The S. W. F. Club by Caroline E. Jacobs

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Pauline laughed. "They were my great-grandmother's bed curtains."

"Goodness! What are you going to do with them?"

"I'm not sure mother will let me do anything. I came across them just
now in looking for some green silk she said I might have to cover
Hilary's pin-cushion with."

"For the new room? Patience has been doing the honors of the new paper
and matting--it's going to be lovely, I think."

Pauline scrambled to her feet, shaking out the chintz: "If only mother
would--it's pink and green--let's go ask her."

"What do you want to do with it, Pauline?" Mrs. Shaw asked.

"I haven't thought that far--use it for draperies of some kind, I
suppose," the girl answered.

They were standing in the middle of the big, empty room. Suddenly,
Josie gave a quick exclamation, pointing to the bare corner between the
front and side windows. "Wouldn't a cozy corner be delightful--with
cover and cushions of the chintz?"

"May we, mother?" Pauline begged in a coaxing tone.

"I suppose so, dear--only where is the bench part to come from?"

"Tom'll make the frame for it, I'll go get him this minute," Josie
answered.

"And you might use that single mattress from up garret," Mrs. Shaw
suggested.

Pauline ran up to inspect it, and to see what other treasures might be
forthcoming. The garret was a big, shadowy place, extending over the
whole house, and was lumber room, play place and general refuge, all in
one.

Presently, from under the eaves, she drew forward a little
old-fashioned sewing-chair, discarded on the giving out of its cane
seat. "But I could tack a piece of burlap on and cover it with a
cushion," Pauline decided, and bore it down in triumph to the new room,
where Tom Brice was already making his measurements for the cozy corner.

Josie was on the floor, measuring for the cover. "Isn't it fun, Paul?
Tom says it won't take long to do his part."

Tom straightened himself, slipping his rule into his pocket. "I don't
see what you want it for, though," he said.

"'Yours not to reason why--'" Pauline told him. "We see, and so will
Hilary. Don't you and Josie want to join the new club--the 'S. W. F.
Club'?"

"Society of Willing Females, I suppose?" Tom remarked.

"It sounds like some sort of sewing circle," Josie said.

Pauline sat down in one of the wide window places. "I'm not sure it
might not take in both. It is--'The Seeing Winton First Club.'"

Josie looked as though she didn't quite understand, but Tom whistled
softly. "What else have you been doing for the past fifteen years, if
you please, ma'am?" he asked quizzically.

Pauline laughed. "One ought to know a place rather thoroughly in
fifteen years, I suppose; but--I'm hoping we can make it seem at least
a little bit new and different this summer--for Hilary. You see, we
shan't be able to send her away, and so, I thought, perhaps, if we
tried looking at Winton--with new eyes--"

"I see," Josie cried. "I think it's a splendiferous ideal"

"And, I thought, if we formed a sort of club among ourselves and worked
together--"

"Listen," Josie interrupted again, "we'll make it a condition of
membership, that each one must, in turn, think up something pleasant to
do."

"Is the membership to be limited?" Tom asked.

Pauline smiled. "It will be so--necessarily--won't it?" For Winton
was not rich in young people.

"There will be enough of us," Josie declared hopefully.

"Like the model dinner party?" her brother asked. "Not less than the
Graces, nor more than the Muses."

And so the new club was formed then and there. There were to be no
regular and formal meetings, no dues, nor fines, and each member was to
consider himself, or herself, an active member of the programme
committee.

Tom, as the oldest member of their immediate circle of friends, was
chosen president before that first meeting adjourned; no other officers
were considered necessary at the time. And being president, to him was
promptly delegated the honor--despite his vigorous protests--of
arranging for their first outing and notifying the other members--yet
to be.

"But," he expostulated, "what's a fellow to think up--in a hole like
this?"

"Winton isn't a hole!" his sister protested. It was one of the chief
occupations of Josie's life at present, to contradict all such
heretical utterances on Tom's part. He was to go away that fall to
commence his studies for the medical profession, for it was Dr. Brice's
great desire that, later, his son should assist him in his practice.
But, so far, Tom though wanting to follow his father's profession, was
firm in his determination, not to follow it in Winton.

"And remember," Pauline said, as the three went down-stairs together,
"that it's the first step that counts--and to think up something very
delightful, Tom."

"It mustn't be a picnic, I suppose? Hilary won't be up to picnics yet
awhile."

"N-no, and we want to begin soon. She'll be back Friday, I think,"
Pauline answered.

By Wednesday night the spare room was ready for the expected guest.
"It's as if someone had waved a fairy wand over it, isn't it?" Patience
said delightedly. "Hilary'll be so surprised."

