Lizbeth of the Dale Part 27

"Dear, dear, it must be nice to be you, Miss Gordon," she sighed, "nothing in the wide world to do. I've been clear distracted this afternoon with that new maid. I dismissed her at last. She would not even carry the plates to the table properly, and as for the way she washed the dishes! Really, Miss Gordon, I tried to do my duty by her.

I scolded and explained till I was hoa.r.s.e. But I believe the hussy was just stubborn. I felt sorry to dismiss her, as it was Mr. MacAllister who asked me to give her a trial. Don't say anything to him about it, please, Miss Gordon. I hate to tell him I had to send her away."

Miss Gordon laughed. "Has Mr. MacAllister turned into an intelligence office? Or is he squire of domestic dames?" She retreated up the stairs as she spoke. It was not safe to get caught in the full tide of Mrs. Dalley's talk, one might find a whole evening swept away by it.

"Charles Stuart is so queer," she soliloquized. "I wonder what he's up to now."

She tapped briskly upon a bedroom door at the head of the stairs, then shoved it open. A young woman with loose raiment, untidy hair, and a green shade over her eyes looked up from her studies. She raised a book and aimed it threateningly.

"Lizzie Gordon, don't dare show your idle and frivolous head in this place. Miss Mills is coming down in five minutes, and we are going to grind for an hour before tea."

"The mills of the Gordons grind at most inconvenient seasons," said the visitor giddily. She entered just as though she had been cordially invited, concealing the magazine beneath her cloak. "I'll stay until the wheels begin to rumble, anyway. Any letters from home?" She rummaged through the books and papers that littered the table, keeping her magazine carefully hidden.

"Just that note from Malc. He was home for Sunday. Jamie's started to the High School, and Archie's in John Coulson's office. Is that really another new dress, Lizzie?"

Elizabeth, absorbed in Malcolm's business flourishes, made no reply.

"Mrs. Jarvis spoils you," her sister continued. "You've had your hair done at the hair-dresser's again, I do believe. Do you know that light streak in it has almost disappeared, hasn't it?"

Elizabeth folded the letter. The gray star-eyes were very tender.

"I'm so glad Mary's cough is better. My hair?" She patted the heavy brown braids. "Yes, of course. That means that the wild streak is gone. I'm perfectly genteel, I a.s.sure you, Jean. I left all my improprieties scattered over the continent of Europe last summer, and have come home prepared to give up all my penoeuvres."

"I wish you wouldn't use those foolish expressions of Sarah Emily's, dear, they sound so illiterate."

Elizabeth put down the letter and gave her sister's ear a pull.

"Jean Gordon, you are becoming so horribly particular I'm scared of you. Every time I come over here I spend the day before getting out an expurgated edition of everything I intend to say, and even then I fall into rhetorical pits."

"You're hopeless," sighed Jean. "What were you at to-day, a tea?"

"Yes, some kind of pow-wow of that sort. I'm at one every day." She moved about the room straightening photographs and arranging cushions.

"Do you know, Jean, I'm so tired of it all I feel like running away back home sometimes."

"Dear me, you don't know how fortunate you are. You'd soon discover, if you got home, that life at The Dale would be dreadfully monotonous."

"It couldn't be more monotonous than fashionable life. Those receptions are all so horribly alike. There is always a woman at one end of a polished table cutting striped ice-cream, and another at the other end pouring tea; with a bouquet between them. If I ever so far forget my genteel upbringing as to give a Pink Tea I'll put the bouquet at one end and make the ice-cream cutter sit in the middle of the table with her feet in the tea-pot."

"Don't be absurd. If you dislike it all so thoroughly, why do you do it?"

"Mrs. Jarvis does it, and I have to go with her. After all, that's the way I earn my living."

"That's the way I'd earn my death in a month," said her sister, looking proudly at the pile of books before her. "Are there no girls amongst those you meet who have a purpose in life?"

"None that I've discovered, except the supreme purpose of getting ahead of her dearest friend. Society is just like the old teeter we used to ride at school. When Rosie Carrick was up, I was down, and vice versa."

Jean Gordon looked at her younger sister seriously. Jean took everything in life seriously, and plainly Lizzie was determined to continue a problem in spite of her brilliant prospects. She did not understand that the girl's old desire for love and service had grown with the years, and her whole nature was yearning for some expression of it. It was this desire to get back to the old simplicity of life that drove her so often to her brother and sister in their cramped boarding-house.

"Why don't you read some improving books," said Jean primly. "I wish I had your chance. If Mrs. Jarvis had taken a fancy to me I'd be a Ph.D.

some day."

Elizabeth regarded her in silent wonder. The hard life of student and teacher which Jean still pursued was telling on her. She was pale and stooped, and deep lines marked her forehead. To Elizabeth her life seemed a waste of strength. She could never get at Jean's point of view.

