CHAPTER XXIII.

The next morning was rather dreaded by Dorothea. She had really suffered from a headache the night before, and with that excuse had been allowed to keep her room, and have a light supper sent up to her.

"But I wish I hadn't--I wish to goodness I'd gone down last night!" she said petulantly to herself, as she faced the morning's sunshine. She had full faith in Hope and her promise, and was therefore quite secure that not one of the girls would know of that mortifying little episode at the end of yesterday's escapade; and this was the most that she cared for.

But yet, in spite of this, she had a certain very uncomfortable feeling about meeting Kate Van der Berg and "that set," as she called the little group of girls of which Kate seemed the natural head and leader. A very uncomfortable feeling; for though that mortifying episode was a safe secret, the rest of the escapade was the common property of Kate and Hope; "and of course," argued Dorothea, "Kate Van der Berg has told all _she_ knows to the others, and they'll just take her little pattern of things, and set up and look at me, and think how the naughty girl was taken care of by Mrs. Sibley and Hope. Oh, oh, if it hadn't been for that horrid Raymond Armitage's being so mean and selfish at the end,--well, I've found _him_ out!--I shouldn't have _had_ to accept Hope's offer,--though it was awfully good of her, and I was awfully glad to accept, as things turned out. But if things _hadn't_ turned out as they did,--if Ray Armitage had behaved himself, I _needn't_ have accepted, and then if I had come back in the cars, as I went, I should have taken the risks and they'd have known that I was independent. But now, though thank Heaven they won't know _why_ I accepted Hope's offer, they'll know that I _did_ accept it, and so they'll stare at me as the naughty little girl who _had to_ give in!"

It will be seen by this argument that Dorothea's state of mind was not yet what it should be. It will also be seen that, harboring such a state of mind, it was quite natural that she should find herself decidedly uncomfortable at the prospect of facing "that set." But it had to be done, however. There was no use in putting it off; and with a final glance at the mirror, a final pat to her smooth shining hair, Dorothea started off toward the dining-room. As she gained the lower hall, she heard a mingled sound of various voices issuing from the room, and ruefully thought: "Late as it is, they're all there! _Why_ didn't I get up earlier? I might have known they'd be late Sunday morning. Now all eyes will be glaring at me when I open the door!"

But as she opened the door, beyond one or two of the girls looking up with a preoccupied air and a hasty good-morning, no notice was taken of her. "That set" and indeed the whole a.s.sembled company were in the very thick of an animated talk concerning the origin and observance of Saint Valentine's Day.

"Of course we have kept up the Valentine fun year after year, because there's such a lot of children in our family. I don't suppose that grown up people nowadays would make anything of it, if it wasn't for children,--except maybe vulgar people who use those horrid comic valentines to play a vulgar joke on some one," Kate Van der Berg was saying just as Dorothea stepped over the threshold. A little nod and smile was given to Dorothea the next moment,--a little easy nod and that happy half-smile that was "not too much," recommended by Hope.

"It says in Chambers' Book of Days," here spoke up Anna Fleming, "that Valentine's Day is now almost everywhere a much degenerated festival, but that it was once a very general custom with everybody--grown-up-people as well as children--to send valentines to each other; and it says, too, that the origin of this custom is a subject of some obscurity. Those are the very words; I read them last night to Myra, didn't I, Myra?"

"Yes; and you read too that the Saint Valentine who was a priest of Rome and martyred in the third century seems to have nothing to do with the matter beyond the accident of his day being used for the festival purpose."

"Then, if that is true, the whole thing is a sentimental muddle of nonsense, starting off with the mating of birds for origin, as some of the old writers seem to believe," cried Kate, in a disgusted tone. "But _I'm_ not going to believe any such thing. I'm going to believe what Bishop Wheatley says about it. He says that Saint Valentine was a man so famous for his love and charity that the custom of choosing valentines upon his festival took its rise from a desire to commemorate that very love and charity by choosing a special friend on his day,--I suppose his birthday,--which was, as nearly as can be reckoned, the fourteenth of February. Now, I shall stick to this explanation of the day. Bishop Wheatley's authority is good enough for me, and I shall choose _my_ valentine on his lines this year as I did last."

"Oh, _who_ was your Valentine last year?" cried little Lily Chester, with eager curiosity.

"My aunt Katrine,--a great-aunt whom I had never seen until last year, when she came over from Germany to visit us."

"An old aunt,--how funny!" exclaimed Lily.

"Why funny?"

"Why? Because--because whoever heard of anybody choosing an old aunt for a valentine?"

