Chapter 6 ELAINE HAS VISITORS

It was Priscilla who, on the way home from school the next day, suggested stopping to see if Elaine had quite recovered from the effects of the Hallowe'en party. She made the remark to Peggy, but Amy, who with Ruth was walking just behind the others, took it on herself to answer.

"Yes, that was just what I was thinking. It wouldn't be any more than neighborly after her fright, and all the rest of it."

Priscilla choked down an exasperated sigh. She said to herself it was strange Amy couldn't realize that there might be occasions when one wanted Peggy to one's self. At the same time it was not altogether Amy's obtuseness which was responsible for the difficulty of monopolizing Peggy's society. Peggy herself, with her trick of liking everybody, and expecting all her friends to like one another, made monopoly difficult, if not impossible.

Accordingly four girls, instead of two, turned in at the Marshall cottage. The chatter of voices on the porch told Elaine that she had visitors and she came to the door in something of a flutter, for, with all her air of self-sufficiency, Elaine was shy at heart, as is often the case with people who hold their acquaintances at arms' length. She was uncertain, as she admitted the quartet, whether or not to ask them into the parlor, but Peggy, who had caught sight of Mrs. Marshall seated in great state in the living-room, and apparently absorbed in the contemplation of a steel-engraving over the mantel, settled the question by bearing down upon the engrossed lady and giving her a hearty greeting.

Mrs. Marshall welcomed her daughter's visitors with an air nicely balanced between cordiality and condescension. Nearly everything that Mrs. Marshall said and did conveyed the impression that she had seen better days, and that she would not submit to being judged by her present environment. Peggy, who had a perfect mania for cheering people, found Mrs. Marshall's air of melancholy a perpetual challenge, and, when Mrs. Marshall gave her a chance, she occasionally succeeded in bringing a smile to that lady's severe countenance, much to her own delight, and to Mrs. Marshall's astonishment.

She dropped into a chair next to Elaine's mother, and addressed her as soon as the introductions were over. "I hope you weren't lonely last evening, Mrs. Marshall, with Elaine away."

"I am used to loneliness, Miss Margaret," Mrs. Marshall returned pensively. "It is one of the many hard things to which I am now forced to accustom myself. When I was Elaine's age--"

Peggy resigned herself to listen to a story of past glories while the other girls plunged into a discussion of the party. "What a fright we all had when you screamed!" Amy laughed. "But, of course, it was worse for you than for anybody else. Did you feel all right this morning?"

"I felt a little cheap," Elaine acknowledged with a smile, while her color rose, "That was all."

"You're not the only one to feel that way," Priscilla comforted her. "There were some sheepish boys at school this morning. My father is the high-school principal, you know."

"Yes, Peggy spoke of it."

"Well, in the middle of the night father thought he heard a little noise around the house and he dressed and went out to the stable. Everything seemed quiet, and he was just starting to go in again when he heard steps outside. He slipped into the carriage, just to see what would happen, and then the door opened and five or six boys came creeping in. They took hold of the shafts of the carriage and started off at a good trot, with father sitting perfectly quiet, not saying a word."

Priscilla stopped to laugh, and her audience, especially the girls who knew the actors in the little comedy, joined her heartily. Peggy, who was hearing of the splendors of Mrs. Marshall's coming-out party, to which festivity two hundred guests had been invited, cast a wistful glance in the direction of the laughing group, and then, with a twinge of conscience, gave redoubled attention to the tale of by-gone grandeur.

"They carried him out to the new part of town," said Priscilla, continuing her story, "and pulled the carriage over to a vacant lot. And they were feeling so well satisfied with themselves, when father spoke out from behind the curtains, in his very deepest voice. 'Thank you for the ride, boys,' he said. 'It has been very enjoyable! But I think you may take me home now.' Of course there wasn't anything else for them to do, and father rode home in state. He made them pull the carriage into the stable, and then he got out and locked the door and thanked them again, very politely. Father can keep as grave as a judge even when he is dying to laugh. But as soon as he got into the house he woke mother up to enjoy the joke. He just couldn't wait till morning."

"I guess you had your share of Hallowe'en pranks, didn't you?" asked Amy, turning to Elaine.

