"But I told her I would come, and I am going," said Mabel, stubbornly.
"I bet you won't if mamma says not," retorted Frank.
His mother caught his eye and shook her head.
"Someone will have to stay home and see the laundress, and Frank has his basketball practice. It is a great chance for me, so I wish you would stay, Mabel," she said.
"I don't see how I can!" objected Mabel. "I told Rosanna I would come and I reckon I had better go. You can go some other time, can't you, mamma?"
"I suppose I can," said Mrs. Brewster, and left the room.
Mabel glanced at her brother and noting his scowl, commenced to read a magazine.
She was perfectly miserable. When it came time to dress, she donned her old frock, wondering why her mother had laid the new one, still unfinished, across her bed. Mabel loved to go to the Hortons. But for once the dinner was not a success. All the conversation seemed to hinge on anecdotes of unselfishness and generosity. Mabel thought of Frank working on his gym suit because she wouldn't mend it for him, but she thought most of her mother giving up her dinner to sit at home and wait for the laundress. Her mother was too kind to make the poor colored woman come again for her money. Mrs. Brewster knew that she needed it.
Mabel, sitting with unwonted primness and silence at the Horton table, thought harder and harder and could not enjoy herself. And Mrs. Horton, the little Scout Captain, saw and smiled to herself a sly, quiet smile that scarcely disturbed her dimples. She wondered curiously what sort of a report Mabel would bring her.
CHAPTER III
We will leave Mabel embarked on her desperate career of utter selfishness and return to Claire Maslin.
When Rosanna and Helen and pretty Elise went to call on her they found her rooms had been marvelously changed from the stiff appearance of hotel suites by the gorgeous draperies and scarfs and table covers placed wherever they could possibly be put. A faint, sweet, oriental odor seemed to come from them, and the soft-stepping Chinaman who ushered them in seemed to be part of a dream. Claire looked modern enough, however, in her kilted skirt of big green plaid, soft silk shirtwaist and dull green sweater. Her face was as impassive as ever, but she seemed to think that as hostess something more than silence was required of her, and she talked in a very friendly and entertaining manner.
Elise, always thoughtful of little courtesies, asked almost at once if they might meet Madame, her mother, and the girls were filled with pity when Claire replied that her mother was an invalid and was away at a sanitarium. It was clear that Claire in her silent, repressed way felt her mother's illness very deeply. She changed the subject at once.
Little by little, however, the girls gleaned the bare facts of her life.
She had been born in the Philippines, and had traveled from post to post and from country to country with her parents until the time of her mother's illness. There was a gap in her story there, but later she went with her father, the Colonel. Her own maid, who took charge of the house when they had one, was a serious looking New England woman about sixty years old. The Chinaman too went with them everywhere.
"We expect to move tomorrow," said Claire. "Papa has found a nice house way up on Third Street. It is furnished, so we will not have to unpack our things."
"You look unpacked now," said Helen, glancing at the gorgeous silks and cushions that were scattered around.
"Oh, no, we just take a trunk full of these with us so wherever we stop the rooms will seem like home to us. Papa and I both hate hotel rooms.
They all look alike with their stuffy furniture and dreadful curtains.
It does not take Chang long to fix everything and we are much more comfortable. I think we will like the new house." Then she added rather shyly, "I hope you will all come to see me very, very often. Papa wants me to know all of you. I don't like girls very well."
The three girls stared in amazement. She didn't like _girls_! And she was willing to tell them so! Elise lifted her eyebrows. It was so rude.
Helen Culver laughed. "Why do you bother with us if you do not like us?"
she demanded.
Claire was blushing. "I should not have said that," she confessed bluntly. "I don't mean to say what I think. You must excuse me for saying it."
"And we will forgive you for having such a heart for us," said Elise, smiling. "I know how you will feel soon. At least for these two dear ones. You will love them so much."
"It is such a beautiful day," said Rosanna, to change the conversation, "why can't we all take a ride? Perhaps you would like to see our parks."
"I have seen everything," said Claire wearily. "I have done nothing but ride ever since we came to Louisville. But every afternoon I drive up to Camp Taylor to get papa and it is now almost time to go. Won't you all come with me? I do truly want you to, and papa wants so much to meet you. Papa likes girls," she added with a smile.
