by Jean Webster
Miss Jellings herself seemed to be a bit on edge. She snapped out her orders with a curtness that brought a jerkily quick response from forty waving Indian clubs. As she stood straight and slim in her gymnasium suit, her cheeks flushed with exercise, she looked quite as young as any of her pupils. But if she appeared young, she also appeared determined. No instructor in the school, not even Miss Lord in Latin, kept stricter discipline.
"One, two, three, four--Patty Wyatt! Keep your eyes to the front. It isn't necessary for you to watch the clock. I shall dismiss the class when I am ready. Over your heads. One, two, three, four." Finally, when nerves were almost at the breaking point, came the grateful order, "Attention! Right about face. March. Clubs in racks. Double quick. Halt. Break ranks."
With a relieved whoop, the class dispersed.
"Thank heaven, there's only one more week of it!" Patty breathed, as they regained their own quarters in Paradise Alley.
"Good-by to Gym forever!" Conny waved a slipper over her head. "Hooray!"
"Isn't Jelly awful?" Patty demanded, still smarting from the recent insult. "She never used to be so bad. What on earth has got into her?"
"She is pretty snappy," Priscilla agreed. "But I like her just the same. She's so--so sort of spirited, you know--like a skittish horse."
"Urn," growled Patty. "I'd like to see a good, big, husky man get the upper hand of Jelly once, and just make her toe the mark!"
"You two will have to hurry," Priscilla warned, "if you want to get into your costumes up here. Martin starts in half an hour."
"We'll be ready!" Patty was already plunging her face into an inky mixture in the wash bowl.
The fancy-dress lawn fête, which St. Ursula's School held on the last Friday in every May, had occurred the evening before; and this afternoon the girls were redonning their costumes to make a trip to the village photographer's. The complicated costumes, that required time and space for their proper adjustment, were to be assumed at the school and driven down in the hearse. Those more simple of arrangement were to go in the trolley car, and be donned in the cramped quarters of the gallery dressing-room.
Patty and Conny, whose make-up was a very delicate matter, were dressing at the school. They had gone as Gypsies--not comic opera Gypsies, but real Gypsies, dirty and ragged and patched. (They had daily dusted the room with their costumes for a week before the fête.) Patty wore one brown stocking and one black, with a conspicuous hole in the right calf. Conny's toes protruded from one shoe, and the sole of the other flapped. Their hair was unkempt and the stain on their faces streaked. They were the last word in realism.
They scrambled into their dresses to-day with little ceremony, and hitched them together anyhow. Conny caught up a tambourine and Patty a worn-out pack of cards, and they clattered down the tin-covered back stairs. In the lower hall they came face to face with Miss Jellings, clothed in cool muslin, and in a more affable frame of mind. Patty never held her grudges long; she had already forgotten her momentary indignation at not being allowed to look at the clock.
"You cross-a my hand with silver? I tell-a your fortune."
She danced up to the gymnasium teacher with a flutter of scarlet petticoats, and poked out a dirty hand.
"Nice-a fortune," Conny added with a persuasive rattle of the tambourine. "Tall, dark-a young man."
"You impudent little ragamuffins!" Miss Jellings took them each by the shoulder and turned them for inspection. "What have you done to your faces?"
"Washed 'em in black coffee."
Miss Jellings shook her head and laughed.
"You're a disgrace to the school!" she pronounced. "Don't let any policeman see you, or he'll arrest you for vagabonds."
"Patty! Conny!--Hurry up. The hearse is starting."
Priscilla appeared in the doorway and waved her gridiron frantically. Priscilla, late about finding a costume, at the last moment had blasphemously gone as St. Laurence, draped in a sheet, with the kitchen broiler under her arm.
"We're coming! Tell him to wait." Patty dashed out.
"Don't you want a coat?" Conny shrieked after her.
"No--come on--we don't need coats."
The two raced down the drive after the wagonette--Martin never waited for laggards; he let them run and catch up. They sprang onto the rear step; and half-a-dozen outstretched hands hauled them in, head first.
They found the photographer's waiting-room a scene of the maddest confusion. When sixty excited people occupy the normal space of twelve, the effect is not restful.
"Did anyone bring a button-hook?"
"Lend me some powder."
"That's my safety-pin!"
"Where'd you put the burnt cork?"
"Is my hair a perfect sight?"
"Fasten me up--please!"
"Does my petticoat show?"
Everybody babbled at once, and nobody listened.
"I say, let's get out of this--I'm simply roasting!"
St. Laurence seized the Gypsies by the shoulder and shoved them into the vacant gallery. They squeezed themselves, with a sigh of relief, onto a shaky flight of six narrow stairs before the breezes of an open window.
"I know exactly what ails Jelly!" Patty spoke with the air of carrying on a conversation.
"What?" asked the others, with interest.
"She's had a quarrel with that Laurence Gilroy man who is manager at the electric light place. Don't you remember how he used to be hanging about all the time? And now he never comes at all? He was out every day in the Christmas vacation. They used to go walking together--and without any chaperone, too! You would think the Dowager would have made an awful fuss, but she didn't seem to. Anyway, you should have seen the way Miss Jellings treated that man--it was per-fect-ly dreadful! The way she jumps on Irene McCullough is nothing to the way she jumped on him."
"He doesn't have to work off demerits. He's a fool to stand it," said Conny simply.
"He doesn't stand it any more."
"How do you know?"
"Well, I--sort of heard. I was in the library alcove one day in the Christmas vacation, reading the 'Murders in the Rue Morgue,' when Jelly and Mr. Gilroy walked in. They didn't see me, and I didn't pay any attention to them at first--I'd just got to the place where the detective says, 'Is that the mark of a human hand?'--but pretty soon they got to scrapping so that I couldn't help but hear, and I felt sort of embarrassed about interrupting."
"What did they say?" asked Conny, impatiently brushing aside her apologies.
"I didn't grasp it entirely. He was trying to explain about something, and she wouldn't listen to a word he said--she was perfectly horrid. You know,--the way she is when she says, 'I understand it perfectly. I don't care to hear any excuse. You may take ten demerits, and report on Saturday for extra gymnasium.'--Well, they kept that up for fifteen minutes, both of 'em getting stiffer and stiffer. Then he took his hat and went. And you know, I don't believe he ever came back--I've never seen him. And now, she's sorry. She's been as cross as a bear ever since."
"And she can be awfully nice," said Priscilla.
"Yes, she can," said Patty. "But she's too cocky. I'd just like to see that man come back, and show her her place!"
The masqueraders trooped in and the serious business of the day commenced. The school posed as a whole, then an infinity of smaller groups disentangled themselves and posed separately, while those who were not in the picture stood behind the camera and made the others laugh.
"Young ladies!" the exasperated photographer implored. "Will you kindly be quiet for just two seconds? You have made me spoil three plates. And will that monk on the end stop giggling? Now! All ready. Please keep your eyes on the stove-pipe hole, and hold your positions while I count three. One, two, three--thank you very much!"
He removed his plate with a flourish, and dove into the dark room.
It was Patty's and Conny's turn to be taken alone, but St. Ursula and her Eleven Thousand Virgins were clamoring for precedence on the ground of superior numbers, an
d they made such a turmoil that the two Gypsies politely stood aside.
Keren Hersey, as St. Ursula, and eleven little Junior A's--each playing the manifold part of a Thousand Virgins--made up the group. It was to be a symbolical picture, Keren explained.
When the Gypsies' turn came a second time, Patty had the misfortune to catch her dress on a nail and tear a three-cornered rent in the front. It was too large a hole for even a Gypsy to carry off with propriety; she retired to the dressing-room and fastened the edges together with white basting thread.