"Whom do _you_ choose, Lily?"

"I? Oh, _I_ choose children I know,--boys, always."

An outburst of laughter greeted this declaration; and in the midst of it Kate said gayly, with a little confidential nod to Dorothea, "It's currants and raisins again, Dorothea."

The gay tone of good-fellowship, the confidential nod and smile took Dorothea so by surprise that for the moment her ready speech failed her.

What she had _thought_, what she might have _said_ if she had not thus been surprised into silence, was something in her usual truculent vein, with a very decided declaration of sympathy with Lily's choice. But surprised and silent for the moment, she was all ready to agree with Myra Donaldson, who followed Kate's remark with a laughing confession that she too had chosen "boys always,"--that she thought that was the customary, the proper valentine way. And agreeing with Myra in an emphatic "It _is_--it always _has_ been the proper valentine way,"

Dorothea was again surprised at the gentleness of Kate's tone as she disagreed,--as she said:

"Oh, no, no, Dorothea; the good old Bishop Wheatley didn't mean that it was _nothing_ but a sweethearting custom, for there is another record that says distinctly that the early Church looked upon that custom as one of the pagan practices, and observed the day as a real Saint's Day, when one chose a particular patron saint for the year and called him, or her, my 'valentine.' And it was in that way that I chose dear old Aunt Katrine for _my_ valentine last year."

"And _I_ chose my dear Mr. Kolb, my first music-teacher," said Hope, looking up brightly. "He taught me to play on that little violin I was telling you about," glancing at Kate with a significant smile. Dorothea saw the smile, and instantly said to herself: "She's told her,--she's told her all that Mayflower and fiddle story, every word of it, I can see by their looks. I wonder if she's told the other girls?"

But what was that that Myra Donaldson was referring to?--something that had evidently brought up all this talk. Dorothea had lost a sentence or two in her momentary preoccupation over Hope and Kate; but now catching the words "It's to be a valentine party as usual," she asked eagerly,--

"Whose party is it,--who gives it?"

"Bessie Armitage. The fourteenth of February is her birthday, and she always has a party on that day, or on the evening of the day. She hasn't sent her invitations out yet, but she will next week. I went to her last year's party, and it was such a pretty party, wasn't it?" looking at Kate and Hope, who at once gave cordial agreement that it was a _very_ pretty party. "But you'll see for yourself this year, Dorothea," Myra went on, "for I suppose Miss Marr will let us go, as she did last winter, though it _is_ stretching a point to go to any party outside; but Bessie has been here so long--she was only ten when she first came to Miss Marr's--that she has exceptions made in her favor; and then these birthday-parties of hers are always early parties, and that makes a great difference."

A party,--a Valentine party at Bessie Armitage's! Dorothea couldn't, for the life of her, keep the hot angry color from rushing to her face as she heard the name of Armitage; and her first thought was: "Catch me going to a party at _his_ home, where I've got to be polite to _him_!"

At the next thought,--the thought that her refusal to go would be thoroughly understood by Raymond himself, would be taken by him as a direct cut and snub, her spirits rose, and a little triumphant smile began to curl her lips.

"Look at Dorothea! She's planning _some_ mischief," laughed Myra, who had noted the sudden change in her opposite neighbor's face. All eyes were now indeed turned upon Dorothea.

"Yes, you look like yourself again," spoke up Anna Fleming, "you were quite pale when you first came in. Has your headache all gone?"

"My headache?"

"Yes; they said you didn't come down to dinner last night on account of a headache."

"Oh yes, I forgot to ask you how you were, we were so full of Bessie's Valentine party when you came in," said Myra, apologetically. Then, politely: "You had to leave the Park yesterday almost directly after you arrived there, some one said. 'Twas too bad. I didn't see you at all after we entered, for I went at once over on the other side of the pond with Anna and some of her friends. What a scattered party we were,--Anna and I on one side and Kate and Hope on the other, and the rest I don't know where: and how we straggled home,--Anna's friends in charge of us, while Miss Thompson had another party and Miss Stephens still another."

Dorothea forgot her embarra.s.sment, forgot everything, as she listened to these words, but the amazing fact that Kate had told neither Anna nor Myra the story of yesterday's escapade,--and Anna was Kate's room-mate!