"I think we should love to go," said Rosanna heartily. She wanted to accept the first invitation that Claire gave, so she spoke quickly and nodded gaily to the girls. But it was a nod that they understood to mean "We will go." They were accustomed to the guiding nods of the wise little Rosanna.
Gliding smoothly along the beautiful roads in the luxurious limousine, the four girls chatted gaily. And returning, the talk and laughter was even more spirited for they found Colonel Maslin to be all that one could dream of or hope for in the way of a jolly, handsome father.
Nothing would do but they must return to the hotel for afternoon tea, and Colonel Maslin's idea of tea was ordering all the goodies to be found on the menu card, and then a few more that the head waiter managed to think up. So it was a regular feast.
Then the Colonel and Claire insisted on driving them home, and Colonel Maslin went in and was introduced to each of their families. The girls only waited for the big Maslin car to be well on its way when with one accord they hurried over to Rosanna's.
"Well, what do you think?" demanded Helen.
"Claire's father, is he not most splendid?" asked Elise with a deep sigh of appreciation.
"Yes, he is!" agreed Rosanna. "But Claire is the oddest girl that I ever saw. Did you notice how she sits and looks in one direction as though she did not hear a word you were saying? And her eyes look perfectly desperate!"
"She doesn't hear much that you say, at that," said Helen. "I watched her. She has taken a great fancy to you, Rosanna."
"Dear me!" said Rosanna. "I almost wish she wouldn't! Whenever I look at her or think about her, it seems as though a cloud pressed down on me and choked me."
"Don't you like her?" asked Helen.
"Yes, in a way I do, but there is something so strange about her, and I can't help the feeling that some way she is going to have an influence on my life."
"Don't let her," said Helen calmly. "Do some influencing yourself. I never let anyone influence me that way. Why, you will be awfully uncomfortable if you feel as though that girl with her red hair and green eyes could turn you from your purpose in any way. Don't you let her! I am surprised at you, Rosanna!"
"I don't mean it in that way," said Rosanna. "She will not change me, Helen dear, but in some way or other--Oh, I can't tell what _I do_ mean!"
"Too many tarts!" laughed Helen. "I confess she is a queer girl, but we don't have to see much of her, and I doubt if we will. We have enough work coming along this spring without taking on any more than we have to. I want to earn all the merits and emblems that I possibly can by summer time, and I shall be a busy girl if I do it. And you want to do a lot of Scout work, Elise, now that you have learned to speak English so nicely."
"_Merci_--I mean, thank you," said Elise. "Indeed I do much want to do something to benefit myself, and more to please our dear Captain. And somehow I think you are both seeing that strange Claire wrongly. I think the cloud hangs over her, and she is most, most sad, most gloomy in its shadow."
"Dear me, how mysterious!" said Helen. "To me, she seems just like any other girl, except that she has gorgeous clothes and those queer green eyes, and such wads and wads of hair, and that Chinaman, and all those splendid embroideries. And of course it is odd the way she sits and never moves her hands but looks over your head as though there was some writing on the wall."
"Perhaps there is," said Rosanna. "Like that man in the Bible, you know, who had a warning."
Rosanna, as she spoke, little dreamed that there _was_ writing on every wall, in every cloud, that poor Claire saw and read with a feeling of hopeless horror.
Leaning close to his handsome daughter in the big luxurious limousine, Colonel Maslin was saying to her, "Well, Bird o' Paradise, how do you like your new friends? Are they as friendly and fascinating as Kentucky girls are supposed to be?"
"You met them," said Claire evenly. "What do you think?"
"A mere man isn't supposed to think," laughed Colonel Maslin. "They seem delightful to me, so pretty and dainty and girlish. Stray sunbeams."
Claire laughed. "I should say you thought quite fully on the subject, daddy!"
"Well, they are all that I say, are they not?" asked the Colonel.
"Oh, yes!" and Claire leaned indifferently away from her father's shoulder. He glanced at her and sighed. They entered the hotel in silence, each one busy with somber thoughts, and as the Chinaman closed the door behind them Claire suddenly flung her gloves on the table with a gesture of impatience and turning to the Colonel said passionately: