Part 5

"Yes, of course, in a way. But you don't have to keep thinking about it always. People have to enjoy themselves sometimes, and if we can't enjoy ourselves in this Four Club we might as well give it up at once."

"Do you mean that Julia would prevent our enjoying ourselves if she came?" Nora's voice sounded ominously severe.

"I didn't say that, but--well what's the good of talking?" cried Belle, who saw that she was getting into deep water.

"Yes," chimed in Brenda, "that's what I say too." But Edith continued in a rather grave voice,

"Of course it's your house, Brenda, and you and Belle started the Club, and no one can compel you to invite any one you don't want. But I'm sure if I had my way Julia should be here this minute, and I'm not sure that I'll stay in the Club if she isn't asked."

"Do you mean you won't work for the Bazaar?" exclaimed Nora in surprise, thinking of Manuel, and of the dainty needlework at which Edith was so skilful.

"I haven't said exactly what I'll do," replied the quiet Edith, with more spirit than she generally displayed. "Only I can tell you that I'm not going to see Julia left out of things the way she has been."

"Oh, Julia's all right," said Brenda scornfully. "She doesn't know how to do fancy-work, and she'd just feel bored if she came to the Club. If you want a 'cause' Edith, you'd better adopt a smaller orphan than Julia."

"Like Manuel," said Edith, with a bright smile, for, determined though she was when she had made up her mind about a thing, she was also a peacemaker. Even when Brenda and Belle most annoyed her, she hesitated to say sharp things to them, remembering that "A soft answer turneth away wrath."

"Yes, like Manuel," said Nora, taking up Edith's words. "I won't give Manuel up to you, for you know that I mean to adopt him myself, but he has a sister, or two of them for that matter, and I shouldn't wonder if either of them would give you enough to do."

"Oh, yes," said Brenda, "they both looked as if they needed lots of clothes. But they have the _sweetest_ black eyes."

"Well, then, why shouldn't we make dresses or aprons or something like that, before we get started on our work for the Bazaar?" asked Edith.

"Oh, how can you?" cried Belle. "Horrid calico dresses and things like that--I should just hate them."

"There, don't get excited," said Nora. "I've thought of that myself. But my mother says there are plenty of Societies and Sewing Circles we can get clothes from, if the Rosas really need clothes. She says it would be bad to begin giving them things."

"Well, then, what are we going to have a Bazaar for?" asked Brenda.

"For fun," responded Belle, so promptly that Nora looked at her a little suspiciously.

"No," replied Nora, "not for fun, but we've got to have an object in a Club of this kind, and besides there'll probably be other things we can do for the Rosas."

"Send them to the country in the summer, perhaps," said Edith.

"There are the Country Week people," cried Belle. "They always do things like that."

"Let's wait until we get the money," said Brenda, grandly. "Perhaps we'll have enough to buy them a house--or----"

"Or a horse and carriage," laughed Edith. "Oh, Brenda, you _are_ so unpractical."

"There, there," said Nora, who saw another cloud rising over the horizon of the Four Club. "Let's talk of something sensible."

"What are you working at, Belle?"

Belle held up a pretty piece of blue denim on which she had begun to outline a pattern in white silk. "This is to be a sofa cushion," she said in answer to Nora's question. "People always like to buy them, and this shade of blue goes with almost anything."

"Oh, it's too sweet for anything," said Nora, enthusiastically.

"Yes, indeed," added Edith, with perfect sincerity. "You do such perfect needlework that I really envy you."

Both Nora and Edith were glad to praise Belle's skill, for although they knew that they themselves had been in the right, they realized that Belle would not feel very kindly toward them for not siding with her in the matter of Julia. Nora, like Edith, was a peacemaker, and both wished the afternoon to end as pleasantly as possible.

Belle was by no means indifferent to the praise of her friends. She really could do very fine embroidery and she took considerable pride in her work.

"I never _could_ have patience to do anything like that," said Nora, whose specialty was crocheting. "I like to do something that I needn't look at all the time. I could crochet an afghan almost in the dark."

"Yes, but an afghan is such an endless piece of work."

