Part 6

"Well, I wish myself that our English instructor hadn't such a fondness for reading themes to us that the girls have written. He makes out that they are better than ours, but I can't say that I see it myself."

"Who gets the best marks?"

"I'm sure I can't say. He gives us such beastly marks that I dare say he makes it up with the girls. But I wouldn't let a sister of mine go to College," he concluded inconsequently.

"It's a good thing Edith doesn't wish to go," said Nora; adding mischievously, "but Brenda Barlow's cousin Julia is going."

Brenda blushed, for Julia's intention of going to College was still a sore point with her.

"Does Julia wear glasses, or look green? I beg your pardon, Brenda----"

"No, she doesn't," said Nora shortly. "She's about the nicest girl I know."

"Oh, she is lovely," added Edith.

"A matter of opinion," murmured Belle under her breath.

"You don't mean to say you haven't seen her," cried Brenda in surprise.

"No, I haven't happened to," answered Philip.

"She's invited to my cooking party next week," said Nora. "You know that you've accepted too, so you'll see her."

"Oh, yes, by the way," said Philip, "what evening is it?"

"Friday, of course," replied Nora, "so we can sit up late without thinking about school the next day."

"Well, you'll see me sure," said Philip. "But see here, it's five o'clock now and I have an engagement down town."

Philip hurried off, bowing in a very grown-up way to the group of girls. For whatever criticisms any one might make about Philip's indolence and disinclination to study, no one could deny that he had very good manners. Though only about four years their senior, he seemed much older than Brenda and her friends. Years before they had all been playmates together, but his two years in College had taken him away from them, and it was not often that he condescended to spend as long a time in their presence as had been the case this afternoon.

"Do you think that Philip looks very well, Edith," asked Belle when he had left the room.

"Why, of course, don't you?" replied Philip's sister.

"It seemed to me he was just a little pale."

"He is always pale," said Edith.

"Do you suppose he sits up too late?" asked Brenda.

"I'll warrant he doesn't study too much," said Belle.

"How can you?" cried Nora. "How can you criticise Edith's brother? Don't let her do it, Edith."

"It doesn't trouble me," answered the placid Edith. "I know all about Philip, and he's good enough for me."

"That's right," said Nora. "Always stand up for your brother. But I do think he might have better friends. He really isn't very particular."

"Why, what do you mean?"

"Oh, I don't know exactly, but I heard my brother talking the other day. He says there are two or three fellows just sponging off of Philip all the time, and Philip is too good-natured to say anything."

"I wonder how he'll like Julia," said Edith.

"Oh, he won't like that kind of a girl," hastily interposed Belle. "Boys never like a girl who studies; especially one who is going to College."

"Well, Julia is just the nicest girl _I_ know," said Nora, repeating the words she had used to Philip.

"And Philip is one of the nicest young men I know," said Brenda, politely, turning to Edith. "But don't tell him I said so," she added with a blush.

"Oh, no, of course not," laughed Edith, as the girls separated for the afternoon.

XI

THE COOKING CLASS

Nora's cooking party was not altogether a pleasure affair. It was the result of her father's desire that she should have some knowledge of domestic matters before she left school. Dr. Gostar was a busy man, having little time to spend with his children. His practice was large, but as he gave his services as willingly to poor as to rich people, he had not accumulated much money. Nora's home, however, was a very pleasant one. The numerous members of the family used all the rooms with the greatest freedom. As the four other members of the household besides Dr. and Mrs. Gostar and Nora were boys, the furnishings of the house had a well-worn, comfortable look. No one was kept out of any particular room. The boys had a large play and workroom in the attic, but when they wished to sit in the library (which other people might have called a "drawing-room") they were not forbidden.

Mrs. Gostar, though fond of society, was never too busy to hear what her children had to say, to read to them or hear them tell about their school, or to sympathize with them in any way. She had agreed with Dr. Gostar when he had expressed a wish to have Nora learn cooking.

"I am anxious," he had said, "that my little daughter shall know how to cook. I have been so often in houses where wives and mothers have been quite helpless when a cook left, that I should be very sorry to have Nora grow up as ignorant as they. I know that a great deal of sickness comes from eating badly prepared food."

Nora herself had been rather pleased at the prospect of learning to cook. But Belle thought it very vulgar, and for a time was not sure whether or not she would join the cooking-class.

During the first winter the girls had had lessons once a week. But through this season of Julia's arrival in Boston, they had met to practice cooking only once a month. The lessons always were given at Nora's house, because, as Edith said, her cook wasn't too fashionable to let them fuss around in the kitchen.

