"Yes?" commented Miss Berta, with an inflection so maddening that in three seconds she was fleeing for her life.

CHAPTER V

THE GIFTIE GIE US

It had been raining for a week. Berta was writing a poem, her elbows on the desk, her hair clutched in one hand, her pen in the other. At the window Robbie Belle was working happily over her curve-tracing, now and then drawing back to gaze with admiration at the sweeping lines of her problem. Once the slanting beat of the drops against the pane caught her eye, and she paused for a moment to consider their angle of incidence.

She decided that she liked curves better than angles. She did not wonder why, as Berta would have done, but having recognized the fact of preference turned placidly back to her instruments.

Splash! came a fiercer gust of rain, and Berta stirred uneasily, tossing her head as if striving subconsciously to shake off a vague irritation of hearing. Another heavier sound was mingling with the steady patter.

Rub-a-dub-dub, rub-a-dub-dub! Robbie Belle glanced up and listened, her pencil uplifted.

"It's Bea," she said, "she's drumming with her knuckles on the floor in the corridor. She says that it is against her principles to knock on the door when it has an engaged sign on it. Shall I say come?"

Apparently Berta did not hear the question. With her chin grasped firmly in one fist, she was staring very hard at a corner of the ceiling where there was nothing in particular. Robbie looked at her and sighed, but the resignation in the sigh was transfigured by loving awe. She picked up her pencil in patient acquiescence. Berta must not be disturbed.

"Chir-awhirr, chir-awhirr, tweet, tweet, tweet!" It was Bea's best soprano, with several extra trills strewn between the consonants. "Listen to the mocking-bird. Oh, the mocking-bird is singing on the bough. Bravo, encore! Chir-awhirr! Encore!

"'Make me over, Mother April, When the sap begins to stir.

When thy flowery hand delivers All the mountain-prisoned rivers, And thy great heart throbs and quivers To revive the joys that were, Make me over, Mother April, When the sap begins to stir.'"

Robbie Belle was leaning back in her chair to listen in serene enjoyment.

She loved to hear Bea sing. Berta was listening, too, but with an absent expression, as if still in a dream.

The voice outside the door declared itself again. "Ahem, written by Bliss Carmen. Sung by Beatrice Leigh. Ahem!" It was a noticeably emphatic ahem, and certainly deserved a more appreciative reply than continued silence from within. After a minute's inviting pause, the singer piped up afresh.

"'Make me over in the morning From the rag-bag of the world.

Sc.r.a.ps of deeds and duds of daring, Home-brought stuff from far-sea faring, Faded colors once so flaring, Shreds of banners long since furled, Hues of ash and hints of glory From the rag-bag of the world.' Ahem!"

The concluding cough was so successfully convulsive that Robbie Belle's mouth opened suddenly.

"It must be something important," she said.

Berta woke up from her trance. "Come!" she called.

At the first breath of the syllable, the door flew open with a specially prepared bang, and Bea shot in with an instantaneous and voluntary velocity that carried her to the centre of the rug.

"Oh, girls!" she exclaimed in the excited tone of a breathless and delighted messenger bringing great and astonishing news, "it's raining!"

In the ensuing stillness, she could almost hear the disgusted thud of expectation dashed to earth.

"Villain!" said Berta, and swung around to her interrupted poem.

Robbie's puzzled stare developed slowly into a smile. "I think that is a joke," she said.

Then Bea laughed. She collapsed on the sofa and shook from her boots to her curls. It was contagious laughter that made Robbie chuckle in sympathy and Berta grin broadly at a discreet pigeon-hole of her desk.

When the visitor resumed sufficient self-possession to enable her to enunciate, she sat up and inquired anxiously,

"Did you hear me sing?"

Berta regarded her solemnly. "We did," she answered.

"Yes," said Robbie Belle.

"Well, that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to change. I'm going to be made over, Mother April. I'm going to turn into a genius for a while.

I've always wanted to be a genius. It's no fun to be systematic and steady and conscientious, and so forth, is it, Robbie Belle? At least it isn't very much fun, considering what might be done with our opportunities. So I intend to behave as if I had an artistic temperament.

I am going to let my work pile up, cut late, skip meals, break engagements, never answer letters, give in to moods, be generally irresponsible, and so forth, just like Berta. I'm going to----"

"What!"

Bea laughed again mischievously at the sound of outraged dignity in Berta's voice. "Yes, I am. I have the spring fever: I don't want to do anything, and I don't want to do nothing either. In fact, this is the single solitary thing I do want to do. That's the reason why it will be so agreeable to be a genius. At least, it will be agreeable to me, if not to my contemporaries and companions. I shall do exactly as I please at the moment. Another reason will be the thrill of novelty--I'm simply dying for excitement."

"Thrill of novelty!" groaned Berta. "I infer that you never do as you please. You continually 'sackerifice' yourself----"

"Yes, yes, of course, but I was afraid you hadn't noticed." Bea raised her fingers to smooth the corners of her mouth straight. "Now, you've been growing worse--I mean, more and more of a genius ever since entering college. I myself ought to be called Prexie's a.s.sistant, somewhat after the order of Miss Edgeworth's 'Parent's a.s.sistant,' you know, because my career has been such an awful warning to the undergraduate. But you're an example----"

"I am not a genius," Berta spoke with biting severity of accent; "Lucine Brett is a genius, and I despise her."

"You used to despise her," put in Robbie Belle gently.

Berta caught her lip between her teeth for a fleeting instant of irritation, for she was not naturally meek. Then she glanced at Robbie with a quick smile all the sweeter for the under-throb of repentance over her impatient impulse. "All right, I used to long ago. But to return to our guest. I am not a genius, I hasten to remark again. Furthermore I shall be excessively obliged if Miss Leigh will march out of this apartment and stay where she belongs."

In the pause which was occupied by Bea in considering a choice of retorts stupendous, Robbie spoke again.

"I think Bea misses Lila while she is in the infirmary," she said.

Bea swung magnificently on her heel. "I have decided that the proper rejoinder is a crushing silence. I wish you good afternoon." At the door she halted. "And I shall be a genius for a spell. You just watch me and see. Sh.e.l.ley was lawless, you know, and Burns and Carlyle, I guess, and Goethe and George Eliot----"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "OH, THANK YOU; I DON'T WANT ANYTHING TO EAT"]

"What!"

This was a shout of such indignation that Bea vanished instanter. A moment later she poked her head around the lintel.

"Well, they were," she said, "and so are you. It is a marvel to me how you hoodwink Prexie about your work. Pure luck! Vale!"

Berta's repartee consisted of a sofa pillow aimed accurately at the diminishing crack.

The next day was Sat.u.r.day. Bea failed to appear at breakfast--a catastrophe which had not occurred before in the memory of the oldest junior. Berta who usually arrived herself half an hour late headed a procession of inquiring friends, three of whom bore gla.s.ses of milk and plates of rolls to supply the dire omission. A succession of crescendo taps at her door was at length rewarded by a drowsy-eyed apparition in bath-robe and worsted slippers.

"Oh, thank----" she exclaimed at sight of the sympathetic group, and suddenly remembered that she must be different from her ordinary self. "I don't want anything to eat. I didn't feel exactly like getting up early.

I seem to prefer to be alone this morning." And she managed, though with a hand that faltered at the misdeed, to shut the door in their astonished faces.

"Well, I never!" "What has happened?" "Was it a telegram?" "How perfectly atrocious!" "Is she sick?" "Beatrice Leigh to treat us with such unutterable rudeness!"

Berta listened with a queer little smile on her sensitively cut lips.