"And what would you do then--even if you should turn into a P.D.H., or whatever you call him?"

"Why, just go on studying, of course."

"Until you died?" whispered Elizabeth, appalled at the thought of a life-long vista of green eye-shades and Miss Millses and mathematics.

Jean opened her book. "You can't understand," she said patiently.

"You haven't any ambition."

It was the old, old accusation under which Elizabeth had always lived.

She thought of Annie's cosy home which three Visions now made radiant, of John Coulson's love and devotion, and her heart answered the accusation and declared it false. She wondered if other girls were as silently ambitious as she, and why this best of all ambitions must be always locked away in secret, while lesser ones might be proudly proclaimed upon the house-tops.

"Evidently I haven't," she said, pulling her cloak about her with a laugh. "I'm a b.u.t.terfly. Gracious! I believe I hear the Mills rumbling. I'm going to get out of the way."

"Wait and talk to her. She'll fire you with a desire to do something.

She's the brainiest woman that's ever come under his tuition, Professor Telford says."

"I haven't a doubt of it," said Elizabeth, with a look of alarm.

"That's just the reason I'm scared of her. She's always in a sort of post-graduate att.i.tude of mind when I'm round, and it makes me feel young and foolish. Good-night. I'm going up to molest the boys."

"Don't bother them long, Lizzie--there's a good girl. John needs every minute."

But Elizabeth had caught her cloak around her and was already fleeing up the second flight of stairs. She barely escaped Miss Mills, who was coming down the hall. Miss Mills did not approve of Jean Gordon's fashionable sister, and Elizabeth feared her clever, sarcastic tongue.

John and Charles Stuart shared a bedroom and sitting-room on the top flat. Elizabeth tapped on the door of the latter room, and in response to a "come in," entered. They were already at work. Her brother was doubled up over a table close to a reading-lamp; the Pretender was walking the floor note-book in hand. They were men now, these two, both in their last year at college. John Gordon had the same dark, solemn face of boyhood, lit by that sudden gleaming smile which made him so resemble his sister. Charles Stuart had changed more. He was graver and quieter, and a great man in his year at 'Varsity by reason of his prowess on the public platform. Everyone said MacAllister would be sure to go into politics, but Charles Stuart, remembering the wistful look in a beautiful pair of eyes away back in the old home valley, would never say what would be his calling.

Elizabeth burst radiantly into the room and was received with joyous acclaim. No matter how busy these two might be, there was never any doubt of her welcome here.

"Miss Gordon, I declare!" cried the Pretender, making a deep bow. He handed her a chair and John pulled her into it.

"h.e.l.lo, Betsey! I say it's a great comfort and uplift to Malc and me when we toil and moil and perspire up here, to remember there's one lady in the family anyhow. It keeps up a fellow's self-respect."

"I hope you're going to be nice to me," said Elizabeth, turning to the other young man. "It's a great strain on a frivolous person like me belonging to a clever family. Jean's grinding at the Mills, and I came up here for relaxation, and now John's throwing witticisms at me."

"Jean's studying too hard," said Charles Stuart. "It is enough to drive those girls out of their minds the way they go at it."

"Well, I hope they won't go that distance. It's hard enough to have them out of temper all the time," said Elizabeth. Charles Stuart was always so staid and solemn, she took an especial pleasure in being frivolous in his presence. She knew he disapproved of her fondness for dress, so she turned to her brother.

"How do you like my new frock, Johnny?" she asked.

She slipped out of her cloak, dropping the magazine into a chair with it, and walked across the room, with an exaggerated air of haughty grandeur. The soft gray folds of the gown swept over the carpet.

There was a hint of rose-color in it that caught the lamp-light.

Elizabeth glanced teasingly over her shoulder at the Pretender, who turned abruptly away. He was a very poor sort of Pretender, after all, and he feared the mocking gaze of those gray eyes. They might read the secret in his own and laugh at it. He picked up the magazine she had dropped and began turning over its pages, just to show his lofty disapproval, Elizabeth felt sure.

John proceeded to make sarcastic remarks upon her appearance, while his admiring eyes belied his tongue. But Elizabeth and John had never outlived the habits of their reserved childhood, and found it necessary always to keep up a show of indifference lest they reveal the deep tenderness between them. Lizzie looked frightfully skinny in the dress, he announced, and her neck was too long by a foot. Besides, as her medical adviser, he felt it his duty to tell her that she would likely get tangled up in that long tail and break some of her bones.

"I'll bet a box of chocolates you can't tell the color of it,"

Elizabeth said. She was glancing nervously at Charles Stuart. He was surely near the place in the magazine. The guessing grew lively, John finally giving his verdict that the dress was "some sort of dark white," when Elizabeth saw Charles Stuart pause and read absorbedly.