"Well, I don't suppose I'll make _many_ of them for the Bazaar."

"I should say not," said Edith. "What are you going to do first, Brenda? You haven't had a needle in your hand this afternoon."

"I know it, I know it," cried Brenda, the heedless. "But I can't think what to begin first," and she opened the bottom drawer of her bureau, where were displayed a tangled heap of linen and floss and gold thread and silk plush and other materials for fancy work which she had bought at different times. There were cushion covers and doilies in which a few stitches had been taken, only to be thrown aside for something else, and some of them were in so soiled a condition that they were not likely to be good for anything.

"Oh, what a wicked waste of money, Brenda Barlow," exclaimed Nora, as she looked at the contents of the drawer.

"Well, at any rate it shows that I have had good intentions," said Brenda.

IX

A MYSTERIOUS MANSION

At the corner nearly opposite Miss Crawdon's school stood a large, old-fashioned mansion of brick painted light brown. It was a detached house almost surrounded by a high wall. In the wall was a pillared gateway, and each pillar was surmounted by two large balls that looked as if they had dropped from the mouth of a great cannon. Behind the fence and close to the house were two little garden beds, and there were three or four trees in the yard back of the house. It was said that the mansion had once been surrounded with extensive grounds that sloped down hill almost to the river. But new streets and houses had gradually encroached on these grounds until hardly a trace of them remained. There was never a sign of life seen about the old house. Windows and doors were always closed. Even the blinds were seldom drawn up, though once in a while at an upper window, some of the schoolgirls said that they had seen a woman's figure seated behind the lace curtains. Occasionally, too, on sunny days they had noticed a large, old-fashioned carriage drive up under the porte-cochere, while an old lady very much wrapped up, and attended evidently by a maid, entered it. In taking their walks at recess the girls always passed this house, and, as schoolgirls, they naturally felt much curiosity about the lady who occupied it, since she seemed to be surrounded by an air of mystery.

They knew, of course, her name--Madame du Launy--and some of the girls had heard more about her from their parents.

"My mother," said Frances Pounder, "says that my grandmother told her that Mme. du Launy was a very beautiful girl. She married a Frenchman whom her family despised, and she stayed in Europe until after her father's death."

"Was the Frenchman rich?" asked Edith, in rather an awe-stricken voice, for the story sounded very romantic. The girls at this moment happened to be seated on the steps leading to the school, and Frances was in her element when she had an interested group hanging on her words.

"Oh, dear, no, he wasn't rich at all. He was a cook, or a hair-dresser, or something like that, only very good looking. But when Mme. du Launy's father died, she had three little children, and her father was so proud--he was a Holtom--he couldn't bear to think of her coming to want, so he left her all his fortune just the same as if she hadn't married beneath her."

"That was right," said Nora approvingly. "I think it's ridiculous for fathers to cut their children off with a penny, the way they used to."

"Well," responded Frances, "I think it's a great deal more ridiculous for people to marry beneath them."

"Of course you'd think that, Frances," interposed Belle.

"There, there, don't begin to quarrel, children," said Nora. "Go on with the story, Frances. What did Mme. du Launy do when she got her money?"

"Oh, she brought her Frenchman and her children to Boston, and she lived at a hotel while she began to build this house. Some people went to see her, but the Frenchman was a terribly ill-mannered little thing, and nobody liked him because he was so familiar. Mme. du Launy and he were hardly ever invited anywhere, and they spent most of their time driving about in a great carriage which held the whole family, and a maid and governess."

"I should think they would have stopped building the house."

"Oh, no," said Edith, "they kept on, and after a while they went to Europe to buy things for it. They had more than a ship-load, and they say that everything was perfectly beautiful,--foreign rugs, and tapestry, and glass, and gilt furniture."

"Dear me, I should love to have seen it."

"Well, it's all there in the house now, but you'd have to be a good deal smarter than any one I know to see it."

"Why Frances, do you mean that no one ever goes there?" asked Julia.

"Yes, that's just what I mean. I don't suppose any one in Boston except the doctor, and two or three very old people, have ever been inside that door."

