The Story Book Girls Part 61

Time stood still once more, but it took the last of the frown from between the eyes of Mr. Symington.

"Now for Isobel's wedding party," cried he.

Mr. Leighton was stunned a little with the news. "Only one stipulation,"

said he. "I want to tell Elma myself."

Mabel was terribly disappointed.

"Oh, papa--of all people--I wanted to tell Elma."

He was adamant however, even when Mr. Symington added his requests.

"You've interfered seriously enough between me and one of my daughters,"

Mr. Leighton said severely. "Leave me the other."

So nothing was mentioned until Mr. Leighton should tell Elma. Mrs.

Leighton was nervous about the whole thing, yet in an underhand way very proud of Mabel.

"I can't see that any of you are at all suited to be the wife of a man like Mr. Symington," she said to Mabel pessimistically. "But your father thinks it is all right." She had had rather a long day with Aunt Katharine.

Elma saw that the clouds had lifted where Mabel was concerned, and Mr.

Symington was in magnificent spirits. She thought they might have told her something, but she was sent to lie down with no news at all until the dance in the evening. Isobel left regally. There was not much of the usual scrimmage of a wedding-leave-taking about her departure. Her toque and costume were irreproachable. Miss Meredith attended her dutifully, as though she were a bridesmaid herself. But with Robin she had felt too motherly for that. Indeed, some new qualities in Miss Meredith seemed to be coming uppermost.

Dancing was in full swing in the evening when Mr. Leighton methodically put on an overcoat and took Elma to sit out in the verandah. "It is to prevent your dancing too much," he told her.

Elma had the feeling of being manipulated as she had been when she was ill. What did all this mystery mean? She tucked in readily enough beside her father. The night was warm, with a clear moon, and the lights from the drawing-room and on the balcony shed pretty patches of colour on her white dress and cloak.

Mr. Leighton began to talk of Adelaide Maud of all people. She was there, with her sisters. They had at last dropped the armour of etiquette which had prevented more than one from ever appearing at the Leightons.

"I don't suppose any of you really know what that girl has come through," said Mr. Leighton. "All these years it has gone on. A constant criticism, you know. Mrs. Dudgeon found out long ago about Cuthbert, and what Cuthbert calls 'roasted' her continually. Adelaide Maud remained the fine magnificently true girl she is to-day. That is a difficult matter when one's own family openly despises the people one has set one's heart on. She never gave a sign of giving in either way--did she?"

"Not a sign," said Elma. "Adelaide Maud is a delicious brick, she always has been. The Story Books have come true at last."

"It does not sound like being in battle," said Mr. Leighton, in a pertinacious way. "But a battle of that sort is far more real than many of the fights we back up in a public manner. One relieves the poor, and you girls give concerts for hospitals, but who can give a concert to relieve the like of the trouble that Adelaide Maud has gone through?

She never wavered."

Elma thought of another fight--should she tell her father?

"We talk about Ridgetown being a slow place, but what a drama can be lived through here!" went on Mr. Leighton. "Isobel, for instance, thinks there's nothing in life unless one attends fifty b.a.l.l.s a month.

Yet she lived her little drama in Ridgetown. And she has learned to be civil to Miss Meredith. There's another fight for you. It cost her several pangs, let me tell you."

("What did it all lead to?" thought Elma.)

"Oh, there were other fights too, papa, but one I think is over. Have you seen Mabel's face to-night?"

Mr. Leighton started.

Elma required some sort of confidant, "or I shall explode or something,"

she explained. She told her father about Mr. Symington.

"And I've been worrying so because it seemed so sad about Mabel. And she never gave it away, did she? And when you all thought so much of Isobel when she first came, and Mabel was getting dropped all round, she never said a word, did she?"

"No," said Mr. Leighton, with a long-drawn impatient sort of relief in his voice. "No, but you did. You talked so much about the man all through your illness that your mother thought you were in love with him yourself. Ridiculous nonsense," he said testily. "And here have I been trying to brace you up to hearing that Mabel is engaged to him, and the scoundrel wishes to marry her at once."

Dr. Merryweather, who had said that Elma was not to be excited, ought to have been on the spot just then. She sat on her father's knee and hugged him.

"Oh, papa, papa, how glorious," said she. "Never mind, I shall always stay with you, I shall, I shall."

"Oh, will you?" said Mr. Leighton dismally. "Mabel said the same thing not so long ago."

Mrs. Leighton and Aunt Katharine came on the balcony, and behind them, Mabel and Mr. Symington.

"Isn't this a midsummer's night's dream?" sighed Elma, after the congratulations were over. "I shall get up in the morning ever afterwards, and I shall say, 'Now here there dawneth another blue day'--even although it's as black as midnight."

"Well, now that we're rid of Mabel," said Aunt Katharine placidly, "when will your turn come along?"

"Oh, Elma is going to stay with me," said Mr. Leighton.

"H'm. Well, she always admired Miss Grace," said Aunt Katharine.

"There's nothing like being an old maid from the beginning."

Elma stirred herself gently, and laughed in the moonlight.

"Miss Grace is to be married to Dr. Merryweather," she said with a smile. It was her piece of news, reserved till now for a proper audience.

Miss Grace had told her anxiously in the course of the afternoon. "Oh,"

Elma had said, "how nice! Dr. Merryweather is such a duck!"

"Do you think so?" had asked Miss Grace seriously. "Miss Annie used to think he was a little loud in his manners."

Miss Grace would ever be loyal to Miss Annie. Adelaide Maud came out just then with Cuthbert. "How much finer to have been loyal to the like of Cuthbert!" Elma could not help the thought. Ah, well, there were fights and fights, and no doubt Miss Grace had won on her particular battlefield.

A new dance commenced indoors, and some came searching for partners.

"Mr. Leighton," said the voice of George Maclean, "won't you spare Elma for this dance?"

They turned round to look at him.

"Elma wants to stay with me," said Mr. Leighton gravely, putting his arms round her.

"Hph!" said Aunt Katharine in an undertone. "It's another Miss Grace, sure enough."

"Why don't you go and dance?" asked Adelaide Maud of Elma.

There were her two ideals, Miss Grace and Adelaide Maud, crossing swords as it were with one another. And there was George Maclean waiting at the window of the drawing-room. A Strauss waltz struck up inside, one which she loved. Ah, well, there were several kinds of fights in the world.

She felt in some inscrutable way that it was "weak" to stay with her father.

She went in with George Maclean.