The first winter they had had a teacher, but this year they were supposed to know enough to concoct certain dishes themselves. The cooking party took place on the third Friday of the month, and from six to eight the girls were busy cooking. At eight o'clock any guests whom they had invited arrived, and at nine o'clock they had a little supper. They were not permitted to have too elaborate a bill of fare. Even as it was, Belle's grandmother protested against what she called an indigestible supper served at this hour. As a matter of fact it was not apt to be indigestible. Dr. Gostar himself usually made out the list of eatables. Light salads, simple cakes, bouillon, ices, blanc-manges, jellies, oysters or eggs cooked in various styles, and chocolate prepared with whipped cream, were conspicuous on the list from which he made his selection. But the girls on any given evening were restricted to one sweet, one solid and two kinds of cake. With the assistance of a maid each girl in turn set the table, and sometimes, besides their young friends, their parents were present to see what their skill and taste had accomplished.

"There, there, Edith, I'm sure your cake is burning," cried Nora on the Friday evening after their talk with Philip.

"Oh, dear, I can't do anything about it now; I've cut my fingers," and Edith held up her hands rather plaintively.

"Here, take my handkerchief," said Brenda; and before Edith could stop her she was binding up the wound with a delicate lace-trimmed handkerchief. It was Agnes's birthday present to her, sent from Paris, and intended only for full dress occasion.

"Why, Brenda, that lovely handkerchief!" exclaimed Belle, who was looking on.

"Oh, it won't hurt it. How does your finger feel, Edith?"

"It feels all right, for it wasn't a deep cut, but with my right hand tied up I don't believe I can lift that cake out of the oven," and Edith looked about helplessly, for she was not used to battling with difficulties.

Over her dress each girl wore a long-sleeved blue-checked apron--each of them at least except Julia. This was her first appearance at the cooking-club, and as Brenda had forgotten to tell her about the aprons, she was unprepared. She had on a small white apron, borrowed from Nora, and when Edith spoke about the cake, she seized a holder, and opening the oven door, lifted the pan out. As Edith feared, the cake was burned, though not the whole top, but black spots here and there gave it a very unsightly appearance, and Edith felt very much disturbed as she looked at it.

"How provoking! That was the only cake we were to have to-night, and there isn't time to make another."

"Oh, we can do something," cried Julia. "Let me help you."

"I don't see what we can do," half moaned Edith.

"I'll show you," cried Julia hopefully. "You have plenty of sugar and eggs--and----"

"But really there isn't time to make anything not to speak of baking it, and, oh, dear, I am so unlucky!" sighed poor Edith.

"Nonsense," said Julia. "You haven't any idea what I can do. I shall just have to show you," and she began to break the eggs into a bowl, beating them and stirring into them a liberal amount of sugar. "Run, Brenda," she cried, "and bring me a sheet of that brown wrapping paper."

Brenda obeyed, and after buttering the paper, Julia dropped her mixture of sugar and eggs, a spoonful at a time, here and there, on the paper.

"Oh, I know," cried Brenda. "Kisses, but I never would have thought of it myself."

"Well," responded Julia, "there is nothing you can bake so quickly, and almost every one likes them. There, this first batch must be ready now," and she opened the oven door to remove the pan with its sheet of kisses, delicately browned and of the size and shape that a confectioner could not surpass. Two or three other lots were baked before there were enough. By the time they were finished Edith's finger had ceased to pain her, and she was helping place the other eatables on the dumb-waiter.

From the floor above there came the sound of laughter, and the voices of the boys could be heard mingled with those of the girls as they called to the three kitchen maidens.

At last, with the help of Hannah, the maid, who had come down from the floor above, all the kitchen work was declared at an end.

"That's all," shouted Brenda, as Belle and Philip gave a final pull on the cords of the dumb-waiter.

A moment later Edith and Julia and Brenda entered the dining-room, with faces perhaps a little flushed, but otherwise looking very unlike the three cooks they had been a few minutes before.

Under Nora's direction the dining-table had been exquisitely arranged. There was a great glass bowl of pink roses in the centre, and the plates and cups were of china with a wild rose border. The candles in the silver candelabra at each end of the table had pink shades.

"There, you go, Philip, and tell the others that supper is ready," said Nora, glancing at the table and giving a final touch to one or two dishes.

With Philip leading, the guests trooped into the dining-room. "Trooped" is perhaps too boisterous a word to apply to the procession of young people who came into the room two at a time with a fair amount of dignity. To Julia, in fact, they appeared to a certain extent to be imitating the demeanor of their elders. She could not help thinking that the manner with which Belle let herself be led to a chair was entirely too coquettish, and only Nora seemed to be her real self in the presence of the guests.

