Katharine Ellis Barrett

The “stub” train on the Central was due to leave Winsted at 7:30. Catherine, having reluctantly left the washing of the breakfast dishes to the reckless Inga, to whom their quaint blue pattern was as naught, hurried down the hill and reached the dingy little station as the train shambled in. Algernon, full of good cheer, because his mother had taken it into her head to approve his undertaking, gallantly helped her aboard, and began at once to show a list of questions he had ready to ask the Hampton librarian.

The train stood still a little longer while a few milk cans were put on, then whistled, puffed and pulled slowly out. Hampton was only a short distance from Winsted, and Catherine and Algernon soon got off the train, and made their way to the library where they were welcomed by the kindly librarian and her young assistant, who proved to be a Dexter graduate.

The “stub” train meanwhile jogged and jolted on its way, carrying with it, fast asleep, the little 29 “limb o’ Satan” known as Elsmere Swinburne. Elsmere could sleep anywhere on the slightest provocation. Deeming it unwise to make his presence known to his brother until the train was started beyond recall, he had curled up on a seat behind a large family, and while waiting his opportunity had fallen asleep. The conductor, taking him to be one of the overflow from the family in front, paid no attention to him until after they had left. Then he tried to rouse the child.

“Wake up, kid! Here, you’ve gone past your station. Wake up, I say! Gee! We’re running a sleeper on this train to-day, all right,” as Elsmere, lifted by the collar, only sank heavily back on the seat when released.

The conductor, goaded by the jests of the passengers, yelled in the boy’s ear, to no avail. Just as he was abandoning the task in wrath, the child suddenly popped up, wide awake and interested.

“I want zwieback,” he announced.

Mrs. Swinburne, having read in a child-study book that dry food was bone-building, had brought her youngest up on long crumbly strips of zwieback, and he was seldom seen without one.

“What you givin’ us?” asked the conductor.

“I want zwieback,” answered Elsmere cheerfully, in the persistent tone he had learned to value for its efficacy.

“Where was your ma goin’?” asked the conductor.

30“I want zwieback,” replied Elsmere.

“Let me try,” suggested a soft-voiced little lady. “I talked with his mother quite a bit while she was on. Want to find your mamma, little boy, and go to Grandma’s and play with all the pigs and chickies?”

“I want zwieback.”

“You talked with the woman, did you?” said the conductor. “Did you find out what her name was?”

“Let me see. Yes. It’s Peters. She was talking about going to his folks’, two miles out of Edgewater. She’ll be worried to death about this one.”

“I should think she might be,” remarked the conductor grimly, “for fear he’d come back. Here, you young Sweebock, you get off here.”

Elsmere obligingly followed to the platform and suffered himself to be given into the custody of the station agent, to whom he presented his petition for food.

“A little weak in the upper story,” explained the conductor. “His ma had about as many as she could manage and gettin’ off at Edgewater she forgot this one. Name’s Peters, stayin’ with old Mis’ Peters, two miles from Edgewater. You wire ’em to meet the express, and then you pass him back. Tell McWhire not to let him get to sleepin’. He ain’t an easy proposition, when he’s gone to 31 Bylow, now I tell you,” and the conductor of No. 5 swung himself aboard.

Elsmere had the time of his life in the two hours before the arrival of the noon express. The station agent was a sociable soul. He had a guinea-pig in a box, so delightful to observe that Elsmere forgot his desire for zwieback and became conversational. He told the agent the history of the polly-wogs he had raised “till they was all froggies, only one was deaded.” He showed the place where he had cut his finger in the mower-lawn. He explained how fond he was of back-horse-saddle-riding, and declared his intention of some day having “frickers,” caressing the agent’s own sandy growth with great admiration. He tried to perform on the telegraph instrument and cried “Boo” with all his strength at a lady, peering in at the ticket window. Altogether, Elsmere found traveling very much to his taste. The noon express stopped for a minute, he was thrust aboard the last car, and a few minutes later, according to instructions, the newsboy put him off at Edgewater, with a cheery:

“Here y’are, Bub, and there’s Ma and Gramma.”

