Chapter 13

CAUGHT IN A SHOWER

The three girls, "just the right number, one for each gable," as Dr. Harlow said, had been very busy that morning. Their beds made, Catherine had gone down to market, while Frieda dusted the living-room, and Hannah swept the porches.

"I like doing things like this," said Frieda suddenly, as she came to the doorway, and shook her duster energetically. "Do you remember the time we got our own supper in Berlin, Hannah?"

"Indeed I do," said Hannah heartily, leaning on her broom. "You look awfully pretty this morning, Frieda, in that plaid gingham. Are you going off with Polly, as usual? I don't see you at all, it seems to me."

"You have Catherine," answered Frieda. "Polly is learning German."

"And you are learning English. I can see that you have improved a lot this week. But you are getting pretty slangy. It would be better for you to learn from Catherine than from Polly."

Frieda shook her head firmly. "I am in awe of Catherine," she announced, "and with you I feel weary talking English, for I know you can talk German. But Polly cannot do any other, and I must talk with her. She is delightsome."

"So is Catherine," said Hannah, looking at Frieda wistfully. It was a worry to her that these two who were to be together all the next year should be so slow in getting acquainted. "One is obstinate and the other is shy, and I don't know when they will get over it," she sighed to herself, as Frieda, seeing Catherine come up the walk, disappeared into the house.

Catherine was breathless with her quick climb and her many parcels. She dropped into a chair on the porch, and took off her hat to fan herself.

"There is the funniest woman on the street," she said. "I know she is an agent, and I suppose she'll be here soon; but I've got to shell these peas and I want to do it out here, so I shan't run from her. Won't you bring out some pans for the peas when you take your broom in, Hannah? I'm too weary to move."

Hannah, on her way after pans, persuaded Frieda to come out and help shell peas, and all three were soon busily at work.

Suddenly Catherine snapped a pea at Hannah to attract her attention.

"My agent!" she whispered, as a woman in a loose flowing gown marched toward them.

She mounted the steps and, stooping over Catherine, snapped something around her neck.

"There!" she said, straightening herself. "That will never come off."

All three girls gasped. Catherine clutched at the offending article and the peas rolled in all directions.

"It's a collar," said the woman triumphantly. "You can wear it forever. Just put a fresh ribbon over it now and then, and you're always dressed. Only fifteen cents. I'll try one on you, Miss--" and before Hannah could utter a protest she was caught in the celluloid trap as Catherine had been. Speechless they faced each other. With a little gasp Frieda slipped over the porch railing and disappeared around the corner of the house. Hotspur came bounding after her and she patted him, and hugged him and laughed and laughed.

"A collar just like yours, Hotspur dear," she told him in German. "And it will never come off! Catherine, the Saint, the Perfect, the Inviolate, sitting there looking like a--in English, like an idiom! O, Hotspur, dear, it has done me good. I have wished I could want to laugh at her. Now I shan't be so afraid of her ever again. Come! we must go. It's time for our row." And Frieda danced off across a little wood path which was a short-cut to the boat-house.

Polly was waiting, and in a very few minutes the "Minnehaha" was launched. It was a beautiful day, the river rippling with waves and twinkling with reflections of trees, but the ardent oarswomen saw neither the beauty surrounding them nor the black clouds threatening. They were practising for a race. Neither spoke. They pulled with long steady strokes in perfect time. Suddenly Frieda's oar flopped and "caught a crab." The bow at the same moment struck the bank, and a great scrambling tearing sound followed. In a fright the girls huddled together in the bottom of the boat, not daring to look up.

"O, pshaw! It's only a cow, more afraid than we were. She made all that noise just tearing up the bank."

"I thought it was an earthshake," sighed Frieda, leaning back and resting. "That was one hundred strokes without missing. I didn't know the bank was so near."

"Neither did I. That's the trouble with us, Frieda. We get so interested in rowing that we forget to steer."

"We steered into a steer that time."

"O, Frieda! You ought not to be allowed to make jokes in English, you make such bad ones."

Frieda smiled cheerfully. "Ten days ago I thought I should never make a joke in any language, or laugh at one again. I was very sorrowful when I came here, Polly."

"I didn't dream it," answered Polly. "You looked very sweet when I first saw you, and I thought you kept still because you didn't care to talk! But we have had a lot of fun these days, haven't we? I feel as though I had known you a long time. Wish you were going to Wellesley."

