The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted Part 15

That was such a delightful joke that they both laughed aloud and Mrs.

Eldred and Frieda were quite in the room before they realized it, and sprang up to greet them with cordiality, if not with the ceremony Hannah had planned for.

Those first days Frieda lived in a busy whirl. Hannah, once at home, and recovered from the excitement of the day in Boston, was ashamed of her conduct on that occasion, and tried to make up for it by all sorts of thoughtful attentions to Frieda, which, with the shade of formality they involved, added a little to the loneliness they were meant to combat.

Mrs. Eldred, giving up, or suspending for a time, the apparently hopeless task of winning Frieda's confidence, attended to her wardrobe with a rapidity and fervor which astonished Frieda, accustomed to long deliberations on such matters, and no reckless buying. Even the pretty frocks and hats and shoes did not please her. She felt loyalty demanded that she should wear the things she had brought from home, and it was not till Mrs. Eldred had given her her mother's letter to read that she consented to lay aside the German garments. Mr. Eldred took her about the city, and thoroughly enjoyed her comments on things American, a scorn thinly veiled by polite phrases, or by an expressive silence.

She was silent most of the time, for the language was her greatest obstacle. She remembered vividly the superior feeling she had had in Berlin, when she had watched Mr. Eldred wrestle with a conditional or had heard Mrs. Eldred struggle to p.r.o.nounce "ch." It was not nearly so pleasant to be struggling one's self, with a quite senseless "th," for instance. Her heart filled with rage when she caught Hannah listening intently to her carefully enunciated words, and then saying suddenly with relief, "O!" as their meaning dawned upon her. Frieda had been at the head of her cla.s.s in English.

"It's really because you p.r.o.nounce so very well," Hannah explained apologetically, on one of these occasions. "You are so much more exact than we ever think of being, that it gives an unfamiliar sound to words.

And besides, yours is English English and ours is United States."

"But English English must be best," protested Frieda, and Hannah forgot Miss Lyndesay's warning and "flared up" for a minute, but immediately recollected herself, and ordered an ice-cream soda as a peace-offering, notwithstanding the fact that Frieda found the taste disagreeable.

"You'll like it, when you are used to it," she said comfortingly. "You don't have them at home, you know."

"No," growled Frieda, choking on a spoonful. "And I'm glad we don't.

Sundaes aren't so bad, but the name is foolish! I do not wonder Miss Lyndesay lives most of the time in Europe!"

The fifth day matters came to a climax. Karl had come over from Cambridge to spend Sunday. Hannah and he seemed to be on the best of terms. They talked English faster than Frieda could understand, and they seemed to have an endless stock of jokes that had no meaning for her.

Suddenly, after sitting with a brow like a thunder-cloud for a while, listening to them and declining to join in the fun, she started up and ran up stairs with a swift pounding gait that recalled to Hannah the way she used to tear madly off to school in the morning, fearful of being late.

Karl and Hannah, left behind, looked solemnly at each other. Karl whistled.

"_Die Kleine_ is irritated about something," he remarked.

"I don't wonder," said Hannah sympathizingly. "I always remember when it's too late to do any differently. She felt left out, I suppose, and you know you do use a terrible amount of slang, nowadays. I'm awfully ashamed of us, Karl!"

Karl pondered a moment. Then he said: "I'll fix it up all right. Here, you take this note up to Frieda. Just shove it under the door, if she won't let you in."

He wrote a few lines on a card and gave it to Hannah, who promptly ran away up stairs with it. Then Karl went into the study and telephoned a garage.

In a few minutes, Frieda, shy and somewhat red-eyed, came down stairs.

Hannah was nowhere to be seen, and Mrs. Eldred was out for the afternoon. At the door was a snorting automobile, with seats for just two.

"I knew Hannah would forgive us if we ran away by our two selves," said Karl in German, meeting Frieda in the hall, and conducting her out to the machine. "She knows enough about being in a foreign country to understand that sometimes you want to be with your very own people.

There! I'll have this thing running like a charm in about a minute. Sure you're not afraid to go out alone with me? I've learned a good deal about this kind of thing lately. It's one of the courses I'm taking at Harvard. Here we go!" And there they went, speeding down the street at a rate that made a policeman, half asleep on the corner, look about him with a start. Frieda's eyes shone, and she began to feel better.

Karl had evidently acquitted himself well in his course in motoring. He drove skilfully and easily, and they were soon outside the city in a pleasant country road. Almost any place would have seemed pleasant to Frieda just then, though, for Karl was talking cheerily, merrily, talking in German, talking of topics she knew about, and talking exclusively to her. She discovered that the day was much more of a day than she had thought. There was a quality in the air she had not noticed earlier in the afternoon. Presently she even became confidential. Karl, with eyes and hands busy, guiding the machine, bent an attentive ear as Frieda poured out her suppressed irritation of days.

"They think it is such a fine country, Karl. I cannot understand them.

If they had never travelled--but they have been over Europe! They have been in Berlin! And still they find matter for admiration in this dirty little city with its buildings all heights, and its no trees anywhere except in the parks. Where are their beautiful statues? Where is their Victory Avenue? Where are their bridges? _Ach!_ It is a poor cheap country. Tante Edith and Mr. Eldred are heavenly kind, and Hannah I have loved with a great love, but they have very little taste, and no sense at all."

Karl puckered up his lips in a low whistle, and Frieda blushed.

"I did not mean to say that, Karl," she said penitently. "I am their guest. They are heavenly kind, yes. _But_ I do not like the country."

It was a beautiful shady road they had come into then, and the hills at the end of it showed gracious curves.

