She could not pass the First Aid or the International alphabet exam.
She could not train a Tenderfoot; at least it was too much trouble, and while she could name ten trees, ten wild flowers, ten wild animals and ten wild birds, they were all Chinese. She could swim; oh, _how_ she could swim! A thrill of joy shook her as she thought of past hours spent in soft tropic waters. As for fifty cents in bank earned by herself, that was so funny that Claire laughed aloud. She could not imagine earning _five_ cents, let alone fifty.
That brought her thoughts around to Mabel Brewster, and Claire saw her in a new light.
There was a lucky girl even if she _was_ silly and conceited. She believed in herself and had gone off alone to fight the world, with all her banners flying. Yet there was that loyalty law cropping up again.
What if Mabel _could_ write as splendidly as she said, wasn't her place really at home with her mother and brother? Claire was sure the Brewsters were not rich, and in that case Mrs. Brewster certainly needed help. Loyalty; always loyalty! A new and disturbing thought flashed over Claire. Perhaps she owed her own mother some loyalty too, even though she was away in a sanitarium. Wasn't it loyalty to her to keep her troubled, lonely and unhappy father "built up" so far as it lay in her power?
Claire closed the little offending blue book and flung it across the room and when her maid entered she was lying petulantly with her head on her arm, her glorious red hair streaming over her like a glittering veil.
The little book, so helpful and so uplifting, had not helped Claire at all. But that was because in her heart she did not want to be helped.
She had lived for herself so long in her queer, cold, brooding fashion that the thought of anything different actually hurt her just as it hurts to stand on one's foot when it is asleep. Claire had held one position of thought for so long that it made her hurt and sting and prickle even to think of moving. So she buried her face in her arm and hid under her shining red hair and studied her queer jade ring and tried to forget the feeling that she might be in the wrong.
Mabel Brewster's awakening was even more disagreeable, although she really deserved it less. She was not accustomed to pickles and cold ham and cheese for supper, as Mrs. Brewster was a careful mother. Also Mabel, to celebrate her great step, had found a light novel, and snapping on a perfectly fascinating reading light at the head of her bed, had proceeded to read until after one o'clock. Then she dreamed!
She dreamed that she tried to get out of bed and couldn't because there was a sour green pickle as large as a street car right in the way, and the City Editor sat on top and looked at her from under his green shade and told her that the only way that she could get out was by eating her way through the pickle. So she commenced, while all the society ladies in Louisville looked on and said, "Dear me, isn't it wonderful what a girl can accomplish if she will only leave home, and _live for herself_?" And the pickle was so sour that it made Mabel shudder with cold and she shuddered herself awake, to find all the bed-clothes on the floor. She got up and made the bed over, and found it was only three o'clock, although she had been hours and hours trying to eat that frightful pickle. The bed was too soft or too hard or something, and she could not get to sleep again for a long while. She was glad to waken again and find that it was morning. Unfortunately, after all the adventures of the night Mabel had over-slept and was obliged to start off to school without breakfast and with her hair ribbon badly tied.
Also there was no time to put the apartment in order, and Mabel was rather shocked to find how badly one person could tumble things up.
She half hoped her mother would run around during the morning and put things in shape, but when she unlocked her door at one o'clock, when school was over for the day, she found her bed still unmade, her clothes tumbling out of the suitcase, and the soiled dishes on the kitchen table.
She had cold boiled ham for luncheon, and but little of that because just as she commenced to eat, a telephone call interrupted her. It was Miss Gere asking how soon she would be down with her items and to take up some other work. The items were not written up, and Mabel had to give up her luncheon time to writing them. There was no time to tidy up, and Mabel hurried down town hoping now with all her heart and soul that her mother would not get time to use the duplicate key that Mabel had insisted on her taking. She felt her cheeks burn as she thought of her mother seeing the mess and cleaning it up in her kind way.
Mabel had no cause to worry. When her mother dropped in about four o'clock she merely looked the place over, then sat down and laughed in the strangest manner. Then she carefully went out without disturbing anything, and took a covered basket into the apartment below where she talked for awhile with Mabel's grandmother, who laughed too; laughed hard and long, and who then said mysteriously, "Well, thank you for the rolls, my dear! I think they will do me more good than they would Mabel.
And I think I shall not be 'at home' for the next week or so."
Mabel did not get home until six o'clock. She had forgotten to stop at the market, so she had only shredded wheat and milk and pickle for supper. She ate shredded wheat and milk. It was a modern apartment with thin walls. Somebody was having chops and baked apples for supper, and a few minutes later there was a smell of fried chicken. Mabel helped herself to another shredded wheat biscuit.
