Four Girls and a Compact.

by Annie Hamilton Donnell.

CHAPTER I.

"Wait for T.O.," commanded Loraine, and of course they waited. Loraine's commands were always obeyed, Laura Ann said, because her name was such a _queeny_ one. n.o.body else in the little colony--the "B-Hive"--had a queeny name.

"Though I just missed it," sighed Laura Ann. "Think what a little step from Loraine to Laur' Ann! I always just miss things."

T.O. was apt to be late. She never rode, and, being short, was not a remarkable walker. To-night she was later than usual. The three other girls got into kimonos and slippers and prepared tea. In all their minds the Grand Plan was fomenting, and it was not easy to wait. A cheer greeted T.O. as she came in, wet and weary and cheerful.

"You're overdue, my dear," Loraine said severely. But of course T.O.

laughed and offered a weak pun:

"The 'dew' is over me, you mean! Oh, girls, this looks too cozy for anything in here! All the way up town I've been blessing you three for taking me in."

Said Laura Ann: "If I were pun-mad, like some folks, I could do something quite smart there. But there, you poor, wet dear! You sha'n't be outdone in your specialty, no you sha'n't! Get off your things quick, dear--we're all bursting to talk about the Grand Plan."

It was, after all, Billy that started in. Billy was very tired indeed, and her lean, eager face was pale.

"Girls, we _must!_" she said. "I can't hold out more than a few weeks more. I shall be a mental wreck and go 'round muttering, _one_-two--three--four, _one_--two--three--four--flat your b's, sharp your c's--one--two--three--four--_play!_" For Billy all day toiled at pianos, teaching unwilling little persons to play. Billy's long name was Wilhelmina.

They were all toilers--worker-B's. The "B" part of the name which they had given to the little colony came from the accident of all their surnames beginning with that letter--Brown, Bent, Baker, Byers. It was, they all agreed, a happy accident; the "B-Hive" sounded so well. But, as Laura Ann said, it entailed things, notably industry.

Laura Ann finished negatives part of the day to earn money to learn to paint the other part. She was poor, but the same good grit that made her loyal to her old grandmother's name, unshortened and unbeautified, gave her courage to work on toward the distant goal.

Loraine taught--"just everlastingly taught," she said, until she could do it with her eyes shut. Cube root, all historic dates, all x, y, z's, were as printing to her, dinned into the warp and woof of her by patient reiteration. She was very tired, too. The rest of the long June days stretched ahead of her in weary perspective.

That these three had drifted together in the great city was sufficiently curious, but more curious yet was the "drifting together" of T.O.--a plain little clerk in a great department store. She, herself, humbly acknowledged that she did not seem to "belong," but here she was, divesting herself of her wet wraps and getting ready for tea in the tiny flat. Handkerchiefs, initialed, "warranted,"--uninitialed, unwarranted--were behind her and ahead, but between she forgot their existence and took her comfort.

"Well?" she said presently. "I'm ready." They sat down to the simple little meal without further delay and with the first mouthfuls opened again the rather time-worn discussion. Could they adopt the Grand Plan?

Oh, _couldn't_ they? To get out of the hot, teeming city and breathe air enough and pure enough, to luxuriate in idleness, to _rest_--to a girl, they longed for it. They were all orphans, and they were all poor. The Grand Plan was ambitious, indefinite, but they could not give it up. They had wintered it and springed it, and clung to it through bright days and dark.

Suddenly Loraine tapped sharply on the table. "All in favor of spending the summer in the country say 'aye,'" she cried, "and say it hard!"

"Aye!"

"Aye!"

"Aye!"

"_Aye_!" appended Loraine, and said it hard. "It's a vote," she added calmly. Then, staring at each other, they sat for a little with rather frightened faces. For this thing that they had done was rather a stupendous thing. T.O. recovered first--courage was as the breath of her little lean nostrils.

"Girls, this is great!" she laughed. "_We've gone and done it!_ There's nothing left but to pack our trunks!"

"Except a few last trifles, such as deciding where to go and what to pay for it with," put in Laura Ann with soft irony. "We could decide those things on the train, I suppose--"

"Let's decide 'em on the spot," rejoined T.O. imperturbably. "Somebody propose something."

Here Billy was visited with one of her inspirations and promptly shared it with her usual generosity. "We must hunt up a place to--er--'bunk'

in--just bunk and board ourselves. Of course we can't afford to _be_ boarded--"

"Of course," in chorus.

"Well, then, one of us must go out into the waste places--oh, anywhere where the gra.s.s has room to grow and there are trees and birds and _barns_--I stipulate barns." Billy made a splendid, comprehensive gesture that took in all the points of the compa.s.s impartially. "One of us must take a few days off and go and hunt up a nice, inexpensive little Eldorado for us. There!--there, my friends, you have the solution of your knotty little problem in a nutsh.e.l.l. I gladly give my 'services' free."

"Who's going?" demanded practical Laura Ann. "Does anybody kindly volunteer?"

No volunteers. Silence, broken only by the chirp of the cheery little teakettle. The immense responsibility of setting the Grand Plan in motion was not to be lightly a.s.sumed. The utter vagueness of Billy's "waste places" was dismaying, to say the least. There might be many nice, inexpensive little Eldorados waiting to be "bunked" in and picnicked in, but where? The world was full of places where there were trees and birds and barns, but to pick out the particular one where four tired-out young toilers could lay down their tools and rest _inexpensively_, looked like a big undertaking.