"I think she will and--pleased." Pauline gave one of the cushions in
the cozy corner a straightening touch, and drew the window
shades--Miranda had taken them down and turned them--a little lower.

"It's a regular company room, isn't it?" Patience said joyously.

The minister drove over to The Maples himself on Friday afternoon to
bring Hilary home.

"Remember," Patience pointed a warning forefinger at him, just as he
was starting, "not a single solitary hint!"

"Not a single solitary one," he promised.

As he turned out of the gate. Patience drew a long breath. "Well,
he's off at last! But, oh, dear, however can we wait 'til he gets
back?"

CHAPTER V

BEDELIA

It was five o'clock that afternoon when Patience, perched, a little
white-clad sentry, on the gate-post, announced joyously--"They're
coming! They're coming!"

Patience was as excited as if the expected "guest" were one in fact, as
well as name. It was fun to be playing a game of make-believe, in
which the elders took part.

As the gig drew up before the steps, Hilary looked eagerly out. "Will
you tell me," she demanded, "why father insisted on coming 'round the
lower road, by the depot--he didn't stop, and he didn't get any parcel?
And when I asked him, he just laughed and looked mysterious."

"He went," Pauline answered, "because we asked him to--company usually
comes by train--real out-of-town company, you know."

"Like visiting ministers and returned missionaries," Patience explained.

Hilary looked thoroughly bewildered. "But are you expecting company?
You must be," she glanced from one to another, "you're all dressed up,"

"We were expecting some, dear," her mother told her, "but she has
arrived."

"Don't you see? You're it!" Patience danced excitedly about her sister.

"I'm the company!" Hilary said wonderingly. Then her eyes lighted up.
"I understand! How perfectly dear of you all."

Mrs. Shaw patted the hand Hilary slipped into hers. "You have come
back a good deal better than you went, my dear. The change has done
you good."

"And it didn't turn out a stupid--half-way affair, after all," Hilary
declared. "I've had a lovely time. Only, I simply had to come home, I
felt somehow--that--that--"

"We were expecting company?" Pauline laughed. "And you wanted to be
here?"

"I reckon that was it," Hilary agreed. As she sat there, resting a
moment, before going up-stairs, she hardly seemed the same girl who had
gone away so reluctantly only eight days before. The change of scene,
the outdoor life, the new friendship, bringing with it new interests,
had worked wonders,

"And now," Pauline suggested, taking up her sister's valise, "perhaps
you would like to go up to your room--visitors generally do."

"To rest after your journey, you know," Patience prompted. Patience
believed in playing one's part down to the minutest detail.

"Thank you," Hilary answered, with quite the proper note of formality
in her voice, "if you don't mind; though I did not find the trip as
fatiguing as I had expected."

But from the door, she turned back to give her mother a second and most
uncompany-like hug. "It is good to be home, Mother Shaw! And please,
you don't want to pack me off again anywhere right away--at least, all
by myself?"

"Not right away," her mother answered, kissing her.

"I guess you will think it is good to be home, when you
know--everything," Patience announced, accompanying her sisters
up-stairs, but on the outside of the banisters.

"Patty!" Pauline protested laughingly--"Was there ever such a child for
letting things out!"

"I haven't!" the child exclaimed, "only now--it can't make any
difference."

"There is mystery in the very air!" Hilary insisted. "Oh, what have
you all been up to?"

"You're not to go in there!" Patience cried, as Hilary stopped before
the door of her own and Pauline's room.

"Of course you're not," Pauline told her. "It strikes me, for
company--you're making yourself very much at home! Walking into
peoples' rooms." She led the way along the hall to the spare room,
throwing the door wide open.

"Oh!" Hilary cried, then stood quite still on the threshold, looking
about her with wide, wondering eyes.

The spare room was grim and gray no longer. Hilary felt as if she must
be in some strange, delightful dream. The cool green of the wall
paper, with the soft touch of pink in ceiling and border, the fresh
white matting, the cozy corner opposite--with its delicate
old-fashioned chintz drapery and big cushions, the new toilet
covers--white over green, the fresh curtains at the windows, the
cushioned window seats, the low table and sewing-chair, even her own
narrow white bed, with its new ruffled spread, all went to make a room
as strange to her, as it was charming and unexpected.

"Oh," she said again, turning to her mother, who had followed them
up-stairs, and stood waiting just outside the door. "How perfectly
lovely it all is--but it isn't for me?"

