"I wish you _would_ ask her up, Nan," said Mrs. Harte, confidentially.

"I want her to see the place. So far as I can judge, it's the best thing for her. There isn't any doubt that she's a very bright girl, but she's getting thoroughly spoiled here. You see, she does just as she pleases--she's the only young person in the family--and I know we spoil her terribly. Her mind is made up to come out in the winter, here in Chicago, and they'll refuse her nothing--her father and mother."

"They _don't_ seem what you'd call oppressively strict with her,"

remarked Anne, twirling her racquet.

"Now what I want is for her to get somewhere where she isn't the only clever girl; to see that other girls can read and talk and play the guitar and wear nice clothes and order silly young men about. And judging from those of you that I've seen, you can!"

"We do our little best," said Anne, modestly.

"And I wanted her to see you all: that's one reason why I planned the house-party. I was so disappointed when she came so late. You see, her cousin Georgiana was--was unfortunate. She went to Yale and Columbia and goodness knows where, and she had short hair and was such a frump and she wore such hideous spectacles and talked about Socialism--or was it Sociology?--all the time. I remember she was always trying to persuade us to join clubs and protest against something or other--it was very wearisome. So Madge got to despise the whole thing: she has always thrown Georgiana at me when I mentioned college. It was perfectly useless to try to make her understand that every girl needn't be like Georgiana. She's very obstinate. But she's a nice girl, too, and if she can only get out of her present atmosphere for four years--"

"Pity she couldn't have seen Ursula, if she's afraid we're all frumps," Anne suggested.

"Yes, isn't it? But I think she stayed purposely. Now, you--she says you're an exception; that there can't be many like you. You see, Madge has a standard of her own; she says she'd be ashamed to go through college the way some of the boys do, with just a good time and as low marks as they can safely get. She says she'd want to be a student if she pretended to, and yet she must have a good time, and--"

"And she thinks it can't be done? Dear me, what an error! Well, if she'll come up I'll be very glad to have her, I'm sure. I can trot out our little pastimes and er--omit the more _sociological_ side," said Anne, with a grin.

Mrs. Harte leaned forward eagerly. "Yes, that's just what I mean! She got enough of that from Georgiana. I want her to watch you--"

"Sport about on the lawn? Gambol through the village? 'Make the picturesque little lake echo with sweet girlish gayety,' as the newspaper gentlemen say?"

"Yes, that's it," and Mrs. Harte patted Anne's broad shoulder. "That's what I mean, you silly child. Just let her see that there are a few diversions!"

Miss Marjory Cunningham, who was just then coming up from the lake, was a tall, well-grown young woman of seventeen, with a handsome, a.s.sured face and unexceptionable garments. She looked fully twenty, and was young enough to find satisfaction in this circ.u.mstance. She had been brought up, in the orthodox American fashion, to take a prominent part in the household, particularly in the entertainment of her mother's many guests; and this, added to the fact that she happened to be much cleverer than the young women with whom her social lot had hitherto been cast, inclined her to regard any one under thirty with a patronage somewhat offensive, if mild.

She dropped down beside Anne as her aunt left the broad piazza, and smiled politely.

"Aunt Frank says you're going to-morrow," she remarked, adding a little curiously, "Shall you be glad to get back?"

"East, you mean? Why, yes. You see I'm a week late. They've started up the show without me, so to speak, and naturally it's rather hard for them to worry along. They may have given me up and laid my new little single room at Lucilla Bradford's feet, which would more than trouble me."

"Do they allow you to come back whenever you want to?"

Miss Cunningham's tone was that of an indulgent aunt toward a pet nephew on his Christmas holidays, and Anne's reply was framed accordingly.

"Oh, easily! They only insist on our being back for the Glee Club concert. They're just bound up in that, you know. So we usually make a point of it. I must say," she changed her tone, "I'd like to hear Carol Sawyer's explanations to Miss Roberts! Carol has a fine imagination, but she's used it so much of late that she'll have to surpa.s.s herself this time to make much impression on Robbie. You see I have the great good fortune to possess an accommodating relative: the Amiable Parent is far from well, and asked me if I'd wait a week till he could go on, and cheer his last moments--smooth his pillow, as it were. So, since I've never gone away early once and only come back late twice before, and once with an excuse, I thought I was safe to stay. And I told him that, notwithstanding the fact that I was languishing among dirt courts and single-piece drivers and Sat.u.r.day hops and--_and_ your n.o.ble family, I'd stick it out a week longer.

