Peggy Stewart at School Part 23

"Just what I say. _I_ believe Nelly Bolivar is as poor as Job's turkey and that Peggy Stewart pays all 'her expenses here. And I know she wears Peggy's cast-off clothes. I saw Peggy's name in one of her coats. You know Peggy has her name and the maker's woven right into the linings.

Just you wait and see what her father looks like and then see if I'm far wrong."

"Why, she's nothing better than a charity pupil if that's true," sneered Lily Pearl, who never failed to follow Helen's lead.

"If Mrs. Vincent opens her school to such girls I think it would be well for our parents to investigate the matter," was Isabel's superior criticism.

"Yes, you'd better. Mother would be delighted to have an extra room or two; she has so many applicants all the time," flashed Natalie, her cheeks blazing.

"Children, children, don't grow excited. Wait until you find out what you're fuming about," said Stella in the tone which always made them feel like kids, Rosalie insisted. "And come on down. The horses have been waiting twenty minutes already and Mrs. Vincent will have a word or two to say to us if we don't watch out."

As they crossed the hall to the porte cochere, Peggy, Polly and Nelly came from the reception room, Mr. Bolivar with them. The lively curiosity upon the girls' faces was rather amusing. Juno favored him with a well-cultivated Fifth Avenue stare. Helen's nose took a higher tilt if possible. Lily Pearl giggled as usual. Stella smiled at the girls and said: "Glad you're coming with us." Isabel murmured "Horrors!"

under her breath and waddled with what she believed to be dignity toward the door. Marjorie only smiled, but Rosalie and Natalie stopped, the former crying impulsively:

"Introduce your father to us, Nelly; we want to know him."

The man the girls looked upon had changed a good deal from the despondent Jim Bolivar whom Peggy had seen sitting upon the upturned box in Market Square so long ago. Prosperity and resultant comforts had done a good deal for the despairing man. There were still some traces of the handsome Jim Bolivar with whom pretty, romantic Helen Bladen had eloped, though the intermediate years of sorrow and misfortune had changed that dapper young beau into a careless, hopeless pessimist. What the end might have been but for Peggy is hard to guess, but the past two years had made him think and think hard too. Though still slipshod of speech as the result of a.s.sociating with his humbler neighbors, he was certainly making good, and few lapses occurred as he shook hands with Nelly's friends and then went out to help them mount. In his dark gray suit, Alpine hat and his gray gloves, something of the gentleman which was in him became evident.

He helped each girl upon her horse, greeted Junius Augustus, patted Shashai, Star and Tzaritza; deplored poor Columbine's shorn glories, smiled an odd smile at Isabel's bulky figure upon the more bulky Senator, then said:

"I'll see you when you come back, honey. I've got to have a talk with Shelby. Some things is--are--bothering me back yonder. Have a fine gallop. It's a prime day for it. Good-bye, young ladies," and raising his hat with something of the gallantry of the old Bolivar he followed Junius toward the stables.

That night Mrs. Vincent asked him to dine with her, but he declined on the score of an engagement with a friend. He and Shelby dined in Was.h.i.+ngton and during that meal he made just one allusion to Nelly and her surroundings.

"It's all very well for a man to make a plumb fool of himself and waste his life if he's a-mind to, but he ain't got any business to drag other folks along with him. If I hadn't a-been a fool among fools I might a-been sittin' beside my little girl this minute, and not be scared to either, Shelby. My dad used to say something about 'man being his own star,' I don't recollect it all, but I know it meant he could be one of the first magnet if he'd a mind to. I set out to be a comet, I reckon, all hot air tail, and there isn't much of me left worth looking at."

"How old are you!"

"Forty-four."

"Well, you've got twenty-five years to the good yet. Now get busy for the little girl's sake."

"Shake," cried Jim Bolivar, extending his hand across the table.

Meanwhile back yonder at the school, Friday night being "home letters night" the girls were all busily writing, but Helen kept the monogram upon her paper carefully concealed.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER XVI

A MIDNIGHT SENSATION

But two weeks remained of the spring term. School would close on May twenty-eighth. Already Was.h.i.+ngton had become insufferably warm, and even Columbia Heights School situated upon its hill, was very trying. The girls were almost too inert to work and spent every possible moment out of doors.

The moment school ended Peggy, Polly and Nelly would go back to Annapolis and Rosalie was to go with, them as Peggy's guest for a month.

Mrs. Harold had invited Marjorie, Natalie, and Juno to be Polly's guests for June week under the joint chaperonage of herself and Mrs. Howland, after which plans were being laid for the entire party to go to Provincetown with "all the Howland outfit," as Captain Stewart and Mr.

Harold phrased it, there to live in a bungalow as long as the Atlantic fleet made that jumping-off place its rendezvous. It bid fair to be a tremendous house party, though the lads whom the girls had grown to know best would not be there. The practice squadron was going to Europe this summer. However, "the old guard" as Happy, Wheedles and Shortie, as well as dozens of others from earlier cla.s.ses were called, would be there and things were sure to be lively. But all this lies in the future.

