Four Girls at Chautauqua | Page 2

little laugh, and she sank down among the cushions of the sofa, while her white morning dress floated around her like a cloud. "Charlie thinks it is silly, and Kit thinks it is sillier, and mamma thinks it is the very silliest thing I ever did yet; but for all that I am going--that is, if the rest of you are." Which, by the way, was always this little Flossy's manner of speech. She was going to do or not to do, speak or keep silent, approve or condemn, exactly as the mind which was for the time being nearest to her chose to sway her.
"Good!" said Eurie, softly clapping her hands. "I didn't think it of you, Flossy; I thought you were too much of a mouse. Now, Ruth, you will go, won't you? As for Marion, there is no knowing whether she will go or not. I don't see now she can afford it myself any more than I can; but, of course, that is her own concern. We can go anyway, whether she does or not--only I don't want to, I want her along. Suppose we all go down and see her; it is Saturday, she will be at home, and then we can begin to make our preparations. It is really quite time we were sure of what we are going to do."
By dint of much coaxing and argument Ruth was prevailed upon to leave her fascinating brown hat with its brown velvet trimmings, and in the course of the next half hour the trio were on their way down Park Street, intent on a call on Miss Marion Wilbur. Park Street was a simple, quiet, unpretending street, narrow and short; the houses were two-storied and severely plain. In one of the plainest of these, wearing an unmistakable boarding-house look, in a back room on the second floor, the object of their search, in a dark calico dress, with her sleeves rolled above her elbows, had her hands immersed in a wash-bowl of suds, and was doing up linen collars. She was one of those miserable creatures in this weary world, a teacher in a graded school, and her one day of rest was filled with all sorts of washing, ironing and mending work, until she had fairly come to groan over the prospect of Saturday because of the burden of work which it brought. She welcomed her callers without taking her hands from the suds; she was as quiet in her way as Ruth Erskine was in hers.
This time it was Flossy who asked the important question: "Are you going?"
Marion answered as promptly as though the question had been decided for a week.
"Yes, certainly I am going. I thought I told you that when we talked it over before. I am washing out my collars to have them ready. Ruth, are you going to take a trunk?"
Ruth roused herself from the contemplation of her brown gloves to say with a little start:
"How you girls do rush things. Why, I haven't decided yet that I am going."
"Oh, you'll go," Marion Wilbur said. "The question is, are we to take trunks--or, rather, are you to? because I know I shall not. I'm going to wear my black suit. Put it on on Tuesday morning, or Monday is it that we start? and wear it until we return. I may take it off, to be sure, while I sleep, but even that is uncertain, as we may not get a place to sleep in; but for once in my life I am not going to be bored with baggage."
"I shall take mine," Ruth Erskine said with determination. "I don't intend to be bored by being without baggage. It is horrid, I think, to go away with only one dress, and feel obliged to wear it whether it is suited to the weather or not, or whatever happens to it. Eurie, what are you laughing at?"
"I am interested in the phenomena of Marion Wilbur being the first to introduce the dress question. I venture to say not one of us has thought of that phase of the matter up to this present moment."
While the talk went on the collars and cuffs were carefully washed and rinsed, and presently Marion, with her hands only a trifle pinker for the operation, was ready to lean against a chair and discuss ways and means. Her long apprenticeship in school-rooms had given her the habit of standing instead of sitting, even when there was no occasion for the former.
If these four young ladies had been creatures of the brain, gotten up expressly for the purpose of illustrating extremes of character, instead of being flesh and blood creations, I doubt whether they could have better illustrated the different types of young ladyhood. There was