Said I to the Amiable Parent:

"_My own convenience count as nil; It is my duty, and I will!_"

Next morning, when Nan came down to breakfast, pink under her tan and with that air that she always carried of having just come out of the tub, Marjory really regretted her going. She mentioned to her aunt that she would have liked to see more of her, and that if she _did_ go to New York in the spring she should surely go up to Northampton. It was not only because Miss Gillatt danced and golfed and drove and played tennis so well that Marjory's interest was for the first time roused in a girl of her own age, nor because her clothes were nice and her ways amusing; what struck Miss Cunningham was her guest's entire absence of surprise at what she utterly failed to recognize as an unusual amount of interest on Marjory's part.

"This is Marjory--how do you do, Marjory?" she had said easily on their first meeting, and she had never cared to learn that Marjory intended her own "Miss Gillatt" for a lesson to forward schoolgirls.

And she had taken Marjory's growing attentions quite as if she were accustomed to have handsome young women talk to her and row her about and give her their photographs. When she had herself mentioned looking Nan up in Northampton, her proposition had not evoked the grateful surprise that might have been expected.

"Glad to see you any time," the future hostess had returned. "Better come up in the spring; it's a lot prettier." And Madge had decided then and there to go, though her suggestion had been more or less perfunctory.

She would never have considered it for a moment had it not been perfectly obvious that the college girl did not regard herself at all in the light of a possible example. Georgiana's lectures on the Higher Education of Women and its Ultimate Effect on the s.e.x were not to be thought of in connection with this athletic damsel, whose quotations, though frequent, indicated a closer study of Lewis Carroll and W. S.

Gilbert than her alma mater's official catalogue would suggest. She referred very little to the college and then only as the scene of incidents in which she and her "young friends," as she invariably called them, had taken amusing or amazing parts. Marjory's chief impression had been that of the jolliest possible crowd of girls, who seemed to derive great comfort and entertainment from one another's company, and it was a half-envious desire to see if they really did this to the extent that Anne implied, that drew her to Northampton one fine day in the late spring.

As she stood on the station platform looking in vain for a tall girl with broad shoulders and a persuasive grin, she heard her name called, and turned to meet the outstretched hand of a very different person.

This person was small and slender, with a plain, distinguished little face, intelligent eyes, and a low and charming voice. From the very Parisian arrangement that topped her shining coils of hair to the tips of her tiny shoes, she was one of the most thoroughly well-dressed young women Marjory had ever seen. She reminded one vaguely, though not disagreeably, of Mr. Wenzell's pictures, and Marjory failed utterly in a dazed attempt to correlate her and Georgiana.

"You are Miss Cunningham, are you not? I am Ursula Wyckoff. Nan is so sorry, but Hodgkinson Davids or Davidson Hodgkins--I can't remember the way--has come up from New York to play over the course to-day, and of course all the golf people have to be out there. She and Caroline have been there all the afternoon, and I'm to bring you out a little later, when they serve the tea. Isn't it dreadfully warm? Nan's next to Caroline and Caroline holds the championship, so they're naturally interested. I don't play at all. I was so sorry to miss you at the house-party: we all fell in love with your aunt. Oh, no, New York, but I've lots of Western friends: you know I've met your aunt before, in London. We bought some Liberty things, and we were staying at the same hotel, and they sent us each other's parcels, so we got acquainted picking them out. There was a lovely fan; she said it was for her niece. Was it you? I dream of that fan yet."

They walked slowly up the long street, Ursula chatting easily, and Marjory wondering how many of the girls they pa.s.sed belonged to the college. They paused before a druggist's window, all Huyler's and violet soap, and Ursula walked by a long, shining soda fountain to a room in green and white, with little tables and a great palm in the centre. The tables were very nearly filled, and there was a cheerful clatter of tall spoons and a businesslike bustle of clerks with trays.

