Peggy Parsons at Prep School Part 19

They all wore white shirtwaists, white skirts, white shoes, and white linen tennis hats. They looked rather like a party of sunny angels as they boarded their car. They realized that they made a good appearance, but they were not prepared for the effect they had upon a certain motherly-looking woman who watched them file in and take their seats.

She gazed at them very hard and her mouth curved into the most wistful smile the girls had ever seen, and tears came suddenly to her eyes as she glanced hastily away. The other people in the car breathed deep in sympathy. But the girls could no more have understood the vivid impression of youth and loveliness they had given than they could have deciphered the Rosetta stone. In their hearts were only the most prosaic thoughts of dainty little sandwiches and stuffed olives, with an undernote of healthy happiness and rampageous good spirits.

"What can be more beautiful than a group of young girls?" a woman was saying to her neighbor. "Aren't they just ideal, all in white that way-those pretty girlish dresses and those white shoes and stockings-"

If she had known the girls' most eager thought in connection with those white shoes and stockings was to throw them as far away as possible onto a rock in the river they had set out to explore, and in regard to those white dresses, their dearest wish was to fasten them up about their knees while, with all manner of joyous shouts and yells they should go wading below a waterfall.

As they approached the suburban stop where they had been advised to get off, as being near the river they were going to, they gathered up their boxes of luncheon and crowded to the door of the car, humming very softly one of their favorite school songs.

And when the car stopped and let them off in a beautiful strip of country woodland, their voices came out louder and they went swinging along in the direction of the stream whose cool rippling music they were so eager to hear. They had to climb several fences, but they had been told that these woods were always open to school and college girls, for there was a larger college nearer than Andrews, and the girls haunted the place. There was n.o.body in sight to-day, however, and they scrambled to the top of gateways and then jumped down into each other's arms, knocking each other down and laughing and shouting until the woods echoed with their noise.

The stream was broad and rather shallow and was rushing along over its little shining stones at a great rate. Now and then there was the silver flash of minnows or the sluggish shadow of swimming tadpoles. But, look as they would, they could not see the dreaded green-brown menace of a crab, so their happiness was complete.

There were smooth gleaming rocks rising high out of the water everywhere. Once this stream had been a powerful river and it had perhaps tumbled these rocks here and then worn them down to the delightful shininess they showed now. Fascinatingly enough they could walk out on them, stepping with care from one to another until they were in the middle of the stream, and then they could pursue their way upstream in the same exciting way for quite a distance. The girls were in all att.i.tudes, wildly trying to keep their balance and make this fascinating journey at the same time, when there was a splash, a shout, and then a dripping figure emerged between two large rocks and held up its wet hands pitifully for help.

Under her wet hair and through the water streaming down her face, the girls recognized Peggy, much more slimpsy in her white dress than she had been a minute ago.

"First one in!" they greeted her catastrophe uproariously, and in delighted unanimity they sat down on the rocks wherever they happened to be and pulled off their shoes and stockings and turned up their skirts, and then sliding gracefully down, wriggled their contented toes in the water and shrieked as it encroached coldly on their ankles.

In a minute more they were all in, splashing and stamping, the stones smooth under their eager feet as they took each step.

They went on together up the stream farther and farther, following its twisted way until they came to a place they could not hope to climb-where the stream made a sheer leap downwards for a distance that was much greater than their height, and came plashing down toward them in a thousand rainbow lights by means of a spreading waterfall.

"I might as well stand under that," chortled Peggy, "I am as shipwrecked as I can be already. I fell flat when I tumbled off the rock back there."

"OH-O-OH," she cried as she sidled up to the water and finally made her plunge into it. Pounding down and stinging like a hundred little sharp needles of cold, she had never felt such breathlessness nor such elation. Over her, and shrouding her in a gleaming mist, the water came, and the girls stood speechless watching her as she stood there like some Indian princess observing the rites of the waterfall.

