Winnie Childs by C. N. Williamson

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WINNIE CHILDS

THE SHOP GIRL

BY

C.N. & A.M. WILLIAMSON

GROSSET & DUNLAP

PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

Made in the United States of America

1914, 1916, by C.N. & A.M. WILLIAMSON

CONTENTS

Chapter

I. THE DRYAD DOOR

II. BALM OF GILEAD

III. AN ILL WIND

IV. THE KINDNESS OF MISS ROLLS

V. SCENES FOR A "MOVIE"

VI. THE HANDS WITH THE RINGS

VII. THE TWO PETERS

VIII. No. 2884

IX. THE TEST OF CHARACTER

X. PETER ROLLS'S LITTLE WAYS

XI. DEVIL TAKE THE HINDMOST

XII. BLUE PETER

XIII. ONE MAN AND ANOTHER

XIV. FROM SCYLLA TO CHARYBDIS

XV. THE LADY IN THE MOON

XVI. THE SEED ENA PLANTED

XVII. TOYLAND

XVIII. THE BIG BLUFF

XIX. "YES" TO ANYTHING

XX. THE CLOSED HOUSE

XXI. THE TELEPHONE

XXII. THE FRAGRANCE OF FRESIAS

XXIII. MOTHER

XXIV. THINGS EXPLODING

XXV. A PIECE OF HER MIND

XXVI. WHEN THE SECRET CAME OUT

XXVII. THE BATTLE

THE SHOP GIRL

THE SHOP GIRL

CHAPTER I

THE DRYAD DOOR

It was a horrible day at sea, horrible even on board the new and
splendid _Monarchic_. All the prettiest people had disappeared from
the huge dining-saloon. They had turned green, and then faded away,
one by one or in hurried groups; and now the very thought of music at
meals made them sick, in ragtime.

Peter Rolls was never sick in any time or in any weather, which was
his one disagreeable, superior-to-others trick. Most of his qualities
were likable, and he was likable, though a queer fellow in some ways,
said his best friends--the ones who called him "Petro." When the ship
played that she was a hobby-horse or a crab (if that is the creature
which shares with elderly Germans a specialty for walking from side to
side), also a kangaroo, and occasionally a boomerang, Peter Rolls did
not mind.

He was sorry for the men and girls he knew, including his sister, who
lay in deck chairs pretending to be rugs, or who went to bed and
wished themselves in their peaceful graves. But for himself, the wild
turmoil of the waves filled him with sympathetic restlessness. It had
never occurred to Peter that he was imaginative, yet he seemed to
know what the white-faced storm was saying, and to want to shout an
answer.

The second morning out (the morning after the _Monarchic_ had to pass
Queenstown without taking on the mails or putting off enraged
passengers) Peter thought he would go to the gymnasium and work up an
appetite for luncheon. He had looked in the first day, and had seen a
thing which could give you all the sensations and benefits of a camel
ride across the desert. He had ridden camels in real deserts and liked
them. Now he did not see why waves should not answer just as well as
dunes, and was looking forward to the experiment; but he must have
been absent-minded, for when he opened what ought to have been the
gymnasium door, it was not the gymnasium door. It was--good
heavens!--_what_ was it?

Peter Rolls, the unimaginative young man, thought that he must be in
his berth and dreaming he was here. For this room that he was looking
into could not possibly be a room on a ship, not even on the
_Monarchic_, that had all the latest, day-after-to-morrow improvements
and luxuries. The very bread was to-morrow's bread; but these
marvellous creatures could not be supplied by the management as
improvements or luxuries of any kind. Peter seemed to have opened a
door into a crystal-walled world peopled entirely by dryads.

He thought of dryads, because in pictures, beings called by that name
were taller, slimmer, more graceful, more beautiful, and had longer
legs than young females of mortal breed. There were five of them (at
least he believed there were five), and though it was eleven o'clock
in the morning, they were dressed as if for the prince's ball in the
story of "Cinderella." Unless on the stage, Peter had never seen such
dresses or such girls.

