Chapter 13

TWO LITTLE SCHOOLMARMS.

"And so you are your papa's good fairy? How happy you must be! How proud!" Amy's eyes shone as she talked to Grace, and smoothed down a fold of the pretty white alpaca gown which set off her friend's dainty beauty. The girls were in my mother's room at the Manse, and Mrs. Raeburn had left them together to talk over plans, while she went to the parlor to entertain a visitor who was engaged in getting up an autumn _fête_ for a charitable purpose. Nothing of this kind was ever done without mother's aid.

There were few secrets between Wishing-Brae and the Manse, and Mrs. Wainwright had told our mother how opportunely Grace had been able to assist her father in his straits. Great was our joy.

"You must remember, dear," said mamma, when she returned from seeing Miss Gardner off, "that your purse is not exhaustless, though it is a long one for a girl. Debts have a way of eating up bank accounts; and what will you do when your money is gone if you still find that the wolf menaces the door at Wishing-Brae?"

"That is what I want to consult you about, Aunt Dorothy." (I ought to have said that our mother was Aunt Dorothy to the children at the Brae, and more beloved than many a real auntie, though one only by courtesy.) "Frances knows my ambitions," Grace went on. "I mean to be a money-maker as well as a money-spender; and I have two strings to my bow. First, I'd like to give interpretations."

The mother looked puzzled. "Interpretations?" she said. "Of what, pray?--Sanscrit or Egyptian or Greek? Are you a seeress or a witch, dear child?"

"Neither. In plain English I want to read stories and poems to my friends and to audiences--Miss Wilkins' and Mrs. Stuart's beautiful stories, and the poems of Holmes and Longfellow and others who speak to the heart. Not mere elocutionary reading, but simple reading, bringing out the author's meaning and giving people pleasure. I would charge an admission fee, and our dining-room would hold a good many; but I ought to have read somewhere else first, and to have a little background of city fame before I ask Highland neighbors to come and hear me. This is my initial plan. I could branch out."

To the mother the new idea did not at once commend itself. She knew better than we girls did how many twenty-five-cent tickets must be sold to make a good round sum in dollars. She knew the thrifty people of Highland looked long at a quarter before they parted with it for mere amusement, and still further, she doubted whether Dr. Wainwright would like the thing. But Amy clapped her hands gleefully. She thought it fine.

"You must give a studio reading," she said. "I can manage that, mother; if Miss Antoinette Drury will lend her studio, and we send out invitations for 'Music and Reading, and Tea at Five,' the prestige part will be taken care of. The only difficulty that I can see is that Grace would have to go to a lot of places and travel about uncomfortably; and then she'd need a manager. Wouldn't she, Frances?"

"I see no trouble," said I, "in her being her own manager. She would go to a new town with a letter to the pastor of the leading church, or his wife, call in at the newspaper office and get a puff; puffs are always easily secured by enterprising young women, and they help to fill up the paper besides. Then she would hire a hall and pay for it out of her profits, and the business could be easily carried forward."

"Is this the New Woman breaking her shell?" said mother. "I don't think I quite like the interpretation scheme either as Amy or as you outline it, though I am open to persuasion. Here is the doctor. Let us hear what he says."

It was not Dr. Wainwright, but my father, Dr. Raeburn, except on a Friday, the most genial of men. Amy perched herself on his knee and ran her slim fingers through his thick dark hair. To him our plans were explained, and he at once gave them his approval.

"As I understand you, Gracie," Dr. Raeburn said, "you wish this reading business as a stepping-stone. You would form classes, would you not? And your music could also be utilized. You had good instruction, I fancy, both here and over the water."

"Indeed, yes, Dr. Raeburn; and I could give lessons in music, but they wouldn't bring me in much, here at least."

"Come to my study," said the doctor, rising. "Amy, you have ruffled up my hair till I look like a cherub before the flood. Come, all of you, Dorothy and the kids."

"You don't call us kids, do you, papa?"