Elsmere had taken a fancy to the newsboy and did not at all wish to stop at Edgewater. He ran down the track after the retreating train, howling miserably.

As for “Ma and Gramma,” they had been overtaken by the dispatch just as they were starting 32 to drive out to the farm, and had come in great perplexity to the station. The wailing baby running down the track suggested nothing to them, and the agent could give them no satisfaction. He was locking up his office. There was not another train to stop till No. 5 should return toward evening. So, still bewildered, Mrs. Peters and her mother-in-law gave up their fruitless errand and drove away, taking with them a problem for a lifetime’s pondering.

Elsmere, as the train vanished around a curve, sat down on the track for a while and listened to his own howls. Tiring of that amusement presently, he strolled back to the station. Outwardly it looked much like that hospitable one where he had enjoyed life earlier in the day. This one, however, offered no entertainment beyond wandering about the platform and the unoccupied waiting-room. Across the street was a little restaurant. There were pies in the window.

Elsmere obeyed the summons.

“Pie,” he said, presenting his nose to the edge of the lunch counter.

“Don’t you monkey with anything,” snapped a girl from behind the counter.

“I’m aren’t a monkey. I’m are a boy. Want pie,” Elsmere answered sweetly.

“You can’t get pie without money,” said the girl.

Elsmere felt in his pocket and produced a quarter. 33 Whatever his failings, Elsmere had a redeeming trait of forehandedness, and had always on hand a hoard of articles which might be useful in an hour of need. The quarter bought respect at once and plenty of pie, also a sandwich, a tall glass of milk and a big “rubber doughnut.”

When he had satisfied his hunger, the traveller returned to the depot, and, lying comfortably in the shade of a baggage truck, indulged in a siesta, a sleep so light this time, however, that the rolling back of the baggage-room door shattered it.

Sitting up, Elsmere watched the baggage-man get a tin trunk and a canvas telescope ready for shipping. Presently the stub train arrived, stopped, and while the conductor and the agent were exchanging gossip, Elsmere got inconspicuously aboard, and stowed himself away in a corner, so successfully that it was not till the brakeman called “Hampton” that the conductor discovered him.

Swearing softly and scratching his head in mystification, the conductor stood in the aisle staring at the ubiquitous babe, when a double cry arose:

“Elsmere, where in thunder?”

“Hullo, Algy!”

The young assistant, who had accompanied Catherine to the station for the sake of talking over mutual friends at Dexter, looked up in surprise as the dignified youth who had impressed her greatly by his intelligence and earnestness suddenly 34 stooped and lifted a dirty, tear-and-pie-stained little boy in his arms. Catherine laughed. Elsmere could not greatly surprise her.

“Miss Adams,” she said, “you have shown your interest in the new Winsted library. Let me introduce you to its mascot.”

---

The morning after the Hampton expedition, Catherine struggled awake from dreams of book-lined trains, with Miss Adams and Elsmere as engineer and fireman, to open her eyes gratefully upon the substantial reality of her own great room in its fresh bareness. At the foot of her big carved bed, the broad window open to its utmost seemed to bring all out-of-doors within the room. A squirrel whisked his tail across the sill as he scurried in and out of the branches of the window-oak where a grosbeak and a wren chatted sociably. The sunshine through the leafy boughs lighted the bare floor and rested on the great writing table in the center of the room and on the high dark dresser. Catherine’s gaze, following the light, rested at last upon the low bookcases filling the chimney corners.

“I can spare one Child’s Garden of Verses,” she mused, “and that second Little Women. I wish they could have the Walter Crane and Kate Greenaway picture-books, but I couldn’t possibly let them go. I loved those little urchins in the children’s room,–especially that curly-headed little 35 boy reading a bound Wide-Awake–O!” She sat up in bed and tossed her thick braids back. “I wonder if I ought? Or even if I could?” Out of bed she slipped, and crossed the room to the bookcases. Opening one, she ran her finger-tips tenderly along the stout backs of a row of dark red volumes. “My very own Wide-Awakes! What a storehouse they would be for the little folk! They needn’t be allowed to circulate, so they’d not wear out badly. They could just come in and read them there. I was going to give them my little rocking-chair, anyhow. O, dear! I’m afraid I’m really going to let them have you, you dear, dear books. It would be selfish to keep you up here all the time, when I almost never open you. Nobody shall have this one, though, with Hannah’s letter in it.”