He heard himself gasp; and afterward, when he and a wave together had
banged the door shut, he hoped that he had said: "I beg your pardon."
He was so confused, however, that he was not at all sure he had not
blurted out "Good Lord!"

For a moment he stood as still as the sea would let him in front of
the door, burning to open it again and see if the girls were really
there. But, of course, he could not do that. He would have been almost
inclined to believe they were wax figures if they had not moved, but
they had moved.

They had been--sprawling is not a word to use in connection with
dryads--yet certainly reclining, in easy chairs and on sofas, and had
started up as the door opened to stare at him. One had laughed. Peter
had shut the door on her laugh. He had brought away a vague impression
that chairs, sofas, and carpet were pale gray, and that the dryads'
dresses of wonderful tints, sparkling with gold and silver and jewels,
had been brilliant as tropical flowers against the neutral background.
Also, when he came to think of it, he wasn't sure that the walls were
not mostly made of mirrors. That was why he could not be certain
whether he had seen five dryads or five times five.

"The dryad door," he apostrophized it romantically, keeping his
balance by standing with his feet apart, as old men stand before a
fire. It was a very ordinary-looking door, and that made the romance
for Peter in giving it such a name--just a white-painted door, so new
that it smelled slightly of varnish--yet behind it lay dreamland.

Of course Peter Rolls knew that the tall, incredibly lovely beings
were not dryads and not dreams, although they wore low necks, and
pearls and diamonds in their wonderful, waved hair, at eleven o'clock
of a stormy morning on board an Atlantic liner. Still, he was blessed
if he could think what they were, and what they were doing in that
room of mirrors without any furniture which he could recall, except a
very large screen, a few chairs, and a sofa or two.

The next best thing to the forbidden one--opening the door again to
ask the beings point-blank whether they were pipe dreams or just
mermaids--was to go on to the gymnasium and inquire there. Toward this
end young Mr. Rolls (as he was respectfully called in a business house
never mentioned by his sister) immediately took steps. But taking
steps was as far as he got. Suddenly it seemed a deed you could not
do, to demand of an imitation-camel's attendant why five young ladies
wore evening dress in the morning in a room three doors away.

After all, why should a camel attendant dare to know anything about
them? Perhaps they were merely amusing themselves and each other by
trying on all their gladdest clothes. There might be girls who would
think this a good way to kill time in a storm. Yes, conceivably there
might be such girls, just as there might be sea serpents; but, though
Peter Rolls was too shy to have learned much about the female of his
species, the explanation did not appeal to his reason.

His mind would persist in making a mystery of the mirror-walled room
with its five dazzling occupants, and even the bumpings of the
imitation camel could not jerk out of his head speculations which
played around the dryad door. He was as curious as _Fatima_ herself,
and with somewhat the same curiosity; for, except that in one case the
beautiful ladies had their heads, and in the other had lost them,
there was a hint of resemblance between the two mysteries.

Peter Rolls wondered whether he would like to ask his sister Ena if
she knew the visions, or even if, being a woman, she could form any
theory to account for them. It would be interesting to see what she
would say; but then, unless she were too seasick, she would probably
laugh, and perhaps tell Lord Raygan.

As for the visions themselves, only one had spirit enough left in her
to be able to laugh at being thought a dryad or a mystery. She alone
of the five would have known what "dryad" means. And she could always
laugh, no matter how miserable or how sick she was.

That day she was very sick indeed. They were all very sick, but she
could not help seeing, at her worst, that it was funny.

"For heaven's sake, what are you giggling at?" snapped the longest,
slimmest, most abnormal dryad, diaphanously draped in yellow, when she
could gasp out an intelligible sentence after an exhausting bout of
agony.

"Us," said the girl who could always laugh, a vision in silver.

"Us? I don't see anything funny about us!" groaned a tall dream in
crimson and purple.

