Suzanna Stirs the Fire Part 21

Suzanna's face went white as she waited Miss Smithson's answer.

Teachers, being purely ethereal she felt, never descended to the discussion of materialities. She wondered at her father's overlooking this truth.

But, "Thank you," said the teacher, very calmly.

So together they all entered the corner drug store, Suzanna still very quiet. Mr. Procter found a table large enough to accommodate them all.

Suzanna sat next to Maizie.

"I'm going to have a chocolate ice cream soda," whispered Maizie.

"No, you can't, Maizie," Suzanna returned in an agony; "take lemon ice cream soda."

"But I don't like it."

"Well, that doesn't matter, Maizie. Chocolate is too dark; and besides you smear it all over your lips and it looks dreadful; pale lemon ice cream soda is sweet looking. We must do something to honor Miss Smithson, who's here just because she wouldn't hurt father's feelings."

But Maizie looked belligerent.

Suzanna's temper threatened to flame forth. With a mighty effort she controlled it. She turned to her father. "Father, don't you think Maizie had better have lemon ice cream soda?" she asked.

"Anything she wants; anything she wants," Mr. Procter answered and not lowering his voice, even in Miss Smithson's presence: "What do you think you'll have, Suzanna?"

"I'll have a lemon ice cream soda," said Suzanna primly. And she had difficulty in restraining her tears when Maizie deliberately gave her command for chocolate ice cream soda. When the orders came Suzanna scarcely touched her gla.s.s. Covertly she watched Miss Smithson; she saw, how daintily that lady ate her plain vanilla ice cream; perhaps, after all, even teachers found it necessary to find some subsistence and Miss Smithson had hit upon ice cream as the most aesthetic. At least Suzanna was forced to believe this in her endeavor to keep intact her ideal of Miss Smithson.

Then Miss Smithson said in a pleasant, every-day voice:

"I'm glad to have this opportunity, Mr. Procter, of asking you if Suzanna may take part in an Indian Drill I expect to give at school next month."

"Why, I can see no reason against her taking part," said Mr. Procter.

"You would enjoy such an occasion, would you not, Suzanna?"

"She will need an outfit," Miss Smithson went on, treading delicately, since in part she guessed the state of the Procter finances and she wished to be very sure before implicating Suzanna in any embarra.s.sing situation, "including dancing slippers, though I may be able to rent the Indian costumes from a masquerader in the city, and then the cost will be lessened."

"That will be all right," said Mr. Procter immediately. "Just tell us the clothes she will need and her mother will get them."

"That's very nice," said Miss Smithson, though she felt still a little uneasy.

"When will the affair take place?" Mr. Procter asked.

"On the fifteenth of October. We have ample time for rehearsals."

A little later Miss Smithson shook hands with Suzanna's father, murmuring something conventional about his being fortunate in the possession of such an interesting family. Then she was gone.

The children, bidding father good-bye, hastened on home. They burst into the house, anxious to tell mother all about the meeting with Miss Smithson.

Mrs. Procter listened interestedly. "And father said I might take part in the Indian Drill," said Suzanna. "I shall have to have an outfit perhaps and dancing shoes."

"What did father say about that?" asked Mrs. Procter, an anxious little frown growing between her eyes.

"He said you would get them for me," Suzanna returned. She, too, looked a little anxiously at her mother. "But Miss Smithson said perhaps she could hire the Indian costumes."

Mrs. Procter's expression lightened.

"Well, perhaps she can," she said.

"And if she can't, mother?" Suzanna breathlessly awaited the answer.

"Well, we'll manage some way."

And Suzanna was satisfied.

A week later Mr. Procter returned home, carrying a mysterious looking parcel.

"For you, Suzanna," he said, his eyes sparkling. "But let's not open it until after supper."

Suzanna reluctantly put the package to one side. That supper would never end that evening she had a firm conviction.

And yet the end was reached, and she was opening the package, attended by the entire family. At last her eager eyes swept the contents, and her little beating heart for the moment palpitated strangely in her throat, for there lay a pair of shoes.

"Shoes," said Mr. Procter, "for you to wear in the Indian Drill. I saw them thrown out in a little booth when I went into Lane's shoe shop for a piece of leather to be made into washers. They really were marked at so ridiculously low a figure that I thought at once we could surely afford them for Suzanna. They are, I should judge, the very thing for the Indian Drill."

To all of which Suzanna listened gravely. Her heart had gone back to its normal rhythm, but her eyes could not leave the atrocities lying before her. Truly, they were of fine leather, but with their high French heels, and flat gilt b.u.t.tons, they might have been in style when Suzanna's mother was a very little girl, and, to be really candid, they would have lain under the anathema of being out of date even then. But over and beyond the painful vintage of the shoes was the fact that Miss Smithson had announced that all the girls taking part in the Indian Drill should wear the same kind of shoes. She had gone farther and told the children that the right kind of shoes could be obtained at Bryson's for a dollar and forty-eight cents a pair, a really reduced price because fourteen pairs were to be purchased. She had finished by giving the children the number to be called for, "A-14116." Suzanna knew the number well; she had repeated it mentally over and over again.

Finally Suzanna found her voice. "They're very nice, daddy," she said.

"Yes, they are very nice," he said. "See, you can turn them up. They're as soft as a kid glove."

"Well, since you've bought the shoes," said Mrs. Procter, "and probably at a very reasonable figure--" she paused, and Mr. Procter finished:

"Yes, they were only forty-eight cents, a remarkable bargain, I think."

"Remarkable," said Mrs. Procter, picking them up. "Why, I believe they're a handmade shoe! Well," she went on, "since the shoes are accounted for, I think if I have to I can quite easily manage the rest of the outfit."

Suzanna's heart sank lower. She only wondered miserably if her mother, seeing a piece of inexpensive goods of almost any shade, and finding a pattern easy to manage, would make up what she thought would do quite well for the Indian Drill costume. Then her thoughts returned to the shoes. Perhaps after all they wouldn't fit! She was enabled by that emanc.i.p.ating thought to turn a happier face to her father and again to thank him.

But alas, the shoes fitted perfectly.

"I think," said Suzanna desperately, "that perhaps they're a little bit too small--narrow, I mean."

"Do they hurt you?" asked her mother.

Suzanna had to confess that they didn't hurt.

"They certainly make your foot look very nice and slender," said her father.

Well, Suzanna thought miserably, she should have to wear them, and in that belief all interest in the Indian Drill left her. She simply couldn't, she felt, take her lead on the eventful day wearing those shoes. Every eye in the audience, she knew, would be fixed upon them, so different from those of the other girls, so terribly old-fashioned, as instinctively she sensed them to be.

Mrs. Procter carefully wrapped the bargains in the original tissue paper. She was happy in the thought that her little daughter was provided with a pretty and appropriate pair of dancing shoes.

But it was very perfunctorily that Suzanna went through the ensuing rehearsals at school. Her spirits were not lifted even when Miss Smithson announced that the costumes were to be obtained through a masquerader at the small cost of twenty-five cents for each pupil. But at length, the child's natural persevering force had its way, and she set her mind to studying the question of how to avoid wearing the unsuitable shoes and still preserve her father's confidence in his own good judgment. Usually she asked no help, working alone on the problems which a.s.sailed her, but suddenly the thought of her friend Drusilla came to her. She would ask Drusilla what she thought about the matter.