"This reminds me," said Karl meditatively, "of a place I went through near the Rhine one summer vacation. It's really quite as charming, I believe. Look here, Frieda. I'm interested in the impression you make in this country. You're going to spend this year with a lot of girls who don't know much about Germany or Germans, and I don't mind telling you that I'm rather anxious to have you do us credit."

"I shall do Germany credit, everywhere," answered Frieda stoutly, but somewhat perturbed.

"I'd like to think that," answered Karl, "and on the whole I guess it's true, but if you keep on this way, I'm not so sure of it. You are sitting here this afternoon making general statements about America when you have seen only one of the less important cities. That doesn't strike me as the way one should judge. It doesn't seem like the kind of thing Professor Lange would do. He is very accurate and careful in his judgments. And next, you haven't shown much enthusiasm over the things the Eldreds have done for you the last day or two. Now, I never knew any one who was so unfailingly appreciative as Frau Professor Lange."

Frieda pouted. "But Hannah shows off."

"Shows off? Frieda, I'm afraid your sense of humor is rather one-sided.

Hannah may take advantage of your not understanding perfectly, but who taught her that that sort of thing was funny? Who told her the bra.s.s plate over the barber's door meant that cakes were for sale there, so that she almost went in to buy one?"

Frieda chuckled. "It was not long I could fool her. She soon learned too much. Besides, my mother would not let me."

"You still think it was justifiable and humorous, I notice. But what would you have said if Hannah had told you to say: 'So am I' when strangers said: 'I am glad to meet you'? That was what some one told me, when I first began talking English."

"If Hannah should tell me wrong, I would tell her what I think of her!"

blazed Frieda. "But you need not lecture any more, Karl. I understand, and I will be good. I will be better than Hannah. I will be better than yourself, than the saints, even. I will admire all things. Behold the ravishing country! The wonder of that sky! Not Italy, not Spain has such a dull gray color! The beauty of the dirty streets! The charm of the crowded street-cars! Only five cents a ride, sitting upon the laps of others! I will no longer sew on Sunday. I will never ask for beer. I will eat every morning little dry cushions of curled grain. I will rock madly. I will--"

"Hold on, Frieda!" shouted Karl. "Don't reform so fast. I can't keep within speaking distance of you. You know, the reason I scolded you so hard was because I sometimes feel just as you do about the whole country!"

Frieda put out her hand. "Let us make a compact. For the honor of Germany, we will be scrupulously careful of what we say about America, but sometimes, all by ourselves, we can say just what we feel like saying." Karl took her hand solemnly. "It's a bargain, and you are a Cor-r-rker-r-r!"

CHAPTER ELEVEN

BROOKMEADOW

Clara Lyndesay stood in the doorway of her Brookmeadow house, listening for the coming trolley. As she waited, she looked about her with satisfaction.

The big square house, freshly painted white, with green blinds at the windows, stood just at the edge of the broad elm-shaded road, known as the Albany Road because it had been, in stage-coach days, the main line between Albany and Boston. Just opposite the house was a broad meadow with a single elm in the center, and a clear line of hills for background. Boulder walls enclosed the meadow, and vines ran riot over them. The artist, looking, drew a deep breath.

"'The lot is fallen unto me in a fair ground. Yea, I have a goodly heritage,'" she thought to herself. "I think I shall call my wander-years over, and settle down here as Aunt Abigail hoped I would, and care for her old mahogany as she did, painting a picture now and then from my own doorway. The doorway itself is the most beautiful thing about the house," she added, stepping down the flagged path, to view it for the hundredth time that week. Brookmeadow houses were famous for their wonderful old doorways, with carved lintels, and this was not surpa.s.sed by any of them.

Its owner's contemplation was cut short by the far-off whir of the trolley, sounding clearly through the still morning. Miss Lyndesay walked quickly along the curving road to the Common where she was to receive her guests. Reaching the long narrow green, where a few cows nibbled placidly as in the days when a green in the center of the village was a necessary defensive measure, she walked idly up and down.

The straggling road under the great elms pa.s.sed the plain white meeting-house, dating from 1813, the Academy with its belfry, the little general store and post-office combined, and wound out of sight between dignified old houses, "like Aunt Abigail's--mine now," she corrected her thought happily. No one was in sight. Up the road came the trolley, jogging comfortably along. It stopped at the Common and its two pa.s.sengers almost fell into the arms that waited to receive them.

"O-eeeeee!" sighed Hannah, getting as close to Miss Lyndesay as she could on one side, while Frieda did the same on the other with a similar e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n.

"Two blue girls this time!" exclaimed Miss Lyndesay. "That is a very becoming suit, Frieda," and then forestalling any answer, for she had known of Frau Lange's letter to Mrs. Eldred and had guessed that Frieda would not take altogether kindly to the new clothes, she inquired of Hannah as to the health of her father and mother.

"They're all right," answered Hannah briefly. "And I am so glad to be here! Isn't it just the dearest, sleepiest place you ever saw in all your life?"

"Is it your first visit here?" asked Miss Lyndesay. "I supposed you knew these villages by heart."

"I don't," confessed Hannah. "I go to school all winter, and in the summer we go to the sh.o.r.e, and we haven't any aunts or grandmothers or things like that living around here, so I don't see places like this except in pa.s.sing through them."

"Well, you have a sort of aunt and grandmother combined living in Brookmeadow now, and I shall expect you to visit her often. How does it seem to you, Frieda?"

"It's bigger than I thought it would be," answered Frieda. "Hannah said it was a _Dorf_. I thought there would be only two or three houses, and many little huts all close together, but we pa.s.sed many houses."