"Funny! I should think not!" snorted a fantasy in emerald.

"It makes me worse to hear you laugh," squealed a radiance in rose.

"I wish we were all dead, _especially_ Miss Child," snarled the last
of the five, a symphony in black and all conceivable shades of blue.
Because of this combination, the Miss Child in question had named her
the "Bruise."

"Sorry! I'll try not to laugh again till the sea goes down," Miss
Child apologized. "I wasn't laughing at any of _you_ exactly, it was
more the whole situation: us, dressed like stars of the Russian ballet
and sick as dogs, pearls in our hair and basins in our hands, looking
like queens and feeling like dolls with our stuffing gone."

"Don't speak of stuffing. It makes me think of sage and onions,"
quavered the tallest queen.

"Ugh!" they all groaned, except Winifred Child, who was to blame for
starting the subject. "Ugh! Oh! Ugh!"

When they were better they lay back on their sofas, or leaned back in
their chairs, their beautiful--or meant to be beautiful--faces pale,
their eyes shut. And it was at this moment that Peter Rolls burst open
the door.

As he had observed, the waxlike figures moved, sat upright, and
stared. This sudden disturbance of brain balance made them all giddy,
but the surprise of seeing a man, not a steward, at the door, was so
great that for a moment or two it acted as a tonic. Nothing dreadful
happened to any one of the five until after the smooth black head had
been withdrawn and the door closed.

"A man!" breathed Miss Devereux, the abnormally tall girl in yellow
chiffon over gold gauze.

"Yes, dear. I wonder what he wanted?" sighed Miss Carroll, the girl in
rose.

The one in green was Miss Tyndale, the one in black and blue Miss
Vedrine, all very becoming labels; and if they had Christian names of
equal distinction to match, the alien known at home simply as "Win"
had never heard them. They called each other Miss Devereux, Miss
Carroll, Miss Tyndale, and Miss Vedrine, or else "dear."

"I wish we could think he wanted to see us!" remarked Miss Tyndale.

"I hope he didn't notice the basins," added Miss Vedrine

"I think we hid them with our trains," said Miss Carroll.

"Was he nice looking?" Miss Vedrine had courage to ask. She had
wonderful red hair, only a little darker at the roots, and long,
straight black eyelashes. A few of these had come off on her cheeks,
but they were not noticeable at a distance.

"I don't know, I'm sure, dear," replied Miss Devereux, a fawn-eyed
brunette, who was nearest the door. "There wasn't time to see. I just
thought: 'Good heavens! have we got to parade?' Then, 'No, thank
goodness, it's a man!' And he was gone."

"What should we do if a woman did come, and we had to get up?"
wondered Miss Vedrine, whose great specialty was her profile and
length of white throat.

"She wouldn't be a woman; she'd be a monster, to care about clothes in
weather like this," pronounced the golden-haired Miss Carroll. "Parade
indeed! I _wouldn't_. I'd simply lie down and expire."

"I feel I've never till now sympathized enough with the animals in the
ark," said Miss Child, who had not chosen her own name, or else had
shown little taste in selection, compared with the others. But she
was somehow different, rather subtly different, from them in all ways;
not so elaborately refined, not so abnormally tall, not so startlingly
picturesque. "One always thinks of the ark animals in a procession,
poor dears--showing off their fur or their stripes or their spots or
something--just like us."

"Speak for yourself, if you talk about spots, please," said Miss
Devereux, who never addressed Miss Child as "dear," nor did the
others.

"I was thinking of leopards," explained the fifth dryad. "They're
among the few things you _can_ think of without being sick."

"I can't," said Miss Devereux, and was. They all were, and somehow
Miss Child seemed to be the one to blame.

"We were just getting better!" wailed Miss Vedrine.

"It was only a momentary excitement that cheered us," suggested
Winifred Child.

"What excitement?" they all wanted indignantly to know.

"That man looking in."

"Do you call that an excitement? Where have you lived?"

