THE WILD ROSE

As the panting little figure approached and hesitated in her doorway, Linda turned from some white stuff she had been piling on the bed and met the round, expectant eyes, "Come here, Blanche Aurora," she said. "I want to show you something."

With long steps the beneficiary was beside her.

"Here are some things I found for you in Portland yesterday."

Blanche Aurora dragged her gaze from the pink and blue dresses that were lying there, finished, and beheld white underclothing, and large enveloping aprons—a pink-and-white checked one, a blue-and-white checked one, and one all white in a satiny-looking plaid. There was also a pile of stockings and some black low shoes and white sneakers. A bride, inspecting a complete trousseau just arrived from Paris, might experience in faint degree the elation that choked Blanche Aurora now.

"For me?" she uttered mechanically.

"For you, you good little thing," said Linda. "Now take these, and go into the bathroom and put them on."

Like one in a dream, Blanche Aurora accepted the underclothing, stockings, and sneakers put into her arms, and marched toward the bathroom, her head held high and the fishhook braids quivering down her gingham back. She went in and closed the door.

Linda smiled, and seating herself in her wicker rocker clasped her hands behind her head.

Mrs. Porter came to the door.

"What did she say?" she asked, smiling.

"Oh, nothing. She's far beyond speech. What did you do with Aunt Belinda?"

"Mrs. Lindsay arrived and Miss Barry is showing her her rockery and the ferns, so I thought she was safe and I'd come up for the fun."

"You certainly deserve to." Linda sighed unconsciously. "Wouldn't it be wonderful if everybody could be made happy so easily! I believe that is the only satisfaction there is in the world, after all—making others happy, whether you are so yourself or not."

Mrs. Porter came in and took another of the wicker chairs.

"I don't believe you can avoid the latter if you do the former," she remarked.

Linda regarded the speaker, a line appearing in her smooth brow. She often suspected Mrs. Porter to be thinking of Bertram. She had no right to ask impossibilities. The superhuman should not be required of the merely human.

"It is easier said than done, though, as a usual thing," said the girl aloud. "There is one man in Chicago, for instance, to whom I owe much kindness, whom I couldn't make happy except by marrying him."

"Not Bertram," returned Mrs. Porter quickly.

"Of course not Bertram," said Linda coolly.

"It may be some relief to you to know that Bertram no longer wishes that," said Mrs. Porter, after a moment of silence.

Linda's lip curled as she kept her lazy attitude, her hands clasped behind her dark head.

"Of course not," she repeated. "Bertram may make business mistakes occasionally, but he will not commit that of marrying a poor girl."

"Linda!" ejaculated Mrs. Porter. Color rushed over her face and she waited a moment to gain control. "How can you insult him in his troubles!" she finished.

"Please forgive me," returned the girl in the same tone. "It is the hardest thing in the world for me to remember your relationship."

"Your thinking it is quite as bad as saying it."

"Be fair to me, dear Mrs. Porter. You can't blame me for not having illusions, after my sledgehammer blows."

"You can feel compassion instead of hatred, if any one has wronged you."

"That isn't human nature."

"Of course not. We have to learn that we can't have any respect for human nature. Spiritual nature is the only thing we must nurture. We don't have to take care of punishing those who have wronged us. 'Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord.' In other words, the working of spiritual law brings inevitable punishment to all who violate it. We may well exercise compassion instead of hatred to wrongdoers. If Bertram has, humanly speaking, deserved all the contempt you send him, you can well afford to feel more kindly toward him than before. Nothing but his own repentance and amends can end his punishment; and rest assured you do not need to add to it."

"Mrs. Porter,"—the girl dropped her nonchalant attitude,—"I meant it when I asked you to forgive me. If I lost your friendship I should lose the greatest treasure I have left."

"You won't lose it, poor child," was the response, as the deep color faded from Mrs. Porter's face. "You strain it when you speak so of Bertram, but I have to remember exactly the truths I have been telling you."

"That I shall be punished?"

"Assuredly, dear child—just as far as you are wrong."

Linda leaned forward suddenly and laid an affectionate hand on the other's knee.

"But I'm right, dear," she said, her eyes bright.

Mrs. Porter patted the hand in silence and the bathroom door slowly opened.

Blanche Aurora, looking very young indeed, clad in white, with white arms and neck, and tanned face and hands, stood with the old plaid gingham over her arm. Her gaze fled to the bed, then returned to the rusty plaid. So might a butterfly regard the chrysalis from which it had just emerged.

"Do I put this on again?" she asked.

"No," returned Linda. "Fold it and put it on that chair over there."

Light scintillated in Blanche Aurora's eyes as she obeyed; a light which boded ill for the faded gingham.

Linda rose and placed a chair in front of her dressing-table.

