CHAPTER IV

LEARNING

A month had passed. Cecilia quite understood what Father McGowan had meant about clothes. Cecilia wore no more French heels. She had taken down her hair and discarded her beautiful rhinestone hair-pins. Father McGowan too, it seemed, had been responsible for her admittance to the school. Cecilia had found out from Mrs. De Pui that he had written a book! This astounding fact had been divulged after Mrs. De Pui, more than usually tried by Cecilia, had said: "Your entrance here has been rather difficult for me. You see, of course, that the other girls' advantages have not been yours?"

"Oh, yes, Mrs. De Pui," answered Cecilia, and swallowed hard.

"Realising that, my dear," continued Mrs. De Pui, "I hope that you will do your utmost to develop a womanly sympathy, and broaden your character."

Cecilia said somewhat breathlessly that she would try to, very, very hard! "And," went on Mrs. De Pui, then coughed, "desist from the use of such words as 'elegant,'--'refined' (which, when used at all, is re_fine_d, not 'r_ee_fined'), and 'grand.' Such words, my dear Cecilia, are not used in----" (Mrs. De Pui nearly said polite society, but swallowed it with a horrified gulp) "are not used by persons of cultivation," she finished weakly.

Cecilia vanished. She went to her lonely room. (There were no room-mates.) She settled on the bed. By the bed, on a chair, was a pink silk dress. It had been her star play, and after a month of boarding school she was going to give it to the maid. The maid was _so_ friendly!

There were two letters on the small dressing table. Cecilia got them and read:

"Celie girl, we miss you. It ain't like it was in the house. I hope they are learning you good and the board is good. I hope they treat you good. Father McGowan was here last night. He sez he will go to see you soon. Johnny is well. Norah sez your cat is lonely too. Your father with love,

"J. MADDEN."

The other was a line from John. A petulant line, full of querulous complaint of a collarless father, redeemed to Cecilia by a word or two at the end.

"You were so good to me, Celie. I know it now." She threw herself down on the bed. Her shoulders shook miserably. Tears wet a once loved pink silk dress, "all over beads and lace."

Upstairs in another room, a group of girls were laughing uncontrollably. "You know she actually invited Annie to _sit_ down!" said one. (Annie was the slender maid.)

"That is not r_ee_fined," answered Annette. There was more wild laughter.

"_Do_ ask her up to-night," suggested a tawny haired maiden with cat-green eyes. "_Do!_ It would be simply _screamingly_ funny!"

Annette, although one of the most unkind, objected. "It doesn't seem quite nice," she said. However, as the idea promised fun, the majority ruled.

Cecilia answered the tap on her door. "Come up to your room to-night?" she echoed after the invitation. "Oh, Miss Annette, I'd be that glad to come!" she smiled, and her smile was like sunshine after rain.

"I _do_ thank you!" she said. "I do!"

Annette turned away. Cecilia closed the door, then she covered her eyes. "Gawd, thank you ever so much!" she whispered, "thank you! I _have_ been so lonely! Make them love me. Please make them love me, Gawd." Then she lifted her head. Her face shone. "I wonder what I shall wear?" she said.

To meet the ideal of one's dreams while carrying a sick cat is humiliating. And that is what happened to Cecilia Evangeline Agnes Madden. Her shadowy dream-knight had materialised into human shape through a photograph. And she met him while chaperoning a sick cat.

Two weeks before she had gone to a party in Annette Twombly's room. She'd not enjoyed the party very much, in fact she'd been rather unhappy until she saw the photograph. After that she didn't care what happened. All the romance of the Celt had leaped.... Her shadowy dreams took form. The ideal lover developed a body.

"Oh, your _heavenly_ cousin, Annette!" said the green-eyed. "I _adore_ his hair!" She stood before a large photograph, framed elaborately.

"He _is_ a sweet boy," Annette had responded, "but so particular! I never knew any one quite so fastidious. It is _fearfully_ hard to please him!"

"Does he get crushes?" asked the green-eyed.

"My dear," said Annette, "it would be impossible. He's terribly intellectual and all that, and girls so easily offend him. He doesn't say so, but he simply stops paying them any attention."

The group gathered about the picture to admire. It showed a rather nice looking boy, with an outdoor flavour, and eyes that questioned.... The face was too young to have character.

"He's had on long trousers for six years!" said Annette. There was a hushed silence. "Isn't he _divine_!" gurgled one young person at length. Cecilia had only looked. The shadowy dream man vanished. The picture boy took his place.

This day Cecilia walked alone as usual. Mrs. De Pui was an advocate of trust as a developer of "womanly instinct," so on a stipulated number of streets, the girls were allowed to walk unchaperoned. They went in little groups, all except Cecilia. She was her own small group.

