As she ran she was wondering whether Arthur had got a really good view of the furs in the moonlight; was resolving to urge him to go to church next Sunday night even if SHE couldn't; was telling herself she mustn't ENTIRELY relinquish her hold on him-for his sake...

So full were her thoughts that she forgot to be much afraid. And the Lord must have been with her, for she reached the kitchen door in safety and regained her own room without detection. In bed once again, a great, soft, holy peace seemed to enfold her. Everything was right with everybody--with father and mother and G.o.d and Arthur--everybody.

At the very time she was going off into smiling slumber--one hand nestling in the white fox furs on her pillow--it happened that her father was making half-apologetic explanations to her mother: everything had seemed to come down on the child in a lump--commands against walking and against boys and against going out nights and everything.

He couldn't help feeling for the youngster. So he thought he'd bring her the white fox furs she seemed to have set her heart on.

And Mrs. Merriam, who could understand a father's indulgent, sympathetic heart even though--as Missy believed--she wasn't capable of "understanding" a daughter's, didn't have it in her, then, to spoil his pleasure by expounding that wanting furs and wanting beaux were really one and the same evil.

CHAPTER VII. BUSINESS OF BLUSHING

Missy was embroiled in a catastrophe, a tangle of embarra.s.sments and odd complications. Aunt Nettie attributed the blame broadly to "that O'Neill girl"; she a.s.serted that ever since Tess O'Neill had come to live in Cherryvale Missy had been "up to" just one craziness after another. But then Aunt Nettie was an old maid--Missy couldn't imagine her as EVER having been fifteen years old. Mother, who could generally be counted on for tenderness even when she failed to "understand," rather unfortunately centred on the wasp detail--why had Missy just stood there and let it keep stinging her? And Missy felt shy at trying to explain it was because the wasp was stinging her LEG. Mother would be sure to remark this sudden show of modesty in one she'd just been scolding for the lack of it--for riding the pony astride and showing her--

Oh, legs! Missy was in a terrific confusion, as baffled by certain inconsistencies displayed by her own nature as overwhelmed by her disgraceful predicament. For she was certainly sincere in her craving to be as debonairly "athletic" as Tess; yet, during that ghastly moment when the wasp was...

No, she could never explain it to mother. Old people don't understand.

Not even to father could she have talked it all out, though he had patted her hand and acted like an angel when he paid for the bucket of candy--that candy which none of them got even a taste of! That Tess and Arthur should eat up the candy which her own father paid for, made one more snarl in the whole inconsistent situation.

It all began with the day Arthur Simpson "dared" Tess to ride her pony into Picker's grocery store. Before Tess had come to live in the sanitarium at the edge of town where her father was head doctor, she had lived in Macon City and had had superior advantages--city life, to Missy, a Cherryvalian from birth, sounded exotic and intriguing. Then Tess in her nature was far from ordinary. She was characterized by a certain dash and fine flair; was inventive, fearless, and possessed the gift of leadership. Missy, seeing how eagerly the other girls of "the crowd" caught up Tess's original ideas, felt enormously flattered when the leader selected such a comparatively stupid girl as herself as a chum.

For Missy thought she must be stupid. She wasn't "smart" in school like Beulah Crosswhite, nor strikingly pretty like Kitty Allen, nor president of the Iolanthians like Mabel Dowd, nor conspicuously popular with the boys like Genevieve Hicks. No, she possessed no distinctive traits anybody could pick out to label her by--at least that is what she thought. So she felt on her mettle; she wished to prove herself worthy of Tess's high regard.

It was rather strenuous living up to Tess. Sometimes Missy couldn't help wishing that her chum were not quite so alert. Being all the while on the jump, mentally and physically, left you somewhat breathless and dizzy; then, too, it didn't leave you time to sample certain quieter yet thrilling enjoyments that came right to hand. For example, now and then, Missy secretly longed to spend a leisurely hour or so just talking with Tess's grandmother. Tess's grandmother, though an old lady, seemed to her a highly romantic figure. Her name was Mrs. Shears and she had lived her girlhood in a New England seaport town, and her father had been captain of a vessel which sailed to and from far Eastern sh.o.r.es. He had brought back from those long-ago voyages bales and bales of splendid Oriental fabrics--stiff rustling silks and slinky clinging crepes and indescribably brilliant brocades shot with silver or with gold. For nearly fifty years Mrs. Shears had worn dresses made from these romantic stuffs and she was wearing them yet--in Cherryvale! They were all made after the same pattern, gathered voluminous skirt and fitted bodice and long flowing sleeves; and, with the small lace cap she always wore on her white hair. Missy thought the old lady looked as if she'd just stepped from the yellow-tinged pages of some fascinating old book.

She wished her own grandmother dressed like that; of course she loved Grandma Merriam dearly and really wouldn't have exchanged her for the world, yet, in contrast, she did seem somewhat commonplace.

It was interesting to sit and look at Grandma Shears and to hear her recount the Oriental adventures of her father, the sea captain. But Tess gave Missy little chance to do this. Tess had heard and re-heard the adventures to the point of boredom and custom had caused her to take her grandmother's strange garb as a matter of course; Tess's was a nature which craved--and generally achieved--novelty.