CHAPTER VII
A week passed. In one corner of the _Times-Leader_ office there was an old-fashioned letter-press. You put the letters between two iron plates and slowly turned a bar that pressed a lever that squeezed the plates together tighter and tighter. A grimy office boy was forever grinding, and as Mabel had many a long wait for her chief, Miss Gere, she commenced to be fascinated by the operation. Her vivid imagination commenced to trouble her. She saw her hand, her arm, her whole self being pressed flat by that dreadful boy. The boy, by the way, being about Mabel's age and totally unconscious of his grubby appearance, noticed Mabel's fascinated stare and accepted it as a personal compliment. He turned the press with a grand flourish and squeezed it close with a darkly frowning brow as though to call attention to his strength.
Life, after being so eagerly called, was beginning to squeeze Mabel a little. Saturday noon found her half ill for food, as she had spent her small allowance almost at once and had had to live on the faithful box of shredded wheat biscuit and the milk for which she did not have to pay the milkman until the first of the month.
After luncheon, consisting of a nut sundae which took all her remaining change, she spent a few moments peering in at the vegetables and chickens displayed in a grocer's window. She did not see Miss Gere pass.
When Mabel returned to the office, Miss Gere sent her up Fourth Street to study the delicatessens and bread shops. It was agony. Mabel had never seen such delicious articles of food, had never dreamed of such penetrating and tantalizing odors. Mabel wondered if she could ever stand it until six o'clock when she would be paid. She jotted down her notes and, wending her way back to the office, settled down in a corner to put her material in shape. It did not take long, and while she waited for Miss Gere who was almost always out, she reviewed the experiences that had beset her during the past few days. Of them all this day had been the worst. And Mabel, who had fondly expected to have most of her Saturdays to herself, reflected that after six o'clock she would have to take her hungry and weary self back to the apartment and attempt to clean things up.
The dainty rooms looked as though a whirlwind had struck them. Poor Mabel was not wholly to blame. She was carrying too great a load. She had school to think of, and as soon as she was released at noon she was obliged to rush off to the dusty office for her orders for the rest of the day. She never reached home again until six and later, and on several occasions she had been obliged to accompany Miss Gere on long tiresome night trips by automobile or trolley into the surrounding country. Of her mother she had seen but little. Twice her mother had called while she was out with Miss Gere, and Mabel, not knowing that this had been by arrangement between Mrs. Brewster and Miss Gere, was honestly disappointed. Several times she had met her mother down town, and once they had had luncheon together at a cafeteria.
On these occasions Mabel was forced to notice that her mother, whom she had rather looked down on as a common or garden variety of parent, was really a most attractive and charming woman. She treated Mabel not at all like a little girl, spoke only of the surface things that interested Mrs. Brewster herself and lightly passed over all Mabel's wistful references to home and Frank. Mrs. Brewster did say that they missed Mabel and added with a rather sad smile that she had never thought to lose her little daughter and so on. Mabel felt herself saddened by these meetings. She found that she was thinking of her mother all the time, and sometimes she almost wished that she was just an ordinary girl and not a genius, so she could stay at home and be taken care of. When the second Sunday came Mabel permitted herself the luxury of a good cry. She was too stubborn to confess that she was desperately sick of her foolishness and wholly and utterly homesick, but angrily dried her tears and started to dress.
The telephone rang. It was Mrs. Brewster. She sent a cheery good-morning over the wire and asked if Mabel had had breakfast. Mabel hopefully said no, that she was just commencing to dress.
"Why, we are all through!" laughed Mrs. Brewster. "We are getting an early start, because the Morrissons have asked us to drive to Lexington with them. They wanted to ask you too, but I told them that you were always too taken up with your other affairs and your writing to accept any invitations and they were so disappointed."
"Who is going?" asked Mabel.
"Just the two Morrisson boys and Frank and myself."
The two Morrisson boys were quite the most popular young fellows in Louisville and Mabel saw, with a sense of defeat, that her biggest social chance had slipped from her grasp.
Her mother went cheerily on: "So Frank and I got up early and fixed our share of the luncheon, and prepared and ate our own breakfast, and now we are all ready."
Mabel was furious. It was on her tongue's end to tell her mother that of course she would be glad to go, but her stubbornness held her back, so she said a brief and snippy good-bye and hung up the receiver. But she did not leave the phone. A moment later she gave central Mrs.
Morrisson's number, and flushed rather foolishly as she heard Mrs.
Morrisson call hello.