Finally, last of all, they presented themselves in their dirt and tatters. The photographer was an artist, and he received them with appreciative delight. The others had been patently masqueraders, but these were the real thing. He photographed them dancing, and wandering on a lonely moor with threatening canvas clouds behind them. He was about to take them in a forest, with a camp fire, and a boiling kettle slung from three sticks--when Conny suddenly became aware of a brooding quiet that had settled on the place.
"Where is everybody?"
She returned from a hasty excursion into the waiting-room, divided between consternation and laughter.
"Patty! The hearse has gone!--And the street-car people are waiting on the corner by Marsh and Elkins's."
"Oh, the beasts! They knew we were in here." Patty dropped her three sticks and rose precipitately. "Sorry!" she called to the photographer, who was busily dusting off the kettle. "We've got to run for it."
"And we haven't any coats!" wailed Conny. "Miss Wadsworth won't take us in the car in these clothes."
"She'll have to," said Patty simply. "She can't leave us on the corner."
They clattered downstairs, but wavered an instant in the friendly darkness of the doorway; there was no time, however, for maidenly hesitations, and taking their courage in both hands, they plunged into the Saturday afternoon crowd that thronged Main Street.
"Oh, Mama! Quick! Look at the Gypsies," a little boy squealed as the two pushed past.
"Heavens!" Conny whispered. "I feel like a circus parade."
"Hurry!" Patty panted, taking her by the hand and beginning to run. "The car's stopped and they're getting in--Wait! Wait!" She frenziedly waved the tambourine above her head.
An express wagon at the crossing blocked their progress. The last of the Eleven Thousand Virgins climbed aboard, without once glancing over her shoulder; and the car, unheeding, clanged away, and became a yellow spot in the distance. The two Gypsies stood on the corner and stared at one another in blank interrogation.
"I haven't a cent--have you?"
"Not one."
"How are we going to get home?"
"I haven't an idea."
Patty felt her elbow jostled. She turned to find young John Drew Dominick Murphy, a protégé of the school, and an intimate acquaintance of her own, regarding her with impish delight.
"Hey, youse! Give us a song and dance."
"At least our friends don't recognize us," said Conny, drawing what comfort she could from her incognito.
Quite a crowd had gathered by now, and it was rapidly growing larger. Pedestrians had to make a detour into the street in order to get past.
"It wouldn't take us long," said Patty, a spark of mischief breaking through the blankness of her face, "to earn money enough for a carriage--you thump the tambourine and I'll dance the sailor's hornpipe."
"Patty! Behave yourself." Conny for once brought a dampening supply of common sense to bear on her companion. "We're going to graduate in another week. For goodness' sake, don't let's get expelled first."
She grasped her by the elbow and shoved her insistently down a side street. John Drew Murphy and his friends followed for several blocks, but having gazed their fill, and perceiving that the Gypsies had no entertainment to offer, they gradually dropped away.
"Well, what shall we do?" asked Conny when they had finally shaken off the last of the small boys.
"I s'pose we could walk."
"Walk!" Conny exhibited her flapping sole. "You don't expect me to walk three miles in that shoe?"
"Very well," said Patty. "What shall we do?"
"We might go back to the photographer's and borrow some car-fare."
"No! I'm not going to parade myself the length of Main Street again with that hole in my stocking."
"Very well," Conny shrugged. "Think of something."
"I suppose we could go to the livery stable and--"
"It's on the other side of town--I can't flap all that distance. Every time I take a step, I have to lift my foot ten inches high."
"Very well." It was Patty's turn to shrug. "Perhaps you can think of something better?"
"I think the simplest way would be to take a car, and ask the conductor to charge it to us."
"Yes--and explain for the benefit of all the passengers that we belong at St. Ursula's School? It would be all over town by night, and the Dowager would be furious."
"Very well--what shall we do?"
They were standing at the moment before a comfortable frame house with three children romping on the veranda. The children left off their play to come to the top of the steps and stare.
"Come on!" Patty urged. "We'll sing the 'Gypsy Trail.'" (This was the latest song that had swept the school.) "I'll play an accompaniment on the tambourine, and you can flap your sole. Maybe they'll give us ten cents. It would be a beautiful lark to earn our car-fare home--I'm sure it's worth ten cents to hear me sing."
