Chapter 10

THE MAKING OF A COMPACT

At the end of the short railway journey, Mr. Eldred met the girls and conducted them to the house where Mrs. Eldred waited with a heart-warming welcome for her little guest.

It was a pretty home and Frieda felt the charm of it instantly as she went up stairs with Hannah to the little square room which she was to occupy. At the same time, however, she felt strange and out of place. She was conscious of a contrast between her own hat and Hannah's, between her heavy wool dress and Hannah's blue linen suit, between her strong, serviceable--and ugly--shoes, and Hannah's pumps, also strong and serviceable, but far from ugly. The six pieces of hand luggage and the queer steamer trunk, when deposited in the center of the little room, with its crisp ruffled curtains, and its plain mahogany furniture, disturbed the harmony that had reigned before from the etching over the bed to the bowl of ferns on the table. Hannah was friendly and beaming, and not at all belligerent. Mrs. Eldred was all sweet, cheery thoughtfulness, but Frieda looking at herself in the oval mirror of the dressing-table, felt a sudden throb of pity for the girl she saw there.

Hannah helped her remove her thick jacket, tucked it and her hat away in the closet, piled up the bags and asked for the trunk key.

"_Mutter hat uns immer gesagt, alles an seinen Ort zu legen_," she said in a kind of chant. Frieda looked up, her eyes brightening with fun.

"Mother always told us to gargle every morning and use plenty of tooth-powder," she said, and Hannah shrieked with glee.

"O, have you been learning English out of that ridiculous Edith and Mary book, too? I hoped you would have it, and we can do beautiful dialogues in German and English. I've always wanted to, but I never knew any one who could do the responses. I'll be Edith and you can be Mary."

Mrs. Eldred came in as Hannah flung the lid of the trunk back. Frieda's fun died away as she reached into a little pocket and took out a letter.

"It's for you, Tante Edith," she said, holding it as though she loved it. "It's from my mother--" and the tears came into her eyes as she said the word. Mrs. Eldred and Hannah exchanged glances of understanding, and Hannah caught up the water pitcher.

"I'll get this full of warm water for you," she said briskly, "and you must hurry and get ready to come down stairs, for we are going to have _Kaffee_ just as you do in Berlin. Won't that be fun?"

"Mamma can comfort her," she thought to herself, as she emptied the pitcher which Sarah had filled a few minutes before, and refilled it with water a shade cooler. "I'll leave them alone a few minutes and go down and see about the coffee. I know she will like those little currant cakes of Sarah's."

Frieda, however, seemed little inclined to ask consolation from Mrs. Eldred. She stood helplessly looking into her trunk, and Mrs. Eldred, feeling suddenly shy, looked helplessly at her. The clouded, silent face was so different from Hannah's.

"Aren't you rather warm, dear, with that heavy gown on? Let's find something thinner to slip on before we go down stairs."

Frieda stooped, rummaged a minute, and then produced a dress of pink cotton, fussily trimmed with lace and ribbons. "This is thinner," she said, stonily.

"That will do though it is rather fine for home dinner," said Mrs. Eldred gently. "But put it on, if you will, dear. I'll tell that forgetful Hannah to bring your water at once. O, I see, she left it outside the door. There! If you want any help, just call me. I'll go into my own room across the hall and read your mother's letter." She wanted to kiss the child, but Frieda's manner forbade it.

The pink frock had alarmed Mrs. Eldred. "Clothes make such a difference to girls," she thought in distress. "How can I help her? She will be proud and shy, and sure to think I am criticising her mother's taste. Dear Marie!" Whereupon she wisely suspended her puzzling and read the letter.

"I am sending Frieda with as few new clothes as possible, my dear Edith, relying upon your taste and kindness to fit her out with what she needs. I remember how differently you dressed when you came to Heidelberg, and how odd Hannah's clothes looked to Frieda's friends, and I want Frieda to start without a handicap. American girls are less accustomed to seeing foreigners than German girls are, and a little difference in the way of dressing might make a great difference in happiness. I am afraid my Frieda will be peculiar in many ways that cannot be remedied, so once more I ask you, will you choose for her a simple outfit such as Hannah herself would approve, and make me more than ever your grateful debtor?"

Mrs. Eldred sighed with relief. The solution of one difficulty in sight, she felt braver about all others. It was a theory of hers that food and clothes were more important to happiness than most of the subtleties poets and philosophers write about. "Homesickness is very often hunger, and _Weltschmerz_ can frequently be cured by a becoming frock, or brought on by an ill-fitting one," she meditated, as she fastened the pink and lace for Frieda.