To-day she walked alone, at least it seemed so, but by her Cecilia felt K. Stuyvesant Twombly. "I admire art," he was saying. His voice, curiously enough, was Mrs. De Pui's.

"So do I," agreed Cecilia. "Beauty develops us, the best of us, and brings a shining light into the soul." Cecilia stopped. Then because she was very truthful she went on: "That is not original. The man who lectures us on Art said it. He has whiskers and false teeth, I believe, for they click when he says, 'Renaissance.'" ... "Oh, Heavens!" thought Cecilia, "I will never be a lady. That would not be the way to talk to the ideal man. About teeth!--false ones!"

Then the cat had appeared. Rather Cecilia had nearly walked on it. It was a limp little grey and white heap, its fur half wet from the gutter, and eyes half closed.

"Poor pussy," said Cecilia. "You look like I feel when I'm with them what have social advantages. Poor pussy!" She was very tender toward it. She leaned above it, then picked it up. "I will bribe Annie, with dresses, to feed it," she thought. The cat began to be violently ill. Cecilia put it down.

"I say!" came in a rather husky voice, "Pussy needs some Mothersill's, doesn't she?"

Cecilia didn't understand the allusion, but she looked up smiling. The voice had been attractively hearty. After she looked up, she gasped.

"What are you going to do with it?" went on the young man.

"I thought I'd take it to my school and get the hired girl,--I mean maid,--to feed it."

"No," objected K. Stuyvesant; "it's poisoned. We'll take it to a drug store and get them to kill it."

"Oh, _no_!" said Cecilia.

"See here," said the boy, "the cat will die. I've had dogs of mine poisoned. It's the most merciful thing to have it killed. It'll only suffer and drag its life out if you take it home."

"I see," said Cecilia. "I suppose you know. It's just as you say."

"Good kid," he commented. His comment called forth an agony and elation. Cecilia wished for the longer dresses with which she'd come to school. The boy picked up the cat gently and wrapped his handkerchief about it.

"Come on," he said. "Drug store around the corner."

Cecilia followed. She could not keep up to him. Half the time she ran. The whole affair was humiliating.

"Thank the Lord no one saw me!" said the boy when they got inside the drug store. He looked at Cecilia. They both laughed.

"Sit down," he said. "I'm going to buy you a soda." Cecilia sat down. "Choclut," she ordered. He sat down opposite her, and put his arms on the sticky little table. He thought he looked on the prettiest child he'd ever seen.... She seemed entirely and only a child.

"What's your name?" he asked.

"Cecilia Evangeline Agnes Madden," she answered.

"Well, Cecilia Evangeline," he said, "don't try to eat the bottom of the glass; I'm wealthy to-day. I'm going to buy you another soda!"

"Oh," answered Cecilia, "I really oughtn't." At a motion the clerk bent above her. "C-could I have a sundae?" asked Cecilia. The boy laughed and nodded.

"Peach," said Cecilia, "with a good deal of whipped cream on top, if you please!" She smiled frankly on K. Stuyvesant. "I'm having a _fine_ time!" she said. Her sentimental dreams of him had vanished. He didn't talk a bit like the phantom, but he was _nicer_!

"What's your name, please?" she asked. She knew, but little Cecilia at fourteen was a woman.

"Keefer Stuyvesant Twombly," he answered. "Rotten name. Imagine being hailed as 'Keefer'! It sounds like some one's butler. It isn't a nice name, is it, Evangeline Cecilia?"

"No," said Cecilia. "But then, you are nice. Names and things are just trimmings. _You_ are nice," she repeated.

"So are you," returned the boy, "and I'll _bet_ you're Irish!"

"_How_ did you know?" asked Cecilia, wide-eyed. "How did you know?"

"And there she sat," said the green-eyed, "laughing with him in the most brazen way, and he bought her two sodas!"

"How vulgar," said Annette. "Was he good looking?"

"Ravishing, my dear. Alice thought that he looked like your cousin."

"That, of course, is impossible," said Annette coldly. "He _does_ happen to be here. He and his mother are at the Touraine. But as for his looking at any one like that Madden girl--! How she got in here, I can't imagine. I think that it is an imposition to be asked to meet her."

Annette surveyed her hair, and picked up a mirror. "Did you tell Mrs. De Pui?" she asked.

"Yes," answered the green-eyed; "I thought that it was my _duty_. It hurt me to do it, but I thought I _ought_ to. We watched them for the longest time. We pretended to be looking at a window full of hot water bottles."

Alice came in. She picked up the photograph of K. Stuyvesant Twombly. She nodded at the green-eyed after she looked long.... Annette saw this in the glass and glared.