"Well, a surprise, then. But _would_ we have been better if it had
been madame who looked in?"

The picture called up by this question was so appalling that they
shuddered and forgot their little grudge against Miss Child, who was
not so bad when you were feeling well, except that she had odd ways of
looking at things, and laughed when nobody else could see anything to
laugh at.

"Thank heaven, she's a bad sailor!" Miss Devereux cried.

"Thank heaven, all the other women on board are bad sailors," added
Win.

"If madame was well she'd think _we_ ought to be," said Miss Carroll.
"She'd dock our pay every time we--- Oh, _this_ is bad enough, but if
she was well it would be a million times worse!"

"Could anything be worse?" Miss Tyndale pitifully questioned, for just
then the ship was sliding down the side of a wave as big as a
millionaire's house.

"Yes, it would be worse if we were wearing our waists slender this
year," said Win.

"Down, down, wallow, wallow, jump!" was the program the _Monarchic_
carried out for the twentieth time in half as many minutes. Slender
waists! Oh, horrible to think of, unless you broke in two and death
ended your troubles!

"Let's try breathing _in_ as she goes up and _out_ as she goes down.
I've heard that works wonderfully," said Win.

They tried, but it worked disappointingly that time. Perhaps it was
the ship's fault. It was impossible to time her antics with the most
careful breathing.

"Oh, why did we leave our peaceful homes?" moaned Miss Vedrine.

"I didn't," whispered Win.

"Didn't what?"

"Leave my peaceful home. If I'd had one I shouldn't be here."

This was the first time she had volunteered or had had dragged out of
her a word concerning her past. But at the moment no one could be
keyed to interest in anything except preparation for the next wave.

In the veranda cafe Peter Rolls was asking his sister Ena if she knew
anything about five incredibly beautiful girls in evening dress shut
up together in a room with walls made of mirrors.

Ena Rolls was not in a mood to answer irrelevant questions, especially
from a brother; but Lord Raygan and his sister were there, and pricked
up their ears at the hint of a mystery. She could not be cross and ask
Peter kindly to go to the devil and not talk rot, as she would have
done if the others had been somewhere else. But then, were it not for
Lord Raygan and his sister and mother, Miss Rolls would be flat in her
berth.

"Five incredibly beautiful girls in evening dress!" repeated Lord
Raygan, who, like Peter, was a good sailor.

Ena Rolls wanted him to be interested in her, and not in five
preposterous persons in evening dress, so she replied promptly to
Peter's question: "I suppose they must be Nadine's living models. We
all had cards about their being on board and the hours of their parade
to show the latest fashions. You saw the card, I suppose, Lady
Eileen?"

"Yes," returned Lord Raygan's flapper sister. "It's on the
writing-desk in that darling sitting-room you've given Mubs and me."

Ena felt rewarded for her sacrifice. She and Peter had engaged the
best suite on board the _Monarchic_, but when Lord Raygan and his
mother and sister were borne past Queenstown in most unworthy cabins
(two very small ones between the three), Ena had given up her own and
Peter's room to the two ladies. It was a Providential chance to make
their acquaintance and win their gratitude. (She had met Raygan in
Egypt and London, and sailed on the _Monarchic_ in consequence.)

"The stewardess told me before I moved down," she went on, "that Mme.
Nadine had taken the ship's nursery this trip for her show, and fitted
it with wardrobes and mirror doors at immense expense. I'm afraid she
won't get her money back if this storm lasts. Who could gaze at living
models?"

"I could, if they're as beautiful as your brother says," replied Lord
Raygan, a tall, lanky, red-headed Irishman with humorous eyes and a
heavy jaw. He was the first earl Ena had ever met, but she prayed
fervently that he might not be the last.

Peter somehow did not want those pale dryads sacrificed to make a
Raygan holiday. He regretted having remarked on their beauty. "They
looked more like dying than living models when I saw them," he said.