"This is Kingsley's," said Ursula, with a comprehensive gesture. "Will you have a chocolate ice?" While absorbing the inviting and pernicious mixture, Miss Cunningham looked about her with interest. In one corner four girls with rumpled shirt-waists and dusty golf stockings squabbled over scores, and ill.u.s.trated with spoons preferred methods of driving and putting. Their voices rose above the level prescribed for drawing-room conversation, and they called each other strange names. In another corner a tall, dark girl with a grave expression talked steadily in a low voice to her companion, a clever-looking creature, whose bursts of laughter grew hysterical as the dignified one continued, with a perfectly impersonal manner, to reduce her to positive tears of mirth. To them Ursula bowed, and the narrator, politely recognizing her, went on with her remarks, to an accompaniment of gurgling protest from her friend. Near them a porcelain blonde, gowned in a wonderful pale blue stuff with a great hat covered with curly plumes, ate strawberry ices with a tailor-made person clothed in white pique, mystic, wonderful. She was all stiffness and specklessness, and she looked with undisguised scorn at the clamoring athletes, a white leather card-case in her hand. Near one window a gypsy-faced child in a big pink sunbonnet imparted mighty confidences to her friend, who shook two magnificent auburn braids over her shoulders with every chuckle.

"And I heard a knock at the door and of course I thought it was Helen or some of the girls, and I called to come in and, my dear, _who_ do you think it was? It was the _expressman_! 'Will you sign this book?'

said he, and he brought the book right up to the bed and I leaned on my elbow and signed it! My dear, wasn't that perfectly--"

"Oh, well, it's awfully funny here, anyway. That beastly old laundry tore my lovely lace nightgown to shreds and it was new, and I put in an old dressing-sacque that was all in rags and I was going to throw it away, and they mended it carefully before they sent it back!"

As they left the room and Ursula waited while the clerk looked up her soda ticket, the door flew open and an impish little creature, with a large, deprecating, motherly girl in her wake, slipped into the shop.

"Now don't make for the back room, Bertie dear, for there isn't time.

We've got lots of places to do yet!" she called, and catching sight of Ursula she dashed up to her.

"What do you think Alberta and I are doing? We're _so_ bored, and we're going to stop at every drug store on this side and have an ice-cream soda, and the same going back on the other side. Isn't that interesting? I tell Alberta it's bound to be--sooner or later!"

"Is that a freshman?" Marjory inquired competently, and Ursula's eyes twinkled as she replied gravely:

"No, that's a senior. She has fits of idiocy, but in her better moments she's quite a person to know. She's in the Lawrence with me.

Why on earth she should go and get Alberta May and drag her into degradation and dyspepsia, n.o.body knows, but she always does."

They rested for a while in Ursula's room, which was "more than enormous," as Anne said--it was intended for a double room--and furnished very delightfully. There were some beautiful Copley prints and a cast or two and a long low shelf of books and fascinating wicker chairs with puffy cushions. There was the inevitable tea-table and chafing-dish paraphernalia and the inevitable couch with a great many Yale pillows; but there were not more than a dozen photographs of girls in any one place and only one Gibson girl, and she was very small. There was a beautiful desk all littered with papers and little photographs of Ursula's family and her horse at home, and a lot of the pretty little cluttering things one picks up abroad. Marjory saw no girl with such consistently fascinating clothes as Ursula's during her visit, nor did she sit in any room so charming as hers, the college girl being a generation behind her brother in this regard; but first impressions are strong, and Ursula's silver brushes, her beautiful etching, and the two wonderful rugs that nearly covered her shining floor formed the stage setting for all Marjory's subsequent imaginary dramas.

They went out to the links by trolley, through the long quiet street, past pretty lawns and pleasant houses, into the real country of fields and scattered cottages. Marjory learned how "the crowd" had vacationed together more than once; how they were going up to Carol Sawyer's place in Maine next summer for "the time of their lives"; how, after their Commencement obsequies, they were going for two weeks to Nan at Sconset and live in a house all by themselves, and then four of them were going abroad together with Nan's father--"the dearest thing in the world"; how Caroline was going to study medicine in Germany and Lucilla Bradford was going to be married and continue to illumine Boston, and Ursula and her sister were going to stay indefinitely in France or Italy with various relatives.