"Come here and sit down," she said.

Blanche Aurora hesitated but for an instant before complying.

"What be you goin' to do?" she asked as Linda lifted the tortured braids and inspected the white string. "Goin' to cut my hair off?"

"Do you want me to?"

"I don't care. It's only a bother, anyway. I have to braid it every few days."

"Every few days? Oh, Blanche Aurora, you ought to brush it every night."

"I should worry," ejaculated the other. "Red hair don't deserve anything like that. If I didn't have red hair I wouldn't have so many freckles and I'd look nicer in the pink dress. I pinch it good when I braid it," added Blanche Aurora savagely.

"I should think you did," returned Linda, whose deft fingers were meanwhile unbraiding the hair and removing the disciplinary string. "It is kinky enough to stuff a little mattress. You have a nice lot of it. Mrs. Porter, will you hand me that box at the foot of the bed? I'm glad I remembered to get you these." And Linda opened the box, displaying a white brush and comb which she began using on the bright hair while its owner colored with excitement through all her tan at the possession of such grandeur.

She sat silent, watching in the glass the amazing vision of Linda combing and brushing the freed locks which seemed making the most of their escape to fly in all directions and encircle the excited face with a bright aureole. Linda turned and smiled at Mrs. Porter, who nodded appreciation. Many a fine lady would gladly pay a small fortune for the luxuriant shining waves that rippled now under Linda's brush.

"I suppose your hair is straight," she said.

"As a poker," agreed its owner promptly. "I douse it good when I have to braid it over and you'd better too, Miss Linda. You can't never braid it the way it is now; and it likes to git the best of you."

The speaker eyed her halo vindictively. Her hair was an ancient enemy and only her mother's commands had protected its existence.

"When did you wash it?"

"Last week. I don't never wash it winters, but summers Miss Barry makes me."

"You don't need to wash it often in this clean place; but brush it a lot with your white brush. Will you, Blanche Aurora?"

This was a more awful demand than Linda realized. Overwhelmed as she was with benefits her beneficiary demurred.

"I can't only once in a few days."

"But you're going to braid it every day now."

"Oh, Miss Linda," was the aghast response. "I ain't got time. I couldn't! You don't know my hair. It acts as ugly as sin; jest as if it knew it was botherin' the life out of me. I have to git the children off to school—"

"Not now."

"Well, not now; but Miss Barry wants me the middle o' May, and I have to git over early—"

"Yes, but it's July now."

Blanche Aurora ceased protesting and winced.

"Oh, did I pull? I'll be careful."

"Pull it good if you want to. Good enough for it."

"You must like your pretty hair," said Linda.

"Pretty!" uttered Blanche Aurora.

Of all the surprising things that had happened to her, that adjective was perhaps the most surprising.

"Certainly it is, and it deserves good treatment."

Blanche Aurora looked in the mirror at her friend's face. Could Linda, every tiny escaping hair of whose wavy locks curled in a curve of beauty,—could she call this red stubborn mane pretty? Then there was no more to be said.

Blanche Aurora leaned back and studied the narrow trimming on her new clothes and rubbed her hard hands surreptitiously against the soft fabric of her white petticoat. Linda divided the modified waves of hair into two parts.

"Now your hair will soon straighten out," she said. "Let it stay straight and smooth and well-brushed."

"I'd like curly hair like yours," returned Blanche Aurora; "but I guess I'd pretty near die tryin' to comb it."

Linda smiled. "You remind me of the tramp who said he didn't see how folks stood it to comb their hair every day. He did his only once a year, and then it most killed him. Now, you mustn't strangle your hair with that string any more," she added.

"Strangle it! I think that's real funny," said Blanche Aurora judicially. She was radiant. There was only one small cloud on her horizon and that was the prospect of a daily wrestle with that hair. That hair! Why, angels couldn't go through it and keep their religion.

"Now, see what I'm doing?" said Linda. "You'll be glad to do this when you see how nice it looks."

With round and solemn gaze Blanche Aurora watched the braiding of first one half and then the other of her captured locks.

"Be sure to begin as near the middle of your neck as you can."

Linda swiftly doubled the two ends of the braids and fastened them.

She looked at Mrs. Porter again as the fluffy braids hung down the slender back, and again Mrs. Porter nodded.

"Miss Barry wants 'em tight," declared the child.

"Miss Barry will be satisfied with this," rejoined Linda. Then she proceeded to cross the braids and wind them around the small head, tucking the ends out of sight with hair pins. This loosened the hair at the temples and the round eyes took in the fact that the arrangement was becoming even to freckles; but the breath-taking moment was to come.

