A College Girl | Page 4

people were ambitious, and lavished unrequited affection on struggling rose-trees in a centre bed, others contented themselves with a blaze of homely nasturtiums; others, again, abandoned the effort after beauty, hoisted wooden poles, and on Monday mornings floated the week's washing unashamed. In Number Two the tenant kept pigeons; Number Four owned a real Persian cat, who basked majestic on the top of the wall, scorning his tortoiseshell neighbours.
When the lamps were lit, it was possible also to obtain glimpses into the dining-rooms of the two end houses, if the maids were not in too great a hurry to draw down the blinds. A newly married couple had recently come to live in the corner house--a couple who wore evening clothes every night, and dined in incredible splendour at half-past seven. It was thrilling to behold them seated at opposite sides of the gay little table, all a-sparkle with glass and silver, to watch course after course being handed round, the final dallying over dessert.
On one never-to-be-forgotten occasion, suddenly and without the slightest warning, bride and bridegroom had leaped from their seats and begun chasing each other wildly round the table. She flew, he flew; he dodged, she screamed (one could see her scream!) dodged again, and flew wildly in an opposite direction. The chase continued for several breathless moments, then, to the desolation of the beholders, swept out of sight into the fastnesses of the front hall.
Never--no, never--could the bitterness of that disappointment be outlived. To have been shut out from beholding the denouement--it was too piteous! In vain Darsie expended herself on flights of imagination, in vain rendered in detail the conversation which had led up to the thrilling chase--the provocation, the threat, the defiance-- nothing but the reality could have satisfied the thirst of curiosity of the beholders. Would he kiss her? Would he beat her? Would she triumph? Would she cry? Was it a frolic, or a fight? Would the morrow find them smiling and happy as of yore, or driving off in separate cabs to take refuge in the bosoms of their separate families? Darsie opined that all would seem the same on the surface, but darkly hinted at the little rift within the lute, and somehow after that night the glamour seemed to have departed from this honeymoon pair, and the fair seeming was regarded with suspicion.
As regards the matter of distance, it took an easy two minutes to cover the space between the front doors of the two houses, and there seemed an endless number of reasons why the members of the different families should fly round to consult each other a dozen times a day. Darsie and Lavender, Vi and plain Hannah attended the same High School; the Garnett boys and John Vernon the same Royal Institute, but the fact that they walked to and from school together, and spent the intervening hours in the same class-rooms, by no means mitigated the necessity of meeting again during luncheon and tea hours. In holiday times the necessity naturally increased, and bells pealed incessantly in response to tugs from youthful hands.
Then came the time of the great servants' strike. That bell was a perfect nuisance; ring, ring, ring the whole day long. Something else to do than run about to open the door for a pack of children!
The two mistresses, thus coerced, issued a fiat. Once a day, and no oftener! All arrangements for the afternoon to be made in the morning seance, the rendezvous to be outside, not inside the house.
After this came on the age of signals; whistlings outside the windows, rattling of the railings, comes through letter-boxes and ventilation grids, even--on occasions of special deafness--pebbles thrown against the panes! A broken window, and a succession of whoops making the air hideous during the progress of an extra special tea party, evoked the displeasure of the mistresses in turns, and a second verdict went forth against signals in all forms, whereupon the Garnetts and Vernons in conclave deplored the hard-heartedness of grown-ups, and set their wits to work to evolve a fresh means of communication.
"S'pose," said Russell, snoring thoughtfully, "s'pose we had a telegraph!"
"S'pose we had an airship! One's just as easy as the other. Don't be a juggins."
But Russell snored on unperturbed.
"I don't mean a real telegraph, only a sort--of pretend! There's our side window, and your back windows. If we could run a line across."
"A line of what?"
"String. Wire. Anything we like."
"S'pose we did fix it, what then?"
"Send messages!"
"How?"
Russell pondered deeply. He was the member of the family who had a natural aptitude for mechanism; the one who mended toys, and on occasion was even consulted about mother's sewing-machine and escapes of gas, therefore he filled the place of engineer-royal and was expected to take all structural difficulties upon his