"Let's go and see what they look like now," suggested Raygan. "Eh,
what, Miss Rolls?"

"I don't know if men _can_ go," she hesitated.

"Who's to stop them? Why shouldn't I be wanting to buy one of the
dresses off their backs for my sister?"

"What a _melting_ idea! You do, don't you, dear boy?" the flapper
encouraged him.

"I might. Come along, Miss Rolls. Come along, Eily. What about you,
Rolls? Will you guide us?"

"Let's wait till after lunch," said Ena. She hoped that it might
disagree with everybody, and then they would not want to go.

"Oh, no!" pleaded Lady Eileen O'Neill. "We may be dead after luncheon,
and probably will be. Or Rags'll change his mind about the dress.
Nadine's dresses are too heavenly. I've never seen any except on the
stage, worn by wonderful, thin giantesses. All her gowns are named,
you know, Rags: 'Dawn,' or 'Sunset,' or 'Love in Spring,' or 'Passion
in Twilight,' and poetic things like that."

"Can't be very poetic bein' sick in 'em, by Jove! for those girls in
the nursery," remarked Rags, "especially if they've got a sense of
humour."

(One of them had. The shimmering sheath of silver and chiffon she wore
to-day, as it happened, rejoiced in the name of "First Love." It was
all white. She was being very careful of its virginal purity; but it
occurred to her that unless the sea's passion died, the frock would
soon have to be renamed "Second Love," or even "Slighted Affection,"
if not "Rejected Addresses.")

Urged by Eileen, who would think her a "pig" if she refused, Ena
reluctantly uncurled herself from a safe and graceful position on a
cushioned sofa. The result was alarming. Her swimming head warned her
that if she did not instantly sit down again something too awful to
think of in the presence of an earl would happen.

"You'd better go without me. I'm not very keen," she faintly
explained, appealing to Peter with her eyes.

He contrived to understand without asking stupid questions, as some
brothers would, and hurried the others off to the room of the mirrors.
No longer was it a room of mystery; yet romance, once awakened, cannot
be put to sleep in a minute, and Peter Rolls's heart beat with
excitement or shyness, he was not sure which, as Lady Eileen O'Neill
knocked at the dryad door.

CHAPTER II

BALM OF GILEAD

It was the worst possible moment for the dryads. But when their
tear-wet eyes beheld a girl and two men, some deep-down primordial
pride of womanhood rushed to their rescue and, flowing through their
veins, performed a miracle beyond the power of any patent remedy. The
five forlorn girls became at need the five stately goddesses Mme.
Nadine paid them to be. (Winifred Child, by the way, was not paid, for
she was not a goddess by profession. But she got her passage free. It
was for that she was goddessing.)

Miss Devereux was the leader, by virtue, not of extra age, no indeed!
but of height, manner, and experience. She apologized, with the most
refined accent, for Mme. Nadine, who was "quite prostrated"; for Mme.
Nadine's manageress, who was even worse; and for themselves. "I'm
afraid we must do the best we can alone," she finished with
unconscious pathos.

"It's a shame to disturb you," said Peter Rolls.

Miss Devereux and her attendant dryads turned their eyes to him. They
had fancied that he was the man who had burst in before and burst out
again; now they were sure. If he had been a woman, they would have
borne him a grudge for coming back and bringing companions worse than
himself; but as he was a man, young, and not bad looking, they forgave
him meekly.

They forgave the other man for the same reason, and forgave the girl
because she was with the men. If only they could behave themselves as
young ladies should through this ordeal! That was the effort on which
they must concentrate their minds and other organs.

"Not at all," returned Miss Devereux, every inch a princess. "We are
_here_ to be disturbed." (Alas, how true!)

