Stories from Everybodys Magazine, 1910 | Page 5

bulkhead, and from that eminence--with the air
of one performing an accustomed act--she clambered on the fence that
separated the green lawns from beach to avenue. This, with a fine
disregard for splinters, she proceeded to walk--her property tucked
under her arm.
Amiel strode beside her on the lawn. She was as sure-footed as a goat;
but when he clutched her elbow as she performed a daring pirouette,
she offered no opposition, but proceeded sedately beneath his hold.
Why not? She had ceased to be Dorothea on her way to a tennis game
("Lean heavily on me, dearest," whispered Reginald, "the chapel is in
sight. Bear up a little longer"). With a weary sigh the Lady Ursula slid
finally from the gate-post to the ground and proceeded to put on her
stockings.
Jennie Clark arrived duly and was received, if not rapturously, at least
hospitably. To be frank, Jennie Clark was not among those first
suggested by Dorothea as a prospective visitor. Of her own private and
particular friends some five had been rejected by a too censorious
parent, mainly, it seemed, because of a lack of personal
charm--Dorothea preferring a good sport from the gutter, as it were, to
a dull fairy from a dancing school.
Jennie had been near, perilously near, the end of Dorothea's list. Her
sole claims to Dorothea's friendship were that, living next door, she
was available on rainy days when greater delights failed, and that
Dorothea, by a dramatic relation of a ghost story, could hypnotize her
into a terrified and wholly fascinated wreck.
Jennie was thirteen, a very young thirteen--pretty and mindless as a
Persian kitten--but developing rapidly a coquettish instinct for the value
of a red ribbon in her dark curls, and the set of a bracelet on her plump

arm. Beside her curves and curls and pretty frilled frocks, Dorothea, in
her straight, blue flannel playing suit or stiff afternoon pique', with her
cropped blonde head, suggested nothing so much as wire opposed to a
sofa cushion.
She was in white pique' this afternoon. To meet one's friend at the
station was an event. Dorothea was honestly excited and happy, and she
was not at all pained that Jennie Clark's first greeting was a comment
on her short hair and her sunburn.
By what might have seemed to the unobserving a happy coincidence,
Amiel, strolling from his house to the beach with his after- dinner pipe,
was hailed by Dorothea from the summerhouse. She had run the
unsuspecting Miss Clark very hard to arrive at the psychological
moment. Joining them there, he was duly presented to Jennie Clark,
and Dorothea, accepting the courteous fashion in which he
acknowledged the introduction as an indirect compliment to herself,
was elated. Jennie was certainly very pretty. She tossed back her long
curls and talked to Amiel with an occasional droop of her long lashes,
and Dorothea, beaming upon them both, had no notion that, hovering
above her in the quiet twilight, the green- eyed Monster was even then
scenting its victim and preparing to strike.
Presently Dorothea's father and mother and Amiel's stout and amiable
parents joined their offspring in the summerhouse. One of the affable, if
uninteresting, neighbors came as well and, promptly introducing a
banjo as a reason for his being, lured the assembled company into song.
Dorothea, snuggled into her corner, blissfully conscious of Amiel's
careless arm about her shoulder, gave herself up to happiness. The
night was soft as velvet, sewn with the gold spangles of stars. The
waves whispered secrets to each other as they waited for the moon to
rise. Dorothea, rapturously using the atmosphere as a background for
Lady Ursula, became suddenly aware that the singing of "Juanita" in
six different keys had ceased, and that Jennie, having been discovered
to be the possessor of a voice, was singing alone. She had an exquisite
little pipe, and she sang the dominating sentimental song of the year
with ease if not with temperament. Its close was greeted with instant

and enthusiastic applause. Jennie became instantly the center of
attraction.
It was Amiel who urged her to sing again, Amiel who seized upon the
banjo and accompanied her triumphantly through a college song,
turning his back squarely upon Dorothea the while.
Dorothea sat up straight, a sudden, bewildering anger at her heart as she
watched them. In the midst of the song she announced casually that the
moon was coming up. No one paid the slightest attention to her except
the calling neighbor, who said "Hush!"
An instant later, the instant that saw Amiel lay a commending and
fraternal hand on Jennie's curls, the Monster struck. Jealousy had no
firmer grip of beak and talons on the Moor of Venice than on the
crop-headed Dorothea. In absolute self- defense she did