"Of course it is," Patience said. "Aren't you company--you aren't just
Hilary now, you're 'Miss Shaw' and you're here on a visit; and there's
company asked to supper to-morrow night, and it's going to be such fun!"

Hilary's color came and went. It was something deeper and better than
fun. She understood now why they had done this--why Pauline had said
that--about her not going away; there was a sudden lump in the girl's
throat--she was glad, so glad, she had said that downstairs----about
not wanting to go away.

And when her mother and Patience had gone down-stairs again and Pauline
had begun to unpack the valise, as she had unpacked it a week ago at
The Maples, Hilary sat in the low chair by one of the west windows, her
hands folded in her lap, looking about this new room of hers.

"There," Pauline said presently, "I believe that's all now--you'd
better lie down, Hilary--I'm afraid you're tired."

"No, I'm not; at any rate, not very. I'll lie down if you like, only I
know I shan't be able to sleep."

Pauline lowered the pillow and threw a light cover over her. "There's
something in the top drawer of the dresser," she said, "but you're not
to look at it until you've lain down at least half an hour."

"I feel as if I were in an enchanted palace,", Hilary said, "with so
many delightful surprises being sprung on me all the while." After
Pauline had gone, she lay watching the slight swaying of the wild roses
in the tall jar on the hearth. The wild roses ran rampant in the
little lane leading from the back of the church down past the old
cottage where Sextoness Jane lived. Jane had brought these with her
that morning, as her contribution to the new room.

To Hilary, as to Patience, it seemed as if a magic wand had been waved,
transforming the old dull room into a place for a girl to live and
dream in. But for her, the name of the wand was Love.

There must be no more impatient longings, no fretful repinings, she
told herself now. She must not be slow to play her part in this new
game that had been originated all for her.

The half-hour up, she slipped from the bed and began unbuttoning her
blue-print frock. Being company, it stood to reason she must dress for
supper. But first, she must find out what was in the upper drawer.

The first glimpse of the little shell box, told her that. There were
tears in Hilary's gray eyes, as she stood slipping the gold beads
slowly through her fingers. How good everyone was to her; for the
first time some understanding of the bright side even of sickness--and
she had not been really sick, only run-down--and, yes, she had been
cross and horrid, lots of times--came to her.

"I'll go over just as soon as I can and thank her," the girl thought,
clasping the beads about her neck, "and I'll keep them always and
always."

A little later, she came down-stairs all in white, a spray of the pink
and white wild roses in her belt, her soft, fair hair freshly brushed
and braided. She had been rather neglectful of her hair lately.

There was no one on the front piazza but her father, and he looked up
from his book with a smile of pleasure. "My dear, how well you are
looking! It is certainly good to see you at home again, and quite your
old self."

Hilary came to sit on the arm of his chair. "It is good to be at home
again. I suppose you know all the wonderful surprises I found waiting
me?"

"Supper's ready," Patience proclaimed from the doorway. "Please come,
because--" she caught herself up, putting a hand into Hilary's, "I'll
show you where to sit, Miss Shaw."

Hilary laughed. "How old are you, my dear?" she asked, in the tone
frequently used by visiting ministers.

"I'm a good deal older than I'm treated generally," Patience answered.
"Do you like Winton?"

"I am sure I shall like it very much." Hilary slipped into the chair
Patience drew forward politely. "The company side of the table--sure
enough," she laughed.

"It isn't proper to say things to yourself sort of low down in your
voice," Patience reproved her, then at a warning glance from her mother
subsided into silence as the minister took his place.

For to-night, at least, Miranda had amply fulfilled Patience's hopes,
as to company suppers. And she, too, played her part in the new game,
calling Hilary "Miss," and never by any chance intimating that she had
seen her before.

"Did you go over to the manor to see Shirley?" Patience asked.

Hilary shook her head. "I promised her Pauline and I would be over
soon. We may have Fanny some afternoon, mayn't we, father?"

Patience's blue eyes danced. "They can't have Fanny, can they,
father?" she nodded at him knowingly.

Hilary eyed her questioningly. "What is the matter, Patience?"

"Nothing is the matter with her," Pauline said hurriedly. "Don't pay
any attention to her."

"Only, if you would hurry," Patience implored. "I--I can't wait much
longer!"

"Wait!" Hilary asked. "For what?"

Patience pushed back her chair. "For--Well, if you just knew what for,
Hilary Shaw, you'd do some pretty tall hustling!"

"Patience!" her father said reprovingly.

"May I be excused, mother?" Patience asked. "I'll wait out on the
porch."

And Mrs. Shaw replied most willingly that she might.

"Is there anything more--to see, I mean, not to eat?" Hilary asked. "I
don't see how there can be."