"So do I. It would be delightful, with you there and Karl and Hannah so near. But my parents decided for me. Karl will go to see you, though."

"That's nice. Really, Frieda, you will find it's lots easier at a small college than a large one at first. And you can come on East afterward. Dexter is fine, and you'll have such a start, going in as Catherine's friend."

Frieda grimaced.

"If every one there is as beautiful and--_apart_ as Catherine is, I shan't get on very well. Catherine is like a saint. She could never understand wickedness as you and Hannah do."

"Thanks very much!" Polly answered dryly. "But you take my word for it, Catherine isn't just a saint. There is fun in her, too, though not on the surface. You may always feel as though she were a beautiful picture or poem but you won't like her the less for that. She's not stand-offish. She's just different. My dear, I felt a drop."

"So did I. And there's another." Straightway the heavens opened and a deluge descended, most of it, it seemed, aiming for the small rowboat at the pasture's edge.

The thin roof of boughs which had hidden from their view the swiftly gathering clouds was wholly inadequate to the task of sheltering them from the contents of the clouds. Great cracks of lightning showed in the dark sky, and thunder rattled and roared and rumbled and burst.

Polly looked grave.

"We'll drown if we stay here, and we could never row home. Look at the waves! And if we stay here, we're also liable to be struck by lightning. Let's leave the boat and make for that farmhouse across the pasture."

"I'm afraider of the cow," said Frieda. "But I'll go. We can hide the oars and oar-locks in the bushes."

Progress across the pasture was difficult, but when the road beyond was reached, both looked aghast at the muddy stream of it.

Frieda rolled under the fence and stepped boldly in. Polly, gasping with laughter, started to climb over.

"You might as well roll," advised Frieda. "You can't wetten yourself more than you are already, and it is pleasant to roll."

"That's a matter of taste!" panted Polly, balancing herself on the top of the fence.

Suddenly Frieda gave a little shriek. Polly instantly fell forward into the mud, her skirt catching on all the barbs in the fence and rending itself horribly. Frieda, full of wild exclamations of pity and remorse, helped her up and wiped the thickest of the mud from her once piquant face.

"It was the cow," she confessed. "I saw him coming from afar and I squealed. I did not know it would make you tumble, but I had to squeal. I fear cows. I have great alarm before them."

"I forgive you," Polly was weak with mirth. "But we've got to get into that house and telephone for some one to come out from town and take us home. We could never walk in these roads, and I should tie myself all up in knots if I walked in this shredded skirt. One more little spurt, Frieda, and we're at the kitchen door!"

It looked for a minute as though they would never get beyond the door. The respectable lady who met them there was scarcely to blame if she judged a little by outward appearance. Polly's efforts to be suave were discounted by the muddy look of her eye, and the fact that water was dripping from her hair into her face.

"Won't you please let us come in and telephone for a carriage, and then wait for it?" she pleaded. "I will gladly pay for the use of the 'phone." Then it came over her sickeningly that she had no money with her.

"I'm Polly Osgood," she said. "My father is the Osgood of Osgood and Brown, Lawyers."

"You don't say! Come right in. I'm Amanda B. Mills, and Lawyer Osgood has been my counsel for twenty-one years and more. I'd never a-kept you waitin' out there a minute, if I'd known 'twas you. Is this your sister? Don't wipe your shoes. Come right in. There's other folks been caught in this rain, too."

She stepped back, still speaking, and invited them into the kitchen. Polly and Frieda, stumbling a little, blinded as they were by the water dripping from their hair, followed her. As they entered the room, there was a moment's silence, then a burst of laughter and exclamations.

"For the love of Mike!"

"Where did you rain down from?"

"O dear, O dear! You ridiculous boys!"

"What a guy you do look, Polly!"

And slowly out of the babel of voices came a deep solemn: "_Donnerwetter!_" It was not a lady-like expression for a nice little German girl to use, but she knew that to American ears it sounded more harmless than her usual expletives, and, besides, she felt that if ever an occasion had warranted emphasis this was it. She and Polly, dripping, draggled, ragged, confronted with Algernon, Max, Bert and Archie, almost as wet, grouped about Amanda B. Mills' kitchen stove!