Downstairs Hannah was busily setting forth upon a round table an appetizing array of cakes and cookies with a copper pot of coffee. Mr. Eldred had arranged to be present at this unwonted function, and Hannah chattered to him as she worked.

"Be sure you shake hands with her often, Daddy dear," she admonished him. "She is used to so very many hand-shakings a day, you know, and we mustn't cut her down to none at all, the very first thing. It's little matters like that that make you homesick. And homesickness is agony, Father. I know, for I've been through it."

Mr. Eldred pinched the plump cheek which showed no trace of past anguish, and Hannah seated herself upon his knee, being watchful of the pleats of her skirt as she did so!

"There's one good thing," she philosophized. "She can't miss her father as I should miss you, for he is so absent-minded that he really doesn't know her from the furniture. For all she is such a mischief inside, she acts so quiet-like and well-behaved around the house that she might almost as well be a sofa and done with it. And they have plenty of sofas, so he won't miss her and she won't miss him so very much, either."

"You imply that if you were better behaved, you would not miss me so much when we are separated! It's sufficiently complicated. I suppose you pine for my fearful reprimands?"

That was such a delightful joke that they both laughed aloud and Mrs. Eldred and Frieda were quite in the room before they realized it, and sprang up to greet them with cordiality, if not with the ceremony Hannah had planned for.

Those first days Frieda lived in a busy whirl. Hannah, once at home, and recovered from the excitement of the day in Boston, was ashamed of her conduct on that occasion, and tried to make up for it by all sorts of thoughtful attentions to Frieda, which, with the shade of formality they involved, added a little to the loneliness they were meant to combat. Mrs. Eldred, giving up, or suspending for a time, the apparently hopeless task of winning Frieda's confidence, attended to her wardrobe with a rapidity and fervor which astonished Frieda, accustomed to long deliberations on such matters, and no reckless buying. Even the pretty frocks and hats and shoes did not please her. She felt loyalty demanded that she should wear the things she had brought from home, and it was not till Mrs. Eldred had given her her mother's letter to read that she consented to lay aside the German garments. Mr. Eldred took her about the city, and thoroughly enjoyed her comments on things American, a scorn thinly veiled by polite phrases, or by an expressive silence.

She was silent most of the time, for the language was her greatest obstacle. She remembered vividly the superior feeling she had had in Berlin, when she had watched Mr. Eldred wrestle with a conditional or had heard Mrs. Eldred struggle to pronounce "ch." It was not nearly so pleasant to be struggling one's self, with a quite senseless "th," for instance. Her heart filled with rage when she caught Hannah listening intently to her carefully enunciated words, and then saying suddenly with relief, "O!" as their meaning dawned upon her. Frieda had been at the head of her class in English.

"It's really because you pronounce so very well," Hannah explained apologetically, on one of these occasions. "You are so much more exact than we ever think of being, that it gives an unfamiliar sound to words. And besides, yours is English English and ours is United States."

"But English English must be best," protested Frieda, and Hannah forgot Miss Lyndesay's warning and "flared up" for a minute, but immediately recollected herself, and ordered an ice-cream soda as a peace-offering, notwithstanding the fact that Frieda found the taste disagreeable.

"You'll like it, when you are used to it," she said comfortingly. "You don't have them at home, you know."

"No," growled Frieda, choking on a spoonful. "And I'm glad we don't. Sundaes aren't so bad, but the name is foolish! I do not wonder Miss Lyndesay lives most of the time in Europe!"

The fifth day matters came to a climax. Karl had come over from Cambridge to spend Sunday. Hannah and he seemed to be on the best of terms. They talked English faster than Frieda could understand, and they seemed to have an endless stock of jokes that had no meaning for her. Suddenly, after sitting with a brow like a thunder-cloud for a while, listening to them and declining to join in the fun, she started up and ran up stairs with a swift pounding gait that recalled to Hannah the way she used to tear madly off to school in the morning, fearful of being late.

Karl and Hannah, left behind, looked solemnly at each other. Karl whistled.

"_Die Kleine_ is irritated about something," he remarked.

"I don't wonder," said Hannah sympathizingly. "I always remember when it's too late to do any differently. She felt left out, I suppose, and you know you do use a terrible amount of slang, nowadays. I'm awfully ashamed of us, Karl!"

Karl pondered a moment. Then he said: "I'll fix it up all right. Here, you take this note up to Frieda. Just shove it under the door, if she won't let you in."

He wrote a few lines on a card and gave it to Hannah, who promptly ran away up stairs with it. Then Karl went into the study and telephoned a garage.

