Irma in Italy.

by Helen Leah Reed.

CHAPTER I

THE START

"OF course it's great to go to Europe; any one would jump at the chance, but still----"

As the speaker, a bright-eyed girl of sixteen, paused, her companion, slightly younger, continued:

"Yes, I know what you mean--it doesn't seem just like Irma to go away before school closes. Why, if she misses the finals, she may have to drop from the cla.s.s next year."

"Probably she expects Italy to help her in her history and Latin."

"Travelling is all very well," responded the other, "but there's nothing better than regular study. Why, here's Irma coming," she concluded hastily; "she can speak for herself."

"You are surely gossiping about me," cried Irma pleasantly, as she approached her two friends seated on the front steps of Gertrude's house. "You have surely been gossiping, for you stopped talking as soon as you saw me, and Lucy looks almost guilty."

"Listeners sometimes hear good of themselves," replied Lucy, "but we'll admit we have been wondering how you made up your mind to run away from school. I shouldn't have dared."

"My father and mother decided for me, when Aunt Caroline said she must know at once. There was some one else she would invite, if I couldn't go. I simply could not give up so good a chance to see Europe. But of course I am sorry to leave school."

"Now, Irma, no crocodile tears." Gertrude pinched her friend's arm as she spoke. "Fond as I am--or ought to be--of school, I wouldn't think twice about leaving it all, if I had a chance to shorten this horrid winter."

"Winter! And here we are sitting in the open air. In six weeks it will be May, and you won't find a pleasanter month in Europe than our May,"

protested Lucy.

"We intend to have some fine picnics this spring; you'll lose them if you go," added Gertrude.

"One can't have everything," sighed Irma. "I know that I must lose some good things if I go away."

"Examinations, for instance," cried George Belman, who had joined the group.

"And promotions, perhaps," added John.

"But still," continued George, "I say Irma deserves a change for her unselfishness in having whooping-cough last summer, just to keep Tessie company."

"Well, it was considerate in Irma to get over it before school opened; stand up, dear, and let yourself be counted."

"Oh, Gertrude, how silly you are!" but even while protesting Irma rose slowly to her feet, and her friends, looking at her, noticed that she was paler and thinner than she had been a year earlier.

"Come, now," said Lucy, rising, and affectionately slipping her arm around Irma's waist, "tell us your plans. Gertrude knows them, but I have heard only rumors."

"I am not quite sure myself about it all. Only I am to sail with Aunt Caroline and Uncle Jim to Naples by the southern route, and, after going through Italy, we shall be home in July--and a niece of Aunt Caroline's, or rather of Uncle Jim's, is going with us."

"You didn't tell _me_ that," interposed Gertrude. "You won't miss us half as much if you have another girl with you. I begin to be jealous."

"If there were ten other girls in our party I'd miss my friends just as much," said Irma. "Besides, I'll be too busy to take an interest in mere girls."

"Busy!" It was George who said this, with a little, mocking laugh.

"Yes, busy; busy sightseeing and reading, and perhaps studying a little.

For you know I must take a special examination in September. How mortifying if I had to stay behind next year!"

"Then I shall drop behind, too, or at least I should wish to," said George gallantly.

"Did some one speak of summer?" asked Lucy, rising. "Now that the sun is low I am half frozen. Come, Irma, I will walk to your door with you,"

and, after a word of farewell to the others, the two friends walked away together.

Irma, now in her second year in the High School, had really enjoyed her studies, and she was sure that her ancient history was to be made much more vivid by her journey, and even the dry hours she had spent on Caesar would count for much when she reached Italy. It was well, perhaps, that Irma herself had little to do in preparing for her journey. As it was, it was hard enough to keep her mind on lessons those last weeks, when there was so much besides to think of. Still, the March days flew by swiftly. Irma was to sail from New York the Sat.u.r.day before Easter, which this year came very early. A week before she was to start a steamer trunk arrived from New York, accompanied by a letter from Aunt Caroline.

"Your mother must have so much to do that I wish to save her a little of the trouble of shopping," wrote Aunt Caroline, "and I do hope that these will fit you."

"I can't see that the steamer rug is a very close fit," said Rudolph, laughing, as Irma held up the warm-looking square of blue and green plaid. "But the Panama hat's all right,--only the rug and the hat will look rather queer together."

Into the steamer trunk during the week Irma put many little things that the girls at school--and indeed some of the boys--gave her as parting gifts.

"I wish I could take them all," she said, as she stood beside the trunk.

"But there are so many duplicates. I suppose I could use two pinb.a.l.l.s and two brush-holders, but I don't need three needlebooks and half a dozen toothbrush cases. Oh, dear, and all have been so kind that I wish they had compared notes first, so that I needn't have so many things I can't use."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I WISH I COULD TAKE THEM ALL," SHE SAID.

(_Page 6._)]

"It's better to have too many than too few," said Tessie sagely.

"Tessie," however, only occasionally, since the ten year old maiden scorned the diminutive of her earlier years, and insisted that now she was old enough to be known as "Theresa."

"It's better for you, Theresa," responded Irma, "for some of these things may find their way to your room. Lucy might let me give you this needlebook, or at least lend it, for perhaps it wouldn't do to give a present away."

"Well, I'll borrow it now, to help me remember you when you are gone,"

and Tessie, delighted with her treasure, ran off to her room with it.

During her last days at home Irma realized that Nap was not happy. He followed her from room to room, and, so far as he could, kept her always in sight. When she sat down, he lay at her feet with his nose touching her dress. When she moved she almost stumbled over him; and once, when she went to close the steamer trunk, there he was inside! He might have suffered Ginevra's fate, had not Irma happened to look within.

"He truly knows just what you are going to do, and he meant to hide until the trunk was opened on the ship, so you'd have to take him with you," cried Tessie.

"Yes," added Chris, "perhaps he thinks that's his only chance of finding Katie Grimston again. She's still in Europe, isn't she?"

"Well, Katie Grimston shall never have him."

"But she did not give him to you; she wrote she would claim him on her return."

"Yes, but she isn't here to claim him, and possession is nine points of the law." Then Irma picked the little creature up and ran away with him.

The boys were very philosophical about their sister's departure.

"If I should stay home they'd be grievously disappointed," Irma confided to Gertrude. "They are calculating so on the stamps and post cards I am to collect for them, that I wouldn't dare change my mind."