Price dared to hold up her hand and ask if they mightn't have a spelling match. Now no one had ever heard of such a thing on any day but Friday, and Jessie Robertson and Teenie Johnstone nudged each other. Lottie Price was the most disagreeable girl in Forest Glen School; indeed, all the Prices were noted for their capacity for making mischief. Lottie had not spoken to the girls in her cla.s.s for three days, and her two chief rivals understood this move for a spelling match. Jessie whispered to Teenie that it was just like Lottie Price. She was the best speller in the school and wanted to show off before the new boy.

To the surprise of most, Miss Hillary smilingly granted the request.

Jessie, however, nodded her head significantly. She wasn't surprised, not she. Why, the top-buggy had come early in the morning yesterday and stayed both to dinner and tea, and she thought it was just horrid mean of Lottie Price, so she did. She had done it just because she knew Jessie couldn't spell.

Meanwhile, the spelling match was being arranged. Of course, Lottie was sent as captain to one side, and then Miss Hillary asked would the school choose a boy for captain on the other side. A swarm of hands went up, and almost unanimously the new boy was chosen.

This was indeed a triumph for Lottie, and as the two took their places she swept a glance of disdain towards a seat where two young ladies sat gazing with averted faces far out of the window.

Rosie was "mad at" Katie Price, so she also stared in the opposite direction. But Elizabeth never had time nor opportunity to quarrel with anyone, and she gazed at Lottie with frank admiration, and wished she could spell half so well. It seemed such a pity that the grand stranger should find out so soon how stupid she was. She was always chosen the very last in a spelling match, except when Mary or Rosie happened to be a captain and selected her for private reasons.

The captains were in place, and Miss Hillary smilingly nodded to Lottie. Since the age of chivalry had dawned, the girl-captain in a spelling match was always given the first chance to select. Lottie hesitated. She had her beau, but he could not spell, and her bosom friend, but they had vowed never to speak again so long as they both should live. Miss Price was too wise to allow sentiment to injure her campaign, but too bad-tempered to permit any magnanimity to a.s.sist it.

Therefore, she called Hannah Clegg. No one ever quarreled with the Cleggs, not even the Prices; they were too good-natured. Besides, Hannah was a fair speller.

Miss Hillary nodded approvingly and turned to the boy, who was standing regarding the sea of strange faces in a puzzled manner. He had been relying upon Hannah as first choice. Miss Hillary came to his aid.

"Now, Horace, you are in a rather difficult position, as you do not know who are our best spellers. So you may call up anyone you like who will help you in your further selection." The visitor's face brightened. He looked right across the school and electrified everyone by calling out, "Elizabeth Jarvis Gordon."

The owner of the name could not believe her ears. She had to be poked twice by Rosie before she finally arose and took her place beside the velvet boy, overcome with wonder. It was as though one had suddenly been called out to be a Joan of Arc without any warning. Lottie Price giggled. Everyone knew Lizzie Gordon couldn't spell c-a-t without a couple of mistakes, and she saw her victory a.s.sured.

But there was one thing Elizabeth could do, and that was name all the spellers in the room. Who knew them as well as she, when each one was a reproach to her? When the velvet boy's turn came, he looked at her and she proved a fine support. Rosie came first, of course, but then Rosie not only knew every word in the Complete Speller, but was a Complete Speller herself in curls and a pink pinafore. John and Charles Stuart were next. Elizabeth was devoutly thankful she could ask them with a clear conscience. She longed for Susie Martin and Eppie Turner also, but Susie had had five mistakes yesterday, and Eppie seven; it wouldn't be fair to the velvet boy. An exalted position, she realized, brought heavy responsibilities. She really made a very fine campaign, for she had almost all the Senior Fourth girls at her command, seeing that Lottie disdained to call them. She whispered their names to Horace, and as he summoned them to his ranks Lottie's face grew dark with antic.i.p.ation of defeat.