In a few minutes, Frieda, shy and somewhat red-eyed, came down stairs. Hannah was nowhere to be seen, and Mrs. Eldred was out for the afternoon. At the door was a snorting automobile, with seats for just two.

"I knew Hannah would forgive us if we ran away by our two selves," said Karl in German, meeting Frieda in the hall, and conducting her out to the machine. "She knows enough about being in a foreign country to understand that sometimes you want to be with your very own people. There! I'll have this thing running like a charm in about a minute. Sure you're not afraid to go out alone with me? I've learned a good deal about this kind of thing lately. It's one of the courses I'm taking at Harvard. Here we go!" And there they went, speeding down the street at a rate that made a policeman, half asleep on the corner, look about him with a start. Frieda's eyes shone, and she began to feel better.

Karl had evidently acquitted himself well in his course in motoring. He drove skilfully and easily, and they were soon outside the city in a pleasant country road. Almost any place would have seemed pleasant to Frieda just then, though, for Karl was talking cheerily, merrily, talking in German, talking of topics she knew about, and talking exclusively to her. She discovered that the day was much more of a day than she had thought. There was a quality in the air she had not noticed earlier in the afternoon. Presently she even became confidential. Karl, with eyes and hands busy, guiding the machine, bent an attentive ear as Frieda poured out her suppressed irritation of days.

"They think it is such a fine country, Karl. I cannot understand them. If they had never travelled--but they have been over Europe! They have been in Berlin! And still they find matter for admiration in this dirty little city with its buildings all heights, and its no trees anywhere except in the parks. Where are their beautiful statues? Where is their Victory Avenue? Where are their bridges? _Ach!_ It is a poor cheap country. Tante Edith and Mr. Eldred are heavenly kind, and Hannah I have loved with a great love, but they have very little taste, and no sense at all."

Karl puckered up his lips in a low whistle, and Frieda blushed.

"I did not mean to say that, Karl," she said penitently. "I am their guest. They are heavenly kind, yes. _But_ I do not like the country."

It was a beautiful shady road they had come into then, and the hills at the end of it showed gracious curves.

"This reminds me," said Karl meditatively, "of a place I went through near the Rhine one summer vacation. It's really quite as charming, I believe. Look here, Frieda. I'm interested in the impression you make in this country. You're going to spend this year with a lot of girls who don't know much about Germany or Germans, and I don't mind telling you that I'm rather anxious to have you do us credit."

"I shall do Germany credit, everywhere," answered Frieda stoutly, but somewhat perturbed.

"I'd like to think that," answered Karl, "and on the whole I guess it's true, but if you keep on this way, I'm not so sure of it. You are sitting here this afternoon making general statements about America when you have seen only one of the less important cities. That doesn't strike me as the way one should judge. It doesn't seem like the kind of thing Professor Lange would do. He is very accurate and careful in his judgments. And next, you haven't shown much enthusiasm over the things the Eldreds have done for you the last day or two. Now, I never knew any one who was so unfailingly appreciative as Frau Professor Lange."

Frieda pouted. "But Hannah shows off."

"Shows off? Frieda, I'm afraid your sense of humor is rather one-sided. Hannah may take advantage of your not understanding perfectly, but who taught her that that sort of thing was funny? Who told her the brass plate over the barber's door meant that cakes were for sale there, so that she almost went in to buy one?"

Frieda chuckled. "It was not long I could fool her. She soon learned too much. Besides, my mother would not let me."

"You still think it was justifiable and humorous, I notice. But what would you have said if Hannah had told you to say: 'So am I' when strangers said: 'I am glad to meet you'? That was what some one told me, when I first began talking English."

"If Hannah should tell me wrong, I would tell her what I think of her!" blazed Frieda. "But you need not lecture any more, Karl. I understand, and I will be good. I will be better than Hannah. I will be better than yourself, than the saints, even. I will admire all things. Behold the ravishing country! The wonder of that sky! Not Italy, not Spain has such a dull gray color! The beauty of the dirty streets! The charm of the crowded street-cars! Only five cents a ride, sitting upon the laps of others! I will no longer sew on Sunday. I will never ask for beer. I will eat every morning little dry cushions of curled grain. I will rock madly. I will--"

"Hold on, Frieda!" shouted Karl. "Don't reform so fast. I can't keep within speaking distance of you. You know, the reason I scolded you so hard was because I sometimes feel just as you do about the whole country!"

Frieda put out her hand. "Let us make a compact. For the honor of Germany, we will be scrupulously careful of what we say about America, but sometimes, all by ourselves, we can say just what we feel like saying." Karl took her hand solemnly. "It's a bargain, and you are a Cor-r-rker-r-r!"