"Why, no. What made you think so?"

"When that carriage passed the house I woke up. It was a sort of uncanny noise, you know, wheels and footsteps, instead of horses' hoofs. I suspected that something queer happening and I jumped up and looked out of my window, but the carriage had gone before I could get there. But I saw somebody on your porch."

"The boys in this neighborhood were certainly on the rampage last night," observed Ruth.

"But this wasn't a boy," explained Amy. "It was a woman, or a girl, dressed in a long, loose dress, like a light wrapper."

"How mysterious that sounds," cried Priscilla, and Peggy, who, to her great relief, had reached the end of the coming-out party, put in her word. "It's something new for the girls of the Terrace to go out playing Hallowe'en tricks."

"But it wasn't a Hallowe'en trick. There wasn't anything out of order this morning," Elaine insisted sharply.

"It was something, anyway. I was as wide awake as I am now. It walked back and forth half a dozen times, while I stood looking, and then it seemed to disappear. O, girls, you don't suppose--"

Amy's eyes were opened in a half-frightened stare. A girl of good sense in many respects, she had a vein of superstition in her make-up which was one of her greatest weaknesses. Peggy broke into a ringing laugh.

"The Spook on the Porch," she cried, "or the Mystery of Friendly Terrace. O, Amy, what an imagination you have!"

"It wasn't imagination at all," Amy persisted stubbornly. "It was a woman or something--in a trailing dress. I wasn't scared a bit. I just thought it was a Hallowe'en prank."

"Don't you think it's a lot colder to-day?" asked Elaine of the company in general. Her tone was a little stiff, and Peggy, glancing in her direction, was surprised to see a flush of annoyance on her new friend's face. Mrs. Marshall, too, had an air of having heard enough about this nocturnal intruder. It was necessary to change the subject promptly, especially as Amy and Priscilla seemed disposed to fall into an argument as to what Amy had really seen.

"I haven't asked you yet if you'd help in our Bazar, have I?" exclaimed Peggy, addressing Elaine. "It's the tenth of this month. It was the tenth we decided on at last, wasn't it, Ruth?"

"Yes, the tenth," Ruth replied, and Priscilla took up the explanation. "It's for the Empty Stocking Club. We buy dolls with the money we make, and dress them afterward."

"And it's an awful lot of fun," said Peggy. "Fun all the way, first making the things for the Bazar, and then the Bazar itself, and then buying the dolls and dressing them. And of course giving them to the children is the best fun of all." She looked at Elaine expectantly, but, to her surprise, Elaine hesitated.

"My daughter would have been very glad to help you when our circumstances were different," said Mrs. Marshall, coming to Elaine's assistance. "My family have always given largely to charity. Solicitors for philanthropic objects often said to my father, 'We like to come to you first, Mr. Elwell, because you always give so generously, and that inspires others.' And Mr. Marshall, before his business reverses, thought nothing of writing a check for a hundred dollars for a worthy cause."

"The trouble with me," said Elaine abruptly, "is that it is all I can do to help myself." She looked about the little circle, somewhat defiantly, and Peggy, who knew that this piece of confidence was not in the least like Elaine, felt a twinge of regret at having unintentionally forced her to make such an admission.

"You don't understand. Of course none of us can give big things," she explained hastily. "Now, last year, one of the best sellers at our Bazar was as simple as it could be, and it hardly cost anything. It was only a gingham belt, with two dangling tapes, and, at the end of each tape, a square of gingham padded for lifting things out of the oven. They really are the most convenient things; for, generally, when the cake's ready to come out, you can't find anything to lift it with, and so you take your apron, or else a dish towel. We sold them for twenty cents apiece and took orders for a lot more than we had ready."

"And, sometimes, you can make a dear little work-bag out of pieces you have in the house," suggested Ruth. "I made a real pretty one last year: don't you remember, Peggy? If I a piece of newspaper I could show you just how it was done. You can use scraps of silk and ribbon you wouldn't think were good for anything."