"I want to thank you for having thought to ask me on your ride today Mrs. Morrisson," she said smoothly, in her best manner. "I was just talking to mother, and she told me about it." Mabel stopped here and listened eagerly for Mrs. Morrisson to renew the coveted invitation. But alas, poor Mabel!
"We were all sorry that you could not go," said Mrs. Morrisson in a sweet voice that you would never think could deal a blow to a girl's hopes. "And it is almost going to spoil the day for your mother, I know.
She is always so happy when you are with her, my dear."
"It is dear of you all to want me," said Mabel, "and perhaps I can arrange things so I can go after all."
"Oh, my dear," exclaimed Mrs. Morrisson in a most distressed voice, "that is too awful! You see we never thought you would think of it, so I asked another girl, a new girl the boys have met in dancing school. She is a Girl Scout and your mother thought it was just the thing to do."
Mabel swallowed hard.
"Well, I am sure she will have a good time," she replied in a thin voice. "Is she a girl I know?"
"Her name is Claire Maslin," said Mrs. Morrisson, "and I think she is really charming."
"I know her," said Mabel briefly and with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm.
She was glad when the conversation came to an end, and rushing back to her tumbled bed, she threw herself down and wept loudly and long. When finally she found that she could cry no more she dragged on her dress anyhow and went out to look in the tiny ice-chest. She knew what it contained. There was the usual ready-to-eat cereal and milk for her breakfast, and two discouraged looking pieces of cold boiled ham, her unfailing standby, on a saucer; but she had neglected to do any shopping the day before in the rush of necessary tasks, and there was nothing else to eat. For all day! Sunday! And mother and Frank were off on a glorious picnic! Once more Mabel wept. She set the cereal back and went wearily into the living-room. The bell rang, but Mabel did not care who it was; she did not want to see anyone. She heard a rush of feet on the stairs, and the door knob was shaken violently as her brother Frank called through the crack:
"Hey, Mabe, let me in a second! Hurry up! Here's something for you!"
Mabel rushed to the door and let him in. He had a large box in his hand.
"Hello, sis!" he roared cheerfully. "Here's a box mother sent you. She is down in the car, but I told her not to come upstairs. I don't want her to get tired. She sent you some dinner. It's good, I can tell you!
Helped to fix it myself. She thought it would be a change from the swell eats you must be buying yourself. Just notice the chicken salad. And she said for you to--but there is a note inside. Sorry you can't come!
Strange girl going, and I don't like 'em. Nuisance to get acquainted.
Why, what's wrong, Mabe?" he asked as he looked at her for the first time and noticed her tear stained face. "Gosh, what's wrong? Are you sick? Shall I call mother?" He put an awkward but loving arm around his sister, but she shoved him violently away.
"Nothing's wrong!" she jerked out, her lips trembling in spite of her.
"Go along, and don't mind me!" She fairly pushed him toward the door and Frank, dazed and astonished, allowed himself to be hurried into the small hallway.
There he faced her. "Why don't you get some common sense into your head?" he asked savagely. "I think it's a crime your coming here and trying to live by yourself! I am ashamed to have the fellows know about it. They think it is awfully queer. Fellows like to look after their sisters. It isn't right! I don't care if you _are_ a smart kid! You can be just as smart over home as you can here. You don't seem to think of mother at all. You don't care how _she_ feels. She would skin me if she knew I was saying this to you, but I'll say you are the most selfish girl I ever knew and that's the truth! Well, go ahead! We don't care; we can rustle along without you!" He started for the stairs and flung this over his shoulder: "But I bet you will be sorry some day!"
He hurried out of sight as a shrill whistle sounded from the street where the Morrisson boys fretted in the waiting car.
Mabel picked up the box and carried it into the kitchen. Then for the third time that day she rushed into her bed-room, fell on the long-suffering bed and cried; cried tears of mingled rage and disappointment. She could not understand why Frank's ravings, as she called his outburst, should make her feel so strangely mean and small and in the wrong when she positively _knew_ that she was on the right track. But you cannot live principally on cold boiled ham, olives and shredded wheat day in and out, you cannot leave a comfy, homey sort of home even for the luxury of a modern apartment without a pang of homesickness hitting you sooner or later, and Mabel was pierced with it.
And you can't have good reason for tears three times in one morning without losing a little of your courage, at least for the time being.
Mabel thought of the jolly party motoring along the level roads, all laughing over the sallies of the older Morrisson boy. She could almost see Claire Maslin in her lovely green motor coat and close hat set tight over the shining red hair.
Mabel burrowed her wet face deeper in the moist pillow. Her sobs rose.