"Are you through?" Pauline answered. "Because, if you are, I'll show
you."

"It was sent to Paul," Patience called, from the hall door. "But she
says, of course, it was meant for us all; and I think, myself, she's
right about that."

"Is it--alive?" Hilary asked.

"'It' was--before supper," Pauline told her. "I certainly hope nothing
has happened to--'it' since then."

"A dog?" Hilary suggested.

"Wait and see; by the way, where's that kitten?"

"She's to follow in a few days; she was a bit too young to leave home
just yet."

"I've got the sugar!" Patience called.

Hilary stopped short at the foot of the porch steps. Patience's
remark, if it had not absolutely let the cat out of the bag, had at
least opened the bag. "Paul, it can't be--"

"In the Shaw's dictionary, at present, there doesn't appear to be any
such word as can't," Pauline declared. "Come on---after all, you know,
the only way to find out--is to find out."

Patience had danced on ahead down the path to the barn. She stood
waiting for them now in the broad open doorway, her whole small person
one animated exclamation point, while Towser, just home from a
leisurely round of afternoon visits, came forward to meet Hilary,
wagging a dignified welcome.

"If you don't hurry, I'll 'hi yi' you, like I do Fanny!" Patience
warned them. She moved to one side, to let Hilary go on into the barn.
"Now!" she demanded, "isn't that something more?"

From the stall beside Fanny's, a horse's head reached inquiringly out
for the sugar with which already she had come to associate the frequent
visits of these new friends. She was a pretty, well-made, little mare,
light sorrel, with white markings, and with a slender, intelligent face.

Hilary stood motionless, too surprised to speak.

"Her name's Bedelia," Patience said, doing the honors. "She's very
clever, she knows us all already. Fanny hasn't been very polite to
her, and she knows it--Bedelia does, I mean--sometimes, when Fanny
isn't looking, I've caught Bedelia sort of laughing at her--and I don't
blame her one bit. And, oh, Hilary, she can go--there's no need to 'hi
yi' her."

"But--" Hilary turned to Pauline.

"Uncle Paul sent her," Pauline explained. "She came last Saturday
afternoon. One of the men from Uncle Paul's place in the country
brought her. She was born and bred at River Lawn--that's Uncle Paul's
place--he says."

Hilary stroked the glossy neck gently, if Pauline had said the Sultan
of Turkey, instead of Uncle Paul, she could hardly have been more
surprised. "Uncle Paul--sent her to you!" she said slowly.

"To _us_."

"Bless me, that isn't all he sent," Patience exclaimed. It seemed to
Patience that they never would get to the end of their story. "You
just come look at this, Hilary Shaw!" she ran on through the opening
connecting carriage-house with stable.

"Oh!" Hilary cried, following with Pauline.

Beside the minister's shabby old gig, stood the smartest of smart
traps, and hanging on the wall behind it, a pretty russet harness, with
silver mountings.

Hilary sat down on an old saw horse; she felt again as though she must
be dreaming.

"There isn't another such cute rig in town, Jim says so," Patience
said. Jim was the stable boy. "It beats Bell Ward's all to pieces."

"But why--I mean, how did Uncle Paul ever come to send it to us?"
Hilary said. Of course one had always known that there
was--somewhere--a person named Uncle Paul; but he had appeared about as
remote and indefinite a being as--that same Sultan of Turkey, for
instance.

"After all, why shouldn't he?" Pauline answered.

"But I don't believe he would've if Paul had not written to him that
time," Patience added. "Maybe next time I tell you anything, you'll
believe me, Hilary Shaw."

But Hilary was staring at Pauline. "You didn't write to Uncle Paul?"

"I'm afraid I did."

"Was--was that the letter--you remember, that afternoon?"

"I rather think I do remember."

"Paul, how did you ever dare?"

"I was in the mood to dare anything that day."

"And did he answer; but of course he did."

"Yes--he answered. Though not right away."

"Was it a nice letter? Did he mind your having written? Paul, you
didn't ask him to send you--these," Hilary waved her hand rather
vaguely.

"Hardly--he did that all on his own. It wasn't a bad sort of letter,
I'll tell you about it by and by. We can go to the manor in style now,
can't we--even if father can't spare Fanny. Bedelia's perfectly
gentle, I've driven her a little ways once or twice, to make sure.
Father insisted on going with me. We created quite a sensation down
street, I assure you."

"And Mrs. Dane said," Patience cut in, "that in her young days,
clergymen didn't go kiting 'bout the country in such high-fangled rigs."

"Never mind what Mrs. Dane said, or didn't say," Pauline told her.