She turned the pages of one of the latest volumes and paused at a neat little paragraph:

“Dear Wide-Awake:

“I have been taking you ever since I was a child. I will be fourteen my next birthday. I like you very much. I would like to correspond with any one who is about my age. I have no brothers and sisters, and get very lonely. I have read all Miss Alcott, but I wish she had let Jo marry Laurie. I like the Wide-Awake stories. Please have a good long one about boarding-school 36in the next number. I like Dickens, but I can’t bear Scott. I know John Gilpin and Baby Bell by heart, and I am in the eighth grade. I like skating and rowing. There is a fine pond near us.

“Your loving reader,

“Violet Ethelyn Eldred.

“P. S. Nobody knows that I am writing this letter, so please print it soon to surprise them.”

Catherine kissed the page and closed the book. “Isn’t it too unbelievable that that queer little letter with that ridiculous fancy name at the end should have done so much? Violet Ethelyn Eldred! It hasn’t nearly so pleasant a sound to me now as Hannah. And the child thought no one would write to her if she signed her own name,–it was so ‘homely’! Ah me! I suppose I should be getting dressed instead of sitting about in the sunshine, mooning. I wonder if Inga will remember the muffins for breakfast.”

“Polly Osgood wants to see you, Catherine.”

Catherine, busily sorting linen in the up-stairs linen room a little later in the morning, leaned over the railing in answer to her mother’s announcement from the hall below.

“O, Polly, do come on up. I’ve a little more 37 to do and we might just as well talk while I’m at it. Have you called the Boat Club meeting?”

Polly Osgood came running up the stairs. She was a slender little girl with big blue eyes and yellow hair.

“Yes,” she answered brightly. “I’ve called it at ten. It’s almost that now. Tom can’t come, of course; he’s always so busy daytimes, but I think all the others will be there.”

“Hasn’t Bert something to keep him?”

“Not just now,” Polly laughed. “He substituted in the post-office last week, and the week before that in a hardware store, but just now he says nobody seems to need him, and he’s reading law in private.”

“He’s such a goose,” and Catherine put two mated pillow-cases together with a little pat. “Inga never knows enough to put things in pairs, and Mother wouldn’t dare begin to look them over. If she should do anything so domestic, half Winsted would break out with mumps or chickenpox. Where did you say we’d have the meeting?”

“At the boat house. We might as well use it, now we have it. But I didn’t know you broke out with mumps.”

“That’s only figurative. Polly, why have you gone back to braids and bows? You look very infantile for a real Wellesley sophomore.”

“I got tired of the bird-cages and puffs, and 38 decided I’d go back to nature. Besides, playing around with Peter and Perdita you need something stationary. They work dreadful havoc with a stylish coiffure.”

“I wonder if I’d have to put my hair down just to teach them on Sundays? Mrs. Henley is going away, you know, and I’ve been asked to take her class.”

“O, I do hope you will,” cried Polly. “You would have a civilising influence on Perdita, and she needs it. Peter keeps her in order so well she never does anything very bad, but she is potentially a little terror.”

“She always seems very mild when I see her,” commented Catherine, patting her piles into straight lines. “But you can’t always tell about people by looking at them. I, for instance, have all my life been expected to be lady-like, just because when I was little I hadn’t strength enough to be naughty. And many and many a time I have felt like doing something wild and shocking!”

“Why, Catherine Smith!” exclaimed Polly in amazement. “You always seemed to me a sort of beautiful princess up here on the hill, and, good as any of the rest of us might try to be, we never could hope to be as good as you. Have you honestly ever wanted to be bad?”