Somebody found the necessary newspaper, and Ruth hastily constructed a pattern of the article she had tried to describe, while Elaine listened, her color rising steadily. The girls had misunderstood her, and their efforts to show her how she could help without being at any expense added to her sense of humiliation. What she had really meant to imply was that a girl situated as she was, should be exempt from any obligations to help other people. Elaine looked upon herself as an object of sympathy. It was bad enough to face the prospect that one's own stocking would be empty at Christmas time--relatively empty, at least--but to be asked to help fill other stockings was adding insult to injury.

Yet this, hard as it was, did not cut as deeply as the suggestions the girls were now making, with the best intentions in the world. Poverty, from Elaine's standpoint, was equally a misfortune and a disgrace. She had confessed defiantly to being poor, without dreaming that her callers would take her at her word, and proceed on the assumption that in her case economy was really a matter of importance. When Priscilla started in with a description of a hat-pin holder, the materials of which, she assured Elaine, impressively, wouldn't cost more than ten cents at the outside, Elaine felt that she had reached the limit of endurance.

"There!" she exclaimed as if the thought had just occurred to her. "I believe I have a little thing ready that I could contribute." She went to her room, a sense of triumph effacing the intolerable humiliation of the past few minutes. The sacrifice she was about to make was insignificant compared with her opportunity to silence her advisers, and to prove that in spite of the reverses with which the family had met, she could be as generous as anybody. The article for which Elaine was looking was put away carefully, wrapped in tissue paper. She looked at it with brightening eyes, and returned to her visitors almost jauntily.

"It's a little thing I made in the summer," she observed casually. "The Irish crochet is awfully popular, you know, and I think the pattern's rather pretty." With a carelessness almost too pronounced, she dropped her offering on Peggy's knee. "If that will do you any good, you're quite welcome to it."

Peggy was staring with all her eyes. "Why, Elaine! Why, girls! It's a collar. Real Irish crochet! Isn't it gorgeous!"

Such as it was, Elaine's triumph was complete. The girls broke into exclamations of admiration, exchanging bewildered glances as they did so.

"She made it herself. Isn't she a wonder? There won't be anything at the Bazar to compare with it."

"That ought to bring a splendid price. Just think of the dolls we can buy with all that money."

"It's gorgeous," repeated Peggy. She looked from the dainty article in her hand toward the giver. "Really, Elaine," she hesitated, "it's too nice. It's more than you ought to give."

An instant reappearance of Elaine's old hauteur convinced Peggy that she had blundered. "If I am going to give anything," Elaine said with dignity, "I want it to be nice."

The tactful Peggy abandoned her well-intentioned effort to prevent what she felt sure was a piece of reckless generosity. "Well, you've done it," she laughed. "It's pretty certain that we won't have anything else nearly as nice as this. And, Elaine, you'll help us the day of the Bazar, won't you? There'll be lots to do, selling the things, and serving the ice cream, and being nice to the people who come in."

Elaine having reinstated herself in her own eyes, by the character of her donation, graciously agreed to lend whatever assistance might be further required, and then everybody seemed to feel at the same moment that it was time to go. Priscilla excused herself on the ground of her lessons. "With your school principal for a father," she explained, "you can't afford to fail very often." Ruth remembered that Graham was going to bring somebody home to supper. Amy made vague references to letters that must be written. They moved toward the door with less chatter and laughter than usually characterizes the farewells of girls of their age. At the foot of the walk they parted, Amy and Peggy walking on together, while the other two turned in the opposite direction.

"Say, Peggy!" Amy cast a sidelong glance at her companion. "Do you think Elaine is awfully generous?"

Peggy's eyes opened. "Why, it was very generous to give us that collar," she exclaimed. "You know that Irish lace--"

"O, yes, I know all about it." Under Amy's careless good nature a shrewdness of observation sometimes cropped out in a rather surprising fashion. "It was generous, if she cared about the Empty Stockings, but something in the way she did it made me feel as if it was mostly intended to impress us."

"O, Amy!" Peggy was unfeignedly shocked. Amy met her reproachful gaze and surrendered with a laugh.

"You funny old Peg!" she said disrespectfully. "Well, never mind why she did it. Our finances will get quite a boost, anyway. Good night." And as she crossed the street, she added with seeming irrelevance, "I'm sorry for anybody who makes such hard work of being poor."