"Miranda says, what Mrs. Dane hasn't got to say on any subject,
wouldn't make you tired listening to it."

"Patience, if you don't stop repeating what everyone says, I shall--"

"If you speak to mother--then you'll be repeating," Patience declared.
"Maybe, I oughtn't to have said those things before--company."

"I think we'd better go back to the house now," Pauline suggested.

"Sextoness Jane says," Patience remarked, "that she'd have sure admired
to have a horse and rig like that, when she was a girl. She says, she
doesn't suppose you'll be passing by her house very often."

"And, now, please," Hilary pleaded, when she had been established in
her hammock on the side porch, with her mother in her chair close by,
and Pauline sitting on the steps, "I want to hear--everything. I'm
what Miranda calls 'fair mazed.'"

So Pauline told nearly everything, blurring some of the details a
little and getting to that twenty-five dollars a month, with which they
were to do so much, as quickly as possible.

"O Paul, really," Hilary sat up among her cushions--"Why, it'll
be--riches, won't it?"

"It seems so."

"But--Oh, I'm afraid you've spent all the first twenty-five on me; and
that's not a fair division--is it, Mother Shaw?"

"We used it quite according to Hoyle," Pauline insisted. "We got our
fun that way, didn't we, Mother Shaw?"

Their mother smiled. "I know I did."

"All the same, after this, you've simply got to 'drink fair, Betsy,' so
remember," Hilary warned them.

"Bedtime, Patience," Mrs. Shaw said, and Patience got slowly out of her
big, wicker armchair.

"I did think--seeing there was company,--that probably you'd like me to
stay up a little later to-night."

"If the 'company' takes my advice, she'll go, too," her mother answered.

"The 'company' thinks she will." Hilary slipped out of the hammock.
"Mother, do you suppose Miranda's gone to bed yet?"

"I'll go see," Patience offered, willing to postpone the inevitable for
even those few moments longer.

"What do you want with Miranda?" Pauline asked.

"To do something for me."

"Can't I do it?"

"No--and it must be done to-night. Mother, what are you smiling over?"

"I thought it would be that way, dear."

"Miranda's coming," Patience called. "She'd just taken her back
hair down, and she's waiting to twist it up again. She's got awful
funny back hair."

"Patience! Patience!" her mother said reprovingly.

"I mean, there's such a little--"

"Go up-stairs and get yourself ready for bed at once."

Miranda was waiting in the spare room. "You ain't took sick, Hilary?"

Hilary shook her head. "Please, Miranda, if it wouldn't be too much
trouble, will you bring Pauline's bed in here?"

"I guessed as much," Miranda said, moving Hilary's bed to one side.

"Hilary--wouldn't you truly rather have a room to yourself--for a
change?" Pauline asked.

"I have had one to myself--for eight days--and, now I'm going back to
the old way." Sitting among the cushions of the cozy corner, Hilary
superintended operations, and when the two single white beds were
standing side by side, in their accustomed fashion, the covers turned
back for the night, she nodded in satisfied manner. "Thank you so
much, Miranda; that's as it should be. Go get your things, Paul.
To-morrow, you must move in regularly. Upper drawer between us, and
the rest share and share alike, you know."

Patience, who had hit upon the happy expedient of braiding her
hair--braids, when there were a lot of them, took a long time--got
slowly up from the hearth rug, her head a sight to behold, with its
tiny, hornlike red braids sticking out in every direction. "I suppose
I'd better be going. I wish I had someone to talk to, after I'd gone
to bed." And a deep sigh escaped her.

Pauline kissed the wistful little face. "Never mind, old girl, you
know you'd never stay awake long enough to talk to anyone."

She and Hilary stayed awake talking, however, until Pauline's prudence
got the better of her joy in having her sister back in more senses than
one. It was so long since they had had such a delightful bedtime talk.

"Seeing Winton First Club," Hilary said musingly. "Paul, you're ever
so clever. Shirley insisted those letters stood for 'Suppression of
Woman's Foibles Club'; and Mr. Dayre suggested they meant, 'Sweet Wild
Flowers.'"

"You've simply got to go to sleep now, Hilary, else mother'll come and
take me away."

Hilary sighed blissfully. "I'll never say again--that nothing ever
happens to us."

Tom and Josie came to supper the next night. Shirley was there, too,
she had stopped in on her way to the post-office with her father that
afternoon, to ask how Hilary was, and been captured and kept to supper
and the first club meeting that followed.

Hilary had been sure she would like to join, and Shirley's prompt and
delighted acceptance of their invitation proved her right.

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