This was the tableau she made when there came another group of shouts and laughing voices from over the bank of the river, and there all of a sudden looking down were a crowd of older girls, carrying luncheon boxes too, and at the moment opening their mouths and eyes wide in astonishment. At first the rest of the Andrews girls were so far back toward the bank that the newcomers did not see them, and all their gaze focused on Peggy and from their faces it was apparent that they scarcely thought her real. Her arms were upstretched toward the descending water and her face, mist-covered, was lifted. Her slim bare feet shone in the sunlight and sparkled through the water like the feet of some very young Diana, resting from the hunt.

Her dress had lost its starchy lines long since and now resembled a Greek costume as much as anything-at least it would be hard to decide that it wasn't.

"I _never_ in my life-" murmured one of the girls, and her voice broke the spell and the others began to descend the steep bank, becoming aware of the rest of Peggy's party as they did so. Peggy herself was still oblivious. The noise of the waterfall obscured all else, and her efforts to breathe in spite of the water that filled her eyes and nostrils and mouth took all her attention.

"That's the dandiest looking girl I ever saw," said the tallest of the newcomers, heartily. "I wonder if she could be at Hampton and I not have seen her. If she's not there she ought to be, and I'm going to try to get her to change her college and come to us."

"Are you Hampton girls?" Katherine came forward and asked, with the frank and friendly directness that is permissible between girls all of an age and all in school. "Because I'm going to Hampton next year. We are Andrews girls now."

She thought she noticed a stir among the Hampton people as she said this, and their gaze traveled eagerly over the entire group from the prep school. For these girls would be among the most important entering Hampton next fall-the Andrews girls always coming in for a large share of the freshman honors, carrying off the cla.s.s offices and writing the cla.s.s songs and shining in all the more pleasant and social branches of college life. Then the tall girl looked back toward Peggy. Peggy at the same minute saw her audience and came forth, shame-facedly, like a little drowned rat, Katherine said, while she smoothed the pasty wet folds of her skirt and tried to shake some of the water from her curly hair.

"Is _she_ going?" the tall girl demanded with interest, pointing to this dripping apparition.

"I-don't-think she's planning to go to college at all," said Katherine hesitatingly. "I never heard her say that she was going. I'm her room-mate, and she's the nicest girl in all the world, and Hampton will never know what it loses by not getting her."

"She's just the kind we want," sighed the tall girl. "Well, glad we met you-" Her party started off downstream, but she turned and called back over her shoulder, "When you come up next fall come over and see me,-I'm Ditto Armandale-in Macefield House."

"Thanks, I'm Katharine Foster," Peggy's room-mate called after her.

"Good-bye-and I'm really coming."

With a friendly wave the college girls disappeared around the first bend in the little river, and Katherine turned to the perturbed Peggy, expecting her to make some remark about the ridiculous way the others had found her.

But her eyes had a faraway expression in spite of their slightly worried look, and the remark Peggy made was, "Oh, Katherine, Katherine, I wish I were going to Hampton."

Katherine started to speak, but could not, and turned her head hastily away because the thought of four years without Peggy, even four years among hundreds of attractive girls like Ditto Armandale, seemed to her at the minute but a bleak expanse unlit by a single gleam of comfort.

"Peggy, won't you write to your aunt and tell her you _must_ come?" she begged suddenly. "Don't you think she'd let you if she knew that Florence and I and most of the girls are going?"

Peggy rubbed her moist forehead thoughtfully. "Don't think so," she said, "but I might write and-_hint_ that I want to go."

Their momentary depression pa.s.sed, though, when they sat down to eat the good things they had brought in their boxes. Peggy kept in the sun as much as possible, hoping to dry off before it was time to go home. This phase came to her more poignantly later, however, when the other girls had put on their shoes and stockings again and were making ready to go home.

"But mine are all wet and they won't go on," mourned Peggy, "and my dress is a disgrace and my hair isn't very dry yet either, and when I put my hat on little rivulets run down my face like so many horrid young Niagaras. Oh, there _that_ shoe is on, but I can't say there's any special advantage in it. Just hear the water sloshing about when I walk!