Just now her particular interest veered toward athleticism; she had recently returned from a visit to Macon City and brimmed with colourful tales of its "Country Club" life--swimming, golf, tennis, horseback riding, and so forth. These pursuits she straightway set out to introduce into drowsy, behind-the-times Cherryvale. But in almost every direction she encountered difficulties: there was in Cherryvale no place to swim except muddy Bull Creek--and the girls' mothers unanimously vetoed that; and there were no links for golf; and the girls themselves didn't enthuse greatly over tennis those broiling afternoons. So Tess centred on horseback riding, deciding it was the "cla.s.siest" sport, after all. But the old Neds and Nellies of the town, accustomed leisurely to transport their various family surreys, did not metamorphose into hackneys of such spirit and dash as filled Tess's dreams.

Even so, these steeds were formidable enough to Missy. She feared she wasn't very athletic. That was an afternoon of frightful chagrin when she came walking back into Cherryvale, ignominiously following Dr.

O'Neill's Ben. Old Ben, who was lame in his left hind foot, had a curious gait, like a sort of grotesque turkey trot. Missy outwardly attributed her inability to keep her seat to Ben's peculiar rocking motion, but in her heart she knew it was simply because she was afraid.

What she was afraid of she couldn't have specified. Not of old Ben surely, for she knew him to be the gentlest of horses. When she stood on the ground beside him, stroking his s.h.a.ggy, uncurried flanks or feeding him bits of sugar, she felt not the slightest fear. Yet the minute she climbed up into the saddle she sickened under the grip of some increasingly heart-stilling panic. Even before Ben started forward; so it wasn't Ben's rocking, lop-sided gait that was really at the bottom of her fear--it only accentuated it. Why was she afraid of Ben up there in the saddle while not in the least afraid when standing beside him?

Fear was very strange. Did everybody harbour some secret, absurd, unreasonable fear? No, Tess didn't; Tess wasn't afraid of anything. Tess was cantering along on rawboned Nellie in beautiful unconcern. Missy admired and envied her dreadfully.

Her sense of her own shortcomings became all the more poignant when the little cavalcade, with Missy still ignominiously footing it in the rear, had to pa.s.s the group of loafers in front of the Post Office.

The loafers called out rude, bantering comments, and Missy burned with shame.

Then Arthur Simpson appeared in Pieker's doorway next door and grinned.

"h.e.l.lo! Some steed!" he greeted Tess. "Dare you to ride her in!"

"Not to-day, thanks," retorted Tess insouciantly--that was another quality Missy envied in her friend, her unfailing insouciance. "Wait till I get my new pony next week, and then I'll take you up!"

"All right. The dare holds good." Then Arthur turned his grin to Missy.

"What's the matter with YOU? Charger get out of hand?"

The loafers in front of the Post Office took time from their chewing and spitting to guffaw. Missy could have died of mortification.

"Want a lift?" asked Arthur, moving forward.

Missy shook her head. She longed to retrieve herself in the public gaze, longed to shine as Tess shone, but not for worlds could she have essayed that high, dizzy seat again. So she shook her head dumbly and Arthur grinned at her not unkindly. Missy liked Arthur Simpson. He wore a big blue-denim ap.r.o.n and had red hair and freckles--not a romantic figure by any means; but there was a mischievous imp in his eye and a rollicking lilt in his voice that made you like him, anyway. Missy wished he hadn't been a witness to her predicament. Not that she felt at all sentimental toward Arthur. Arthur "went with" Genevieve Hicks, a girl whom Missy privately deemed frivolous and light-minded. Besides Missy herself was, at this time, interested in Raymond Bonner, the handsomest boy in "the crowd." Missy liked good looks--they appealed to the imagination or something. And she adored everything that appealed to the imagination: there was, for instance, the picture of Sir Galahad, in shining armour, which hung on the wall of her room--for a time she had almost said her prayers to that picture; and there was a compelling mental image of the gallant Sir Launcelot in "Idylls of the King" and of the stern, repressed, silently suffering Guy in "Airy Fairy Lilian." Also there had recently come into her possession a magazine clipping of the boy king of Spain; she couldn't claim that Alphonso was handsome--in truth he was quite ugly--yet there was something intriguing about him. She secretly treasured the printed likeness and thought about the original a great deal: the alluring life he led, the panoply of courts, royal b.a.l.l.s and garden-parties and resplendent military parades, and a.s.sociating with princes and princesses all the time. She wondered, with a little sigh, whether his "crowd" called him by his first name; though a King he was just a boy--about her own age.

Nevertheless, though Arthur Simpson was neither handsome nor revealed aught which might stir vague, deep currents of romance, Missy regretted that even Arthur had seen her in such a sorry plight. She wished he might see her at a better advantage. For instance, galloping up on a spirited mount, in a modish riding-habit--a checked one with flaring-skirted coat and shining boots and daring but swagger breeches, perhaps!--galloping insouciantly up to take that dare!

But she knew it was an empty dream. Even if she had the swagger togs--a notion mad to absurdity--she could never gallop with insouciance. She wasn't the athletic sort.