"Yes, that's true," added Edith. "I've heard my mother speak of it. Mme. du Launy is terribly peculiar."

"I should think she'd be lonely," said Julia.

"I dare say she is," replied Frances, "but it's awfully selfish to shut up a great house like that."

"Why does she do it?"

"Oh, I believe, when she came back from Europe the second time she set out to give a great ball. She sent invitations to every one, no matter whether people had called on her or not. Of course very few people went, only her relations and a few others. This made her so angry that she vowed she'd have nothing more to do with people in Boston. Not long afterward her husband died, then her children died or turned out badly, and she has just lived alone ever since."

"It sounds rather sad," said Julia, when Frances had finished.

"Nonsense, Julia," said Brenda, "you're so sentimental."

"No, she isn't at all," cried Edith, "it is really sad. I wonder what became of the children."

Here Belle spoke up. "I've heard that the boys all died. One of them ran away to sea and was drowned. But I believe the girl married some one her mother didn't like, and so she disinherited her. She may be living somewhere, but she must be an old woman herself, for my grandmother says that Mme. du Launy is about eighty."

As the girls looked toward the house they saw a figure standing behind the curtains of the window over the front door.

"There she is now," the girls cried.

"Wouldn't you like to go inside?" said Nora to Edith.

"I don't know that I'm really anxious to," replied the latter.

"Oh, I am," said Nora, and a moment later she cried out to Frances, "Frances, you are rather clever, can't you suggest some way by which I can find my way inside that house? Wouldn't one of your great aunts give me an introduction to Mme. du Launy? I'm just dying to see what is inside those brick walls."

"No," responded Frances, rather scornfully; "if they could they wouldn't, but I'm sure they haven't kept up any acquaintance with Mme. du Launy."

"Well," replied Nora, "I'll find a way. Mark my words, before the present crescent moon is old I shall have at least a speaking acquaintance with Mme. du Launy. Poor thing, she must be very lonely."

"I don't believe she'd appreciate your society particularly, Nora, for one thing you're pretty young," said Edith.

"No matter, I'm going to know her. Come, Brenda, I'll confide in you."

So Brenda and Nora walked down the street, leaving the other girls to wonder what they were planning. This was by no means the first time that the girls at Miss Crawdon's school had discussed Mme. du Launy and her affairs. Indeed, each set of girls had wondered about her and her beautiful furniture, and her music box that played a hundred airs, and all her foreign treasures, and her possessions lost nothing in splendor as the girls told what they had heard about them.

Of the four friends, Belle and Edith were most indifferent to the house across the way. But a number of others among the schoolgirls seemed inclined to join Nora and Brenda in whatever they were planning. One day as they walked about at recess they saw the old lady leave the house and enter her carriage. They were too polite to stand and gaze at her, but some of them could not resist the temptation of staring at the carriage as it rolled by.

The next day Nora and Brenda were seen to be very much interested in playing ball. They tossed it from one to the other, and occasionally as they passed the brick mansion they let it roll within the gateway on the gravelled walks. There were half a dozen girls walking in front of the old house and tossing the ball. As they played, the ball rose higher and higher. Nora and Brenda were standing almost inside the gateway, when suddenly the ball seemed to fling itself against one of the windows, and the crash of breaking glass was heard. Some of the girls looked frightened and hurried across the street toward the school. Brenda too, started to go, but Nora took her by the hand. "Remember your promise," she said, so loudly that two of the other girls who were crossing the street, turned about and joined them. Just at that moment the school-bell rang, and rather reluctantly the girls turned back to school. Nora and Brenda paid very little attention to their lessons the rest of the morning. Some of their friends who had witnessed the mischief done by the ball were also excited. They all more than half expected to see Mme. du Launy's aged servant-man make his appearance to complain of the injury done to the window. As it drew near two o'clock and nothing of the kind had happened, they were really disappointed.

"We're not going home with you," cried Nora, as she and Brenda and the two other conspirators walked down the steps of the school.

"Why not?" asked Edith from the dressing-room.

"Oh, we have something to attend to," replied Nora.

"Well," said Edith, "luncheon is the most important thing that I have to attend to just now."