It's a wonder I won't take cold out of this, but I won't-I never do when I've had a good time. Girls, keep close to me because I'm the most awful object that ever got on a street car and I'd much rather walk only I wouldn't get home for two or three days, I guess, and these wet shoes would have dissolved like paper long before that."

They climbed the fences with less agility than they had displayed in getting over them in the first place, and they were a tired lot of girls when they reached the car track and threw themselves on the gra.s.s beside it.

"I hear a singing on the rails," sighed Peggy, "but I'm too stiff to get up. Somebody wave to the car. Mercy, here it is already coming around the corner. There, keep close to me, somebody on each side,-oh, what will the people on there think of Andrews?"

When they clambered into the car and the whole bedraggled crowd of recent water-sprites sank into their seats, a motherly woman from across the aisle looked up and stared at them in a kind of fascinated horror.

Her appraising glance missed nothing from their mud bordered skirts and soppy shoes to their flying, tangled hair.

She turned in some disgust to a woman who sat beside her. "Isn't it terrible how hoydenish some girls are?" she asked audibly. "Now those poor little spectacles across the aisle-somebody ought to keep watch of them. I wish you might have seen the lovely group of girls that rode on my car a few hours ago when I was coming out this way. Quite different from this messy little party. They were all in white, as sweet as dolls and so adorably radiant and clean and spiritual looking. They made me think of angels. Dear, dear, I shall never forget the picture they made!

You would not know that those little tomboys opposite belonged to the same species even!"

And the motherly looking woman wondered why the tomboys all burst into a fit of uncontrollable giggling.

CHAPTER XV-PARSONS COURT

"Peggy, hurry up and come to bed, the light just shines in my eyes, and _shines_ in my eyes," complained Katherine that night from her side of the room, "and it's so unlike you to study so late-or aren't you studying?"

"Nope," answered Peggy laconically, and the hint of tears in her voice brought Katherine to a sitting posture, a wealth of surprised sympathy in her face. "What's the matter, honey?" she asked coaxingly, "have I unknowingly used one of your themes for sc.r.a.p paper? Or has Forest been mean again?"

Peggy looked across at her and folded a sheet of paper as she did so.

"It isn't anything," she insisted.

But Katherine guessed. "You are writing to your aunt!" she exclaimed.

Slowly Peggy nodded. "I want everything," she said. "Oh, Katherine, I don't know how it is that when a person has so much, they can just go on wanting and wanting and not be content without it _all_. I know I've had this lovely year with all of you and ever so many girls can't go away to school at all, but, Katherine, I'm-I'm such a pig-I-I-want college, too!"

And then the tears that would not be restrained any longer coursed down her cheeks and fell unheeded on her blue kimono, while she clasped her hands and rocked them in self-accusation and despair.

"I wish you were going-I don't know what it will be worth without you,"

moaned Katherine, in sympathy. "But, listen, Peggy, dear, there are lots of girls who have good times staying at home or traveling or-even doing something that's lots of fun to earn money. Peggy, you aren't a girl who can be unhappy long, by nature. Honestly, after you've once gotten over this you-you won't care-"

But Katherine's voice failed her along with her attempts at comfort.

"I can't seem to-face it," wept Peggy. "I don't know what's the matter with me that all of a sudden I want, want, _want_ this and nothing else in the world has any effect to comfort me. Oh, Katherine, Katherine, since I was a little girl I've kind of thought way back in my mind that I'd get to go to college. And all this wonderful year has drifted away just like perfume, or something nice like that,-I don't mean to be poetical-and here it's gone and I haven't any plans. It's terrible to grow up, Katherine, and to have to work out something definite for yourself to do. I don't want to be grown up, Katherine, I want to be a girl for four years more. I know I'm a pig, honey, and if there were bigger things left to want I suppose I'd want them, too. And even when I graduated from college, if I did go, I guess I'd not be content, but I'd want to be an actress and star in something, so as to seem to be having it all. I wish you'd been asleep instead of questioning me, because I'll feel awfully in the morning to think I've told you all this. I-I feel badly enough right now."