The Story Book Girls

  CHAPTER III

  The Flower Show Ticket

  "I call it mean of Mabel."

  Jean sat in a crinkled heap on her bedroom floor, and pulledbad-temperedly with a wire comb at straight unruly hair. It had alwaysannoyed Mabel that Jean should use a wire comb, when it set her "teethon edge even to look at it."

  Mabel however was out of the way, well out of it, they decided, and Elmaand Betty had invaded the room belonging to the elder two in order tocondole with Jean.

  "Mabel could easily have got another ticket--and said she didn't wantit! Didn't want it, when we're dying to go! And then off she goes,looking very prim and grown-up, with Cousin Harry."

  Jean threw her head back, and began to gather long heavy ends in orderfor braiding.

  "Just wait till I grow up! I shall soon take it out of Mabel," shesaid.

  "Oh, girls, girls!"

  Mrs. Leighton's voice at the door was very accusing.

  "Well, mummy, it was mean. We've always gone together before, and nowMabel won't go with one of us."

  "Not if you behave in this manner," said Mrs. Leighton. "I do not likeany of my girls to be spiteful, you know."

  "Spiteful!" exclaimed Jean. She ran rapid fingers in and out thelengthening braid of hair, till long ends were brought in front. Sheput these energetically in her mouth, while she hunted for the ribbonlying by her.

  "Oh, Jean," said Mrs. Leighton, "I've asked you so often not to dothat."

  "Sorry, mummy," said Jean, disengaging the ends abruptly.

  Mrs. Leighton sat down rather heavily on a chair.

  "You didn't say you were sorry for being spiteful," she remarkedgravely.

  "Well, mummy, are we spiteful, that's the question?"

  Elma sat on a bed, looking specially tragic.

  "It's _awful_ to be left out of things now by Mabel," she said.

  Betty looked as though she meant to cry.

  "Well, I never," said Mrs. Leighton. "You must take your turn. Youdon't come wherever your father and I go, or Cuthbert. You know youdon't."

  "I think that Cuthbert might occasionally take us, however," said Jean.

  "We all went to the flower show last year," wailed Elma.

  "Yes, with the parasols papa brought us from London," said Betty. "AndMabel said it was like carrying four bassinettes in a row, and snappedhers down and wouldn't put it up till she got separated from us."

  "She was growing up even then," said Jean in a melancholy manner.

  "Come, come, girls," interrupted Mrs. Leighton. "You may be just thesame when you grow up. I won't allow you to be down on poor Mabel.Especially when she isn't here to speak for herself."

  "When we grow up there will always be one less to tyrannize over," saidJean. "Honestly, mother, I never would have thought that Mabel could beso priggish. Do you know why she wouldn't have us? I'm too big andgawky, and Elma is always saying silly things, and Betty is just a baby.There you are."

  "Well, it isn't very nice of Mabel, but you mustn't believe she meansthat," said Mrs. Leighton. "And after all, Mabel must have her littleday. She was very good, let me tell you, very sweet and nice when youwere babies and she just a little thing. She nursed you, Elma andBetty, often and often, and put you to sleep when your own nursecouldn't, and she has looked after you all more or less ever since. Youmight let her grow up without being worried."

  "It's hateful to be called a nuisance," said Jean, somewhat mollified.

  "Why do you waste time over it, I wonder," said Mrs. Leighton. "Insteadof moping Jean might be golfing, and Elma and Betty having tea at MissAnnie's; with nobody at all being nice to your poor old mother."

  It dawned on them how selfish they might all be.

  "Oh, mummy," cried three reproachful voices.

  "Well, Elma likes Miss Grace much better than she does me, and Bettylikes her rabbits, and Jean despises me because I don't play golf. Ilead a very lonely life," said Mrs. Leighton.

  "Oh, mummy!"

  "My idea, when I came into your room," said Mrs. Leighton, "was topropose that we might walk into town and get Jean's new hat, and taketea at Crowther's, and drive home if my poor old leg won't hold out forwalking both ways. But we've wasted so much time in talking aboutMabel----"

  "Oh, mummy--Your bonnet, your veil, and your gloves, and do be quick,mummy," cried Elma. "We're very sorry about Mabel."

  They flew in self-reproachful manner to getting her off to her room andmaking their own things fly.