"Young ladies, then, at your service," said the doctor, with a low bow. "I've a letter from my old friend, Vernon Hastings. I'll read it to you when I can find it," said the good man, rummaging among the books, papers, and correspondence with which his great table was littered. "Judge Hastings," the doctor went on, "lost his wife in Venice a year ago. He has three little girls in need, of special advantages; he cannot bear to send them away to school, and his mother, who lives with him and orders the house, won't listen to having a resident governess. Ah, this is the letter!" The doctor read:

"I wish you could help me, Charley, in the dilemma in which I find myself. Lucy and Helen and my little Madge are to be educated, and the question is how, when, and where? They are delicate, and I cannot yet make up my mind to the desolate house I would have should they go to school. Grandmamma has pronounced against a governess, and I don't like the day-schools of the town. Now is not one of your daughters musical, and perhaps another sufficiently mistress of the elementary branches to teach these babies? I will pay liberally the right person or persons for three hours' work a day. But I must have well-bred girls, ladies, to be with my trio of bairns."

"I couldn't teach arithmetic or drawing," said Grace. "I would be glad to try my hand at music, and geography and German and French. I might be weak on spelling."

"I don't think that of you, Grace," said mother.

"I am ashamed to say it's true," said Grace.

Amy interrupted. "How far away is Judge Hastings' home, papa?"

"An hour's ride, Amy dear. No, forty minutes' ride by rail. I'll go and see him. I've no doubt he will pay you generously, Grace, for your services, if you feel that you can take up this work seriously."

"I do; I will," said Grace, "and only too thankful will I be to undertake it; but what about the multiplication table, and the straight and the curved lines, and Webster's speller?"

"Papa," said Amy, gravely, "please mention me to the judge. I will teach those midgets the arithmetic and drawing and other fundamental studies which my gifted friend fears to touch."

"You?" said papa, in surprise.

"Why not, dear?" interposed mamma. "Amy's youth is against her, but the fact is she can count and she can draw, and I am not afraid to recommend her, though she is only a chit of fifteen, as to her spelling."

"Going on sixteen, mamma, if you please, and nearly there," Amy remarked, drawing herself up to her fullest height, at which we all laughed merrily.

"I taught school myself at sixteen," our mother went on, "and though it made me feel like twenty-six, I had no trouble with thirty boys and girls of all ages from four to eighteen. You must remember me, my love, in the old district school at Elmwood."

"Yes," said papa, "and your overpowering dignity was a sight for gods and men. All the same you were a darling."

"So she is still." And we pounced upon her in a body and devoured her with kisses, the sweet little mother.

"Papa," Amy proceeded, when order had been restored, "why not take us when you go to interview the judge? Then he can behold his future schoolma'ams, arrange terms, and settle the thing at once. I presume Grace is anxious as I am to begin her career, now that it looms up before her. I am in the mood of the youth who bore through snow and ice the banner with the strange device, 'Excelsior.'"

"In the mean time, good people," said Frances, appearing in the doorway, "luncheon is served."

We had a pretty new dish--new to us--for luncheon, and as everybody may not know how nice it is, I'll just mention it in passing.

Take large ripe tomatoes, scoop out the pulp and mix it with finely minced canned salmon, adding a tiny pinch of salt. Fill the tomatoes with this mixture, set them in a nest of crisp green lettuce leaves, and pour a mayonnaise into each ruby cup. The dish is extremely dainty and inviting, and tastes as good as it looks. It must be very cold.

"But," Doctor Raeburn said, in reply to a remark of mother's that she was pleased the girls had decided on teaching, it was so womanly and proper an employment for girls of good family, "I must insist that the 'interpretations' be not entirely dropped. I'll introduce you, my dear," he said, "when you give your first recital, and that will make it all right in the eyes of Highland."

"Thank you, doctor," said Grace. "I would rather have your sanction than anything else in the world, except papa's approval."

"Why don't your King's Daughters give Grace a boom? You are always getting up private theatricals, and this is just the right time."

"Lawrence Raeburn you are a trump!" said Amy, flying round to her brother and giving him a hug. "We'll propose it at the first meeting of the Ten, and it'll be carried by acclamation."

"Now," said Grace, rising and saying good-afternoon to my mother, with a courtesy to the rest of us, "I'm going straight home to break ground there and prepare my mother for great events."

