The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted Part 19

"I like doing things like this," said Frieda suddenly, as she came to the doorway, and shook her duster energetically. "Do you remember the time we got our own supper in Berlin, Hannah?"

"Indeed I do," said Hannah heartily, leaning on her broom. "You look awfully pretty this morning, Frieda, in that plaid gingham. Are you going off with Polly, as usual? I don't see you at all, it seems to me."

"You have Catherine," answered Frieda. "Polly is learning German."

"And you are learning English. I can see that you have improved a lot this week. But you are getting pretty slangy. It would be better for you to learn from Catherine than from Polly."

Frieda shook her head firmly. "I am in awe of Catherine," she announced, "and with you I feel weary talking English, for I know you can talk German. But Polly cannot do any other, and I must talk with her. She is delightsome."

"So is Catherine," said Hannah, looking at Frieda wistfully. It was a worry to her that these two who were to be together all the next year should be so slow in getting acquainted. "One is obstinate and the other is shy, and I don't know when they will get over it," she sighed to herself, as Frieda, seeing Catherine come up the walk, disappeared into the house.

Catherine was breathless with her quick climb and her many parcels. She dropped into a chair on the porch, and took off her hat to fan herself.

"There is the funniest woman on the street," she said. "I know she is an agent, and I suppose she'll be here soon; but I've got to sh.e.l.l these peas and I want to do it out here, so I shan't run from her. Won't you bring out some pans for the peas when you take your broom in, Hannah?

I'm too weary to move."

Hannah, on her way after pans, persuaded Frieda to come out and help sh.e.l.l peas, and all three were soon busily at work.

Suddenly Catherine snapped a pea at Hannah to attract her attention.

"My agent!" she whispered, as a woman in a loose flowing gown marched toward them.

She mounted the steps and, stooping over Catherine, snapped something around her neck.

"There!" she said, straightening herself. "That will never come off."

All three girls gasped. Catherine clutched at the offending article and the peas rolled in all directions.

"It's a collar," said the woman triumphantly. "You can wear it forever.

Just put a fresh ribbon over it now and then, and you're always dressed.

Only fifteen cents. I'll try one on you, Miss--" and before Hannah could utter a protest she was caught in the celluloid trap as Catherine had been. Speechless they faced each other. With a little gasp Frieda slipped over the porch railing and disappeared around the corner of the house. Hotspur came bounding after her and she patted him, and hugged him and laughed and laughed.

"A collar just like yours, Hotspur dear," she told him in German. "And it will never come off! Catherine, the Saint, the Perfect, the Inviolate, sitting there looking like a--in English, like an idiom! O, Hotspur, dear, it has done me good. I have wished I could want to laugh at her. Now I shan't be so afraid of her ever again. Come! we must go.

It's time for our row." And Frieda danced off across a little wood path which was a short-cut to the boat-house.

Polly was waiting, and in a very few minutes the "Minnehaha" was launched. It was a beautiful day, the river rippling with waves and twinkling with reflections of trees, but the ardent oarswomen saw neither the beauty surrounding them nor the black clouds threatening.

They were practising for a race. Neither spoke. They pulled with long steady strokes in perfect time. Suddenly Frieda's oar flopped and "caught a crab." The bow at the same moment struck the bank, and a great scrambling tearing sound followed. In a fright the girls huddled together in the bottom of the boat, not daring to look up.

"O, pshaw! It's only a cow, more afraid than we were. She made all that noise just tearing up the bank."

"I thought it was an earthshake," sighed Frieda, leaning back and resting. "That was one hundred strokes without missing. I didn't know the bank was so near."

"Neither did I. That's the trouble with us, Frieda. We get so interested in rowing that we forget to steer."

"We steered into a steer that time."

"O, Frieda! You ought not to be allowed to make jokes in English, you make such bad ones."

Frieda smiled cheerfully. "Ten days ago I thought I should never make a joke in any language, or laugh at one again. I was very sorrowful when I came here, Polly."

"I didn't dream it," answered Polly. "You looked very sweet when I first saw you, and I thought you kept still because you didn't care to talk!

But we have had a lot of fun these days, haven't we? I feel as though I had known you a long time. Wish you were going to Wellesley."

"So do I. It would be delightful, with you there and Karl and Hannah so near. But my parents decided for me. Karl will go to see you, though."

"That's nice. Really, Frieda, you will find it's lots easier at a small college than a large one at first. And you can come on East afterward.

Dexter is fine, and you'll have such a start, going in as Catherine's friend."

Frieda grimaced.

"If every one there is as beautiful and--_apart_ as Catherine is, I shan't get on very well. Catherine is like a saint. She could never understand wickedness as you and Hannah do."

"Thanks very much!" Polly answered dryly. "But you take my word for it, Catherine isn't just a saint. There is fun in her, too, though not on the surface. You may always feel as though she were a beautiful picture or poem but you won't like her the less for that. She's not stand-offish. She's just different. My dear, I felt a drop."

"So did I. And there's another." Straightway the heavens opened and a deluge descended, most of it, it seemed, aiming for the small rowboat at the pasture's edge.

The thin roof of boughs which had hidden from their view the swiftly gathering clouds was wholly inadequate to the task of sheltering them from the contents of the clouds. Great cracks of lightning showed in the dark sky, and thunder rattled and roared and rumbled and burst.

Polly looked grave.

"We'll drown if we stay here, and we could never row home. Look at the waves! And if we stay here, we're also liable to be struck by lightning.

Let's leave the boat and make for that farmhouse across the pasture."

"I'm afraider of the cow," said Frieda. "But I'll go. We can hide the oars and oar-locks in the bushes."

Progress across the pasture was difficult, but when the road beyond was reached, both looked aghast at the muddy stream of it.

Frieda rolled under the fence and stepped boldly in. Polly, gasping with laughter, started to climb over.

"You might as well roll," advised Frieda. "You can't wetten yourself more than you are already, and it is pleasant to roll."

"That's a matter of taste!" panted Polly, balancing herself on the top of the fence.

Suddenly Frieda gave a little shriek. Polly instantly fell forward into the mud, her skirt catching on all the barbs in the fence and rending itself horribly. Frieda, full of wild exclamations of pity and remorse, helped her up and wiped the thickest of the mud from her once piquant face.

"It was the cow," she confessed. "I saw him coming from afar and I squealed. I did not know it would make you tumble, but I had to squeal.

I fear cows. I have great alarm before them."

"I forgive you," Polly was weak with mirth. "But we've got to get into that house and telephone for some one to come out from town and take us home. We could never walk in these roads, and I should tie myself all up in knots if I walked in this shredded skirt. One more little spurt, Frieda, and we're at the kitchen door!"

It looked for a minute as though they would never get beyond the door.

The respectable lady who met them there was scarcely to blame if she judged a little by outward appearance. Polly's efforts to be suave were discounted by the muddy look of her eye, and the fact that water was dripping from her hair into her face.

"Won't you please let us come in and telephone for a carriage, and then wait for it?" she pleaded. "I will gladly pay for the use of the 'phone." Then it came over her sickeningly that she had no money with her.

"I'm Polly Osgood," she said. "My father is the Osgood of Osgood and Brown, Lawyers."

"You don't say! Come right in. I'm Amanda B. Mills, and Lawyer Osgood has been my counsel for twenty-one years and more. I'd never a-kept you waitin' out there a minute, if I'd known 'twas you. Is this your sister?