Catherine laughed, a funny little gurgling laugh. “I honestly have–not wicked you know, but–well, 39 reckless! And I never had the courage to do anything very startling till last year at college.”

She stopped and laughed again.

“Tell me,” Polly insisted. “I’ll never tell. What did you do? Was it fun? Tell me!”

Catherine’s eyes twinkled. “I made up my mind that it was my one chance, for no one there belonged to me, and my tiresome reputation for propriety hadn’t had time to get started. So one day I got up late, and was late to breakfast, and cut a class, and–” She laughed so hard that Polly wanted to shake her. “O, Polly it was such a ridiculous thing to do! I talked slang and chewed gum!”

Polly gasped. “Did you like it? What made you stop?”

“People. They were so astonished. And, besides, I hated the gum. Inez Dolliver used to chew it with such gusto that I thought it must be rather good. And the slang sounded so easy and,–O! lighthearted, you know, and friendly. When you and Hannah Eldred use it, it never seems offensive, just pleasant and gay. But everyone looked so worried and puzzled all day at me, that I decided to stop. And next day they seemed so relieved. I told Dy-the Allen later about it (she’s the dearest thing!) and she was very philosophical. She told me it wasn’t becoming to my general character, just as pink wasn’t becoming to my hair. I told 40 her I had always loved pink, and wanted to wear it, and she suggested that I wear it at night. It wouldn’t show in the dark and it was an innocent desire; and perhaps if I did that, I’d not want to use slang or chew gum. I didn’t, after I had tried once, anyhow! Polly Osgood, here we are sitting around and I’m telling you foolish stories about myself, when we ought to be discussing library matters.”

“The other was more interesting,” sighed Polly. “I’m going to give up slang myself soon. I never did chew gum! But I’ve been terribly bored lately by some rather flip young creatures I’ve had to see more or less, and I decided to cut it out and talk plain English. What are you smiling at?”

Then, as her own earnest sentences came back to her, she reddened a little, and joined Catherine in smiling. “Isn’t that a fright? I mean, isn’t that startling? I didn’t know I used it so much. Do you suppose I can cure myself and still have time and attention to give to starting the library? It’s time we were down there now.”

“All right. I’m ready, as soon as I get my hat. Do you ever wear them at college?”

“Never. Now while we go along, tell me just what your idea is. What did the Hampton ladies say?”

Catherine thrust her hatpins in, as she hurried down the steps.

41“They advised having some club take it up, for a time at least, and they thought it would be nice to have it be the Boat Club instead of a literary one, because the literary ones often have a spirit of competition, and if one of them started the library the others might not feel inclined to use it.”

“I see, and the Boat Club, besides being unsectarian and interdenominational and non-partisan, has a lot of waste enthusiasm and energy that might just as well be put to work. Father says he is sure that when the thing is really running, the council will vote a tax and take it off our hands. You are sure Algernon can run it? I thought it took years of special training.”

“It does,” Catherine answered gravely, “but we could not afford a trained librarian, and Algernon is intelligent and will study. Miss Adams gave him hints as to books to get, and she will help him. He can go over there when he gets into difficulties. She seemed to like him. They talked about all sorts of technical things,–Algernon had a lot of information stowed away in his head, of course,–and she didn’t seem bored at all.”

“I’ve often thought I shouldn’t be, if I knew anything about the subjects he talks about,” confessed Polly. “There are Bertha and Agnes.” She trilled to the two girls ahead, who turned and waited.

On the flat roof of the boat house half a dozen 42 members of the club were assembled. Polly hastened to take her seat and call the meeting to order.

“Max Penfield will act as secretary, and we shall expect the minutes done in the most approved University style. Archie Bradly, will you please state the object of the meeting?”

“Fo’ de lan’s sake, no!” ejaculated Archie, sitting up and shutting his knife. “That’s the very thing I came to find out!”