Linda opened a box on her dresser and revealed a fresh pink and a blue ribbon. She took out the pink one and soon a generous bow surmounted those braids, and Blanche Aurora gasped with pleasure. Her white, low-necked, short-sleeved reflection with the new coiffure held her happy gaze, and when Mrs. Porter brought the pink dress and slipped it on and buttoned it up, the red beneath the freckles was very deep, and the modern Cinderella was speechless.

At last she turned to Linda and threw her slender arms around her.

"I can't say nothin'," she gulped.

Linda pushed her gently back and took hold of the hard hands and her eyes were soft with an inner flame as they looked down into the glistening ones.

"I can say something, Blanche Aurora," she answered kindly. "I can say that you look like a wild rose. Do you understand?"

She put her arm around the happy girl and led her to the small table where stood her father's picture, and blooming before it, the child's offering. "Like a wild rose, Blanche Aurora," she repeated slowly.

The pink-crowned head lifted to her. "Oh, Miss Linda," she exclaimed breathlessly.

"Now, then," said the fairy godmother in a different tone, "you have a chest of drawers down in your back room; and after a while I want you to put white paper in them and come up and get these things," waving a hand toward the bed. "But first you go down and see Miss Barry."

"I'm 'most afraid," declared Blanche Aurora, wringing her hands together. "She thinks a pink dress and red hair is awful."

"She won't," returned Linda. "Run along. I think she's outdoors. Yes, I see her there, stooping over the rockery. Mrs. Lindsay has gone and she's alone."

Blanche Aurora left the room. She even forgot the chrysalis and her determination to kick it into the ocean. Seraphs, wafted on rosy clouds, forget such earthly longings.

Mrs. Porter and Linda stood at the window where they could see all that occurred, and despite Linda's assured words she was not sure that she wished to hear what would be said. Her college chums would have recognized Linda Barry again in the mischievous sparkle of her eyes.

Miss Barry, rising from her labors among the ferns, beheld a bareheaded little girl coming slowly toward her. The stranger was clothed in a pink dress with spotless white stockings and sneakers, and as she advanced the sun turned to gold the fluffy hair under a billowy pink bow.

Miss Barry pulled her spectacles down from the top of her head, and even then for a second she thought some summer boarder was straying too far from home. In another moment full recognition burst upon her.

"For the land's sake!" she exclaimed; and the two stared at one another for a silent space. It would have taken a hard heart to resist the beatified, yet shy, expression on the face of Blanche Aurora, and Miss Barry's was not hard.

"Pink's happiness. Pink's happiness!" Miss Belinda saw the statement exemplified.

"Come here, you little monkey," she said.

It wasn't so pleasant to be called a monkey as a wild rose, but Miss Barry's smile was different from any her "help" had ever yet received from her. Perhaps she liked monkeys.

Blanche Aurora came nearer, aware every moment of the fine materials touching her skin.

"Well, well, so my niece hasn't got by the doll-dressing stage," said her mistress.

The lenient tone restored confidence and unloosed an eager tongue.

"Oh, Miss Barry, I ain't a doll. I'll work just as hard. I'll work harder. I've got aprons to cover me all up and I won't break a dish nor slam the silver. The aprons is the most beautiful you ever see and these stockings they feel just like silk."

The reference to the stockings flowed forth because Miss Barry was stooping and running her hand down the slim leg.

The watchers above were edified to see her lift up the pink skirt and examine the underwear.

"You're good clear to the bone," declared Miss Belinda at last, approvingly. "Pretty sensible things, considering that Linda bought them."

The speaker rose again to her full stature and looked curiously at her maid's head.

"What under the canopy—" she began slowly. "Have you got a wig on?"

The broad wavy braids, glinting in the sun as Blanche Aurora turned her head, seemed to bear no relation to the strained tightness usual over her temples.

"No'm, it's my same horrid red hair, but I don't look at it, I look at the pink bow," was the eager response. "The kids at school was always teasin' me,"—a gulp of hurting memory interrupted the speech,—"they said I was the homeliest girl on the Cape, and it's nice for homely girls to have somethin' pretty on their heads so folks can look at that instead of at them."

"H'm," returned Miss Barry, touched by the ingenuous burst. She had never suspected her willful help of feelings. "Well, you certainly look very nice, and I'm glad that you're happy."

"Oh, Miss Barry, may I put some of the white shelf paper in the burer drawers in my room? Miss Linda told me to, and I'm to go back and get the rest o' the clo'es and and fix 'em nice in the burer."

"You're going to keep them here, are you?"

"Don't you think I'd better?" Blanche Aurora wrung her hands together eagerly.

Miss Barry took a mental survey of the child's crowded home and the small marauders who would be likely to molest her treasures. She nodded.

"Yes, that's best," she agreed sententiously, and instantly there was a pink flash, and a twinkling of white pipe-stem legs across the grass, and Blanche Aurora was not.