"What shall I say to your mother?" asked Julia, as she saw Brenda preparing to turn in the opposite direction from home.

"Don't say anything, Julia. I'm not a baby to need looking after."

Julia had no answer for this inconsiderate speech, for indeed she had become only too well accustomed to Brenda's little rudenesses.

"Let's wait and see what they are going to do," suggested Edith, looking toward Nora and Brenda and the two or three others who had joined them.

"I must go on," answered Julia. "I ought to be at----"

"I'll wait," spoke up Belle. "Come, you can stay, Edith."

So the two friends waited near the school while Brenda and Nora and the others crossed the street to Mme. du Launy's mansion. They were surprised to see them ring the bell, and after a moment, when the door was opened, to see them step inside.

Not many minutes later they saw the door reopen, as the girls, looking somewhat crestfallen, turned away from the house.

"What in the world were you up to?" called Belle, rather excitedly as they turned homeward.

"Wait till we get out of sight of the house," said Nora, "and I'll tell you. It was this way, I had just made up my mind that I'd see the inside of that house. Frances Pounder seemed so sure I couldn't. So I thought and thought, and to-day when we were playing ball you see we broke the window."

"On purpose! I do believe. Why, Nora, I should think you'd be ashamed!"

"Well, I had the money in my pocket to pay for it. That was what we went for after school. But that queer old butler,--really I almost laughed in his face. However, I managed to say, 'I'm extremely sorry, but I broke a pane of glass in the window over the front door when I was playing ball this morning.' 'We hadn't discovered it, miss,' he said, as solemn as could be. 'Then you might go and look,' I replied, 'and if you will please tell Mme. du Launy that I'd like to pay for it, I'll be greatly obliged.' I thought that while he was looking at the glass and talking to the old lady, he'd at least ask us into the reception-room, or drawing-room. But not a bit of it. There's a little vestibule just beyond the front door, and there he left us. He asked us to sit down, and we did sit down on the edge of two great black settles there in the marble vestibule. When he came back I felt sure he was going to take us straight up to Mme. du Launy. Instead of that he merely said: 'Mme. du Launy presents her compliments, and is greatly obliged to you for telling her about the window. She couldn't think of letting you pay for it, as an apology is quite enough.'"

"And you didn't see anything in the house?"

"No, not a thing; though as he opened the door into the hall we caught a glimpse of a big gilded table and an enormous piece of tapestry over the stairs. Wasn't it mean, after all our efforts?"

"Who has won the bet, you or Frances?" asked Belle.

"I'm not sure. I have been in the house and I haven't," replied Nora.

"I should think you'd have been frightened to death. What would you have done if you had seen the old lady?"

"I don't know, I'm sure. There were so many of us we shouldn't have been frightened," and Nora looked at Brenda and the other girl who were vehemently describing the adventure.

X

A SOPHOMORE

When Edith's brother Philip came in from College to spend Saturday and Sunday, Edith's house was apt to be a rendezvous for the other girls. Not that Philip was likely to waste much time with mere girls. Not he! He was a Harvard sophomore, and realized his own importance quite as much as the girls did. But still there was always the chance that he would come into the room just for a minute, and tell them some of the latest Cambridge news. He would have scorned to call it gossip. If there was any one thing in the world he hated--so he said--it was girls' talk, this jabbering about nothing. For his part he wouldn't waste his time _that_ way. Yet, when he had an appreciative audience,--and girls generally appreciated what Philip said,--he would often spend as much as half an hour talking about the fellows--how beastly it was Jim Dashaway couldn't row on the crew, and he would grow almost enthusiastic when describing the tussle between Ned Brown and Stanley Hooper over the respective merits of Boston and New York in which Hooper, the New Yorker, was terribly beaten.

"And upon my word," he concluded, "I wasn't sorry, for the New York set is getting just unbearable. I wouldn't so much mind fighting Stanley Hooper myself about New York and Boston. I guess I'd show him that New York isn't the whole world."

"I should say not," exclaimed Nora; but Belle, who had some New York cousins, was silent. Brenda, however, noticing Belle's expression, and not feeling disposed to side completely with Nora, said,

"You're terribly narrow, Nora, to think that nobody's any good unless he comes from Boston."