Conny glanced up and down the deserted street. No policeman was in sight. She grudgingly allowed herself to be drawn up the walk, and the music began. The children applauded loudly; and the two were just congratulating themselves on a very credible performance, when the door opened and a woman appeared--a first cousin to Miss Lord.
"Stop that noise immediately! There's somebody sick inside."
The tone also was reminiscent of Latin. They turned and ran as fast as Conny's flapping sole would take her. When they had put three good blocks between themselves and the Latin woman, they dropped down on a friendly stepping-stone, and leaned against each other's shoulders and laughed.
A man rounded the corner of the house before them, pushing a mowing machine.
"Here, you!" he ordered. "Move on."
They got up, meekly, and moved on several blocks further. They were going in exactly the opposite direction from St. Ursula's school, but they couldn't seem to hit on anything else to do, so they kept on moving mechanically. They had arrived in the outskirts of the village by now, and they presently found themselves face to face with a tall chimney and a group of low buildings set in a wide enclosure--the water-works and electric plant.
A light of hope dawned in Patty's eyes.
"I'll tell you! We'll go and ask Mr. Gilroy to take us home in his automobile."
"Do you know him?" Conny asked dubiously. She had received so many affronts that she was growing timid.
"Yes! I know him intimately. He was under foot every minute during the Christmas vacation. We had a snow fight one day. Come on! He'll love to run us out. It will give him an excuse to make up with Jelly."
They passed up a narrow tarred walk toward the brick building labeled "Office." Four clerks and a typewriter girl in the outer office interrupted their work to laugh as the two apparitions appeared in the door. The young man nearest them whirled his chair around in order to get a better view.
"Hello, girls!" he said with cheerful familiarity. "Where'd you spring from?"
The typewriter, meanwhile, was making audible comments upon the discrepancies in Patty's hosiery.
Patty's face flushed darkly under the coffee.
"We have called to see Mr. Gilroy," she said with dignity.
"This is Mr. Gilroy's busy day," the young man grinned. "Wouldn't you rather talk to me?"
Patty drew herself up haughtily.
"Please tell Mr. Gilroy--at once--that we are waiting to speak to him."
"Certainly! I beg your pardon." The young man sprang to hi
s feet with an air of elaborate politeness. "Will you kindly give me your cards?"
"I don't happen to have a card with me to-day. Just say that two ladies wish to speak with him."
"Ah, yes. One moment, please--Won't you be seated?"
He offered his own chair to Patty, and bringing forward another, presented it to Conny with a Chesterfieldian bow. The clerks tittered delightedly at this bit of comedy acting, but the Gypsies did not condescend to think it funny. They accepted the chairs with a frigid, "Thank you," and sat stiffly upright staring at the wastebasket in their most distant society manner. While the deferential young man was conveying the message to the private office of his chief, public comment advanced from Patty's stockings to Conny's shoes. He returned presently, and with unruffled politeness invited them please to step this way. He ushered them in with a bow.
Mr. Gilroy was writing, and it was a second before he glanced up. His eyes widened with astonishment--the clerk had delivered the message verbatim. He leaned back in his chair and studied the ladies from head to foot, then emitted a curt:
"Well?"
There was not a trace of recognition in his glance.
Patty's only intention had been to announce their identity, and invite him to deliver them at St. Ursula's door, but Patty was incapable of approaching any matter by the direct route when a labyrinth was also available. She drew a deep breath, and to Conny's consternation, plunged into the labyrinth.
"You Mr. Laurence K. Gilroy?" she dropped a curtsy. "I come find-a you."
"So I see," said Mr. Laurence K. Gilroy, dryly. "And now that you've found me, what do you want?"
"I want tell-a your fortune," Patty glibly dropped into the lingo she and Conny had practised on the school the night before. "You cross-a my hand with silver--I tell-a your fortune."
This was no situation of Conny's choosing, but she was always staunchly game.