Helen and Lily Pearl had been invited to Annapolis for June week, by Mrs. Ring, and were to go to the June ball with dear Paul and Charles Purdy. They had not been asked to dance the German since they had made no special friends among the first cla.s.smen. Peggy and Polly were to dance it, one with d.i.c.k Allyn, the other with his room-mate, Calhoun Byrd, who, in Bancroft's vernacular "spooned on Ralph" and had always considered Polly "a clipper." Juno was to go with Guy Bennett, Nelly, Rosalie, Marjorie and Natalie had, alack! to look on from the gallery, escorted by second-cla.s.smen.

But now of immediate happenings at Columbia Heights School.

It had been arranged that Shelby should take Shashai, Star and Tzaritza back to Severndale on the twenty-second, as it was now far too warm to ride in Was.h.i.+ngton. Moreover, Shelby's engagement with Mrs. Vincent expired May fifteenth and he was anxious to get back to Severndale. Then at the last moment, Mrs. Vincent decided to send all the saddle horses to Severndale for the summer months and keep only the carriage horses and the white groom at the school. So Shelby wrote Jim Bolivar that "he'd better come along down and get on the job too." Consequently, about a week after the girl's visit to Annapolis and Rosalie's escapade, Jim Bolivar arrived at the school and took up his quarters in the pretty little cottage provided for Shelby. He expected to spend about two days helping to get matters closed up for the summer, then start on with Junius Augustus in charge of Columbine, Lady Belle, the Senator, and Jack-o'-Lantern, Shelby following a day later with Shashai, Star, Madame Goldie and Old Duke. So far so good out in the stables. Within the school Nelly was learning the difference between being the daughter of patrician blood come upon misfortune, and cheerfully making the best of things, and some extremely plebeian blood slopped unexpectedly into fortune, and trying to forget its origin. Had not Nelly possessed such loyal old friends as Peggy and Polly, and made such stanch new ones as Rosalie, Natalie, Stella and Marjorie, her position might have been a very trying one. And now only eight days remained before vacation would begin. Already the girls were in a flutter for June week at Annapolis.

Would it be fair? Would it be scorching hot? Would there be moon-light nights?

"There'll be moon-light if the old lady has half a chance to show herself," said Polly's a.s.sured voice and nod.

"We had a new moon on the eighteenth," said Peggy. "That means brim-full in June week, and, oh, girls, won't it be fairy land! How I wish, though, you were all to dance the German. I can't help feeling selfish to leave you out of that fun."

"You aren't leaving us out. We understand that even the Little Mother can't ask her boys to take a girl to the German! But we aren't likely to pine away with all the other fun afoot," cried Natalie gaily, doing a pirouette across the room just by way of relieving pent-up antic.i.p.ation.

"Helen said she might be invited to dance the German after all. Dear Paul's Mamma has a grease with a first cla.s.sman," laughed Rosalie.

"When I see her on the floor I'll believe it," said Juno.

"Where is Helen tonight?" asked Marjorie.

"Up in her room. Lily has a sick headache and she went up with her.

Guess that cousin of Helen's who came down from Baltimore, Foxy Grandpa's daughter, or niece, or something, I believe, and spent this afternoon with her, gave those girls too many chocolates. Wasn't she the limit? And big? Well, I'll wager that woman was six feet tall, and she was made up perfectly outrageously. Her skin was fair enough, and her color lovely and I never saw such teeth, if they weren't store ones, but there was something about the lower part of her face that looked queer. Did you notice it, girls?" asked Polly.

"I did. There was such a funny dull tinge, like a man who had just been shaved," commented Rosalie, with a puzzled frown.

"Her voice struck me funniest. Do you remember Fraulein Shultz who was here the first year school opened, Marjorie?" asked Natalie.

"Yes, we used to call her Herr Shultz. Such a voice you never heard, girls!"

"Well, this cousin's was exactly like Herr Shultz."

"Her clothes were the climax with me. I believe she must have been on the stage sometime. Oh, yes, they were up-to-date enough, but, so sort of--of--tawdry," criticised Juno.

"Do you know, she reminded me of somebody I know but who it is I just can't think," and Peggy puckered her forehead into wrinkles.

"Oh!" cried Nelly, then stopped short.

"What's the matter? Sat on a pin?" asked Rosalie, laughing.

"Something made me jump," answered Nelly, pulling her skirt as though in search of the pin Rosalie had suggested. Then in a moment she said:

"Reckon I'll go in, girls, I've got to send a note home by father and he starts pretty soon."

"Why do they start at night?" asked Juno.

"Cooler traveling for the horses. They leave here about eight, travel about nine miles an hour, for two hours, stop at ---- for the night, start again at seven in the morning, and will reach Severndale by ten o'clock at latest. It seems like a long trip, but that makes it an easy one. Shelby will start tomorrow or next day. And won't all those horses have the time of their lives! I am so glad that they're to be there,"

explained Peggy.