Could it be that Kate Van der Berg,--who had always been so ready to find fault, to say disagreeable things, to put her--Dorothea--in the wrong,--could it be possible that of her own will, her own thought, she had refrained from repeating what she knew? And if she had, what was her motive? Dorothea asked herself suspiciously, for she could not understand how one so outspoken and lavish in her fault-finding could suddenly put such restraint upon her tongue; for she could not comprehend, this quick-tempered yet obtuse Dorothea, that a nature which might be lavish of fault-finding and criticism upon certain occasions, upon certain other occasions, from a nice sense of honor and generosity, might also be able to keep a golden silence. Yet this was just what Kate Van der Berg had done. She had had the impulse at the first to rush at once to Myra, to whom she had already told so much, with this amazing story of Dorothea's latest exploit. But a second impulse came to her,--a kindly impulse of restraint, wherein she said to herself: "No, I won't prejudice Myra any further, perhaps I've prejudiced her too much already by what I've told her; at any rate, I'll keep silent about this affair."

How more than glad she was that she had thus kept silent when Myra's innocently betrayed ignorance brought that look of surprise and relief into Dorothea's face. And Dorothea, presently turning her gaze from Myra to Kate herself, caught on the latter's face something of the expression of this gladness, and experienced a fresh surprise thereat; but in this surprise was mixed a little feeling of self-gratulation that matters were turning out so easily and happily; and then her volatile spirits began to rebound again, and her thoughts to run in this way,--

"How silly I've been to get so nervous and fidgety; but it's all owing to Ray Armitage's behavior. I haven't done anything to be ashamed of anyhow, and I dare say in her secret heart Kate Van der Berg _thinks_ I haven't. Any way everything is blowing over beautifully now, and I'm not going to bother about things another bit, not even about that horrid Ray Armitage,--though I'll manage to get even with him yet!" And so solacing herself, in this fashion, Dorothea's spirits continued to rise higher and higher, and by Monday she was in her usual mental as well as bodily condition, her headache and her heartache--if the latter term could be employed to describe her pangs of sore mortification--no longer conquering her. Indeed, so jubilant was the reactionary state of mind following upon her depression, that she at once set about readjusting various little plans to suit her present mood. One of these plans was the determination she had made to refuse Bessie Armitage's invitation to the birthday valentine party. It would only make the girls talk for her to stay away, she concluded. It would be a great deal better plan to go to the party, and show Ray Armitage that he wasn't of enough consequence to keep her away. And when there she could manage to snub him beautifully in a dozen different ways, though it _was_ in his own house,--oh yes, in a dozen different ways, and be outwardly very polite too; yes, indeed, _she_ knew how to do it!

In thoughts and plans like these, the days flew swiftly by. "Next week,"

Myra had informed them, the invitations were to be sent out, and she had had _her_ information from Bessie herself, who was at that time confined at home with a severe cold. Next week, and then another week would bring the antic.i.p.ated fourteenth.

CHAPTER XXIV.

"But there must be some mistake, some accident, that has delayed yours, for all the other girls received theirs yesterday," exclaimed Myra Donaldson in surprise, when Dorothea mentioned the fact to her on Tuesday of that following week, that she had not received her invitation. "Yes, there must be some accident," reiterated Myra; "it no doubt slipped out in some way, and you'll get it to-morrow." But "to-morrow" came and went and Dorothea failed to receive the invitation.

"Of course there must be some mistake," Anna Fleming also declared, when _she_ was told of the fact; and then one and another echoed the same declaration as they heard of the circ.u.mstance. Of course there was some mistake! By Thursday, certainly, everybody thought the "mistake" would be discovered and rectified; but Thursday too came and went, and Friday pa.s.sed by without the desired result. On Sat.u.r.day morning Dorothea said to Hope,--

"I--I wish you would do something for me, Hope."

"Yes, certainly I will if I can," returned Hope.

"Well, it's just this: I heard that you were going out to drive with Kate Van der Berg this afternoon, and I wondered if you could--if you _would_ call and see Bessie Armitage,--see how she is, you know--and then--and then you might ask her--you might tell her about the invitation,--that I hadn't received it. Of course _I_ don't want to speak to her about it, but somebody else might, and she would want to be told--she'd feel horribly--_I_ should, I'm sure, in her place if I _wasn't_ told--if the mistake _wasn't_ rectified; and so I thought if _you_ would just speak of it--"

"Yes, indeed I will. I'm glad you asked me. I wonder I hadn't thought of it myself, but I'll go round directly the first thing this afternoon,"

responded Hope, cordially.

"Some mistake?" repeated Bessie Armitage, in a queer, hesitating, questioning way, as Hope sat before her, waiting for the explanation that she had expected would at once make everything right for Dorothea.