“Very well,” said Polly, twinkling. “Then, of course, you will pay close attention. It will do you more good than carving Andover on the benches. There’s not much space left on them, now, and it’s still early in the season. Catherine, will you tell us the object of the meeting? Ouch!” for Archie had reached lazily behind her and given one of her yellow braids a gentle yank.

“You all know, already,” began Catherine, “except perhaps Archie! We’ve talked it over with the older people, and they think it’s perfectly practical, only some one or some organization has to take it in charge.”

“What’s ‘it’?” asked Archie innocently.

“Why, the library. The Boat Club is going to see that Winsted has a public library.”

“Turn into Carnegies?” inquired Max, doing a sketch of Geraldine Winthrop on the margin of the secretary’s book.

“Not exactly. We haven’t got our own dock 43 built yet, and I don’t think we are in a position to endow libraries. But I mean we can work and talk–”

“Talking’s work,” complained Archie. “That’s redundancy.”

“It is, when you keep interrupting,” cried Bertha Davis. “Go on, Catherine. Don’t mind him. Just how can we work?”

“Well, the room will have to be cleaned thoroughly, and we girls can do most of that if the boys will help a little. And there will have to be some plain shelves put up for the books.”

“Me for the carpenter job!” cried a long-legged youth who had lain thus far in the shade of his own hat, in entire silence and apparent unconsciousness. “It’s just what I want to cure my brain fever.”

“Overstudy? Or overwork reading postals last week?” asked Agnes, smiling into Bert’s half-shut eyes.

“It’s more likely fatty degeneration of the brain, if it’s Bert Wyman that has it,” said an emphatic voice, and a spruce energetic maiden joined the group. “I just got in on the 10:10, and Mother said you were all over here. What’s before the house?”

“Nothing. We’re all on the house,” explained Archie dryly, but Polly answered the question with careful courtesy. Dorcas listened.

44“Very well,” she said, when Polly finished. “If it is in order, I move you, Madam President, that we proceed to clean the library at once.”

“O, Dorcas, not to-day!” groaned two or three, while Max remarked in an aside to no one that if it was in order it shouldn’t need cleaning.

“Why not to-day?” asked Dorcas briskly. “How you-all can loaf around the way you do is more than I can comprehend. Dot, your hair is coming down.”

Dot, who was called Dot, because she was a dot, though her parents had intended her to go through life as Geraldine, lifted her eyebrows slightly, and removing her four hairpins, shook down her hair and did it up again. The process took four seconds.

“I’d rather have Dot’s curls than Dorcas’ brains,” growled Bert to Agnes, who reproached him with a look.

While Dorcas’ motion was waiting for a second, there came down the road two pretty girls, in fluffy gowns, their white sunshades tilted charmingly. Max slammed the secretary’s book shut.

“Hurry up and let’s adjourn,” he said, and Archie, suddenly energetic, seconded the motion and carried it, so far as it concerned himself, by going out to meet the newcomers and invite them to go canoeing at once. Max followed suit, and the meeting broke up unceremoniously, but with a sense of valuable achievement.

45Dorcas, uttering harsh judgments upon the parliamentary methods of Polly Osgood, and, by inference, of all Wellesley College, attached herself to Bertha and Agnes for the homeward walk.

“See here, Dorcas Morehouse,” said Bertha so suddenly that her sister and Dorcas jumped. “If you think that just because you have been to Chicago University for a quarter, you are going to run us all, this summer, you are mightily mistaken. Agnes and Dot and I never went away to school, and neither did Bess nor Winifred, but we aren’t stupid, and we won’t have you patronizing us. Catherine Smith is intellectual enough for any one, and she never snubs or patronizes; and as for Polly Osgood, you wouldn’t dare hint a criticism of Wellesley if she were within hearing, and you know it. So there! If this library scheme is good enough for them, it is for the rest of us, and if you don’t like it, you can just stay out of it!”

Whereupon, Bertha, having delivered herself, even more to her own astonishment than to any one else’s, turned at the first corner and walked rapidly away, leaving her embarrassed sister to placate the wrathful Dorcas in any way her gentle heart suggested.