"I didn't say so," replied Nora.

"No, but that's what you mean, and I'm surprised, Philip Blair, that a boy should be so awfully one-sided."

"Well, you'd better talk, Brenda Barlow," broke in Nora again. "Just see the way you treat Julia. If she'd been born in Boston----"

"I don't treat her," interrupted Brenda.

"No, that's just it, you don't treat her decently."

"Oh, I say," said Philip, from his place in front of the mantelpiece, "how queer girls are; do you always fight like this when you're together?"

"We don't fight like you boys," answered Edith, good-humoredly. "We don't knock each other down and run the risk of breaking one another's noses."

Philip looked over his shoulder in the glass. There was nothing the matter with his own shapely nose, and I doubt that he would have run any such risk as Edith suggested. Perhaps this was the reason why Philip was not a fighter. There was one good thing about the little disputes in which Brenda and Belle indulged. They very seldom lasted long. In the present instance the girls were ashamed of having shown temper before Philip. The latter, however, did not dwell on their weakness.

"Oh, say, did you hear about the time Will Hardon had with the Dicky, last week?" he asked.

Nora nodded. She, too, had a brother in College.

"What was it?" asked Edith. "You haven't told _me_, Philip."

"How funny you are, Edith," said Belle. "You never hear anything. Hasn't anyone told you how the other fellows made him run blindfolded in his shirt sleeves down Beacon Street?"

"No, really?"

"Of course, really!"

"And then they led him up the steps into Mrs. Oxford's when she was giving an afternoon tea, and when they took the bandage off his eyes there he was in his shirt sleeves, without his hat, and his hair all tumbled, and everybody looking at him."

"Oh," said one girl, and "Ah," said another; and "How silly!" they all cried together.

"If girls amused themselves like that what fun you'd make of us!" said the practical Nora.

"I shouldn't think there'd be much fun in making anybody uncomfortable."

"Oh, it gives a fellow a chance to show what kind of stuff he's made of," explained Philip, "whether he has good manners, and whether he's clever--and all that."

"There must be better ways of showing bravery," said the practical Edith. "I don't believe you know a bit more about Will Hardon's bravery than you did before."

"We knew something about his manners."

"What?"

"Why, when he saw where he was, he didn't run away, or flunk out. He only looked a little sheepish, the other fellows said, but he just bowed to the ladies, and saying politely that he was sorry to have disturbed them, he walked off as nice as you please."

"Wasn't he mad at the two fellows for taking him there?"

"Of course not; that's a part of the thing. Why, there are fellows in Cambridge who would go through fire and water, or stand on their heads in front of a pulpit for the sake of getting into the Dicky. I tell you we make some of them suffer."

Philip said "we" with a rather important air, although he had belonged to the illustrious organization a very short time.

"Well, I think you're perfectly horrid," cried Brenda, "I mean the Dicky. I've heard about the way you make people suffer, branding them with hot cigars, and making them run barefoot winter nights, and doing all sorts of useless things."

"If you went to College you'd see more use in them."

"I'm glad girls don't go to College."

"Oh, some do!"

"Not girls we know."

"I'm sure I can't tell," said Philip rather crossly, "there are a lot of girls studying in Cambridge now at the Annex, and the fellows don't like it at all."

"Well, I declare," exclaimed Nora, "I'd like to know what difference it makes to them."

"Oh, they hate to see these girls going about with books, and trying to get into Harvard."

"Yes, trying to break down the walls," said Nora, sarcastically.

"Oh, see here, it would just spoil everything to have women in the classes with us."

"Are you afraid they'd get ahead of you?" asked Edith, gently.

"Now, look here, Edith, I don't want you to talk that way," responded Philip with brotherly authority. "There isn't any danger of girls getting ahead of us."

"Why, I heard," said Nora, "that one of the professors----"

"Oh, yes, I've heard it too," interrupted Philip. "I've heard that some professors say that their Annex classes do better work than ours,--but anybody can tell that that's all rot."

"I believe it's all perfectly true," said Nora.