Rose of Dutcher's Coolly Part 13

"You'll make great use of that, I imagine."

She could not make herself believe that. She saw students coming and going on the street, and they all seemed so gay and well dressed.

"All this will trouble you for a little while," the Doctor said. "When I came to the University the first time I seemed like a cat in a bath tub.

I thought everybody was laughing at me, but, as a matter of fact, n.o.body paid any attention to me at all. Then I got mad, and I said, 'Well, I'll _make_ you pay attention to me before I'm done.'" The Doctor smiled at her and she had the courage to smile back. It was wonderful how well he understood her.

He drove her around the Lake drive. It was beautiful, but in her depression the more beautiful anything was the more it depressed her.

The Doctor did not demand speech of her, well knowing she did not care to talk.

"I'm not mistaken in the girl," he said to his wife when they were alone. "She has immense reserve force--I feel it. Wait until she straightens up and broadens out a little, you'll see! There's some half-savage power in her, magnetism, impelling quality. I predict a great future for her if--"

"If what?"

"If she don't marry. She is pa.s.sionate, willful as a colt. It seems impossible she has come thus far without entanglement. She's going to be very handsome when she gets a little more at ease. I thought her a wonderful creature as she sat in that school-room, with the yellow sun striking across her head. She appeared to me to have destiny in her favor."

"She's fine, but I think you're over-enthusiastic, Edward."

"Wait and see. She isn't a chatter-box like Josie, that is evident."

"In fact, my dear," he went on to say after a silence, "I should like to adopt her--I mean, of course, take a particular interest in her. She has appealed to me very strongly from the first. You can be a mother to Josie and I'll be a father to Rose."

There was something sombre under his smiling utterance of these words.

Their eyes did not meet, and there was a silence. At last the Doctor said:

"The girl's physical perfection is wonderful. Most farmers' girls are round in the shoulders, and flat in the hips, but Rose has grown up like a young colt. Add culture and ease to her and she'll mow a wide swath, largely without knowing it, for the girl is incapable of vanity."

The wife listened with a brooding face. Rose's splendid prophecy of maternity oppressed her some way.

When the girls went up to bed, terror and homesickness and depression all came back upon Rose again. She sat down desolately upon the little cream-and-gold chair and watched Josie as she pattered about taking down her hair and arranging it for the night. She could not help seeing the mult.i.tude of bottles and little combs and powder puffs and boxes and brushes which Josie gloated over, seeing that Rose was interested.

They were presents, she said, and named the givers of each. It was a revelation to Rose of the elegancies of a dainty, finicky girl's toilet.

She thought of the ragged wash-brush and wooden-backed hair-brush and horn comb which made up her own toilet set, and grew hot and cold.

Josephine was delighted to have some one sit and stare in that admiring way at her, therefore she displayed all her paces. She brushed her hair out with her ivory-backed brush, and laid out all her beautiful underwear, trimmed with lace and embroidered in silk. She did it without malice, but Rose thought of her worn cotton things, shapeless and ugly.

She never could undress before Josephine in the world!

She delayed and delayed until Josie had cuddled down into her bed with her little pink nose sticking out, and her merry eyes blinking like the gaze of a kitten. Rose waited, hoping those bright eyes would close, but they would not. At last a desperate idea came to her. She sprang up and went to the gaslight.

"How do you put this out?" she asked.

Josie gurgled with laughter. "Just turn that thingamabob underneath.

Yes, _that_--turn it quick--that's right. O, ain't it dark! But you ain't undressed yet, and the matches are out in the bathroom."

Rose was more at her ease in the dark.

"Never mind, I can undress in the dark. I'm used to it." She loosened the collar of her dress, slipped off her shoes, and lay down on the bed bitter and rebellious.

When Josie awoke in the morning the country girl was awake and fully dressed and reading a book by the window.

The wrinkly red dress could not utterly break up the fine lines of her firm bust and powerful side and thigh, and the admiring little creature hopped out of bed and stole across the room, and threw her arms about Rose.

"How big and beautiful you are!"

These wonderful words ran into the country girl's blood like hot scented wine. To be beautiful made some amends for being coa.r.s.e and uncultured.

As she had never felt abas.e.m.e.nt before, so she had never felt the need of being beautiful until now.

She turned a radiant, tearful face to Josie, and seized her hands.

"I--I like you--O, so much!"

"I knew we'd be friends," cried the little one dancing about. "And you'll let me go and help you buy your things, won't you?"

"O, I'll be _glad_ to have you--I'm such a fool. I don't know anything at all that I ought to know."

"You're just splendid. I'm the one who don't know anything."

Then they entered upon a day of shopping. They toiled like ants and buzzed like bees.

Rose came home at night worn out, discouraged and dumb as an Indian. She had submitted to her fate, but she was mentally sore, lame and confused.

She no longer cared whether Josie saw her poverty or not, and she went to sleep out of utter fatigue, her eyes wet with tears of homesickness.

All she hoped for seemed impossible and of no account, and sleep in her own attic bed appeared to be the sweetest thing in the world.

Her good, vigorous blood built up her courage during the night, but she was hardly a sweet and lovable companion in the days which followed. She (temporarily) hated Josie and feared Mrs. Thatcher. Thatcher himself, however, was her savior, for she would surely have gone home had it not been for him.

She had a notable set-to with the dressmaker.

"I won't come here again," she said, sullenly. "I don't want any dresses, I'm going home. I'm tired of being pulled and hauled."

The dressmaker was a brisk little Alsatian, with something of the French adroitness in her manner.

"O, my dear young friend! If you only knew! I am in despair! You have such a beautiful figure. You would give me such pleasure if I might but finish this lovely gown."

Rose looked at her from under a scowling prominent forehead. She had never been called beautiful before, at least not by one who was disinterested or a stranger, and she did not believe the woman.

The dressmaker pa.s.sed her hands caressingly over the girl's splendid bust and side.

"Ah! I can make myself famous if I may but fit those lines."

Rose softened and put on the gown once more and silently permitted herself to be turned and turned about like a tin sign, while the little artist (which she was) went about with a mouth full of pins, gurgling, murmuring and patting. This was the worst of the worry, and the end of all the shopping was in sight.

The touch of soft flannels upon her flesh, the flow of ample and graceful gowns helped her at once. Her shoulders lifted and her bust expanded under properly cut and fitted garments. Quickly, unconsciously she became herself again, moving with large, unfettered movements. She dominated her clothing, and yet her clothing helped her. Being fit to be seen, she was not so much troubled by the faces of people who studied her.

It was wonderful to see how she took on (in the first few weeks) the graces and refinements of her new life. She met her schoolmates each day with added ease, and came at last to be a leader among them, just as in the home coule. Her strength and grace and mastery they felt at once.

Her heart beat very hard and fast on the first day as she joined the stream of students moving toward the Central Hall. The maple trees were still in full leaf and blazing color. The sunlight was a magical cataract of etherealized gold, and the clouds were too beautiful to look at without a choking in the throat.

As she stepped over the deeply-worn stone sill, she thought of the thousands of other country girls whose feet had helped to wear that hollow, and her heart ached with unaccountable emotion.