But Julia was not a harsh critic, and before very long she forgot that she had not always known these merry young people. She laughed at the jokes made by the boys, although she did not always see the point of them. Most of these jokes turned on something connected with college. For every one of them was in Harvard, although some were only Freshmen. The stories that they thought the funniest dealt with the queer things that some of their friends had had to do when undergoing initiation into one of the College Societies, and many of their doings seemed really inane.

Before they had been long in the dining-room Mrs. Gostar joined them, and later Dr. Gostar himself appeared. The presence of these elder people lessened the laughter only a very little, for all the young people knew that Dr. Gostar enjoyed fun as well as they.

"What was the catastrophe to-night?" he asked Nora, for it was a favorite joke of his that at each meeting of the cooking-class some dish suffered. When he had heard about the disaster to Edith's cake he praised Julia so heartily for having come to the rescue that she blushed deeply. Even without this success in cooking, Julia would have been voted a great addition to the cooking-class. There was something very pleasing in her gentle manners, and Belle, to her surprise, found herself growing a little jealous of Brenda's cousin. Before this she had not thought her sufficiently important to arouse jealousy.

XII

CONCERNING JULIA

In the meantime the Four Club held regular meetings, and every Thursday afternoon Julia heard Edith and Nora and Belle rushing up past her door to Brenda's room on the floor above. Of course in a general way she knew what was going on, for the affairs of the Four Club were no secret. Yet although from time to time Brenda and her friends dropped a word or two regarding their doings, they never talked very freely about the club.

Nora and Edith were silent because they were sorry that they could not persuade Brenda to let them invite Julia to the meetings. Brenda said little about the club, because possibly she was ashamed of her own indifference. As to Belle, she never had had much to say to Julia, and in this case although she felt pleased that her influence chiefly had kept Brenda from counting her cousin in the club group, she hardly ventured to express this feeling in words. There might as well have been five girls as four in the group working for the Bazaar and no one knew this better than Brenda and Belle themselves.

Although Julia had a pretty correct idea of what was going on, she tried to show no feeling in the matter. Her studies, her music, and her exercise occupied almost all her afternoons, and she reasoned with herself that even if she had been invited, it would have been only a waste of time for her to spend hours at fancy-work, which might otherwise have been more profitably employed. But after a while, when through the half-open door she heard her friends running upstairs, she sometimes felt a thrill of disappointment that they did not care enough for her to stop on their way to ask her to join them. Now Julia meant always to be fair in her thoughts, as well as in her actions towards others. So at first when she found that she was left out of the plans of her cousin and her friends, she reasoned with herself somewhat in this fashion.

"Now, Julia, you know that you are a newcomer, and you cannot expect that you will be taken in all at once, just wait."

But after she had waited a good while, she began to feel a little hurt, although she did her best to conceal her feeling from Nora and Edith. In the meantime the latter two girls argued warmly with Brenda, and tried to make her see that it was mean to keep Julia out of the Four Club.

"Nonsense," said Belle, who happened to overhear them, "Julia herself would say that it was awfully stupid to sit for a whole afternoon, sewing."

"Well, if she did not work harder than--well than Brenda does, she would not be very much bored; besides she could look out of the window part of the time, the view there is perfectly fine," responded the lively Nora.

Brenda had tried to speak when Nora had made this very unflattering allusion to her own lack of industry, and when Nora finished she said, holding up a square of linen on which a wreath of yellow flowers was half embroidered,

"There, I've done all this this month."

"That's very good for you," said Belle, patronizingly, "but I'd be willing to bet----"

"Don't say 'bet,'" murmured Edith.

"I'd be willing to bet anything," continued Belle, "that you'll never finish it."

"Why, Belle," continued the others.

"No, you won't," repeated Belle, "you never could, you'll get tired of the pattern or of the color, or you will spoil it in some way, and throw it into the fire, or worse into that bottom drawer of yours with all those other specimens."

Brenda, instead of growing angry at this, only laughed.

"Well if I don't wish to finish it, I certainly won't," she replied. "But it happens that I have made up my mind to finish it this Autumn, before Christmas, in fact, so you can make your bet as large as you please, and pay the money into the fund for Manuel's benefit, for I shall win."

The girls were all a little surprised at Brenda's reply. She was more ready usually to answer pettishly any criticism made by Belle.

"Very well," said Belle, "Edith and Nora are my witnesses, and we shall watch to see when you finish that centrepiece."

"Yes, indeed, Brenda," laughed Nora, "indeed we shall follow the career of this wreath with great interest, and now since you seem to be in an amiable frame of mind, let us go back to Julia. It seems terribly mean not to ask her to join us."

The pleasant expression on Brenda's face changed to a frown.

"I've told you often that Julia would not enjoy working with us, and it would just spoil everything to have her come."