She smiled at Lady Eileen, but not patronizingly, because a mysterious
instinct told her that the plain, pleasant young girl in Irish tweed
was a "swell." The men, too, were swells, or important in some way or
other. One exerted one's self to be charming to such people and to
keep the male members of the party from looking at the other girls.
"Would you like to see something else, different from what we are
showing? Evening cloaks? Day dresses? We have a number of smart little
afternoon frocks---"

"I think that white dress is the _meltingest_ thing I ever saw," said
Lady Eileen, who had walked into the room without waiting for Miss
Devereux's answer to Peter Rolls's objection.

She was a kind-hearted girl, but, after all, living models were living
models until they were dead, and she wasn't going to lose the chance
of getting a dreamy frock out of Rags! All the goddesses were on their
mettle and their feet now, though swaying like tall lilies in a high
wind and occasionally bracing themselves against mirrors, while Lady
Eileen was in the biggest chair, with Raygan and Peter Rolls standing
behind her. The men also were offered chairs by Miss Vedrine with a
lovely play of eyelashes, but refused them: the chairs, not the
eyelashes, which no man could have spurned, despite their scattered
effect.

"The white dress, _moddam?"_ (It thrills a flapper to be called
"_moddam_.") "It is one of the latest designs and considered perfect
for a debutante. No doubt you know it is Mme. Nadine's custom to name
her inspirations. Come here, if you please, Miss Child! This is 'First
Love.'"

"Looks like it," remarked Lord Raygan, as Miss Child obeyed. He might
have meant the wearer or the dress. Peter Rolls flashed a gimlet
glance his way to see which. He felt uncomfortably responsible for the
manners of the visitors and the feelings of the visited. But the face
of Rags was grave, and no offence could be taken. Peter Rolls withdrew
the glance, though not before Winifred Child had it intercepted and
interpreted.

"I believe he's a nice fellow," was the thought that slid through her
mind as, like a chicken on a spit, she turned and turned to let Lady
Eileen behold "First Love" from every point of view.

"Rippin', but a foot too tall for you," said Rags, more because it
amused him to prolong the scene than through a real desire to
criticise. "_You_ don't go in for bein' a sylph."

Another backhanded compliment for the wearer, if she cared to accept
it; but she was beautifully unconscious and, for once, not laughing.
Her eyes looked miles away. Peter Rolls wondered to what land she had
gone.

The girl appeared to be gazing over his head; but, as a matter of
fact, she could see him perfectly. He had black hair and blue eyes,
shrewd perhaps, yet they might be kind and merry; just now they looked
worried. She thought him not handsome, but tanned and thin (she
detested fat men) and somehow nice. Win wondered if she were taller
than he. She hated being taller than men, though she owed her present
engagement to her height and length of limb.

Miss Devereux respectfully argued that appearances were deceitful.
_Moddam_ was quite as sylphlike as the model. Might the dress be sent
to _moddam's_ cabin to try? Then it came out that _moddam_ was Lady
Eileen O'Neill, and the four tallest dryads visibly brightened, not so
much for the owner of the name as for her brother.

Their dull days had been dimly lightened by gossip on the ship,
brought to them by a stewardess from Lord Raygan's native isle, who
knew all about him: that he was an earl, that with his mother and
sister he had booked from Liverpool to Queenstown, but, owing to the
ferocity of the sea, had been unable to land and was being carried to
America. Also that a rich young American and his sister had given up
their suite to the ladies. This American was said to be of no birth,
the son of some big shopkeeper, and far, far outside even the fringe
of the Four Hundred; therefore the tallest dryads did their best
eyelash work for Lord Raygan. They were born British, hailing from
Brixton or other suburban health resorts, and now they knew he was a
"lord" the nickname of "Rags," which had sickened them at first,
seemed interesting and intimate as a domestic anecdote about royalty.

Rags consented to buy the dress for his sister if it fitted and didn't
cost a million pounds. The dryads thought this adorably generous, for
the stewardess, who knew all about Lord Raygan, said that the "family
had become impoverished; they were not what they had once been except
in name, which was of the best and oldest in Ireland." Stewardesses
can tell all the things that Marconi does not mention.

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