  "After all, we are a beastly set of prigs," called out Jean to Elma."And I think I ought to have a biscuit-coloured straw, don't you?"

  It was one of a series of encounters with which the new tactics of Mabelinvaded the family. Mrs. Leighton's gentle rule was sorely tried forquite a long time in this way. Although she reasoned with the youngergirls on the side of Mabel, she took Mabel severely to task for herbehaviour over the flower show.

  "It wasn't nice of you," she told her, "to cut off any little invitationfor your sisters. You must not begin by being selfish, you know. Thereare few enough things happening here not to spread the opportunities.Jean wouldn't have troubled you. She may be at the gawky stage, but shemakes plenty of friends."

  Mrs. Leighton could be very impartial in her judgments.

  But Mabel was hurt. She preserved a superior air, which becameextremely annoying to the girls.

  The greatest crime that she committed was when Jean, amiably engagingher in conversation in the old way, asked, "And how was Adelaide Mauddressed?"

  Mabel turned in a very studied manner and stared past Jean and everyone.

  "I don't think I observed Adelaide Maud," she said.

  This was more than human beings could stand.

  "I think it's most ir--ir----"

  "Oh, find the word first and talk afterwards," said Mabel grandly. "Youkids get on one's nerves."

  "Kids--nerves," cried Jean faintly. "I think Mabel is taking brainfever."

  Elma left the room abruptly, much on the verge of tears, and she triedto find solace in her dictionary. The word was "irrelevant"--yet did notseem to fit the occasion at all. What would Miss Annie or Miss Gracedo, if a sister had turned old and strange in a few days like that?What would mother have done? Mother's sisters always complimented eachother when they met. They never quarrelled. Of course they never couldhave quarrelled. "Forgive and forget," Aunt Katharine once had said hadalways been their motto. Forgiving seemed very easy--but forgetting withAdelaide Maud in the question--what an impossibility! Miss Annie had anaxiom that when you felt worried about one matter the correct thing todo was to think about another. Elma thought and thought, but everythingworked round to the traitorous remark of Mabel's about Adelaide Maud.It seemed as though her head could hold nothing else but that one ideaabout Adelaide Maud, until suddenly it dawned on her that it was reallyrather fine and grand of Mabel that she should talk in this negligentmanner of any one so magnificent. This reflection gave her the greatestpossible comfort. To be condescending, even in a mere frame of mind, tothe Story Book Girls seemed like the swineherd becoming a prince. Elmabegan to think how jolly it would be to hear Mabel saying, "You know, mydear Helen, I don't think you ought to wear heliotrope, it hardly suitsyou." There was something very delicious in having Mabel starchy andproud after all. Elma heard her coming upstairs to her bedroom to dressfor dinner just then. The fall of the footsteps seemed to suggest thatsome of the starchiness had departed from Mabel. Much of the quality ofsympathy which had produced such a person as Miss Grace, was to be foundin Elma. Jean and Betty had hardened their two little hearts to theconsistency of flint over the behaviour of Mabel, but the mere fact thatElma thought her footsteps seemed to flag and become tired roused her tochivalrous eagerness towards making it up. She went into Mabel's roomand sat on the window seat. It was a long, low, pleasant couch let intoa wide window looking on the lawn and gardens at the front of the house.The sun poured in on Elma
, who forgot the habits of upright behaviourwhich she exhibited at Miss Annie's, and sprawled there with her fingerson the cord of the blind.

  Mabel drew her hatpins out of fair braids in an admiring yetdisconsolate manner. She took a hand glass and had first a side view,then a back view of the new effect, patted little stray locks intoplace, and ruffled out others.

  "What's up, Mabs? You don't look en--thusiastic," asked Elma.

  "It's papa. After my lovely day too. He wants me to play that Mozartthing with Betty to-night. Mozart and Betty! Isn't it stale? I hateMozart, and I hate drumming away at silly things with Betty." A verydiscontented sigh accompanied these remarks.

  "I really don't see why I should always be tacked on to Betty or to Jeanor you. I haven't a minute to myself."

  "Oh, Mabs, you've had a lovely day!"

  The words broke out in an accusing manner. Elma had certainly intendedto comfort Mabel, yet immediately began by expostulating with her.

  Mabel turned round, with her seventeenth birthday present, a finesilver-backed brush, in her hand.