"Of course it's your house, Brenda, and you started the club, and Julia is your cousin, so Edith and I have not the same right to say anything, but it seems to me very unkind to leave her out."

"There, I don't want to hear anything more about it," cried Brenda, "haven't Belle and I both said that Julia would not enjoy herself, sewing with us, and it would not be a 'four club,' and I don't want to hear anything more about it."

By this time Brenda's voice was positively snappish, and Edith looked up in alarm. But Nora was undismayed.

"Nonsense, Brenda," she cried, "Belle said that Julia would not enjoy the cooking class, though I'm perfectly sure that no one there had a better time, and the boys thought that she was splendid, didn't they, Edith?"

"Yes," returned Edith, "Philip was surprised; he said she was fine, he always supposed that she was a kind of blue-stocking with glasses, and----"

Here Brenda interrupted, "Well, I'm sure that I never said anything like that to him, and I shouldn't think that you would, Edith."

"Of course, I didn't," responded Edith, indignantly, "it was something Frances Pounder said, and well--Belle----"

"Now, Belle, I do wish that you would not say things about my cousin," broke in Brenda.

"Oh," cried Belle, "you wish to have the privilege of saying everything yourself; but you might as well let other people have a chance."

"Philip did not mean that anybody said anything particularly disagreeable about Julia, only he had a sort of an idea that she did not like people, and that she would not join much in any fun that we might plan."

"Oh, what nonsense, Edith!" exclaimed Nora, "she likes fun as well as any of us, only she is just a little quiet herself. She wants somebody else to start the fun for her."

"Well, she does not dance," said Belle, "and a girl can't have much fun if she does not dance."

"I know that she does not care for round dances, at least her father would not let her learn, but I'm sure that she does the Virginia Reel as well as anybody, and the Portland Fancy. Why she was as graceful as, as anything the other evening," concluded Nora.

But all the conversation at the meetings of the Four Club did not concern Julia and her absence from the club. The girls had many other things to discuss, and their tongues were often more active than their needles. Sometimes as their merry voices floated down to Julia, the young girl sighed. It is never pleasant for any one to think that she is not wanted in any gathering of her friends, although in this special case Julia had no great desire to devote even one of her afternoons to needlework. Nevertheless she could not repress a sigh that she was of so little consequence to Brenda and her friends.

Before Thanksgiving came, the club really seemed in a fair way of realizing its plans for a sale. Edith had finished two or three dainty sets of doilies, for she worked out of club hours. Nora's afghan was at least a quarter made, a great accomplishment for Nora. Belle had several articles to show, and even Brenda had persevered with her centrepiece until hardly more than a quarter of the embroidery remained unfinished. Moreover several of the girls at school had promised to help, on condition that nothing should be expected of them until after Christmas.

"That will be time enough," the Four always answered, "for we shall not have the sale until Easter week."

The girls at school were especially interested when they heard that the Bazaar was to be for the benefit of Manuel, not that any one of them had a clear idea of his needs. But they felt an interest in him because they believed that his life had been saved by one of their number. There were, to be sure, one or two sceptics, like Frances Pounder, who said that of course the child had been in no great danger, for in his own part of the city children are in the habit of playing most of the time under the very feet of the horses passing that way. "And who," the wise Frances had added, "ever heard of a child like that having so much as a leg broken?"

But Frances was not infallible, and many of the girls had heard of accidents to poor children. If they had not, the fact remained, which Nora and Brenda and half a dozen others were ready to testify to that Manuel had been in great danger on the memorable day of his rescue. With his danger granted, it was plain enough that caring for him became a duty imposed on his rescuers.

With little opportunity to show it, Julia had as much interest in Manuel as the other girls. Strange though it may seem, he was the first very poor person with whom she had been brought in contact. For in the secluded life which she had led with her father, she had not seen a great variety of people. It is true that in traveling she had often come across miserable looking and ill-clad women and children, and she knew very well that there were many like them in the world. With her own allowance she subscribed to a number of charities, but her father had not encouraged her greatly in this kind of thing. His own ill health had had the rather unusual effect of making him unsympathetic towards forms of misery unlike the kind which had been sent to him. He thought, too, that young people should be as closely sheltered as possible from the knowledge of the dark side of life. He gave liberally to hospitals, but poverty in itself did not appeal to him. On that account Julia was not permitted to hear or to see much of actual poverty.

But Julia, on the other hand, had always had the greatest desire to help the less fortunate, and to know more about the conditions of their lives. She was therefore greatly pleased when one day in a book-shop she found a copy of "How The Other Half Lives." It was very suggestive to her, and buying it she had read it at home eagerly from cover to cover.