The Story Book Girls Part 34

She simulated a careless tone, however.

"Oh, Isobel," she said, "I wish you wouldn't. When I give directions to the servants, it's very difficult for me if some one else gives them others." It was lame, but it was there, the information that she was in control.

"Very distracting for the servants, too," said Mrs. Leighton calmly, and ratified Elma's venture with her approval.

She ate a grape with extreme care.

Isobel did not answer. She froze in her pink gown however, and a storm gathered kindling to black anger in her eyes.

She looked Elma over, her whole bearing carrying a threat. It was a pose which generally produced some effect.

But Elma was fighting for something more than her own paltry little authority. She was bucking up "for Mabel's sake."

She pretended to treat it as a joke now that Isobel "knew."

"So after this I'm in undisputed authority," she exclaimed, and wondered at herself for her miraculous calmness. "And if you, Betty, endeavour to get more salt in the soup or try on any other of your favourite dodges, I shall--"--she also ate a grape quite serenely--"I shall half kill you."

"Oh, Betty," she said afterwards, "I feel as though I had gone in for a bathe in mid-winter. Did you see her eye!"

"I did," said Betty. "So did papa. You'll find it will be easier for us now. How calm you were! I should have fainted."

"My knees were knocking like castanets," said Elma. "If I had had them j.a.panned, you would have heard quite a row. But it's very stimulating."

It occurred to her that now she could write in a self-respecting manner to Mabel.

Isobel after this entirely blocked off Elma from any of her excursions.

Even the visits to Miss Grace were over so far as Isobel was concerned, and Elma once more had that dear lady to herself.

She would not tell Miss Grace how it had happened that her cousin no longer accompanied her. Occasionally, however, Isobel stepped in herself and found her former audience in Miss Annie.

None of it affected Elma as it might have done. Isobel hardly spoke to her, certainly never when they were alone. It alarmed Elma how she could light up when anybody was present, any one who counted, and be quite companionable to Elma.

This all faded before the success of Mabel and Jean, who were now writing in the best of spirits.

And oh! "Love of our lives," Adelaide Maud, who was now in London, had called on them. It opened up a fairyland to both, for she took them to her uncle's house, and feted them generally. Good old Adelaide Maud.

There was no one like her for bringing relief to the rich, and helping the moderately poor.

So Elma described her.

It seemed odd that it should be difficult to know Adelaide Maud except in an emergency. Elma, on the advice of Miss Grace, merely had to send her one little note when in London, with Mabel's address, and Adelaide Maud had called.

There were great consolations to the life she now led with Isobel.

Cuthbert vowed he would come down to Elma's first dance. How different it was to what she had antic.i.p.ated! She would go with Isobel and Isobel would be sweetly magnificent, and Elma would feel like a babe of ten.

She longed to refuse all invitations until Mabel came home. Then the unrighteousness of this aloofness from Isobel beset her, and they accepted an invitation jointly.

Isobel ordered a dream of a dress from London. Elma was in white. Mabel and Jean sent her white roses for her hair, the daintiest things.

Cuthbert played up, and George Maclean found her plenty of partners.

Isobel was quite kind. Mr. Leighton had looked sadly on Elma on seeing her off.

"Another bird spreading its wings," said he.

She looked very small and delicately dainty. Whereas Isobel, "Isobel was like a double begonia in full bloom," said Betty.

The begonia bloomed till a late hour effulgently.

Elma simply longed all the time for Mabel and Jean, and oh! "Love of our Lives," Adelaide Maud.

It was Lance who christened her "Love of our Lives."

"What's that idiot going on about," asked Cuthbert, as he swung Elma off on the double hop of a polka.

"He is talking about Adelaide Maud. I'm so dull because she isn't here."

"You are?" asked Cuthbert.

There was a curious inflection on the "you" as though he had said, "You also?"

"Yes," said Elma, "though it's so often 'so near and yet so far' with Adelaide Maud, she is really my greatest friend."

Cuthbert seemed impressed.

"She doesn't need to make so much of the 'so far' pose," he said gruffly.

"Oh yes, she does," replied Elma. "It's her mother. She withers poor Adelaide Maud to a stick. It's a wonder she's such a duck. Adelaide Maud, I mean. Cuthbert, when are you coming home for a long visit?" she asked.

"Next summer. I shall tell you a great secret. I think I am to get a lectures.h.i.+p, quite a good thing. Can you keep it from the pater until I'm sure?"

"Rather," said Elma.

"Then," he said, "if it isn't all roses here next summer, you'll only have one person to blame."

"One?" asked Elma.

Visions of Isobel cut everything from her mind.

"Is it Isobel?" she asked mildly.

"Isobel!" Cuthbert looked so disgusted that she could have kissed him.

She saw Isobel at that moment. She was swaying round the room in the perfection of rhythm with no less an old loyalist than George Maclean.

Ah, well--all their good friends might drift over there, but she still had Cuthbert. The joy of it lent wings to her little figure. It always had been and always remained difficult for her to adapt her small stride to men of Cuthbert's build. This night she suddenly acquired the strength and ease--the knowledge which really having him gave her, to make dancing with him become a facile affair.

"Oh, Cuthbert, this is ripping," she sighed at last. "If it isn't Isobel, who is it?" she asked him.

"Why, Elma, you are a little donkey! Who could it be, but 'Love of our Lives,' Adelaide Maud?"

He swung her far into the middle:--where the floor became as melted wax, and life opened out to Elma like a flower.

"Oh, Cuthbert dear, how ripping," said little Elma.