Billy had settled back in her chair with an air of having done her part and washed her hands of further responsibility. The rest must do their parts now. Billy, who was the youngest and frailest of the little colony of workers, had fallen into the way of dropping asleep whenever opportunity offered; she did so now with a little sigh of contentment.

Her girlish face against the faded crimson back of the chair looked startlingly white. In her sleep she moved her lips and the others caught a pathetic little "_one_-two-three-four" dropping from them. Poor Billy! She was giving a music lesson in her dreams!

Loraine made a little paper shade and shielded her pale face from the light, and Laura Ann tilted the clumsy patent rocker backward and trigged it with a book. Both their faces, tired, too, and pale, were sweet with kindness. T.O., who did queer and unexpected things, went round the table on her toes and kissed Billy's forehead openly. Her face had a puckering frown on it, oddly at variance with the kiss and with the look in her eyes. The kiss and the look were the things that mattered--the frown was a thing of insignificance.

"You poor little blessed!" she murmured.

"'Flat your b,'" murmured Billy wearily, and no one laughed. They were all laughers, but the picture of Billy toiling on monotonously in her sleep failed to appeal to them as humorous. T.O. went back silently to her seat.

What the initials T.O. stood for in the way of a name had been the subject of much guessing in the B-Hive, for the owner of the initials refused whimsically to explain them. Perhaps she would sometime when the moon was full or the wind was in the right quarter, she said. Meanwhile T.O. did well enough--as well as "Billy," anyway, or "Laura Ann"! And they fell in gayly with her whimsy and called her T.O. The nearest they had ever come to an answer to their guesses was one night when they had been discussing "talents" and comparing "callings," and T.O. had sat by, a wistful little listener and admirer. For T.O. had no talent, and who would call selling handkerchiefs from morning till night a "calling"?

Even sheer, fine handkerchiefs, warranted every thread linen!

"Talentless One," she broke out startlingly. "You want to know what 'T.O.' stands for--that's it!" And the amused look in the girls' eyes changed quickly to understanding at sight of her face. "Well," she challenged, "why don't you say what an appropriate name it is? It's a wonder you _talented_ ones didn't guess it long ago! Listen!

Loraine's talent is writing--we all know she'll be an author some day.

Laura Ann's is art. Oh, you needn't laugh--need she, girls? One of these days we're all going to a 'hanging,' and _it'll be Laura Ann's!_ Billy's talent everybody knows. She can play wicked folks good, if there's a piano handy. Well, what is my talent? Don't everybody speak at once!" The girl's flushed face defied them. It was bitter with longing to be a Talented One.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "YOU POOR LITTLE BLESSED!" SHE MURMURED.]

"Dear!" It was like gentle Loraine to begin with a "dear," and like her, too, to cross the room to T.O. and touch her little bitter face with cool fingers. "Dear, don't you worry--your talent is _there._"

"Where?" demanded T.O. Then she laughed. "I suppose you mean buried in a handkerchief! But I shall never be able to dig it out--never! There's such an awful pile of them on top! They keep piling on new ones every day. If I keep on selling handkerchiefs till I'm seventy-five, I'll never get down to my talent."

It was, after all, quite true, though none of them would acknowledge it--except the Talentless One herself. She was, as she insisted, the odd one in the busy little B-Hive. Her very face, small and dark and lean, was an "odd" one; the faces of the other three were marked by an indefinable something that she called talent, and she was not far wrong.

A subtle refinement, intellectuality, a.s.serted itself gently in all three of them. The dark little face of T.O. was vivacious and keen, but not refined or intellectual.

Billy was the baby "B," as Loraine was the acknowledged queen. They all favored Billy and took care of her. Was it a rainy morning? Somebody got Billy's rubbers, somebody else her umbrella! Was the child paler than usual? She must have the softest chair and be babied. Poor little toiler-Billy, created to have a mother and a home, to sit always in soft chairs and be taken care of! Yet without them all she was making a splendid struggle for independence, with the best of them, and they were conscious of a certain element of heroism in her toiling that none of the rest of them laid claim to in their own. The other B.'s were proud of Billy.

T.O. was as small and thin as Billy, but no one thought of taking care of T.O. or babying her. Instead, T.O.--the Talentless One--took care of them all. She had always been a toiler, always been alone, and to the rest it was comparatively a new experience. T.O., as she herself said, was able to give them all "points."

While tired Billy slept to-night, the Grand Plan discussion was taken up again and entertained with new enthusiasm. It was now a definite Plan, since they had voted unanimously to adopt it--it was no longer merely a unanimous wish, to be bandied about longingly. It remained only to choose a brave soul to go forth and find for it a "local habitation."

"When Billy wakes up, we'll draw lots," Loraine decided gently. "The one who gets the longest slip _will go_--but mercy! I hope I sha'n't be the one! Girls, there really ought to be one to--er--oversee the drawing of the lots--"

"Hear! Hear!" from T.O.

"You will take your chances with the common herd, my dear," Laura Ann said firmly. "You really need not be alarmed, though, for I shall draw the fatal slip. I always do. Then I shall go up-country and engage four boards at a nice white house with green blinds, and forget to ask how much they will cost--the 'boards,' I mean--and whether they'll take Billy at half-price. You'll all like my white house, but you won't be able to stay more than one night on account of the expense. So you'll turn me out of the B-Hive and I shall--"