Mrs. Mills' astonishment at the boisterous greeting given her latest guests by the earlier ones was so manifest that Polly hastened to make all clear with introductions.

"How do you happen to be here?" she asked, as she finished, and Archie had made a Chesterfieldian bow, though the blue from his Andover cap had run into his fair hair.

"Fishing," answered Bert. "We drove out from town with our old nag, hitched her to a tree and fished. Thunder and lightning always rile the beast, and she just broke her tie-strap and oozed off home, and left us in her wake. We got this far, walking, but the road was such a juicy mess we decided to stop and telephone for some one to come out after us."

"That's what I am going to do. Where is the telephone, Mrs. Mills?"

"O, do allow us to have the pleasure," begged Max. "They said they'd send out the 'light bearers' wagon,' and it's warranted to hold six. Besides it will be here in twenty minutes, and a private equipage would take longer."

"Well--it's awfully kind of you, I'm sure! Aren't you afraid we'll make you wetter, though, if we ride in the same carriage? I am flooding the floor at this moment. It's terrible, Mrs. Mills. Isn't there a shed we could go into, and not make such a lot of work for you?"

"Deary me, Miss Osgood, it's a pleasure to me to have you here. But I wisht you'd come into the parlor, all of you, you and your friends. I'll lay papers down on the carpet, and you can just walk in."

They all protested, but as it soon became clear that it was as much a desire to display the beauties of her room as hospitality that prompted the invitation, they yielded and filed damply along the newspaper path into the gaudy parlor. The rain had stopped as suddenly as it had come up, and the sun was shining through the flowers in the lace curtains at the windows, and striking the bright pink morning-glory of the graphophone, which was the most conspicuous object in the room. Mrs. Mills, preceding her wet guests, turned the track a little past the telephone, resplendent in oak and nickel, so that the whole procession could be inside the room at once. Then she called their respectful attention to her framed marriage certificate, and a similar document declaring the late Jacob Quincy Mills a Grand Something or Other in some lodge. Beneath these, on a shelf, were two tall lava jars filled with pampas grass, a pink china vase and a wreath of Easter lilies made of spangled paper.

"I'd like to show you the pictures in the family album," said Mrs. Mills hospitably, resting her hand upon the fat plush volume on the center table, "but I don't see how more'n two or three of you can look at it at a time." She frowned a moment, puzzled. Then her face lighted. "I'll just set the graphophone goin' for the rest of you to entertain yourselves with," she said eagerly, and in a moment the room was filled with the wheezing and strident strains of "You Look Good to Father," against which Mrs. Mills raised her own voice in explanatory remarks to Archie and Frieda, who happened to be within the album's range:

"This is Mr. Mills' sister's first husband. That was their baby that died. This here is Miss Evelyn Mills of Chicago. She's a singer there at the Orpheum. She was my husband's own cousin, once removed. This was my father's aunt,--" and so on.

"Look at Algernon," whispered Max to Polly. "He's as contented as a lamb. He's learning all there is to know about poultry, and doesn't even know that infernal machine is going or that Mr. Mills had any relatives." And sure enough Algernon, standing beside the bookcase, on a portion of the newspaper track, was reading, even devouring, the pages of a scientific farming journal, with an expression of perfect satisfaction on his face.

The long half hour came at last to an end. Mrs. Mills conducted the procession back to the kitchen, helped tuck the girls into the robes, and disclaiming all right to their earnest thanks, watched the wagon out of sight.

"Which is worse, a soaking or a fourth-class phonograph?" queried Archie from his corner.

Bert, humming "Waltz me Around Again, Willie," paused to remark:

"Why, I rather liked that. Didn't the rest of you?"

Polly shivered, not with cold alone.

"There is one song we all like, Bert," she suggested. "Let's sing it now to keep our lungs from freezing. There's water enough all about to make it appropriate!"

And in a minute four big male voices were shouting out the Boat Club song, Polly's soprano sweet and clear over the rest, while Frieda smiled encouragement over the edge of the robe in which she was wrapped to her chin.

"We are the Winsted Boat Club, Dip the oar, dip the oar! We are the Winsted Boat Club, Push out from shore!

"We are the Winsted Boat Club, Paddle light, paddle light! A-drifting, a-drifting beneath The sunset bright!"