  "_Have_ I had a lovely day, have I?" she asked. "I've had simply nothingof the kind. Jean went on so about not going that Cousin Harry seemedto think I had injured her. He made me feel like a criminal allafternoon. These navy men like lots of girls round them. One or twomore don't make the difference to them that it makes to us. At leastit's a different kind of difference. A nice one. I think it wasabominable of him. My first chance--and to spoil it, all because ofJean! It wasn't fair of her."

  Elma began to feel her reason rocking with the sudden justice of thisnew argument.

  "A minute ago, I thought it wasn't fair of you," she said reflectively."I can see it will be awfully hard to get us all peacefully grown up.Betty will have the best of it. I shall simply give in to her rightalong the line. I can see that. I really couldn't stand the worry ofit."

  "I suppose you wouldn't have gone to the flower show without Jean?"asked Mabel in rather a scornful way.

  "Good gracious, no," said Elma simply. "I should have presented herwith the one and only ticket, just for the sake of peace."

  "That's a rotten, weak way to behave," said Mabel, with a touch ofCuthbert's best manner.

  "I know. I don't mean that you should have given her the ticket. Youweren't made to be bullied. I was. I feel it in my bones every timeany one is horrid to me."

  "I'm getting tired of giving up to others," said Mabel, still on herdetermined tack. "You can't think what it has been during these years.I mustn't do this and that because of the children. It's always beenlike that. And now when I'm longing to go to dances and balls, I've gotto go right off after dinner and play Mozart with Betty. It's all verywell for papa, he hasn't had the work I've had. If I play now, I wantto play something better than a tum-tum accompaniment."

  "Mozart isn't tum-tum," said Elma, "and papa has been listening to usall these years. It must have been very trying."

  "Well, all I can say is that, at his time of life, he ought to be savedfrom hearing Betty scrape on her fiddle every night as she doesnowadays. Instead, you would think he hadn't had one musical daughter,he's so keen on the latest."

  "Miss Annie says it never does to be selfish," said Elma gravely. "Ithink that's being selfish, the way you talk."

  Mabel stopped at the unclasping of her waist-belt.

  "Miss Annie! Well, I like that! Don't you know there isn't so selfisha person in the world as Miss Annie. I've heard people say it."

  She nodded with two pins in her mouth, then released them as she wenton.

  "Miss Annie made up her mind to lie on a nice bed and have Miss Gracewait on her. And she's done it. There's nothing succeeds like success."Mabel nodded her head with the wisdom of centuries.

  "Oh, Mabs, how can you?" Elma was dreadfully shocked. A vision of poormartyred Miss Annie, with "something internal," being supposed to likewhat was invariably referred to in that household as "the bed of pain,"to have conferred on herself this dreadful thing from choice andwilfulness, this vision was an appalling one.

  "How can you say such things of Miss Annie? Who would ever go to bedfor all these years for the pleasure of the thing?"

  "I would," said Mabel. "Yes, at the present moment, I would. I shouldlike to have something very pathetic happen to me, so that I should beobliged to lie in bed like Miss Annie, and have somebody nice andsympathetic come in and stroke my hand! Cousin Harry, for instance. Hecan look so kind and be so comforting when he likes. But, oh! Elma, hewas a beast to-day."

  The truth was out at last. Mabel sat suddenly on the couch beside Elma,and burst into tears.

  "I think I hate being grown up," she said, "if people treat you in thatstiff severe way. Nobody ever did it before--ever."

  Elma stroked and stroked her hand. "The Leighton lump," as theyinterpreted the slightly hysterical quality which made each girl crywhen the other began, rose in riotous disobedience in her throat, andstrangled any further effort at consolation.

  "Why don't you say something," wailed Mabel.

  "I'm trying not to cry too," at last said Elma.

  Then they both laughed.

  "I should go right to Cousin Harry and tell him all about it," Elmamanaged to counsel at last. "I thought you were a beast--but it'sawfully hard on you. It's awfully hard on all of us--having sisters."

  "Yes, isn't it," groaned Mabel.

  "Harry is very understanding. Almost as understanding as papa is."

  "Papa! _Do_ you think papa understands?"

  "Papa understands everything," said Elma. Then a very loyalrecollection of the afternoon they had spent in the cheery presence ofMrs. Leighton beset her. "Also mamma, I think she's a duck," said Elma.