Walking over the fields in great haste, for when one has news to communicate, one's feet are wings, Grace was arrested by a groan as of somebody in great pain. She looked about cautiously, but it was several minutes before she found, lying under the hedge, a boy with a broken pitcher at his side. He was deadly pale, and great drops of sweat rolled down his face.

"Oh, you poor boy! What is the matter?" she cried, bending over him in great concern.

"I've broke mother's best china pitcher," said the lad, in a despairing voice.

"Poof!" replied Grace. "Pitchers can be mended or replaced. What else is wrong? You're not groaning over a broken pitcher, surely!"

"You would, if it came over in the _Mayflower_, and was all of your ancestors' you had left to show that you could be a Colonial Dame. Ug-gh!" The boy tried to sit up, gasped and fell back in a dead faint.

"Goodness!" said Grace; "he's broken his leg as well as his pitcher. Colonial Dames! What nonsense! Well, I can't leave him here."

She had her smelling salts in her satchel, but before she could find them, Grace's satchel being an _omnium gatherum_ of a remarkably miscellaneous character, the lad came to. A fainting person will usually regain consciousness soon if laid out flat, with the head a little lower than the body. I've seen people persist in keeping a fainting friend in a sitting position, which is very stupid and quite cruel.

"I am Doctor Wainwright's daughter," said Grace, "and I see my father's gig turning the corner of the road. You shall have help directly. Papa will know what to do, so lie still where you are."

The lad obeyed, there plainly being nothing else to be done. In a second Doctor Wainwright, at Grace's flag of distress, a white handkerchief waving from the top of her parasol, came toward her at the mare's fastest pace.

"Hello!" he said. "Here's Archie Vanderhoven in a pickle."

"As usual, doctor," said Archie, faintly. "I've broken mother's last pitcher."

"And your leg, I see," observed the doctor, with professional directness. "Well, my boy, you must be taken home. Grace, drive home for me, and tell the boys to bring a cot here as soon as possible. Meanwhile I'll set Archie's leg. It's only a simple fracture." And the doctor from his black bag, brought out bandages and instruments. No army surgeon on the field of battle was quicker and gentler than Doctor Wainwright, whose skill was renowned all over our country-side.

"What is there about the Vanderhovens?" inquired Grace that night as they sat by the blaze of hickory logs in the cheery parlor of Wishing-Brae.

"The Vanderhovens are a decayed family," her father answered. "They were once very well off and lived in state, and from far and near gay parties were drawn at Easter and Christmas to dance under their roof. Now they are run out. This boy and his mother are the last of the line. Archie's father was drowned in the ford when we had the freshet last spring. The Ramapo, that looks so peaceful now, overflowed its banks then, and ran like a mill-race. I don't know how they manage, but Archie is kept at school, and his mother does everything from ironing white frocks for summer boarders to making jellies and preserves for people in town, who send her orders."

"Is she an educated woman?" inquired Grace.

"That she is. Mrs. Vanderhoven is not only highly educated, but very elegant and accomplished. None of her attainments, except those in the domestic line, are available, unhappily, when earning a living is in question, and she can win her bread only by these housekeeping efforts."

"Might I go and see her?"

"Why yes, dear, you and the others not only might, but should. She will need help. I'll call and consult Mrs. Raeburn about her to-morrow. She isn't a woman one can treat like a pauper--as well born as any one in the land, and prouder than Lucifer. It's too bad Archie had to meet with this accident; but boys are fragile creatures."

And the doctor, shaking the ashes from his pipe, went off to sit with his wife before going to bed.

"I do wonder," said Grace to Eva, "what the boy was doing with the old Puritan pitcher, and why a Vanderhoven should have boasted of coming over in the _Mayflower_?"

Eva said: "They're Dutch and English, Grace. The Vanderhovens are from Holland, but Archie's mother was a Standish, or something of that sort, and her kinsfolk, of course, belonged to the _Mayflower_ crowd. I believe Archie meant to sell that pitcher, and if so, no wonder he broke his leg. By-the-way, what became of the pieces?"

"I picked them up," said Grace.