At supper she was still somewhat bitterly ruminating her failings.

"Missy, you're not eating your omelet," adjured her mother.

Missy's eyes came back from s.p.a.ce.

"I was just wondering--" then she broke off.

"Yes, dear," encouraged mother. Missy's hazy thoughts took a sudden plunge, direct and startling.

"I was wondering if, maybe, you'd give me an old pair of father's trousers."

"What on earth for, child?"

"Just an old pair," Missy went on, ignoring the question. "Maybe that pepper-and-salt pair you said you'd have to give to Jeff."

"But what do you want of them?" persisted mother. "Jeff needs them disgracefully--the last time he mowed the yard I blushed every time he turned his back toward the street."

"I think Mrs. Allen's going to give him a pair of Mr. Allen's--Kitty said she was. So he won't need the pepper-and-salts."

"But what do you want with a pair of PANTS?" Aunt Nettie put in. Missy wished Aunt Nettie had been invited out to supper; Aunt Nettie was relentlessly inquisitive. She knew she must give some kind of answer.

"Oh, just for some fancy-work," she said. She tried to make her tone insouciant, but she was conscious of her cheeks getting hot.

"Fancy-work--pants for fancy-work! For heaven's sake!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Aunt Nettie.

Mother, also, was staring at her in surprise. But father, who was a darling, put in: "Give 'em to her if she wants 'em, dear. Maybe she'll make a lambrequin for the piano or an embroidered smoking-jacket for the old man--a'la your Ladies' Home Companion."

He grinned at her, but Missy didn't mind father's jokes at her expense so much as most grown-ups'. Besides she was grateful to him for diverting attention from her secret purpose for the pants.

After supper, out in the summerhouse, it was an evening of such swooning beauty she almost forgot the bothers vexing her life. When you sit and watch the sun set in a bed of pastel glory, and let the level bars of thick gold light steal across the soft slick gra.s.s to reach to your very soul, and smell the heavenly sweetness of dew-damp roses, and listen to the shrill yet mournful even-song of the locusts--when you sit very still, just letting it all seep into you and through and through you, such a beatific sense of peace surges over you that, gradually, trivial things like athletic shortcomings seem superficial and remote.

Later, too, up in her room, slowly undressing in the moonlight, she let herself yield to the sweeter spell. She loved her room, especially when but dimly lit by soft white strips of the moon through the window. She loved the dotted Swiss curtains blowing, and the white-valanced little bed, and the white-valanced little dressing-table all dim and misty save where a broad shaft of light gave a divine patch of illumination to undress by. She said her prayers on her knees by the window, where she could keep open but unsacrilegious eyes on G.o.d's handiwork outside--the divine miracle of everyday things transformed into shimmering glory.

A soft brushing against her ankles told her that Poppylinda, her cat, had come to say good night. She lifted her pet up to the sill.

"See the beautiful night, Poppy," she said. "See!--it's just like a great, soft, lovely, blue-silver bed!"

Poppy gave a gentle purr of acquiescence. Missy was sure it was acquiescence. She was convinced that Poppy had a fine, appreciative, discriminating mind. Aunt Nettie scouted at this; she denied that she disliked Poppy, but said she "liked cats in their place." Missy knew this meant, of course, that inwardly she loathed cats; that she regarded them merely as something which musses up counterpanes and keeps outlandish hours. Aunt Nettie was perpetually finding fault with Poppy; but Missy had noted that Aunt Nettie and all the others who emphasized Poppy's imperfections were people whom Poppy, in her turn, for some reason could not endure. This point she tried to make once when Poppy had been convicted of a felonious scratch, but of course the grown-ups couldn't follow her reasoning. Long since she'd given up trying to make clear the real merits of her pet; she only knew that Poppy was more loving and lovable, more sympathetic and comprehending, than the majority of humans. She could count on Poppy's never jarring on any mood, whether grave or gay. Poppy adored listening to poetry read aloud, sitting immovable save for slowly blinking eyes for an hour at a stretch. She even had an appreciation for music, often remaining in the parlour throughout her mistress's practice period, and sometimes purring an accompaniment to tunes she especially liked--such tunes as "The Maiden's Prayer" or "Old Black Joe with Variations." There was, too, about her a touch of something which Missy thought must be mysticism; for Poppy heard sounds and saw things which no one else could--following these invisible objects with attentive eyes while Missy saw nothing; then, sometimes, she would get up suddenly, switching her tail, and watch them as they evidently disappeared. But Missy never mentioned Poppy's gift of second sight; she knew the old people would only laugh.

Now she cuddled Poppy in her lap, and with a sense of companionship, enjoyed the landscape of silvered loveliness and peace. A sort of sad enjoyment, but pleasantly sad. Occasionally she sighed, but it was a sigh of deep content. Such things as perching dizzily atop a horse's back, even cantering in graceful insouciance, seemed far, far away.

Yet, after she was in her little white bed, in smiling dreams she saw herself, smartly accoutred in gleaming boots and pepper-and-salt riding-breeches, galloping up to Pieker's grocery and there, in the admiring view of the Post Office loafers and of a dumbfounded Arthur, cantering insouciantly across the sidewalk and into the store!