They seemed to have a very intimate knowledge of one another's affairs, Marjory decided, as they got out at the links and strolled up to the tiny club-house. A straggling crowd was gradually melting away there: hot, dishevelled girls with heavy bags, cool and fluffy girls with tea-cups, men arguing in white flannels and men conversing in frock coats. Important small boys--professors' sons and their friends from the town--caddied for the great man and his followers, patronizing the urchins who ordinarily ama.s.sed wealth from this employment, and a crowd of interested golfers from the town trailed about the holes, admiring, criticising, and chattering. Here and there a crimson coat shone out, some of the ladies tilted gay parasols, white duck dotted the gra.s.s everywhere. It was all very jolly and interesting, and when Nan came up with a white-flannelled youth and a cheerful if exhausted friend whom she introduced as "one of my little mates--Caroline Wilde," Marjory could have thought, as she sipped her tea and learned the score, that she was back on the links at home.

Caroline had learned much and Nan had held a reverent conversation with the champion and was basking in the recollection of it. Marjory met an ardent golfer in marvellous stockings, who was with difficulty restrained from ill.u.s.trating, by means of his empty cup and the parasol his fellow-professor was guarding, the very latest method of effecting a tremendous drive from a bad spot in the course, and his friend turned out to be a cla.s.smate of her brother's; and so they started from Yale, which is a very good conversational starting-point, and their reminiscences attracted Ursula, who, with an adoring little freshman--Ursula was never without a freshman--and the Church and the Law wrangling pleasantly over a lost ball, was holding her court in a near corner. They drifted up, and the Church and the Law were so amusing and well set up that Marjory quite lost her heart to them and wished they would come "West," as they persisted in calling Chicago, remarking confidentially that nothing seemed to upset a person from Chicago so much as that!

They rode home with the Church and the Law, while the a.s.sistant in that great undertaking, the higher education of women, raced the trolley on a Columbia Chainless, to the wild delight of the pa.s.sengers, who cheered his futile efforts and bribed the motorman to an exciting rate of speed.

"Do you have lessons with him, really?" Marjory demanded, as they left the rapidly churning golf stockings behind for the moment. Nan grinned. "Do you, Ursula?" she repeated. Ursula sighed but said nothing, and Nan explained that in the midst of his artless prattle last week he had mentioned a written lesson in the near future, based upon certain reference reading. "It comes off to-morrow," she added cheerfully, "and the young Lucilla is hastily sprinting through the volumes and gathering information. She sought the seclusion that a cabin grants last night, and when I howled at her through the keyhole that we were going to Boyden's for the evening meal, she said that if she got through two hundred pages and her notes by then she'd be along. Ursula does it bit by bit, and then tells us to go to the ant, thou sluggard, but little Lucy thinks she knows him better than we do, and she said he wouldn't do it. I told her, go to, he would; I saw it in his eye. So Caroline started to fill her fountain pen--she calls it that from force of habit--but what she really does is to fill the room, and what drips over--"

"There's Lucilla!" said somebody, and they got off the car and teased Lucilla--a small, tired person with a prim little face and beautiful manners--all the way down to Boyden's. A striking, sulky-looking girl with a stylish golf suit that made her look like the costumers' plates of tailor-made athletic maidens, was holding a table for them, and she turned out to be Carol Sawyer. She was the first girl of "the crowd"

Marjory did not like. Her voice was loud and her manner a little overbearing; she wore too many rings and her att.i.tude toward the college was very different from the harmless nonsense that in the case of the other girls covered plenty of good work and a real interest in it. She was evidently very wealthy, and Marjory caught herself wondering if that was why the others put up with her. When they had half finished their supper--and a very good little supper it was--a large girl, almost too tall for a girl, in a mussy short skirt and badly fitting shirt-waist sauntered into the room. From their own table and most of the others a chorus of welcome went up.

"h.e.l.lo, Teddy!" "Don't hurry, Dody!" "Come over here, Dodo!"

"Theodora, dear child, your side-comb is nearly out!" "Have some berries, Ted?"

She included them all in a cheerful "h.e.l.lo!" and strolled up to Nan's table. "This is little Theodora Bent," said Nan, kindly. "She is very shy and unused to company, but her heart--"

"Her heart," little Theodora interrupted, dragging a chair from somewhere and quietly appropriating Ursula's creamed chicken, "is not here. It is with our friend, Mrs. Austin, who sits at a lonely table wondering where her loved ones are to-night. I met her at the door.