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

C >> Caroline E. Jacobs >> The S. W. F. Club

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9

"I believe I'd forgotten all about them; I think I'll choose this--"
Pauline held up a sample of blue and white striped dimity.

"That _is_ pretty."

"You can have it, if you like."

"Oh, no, I'll have the pink."

"And the lavender dot, for Mother Shaw?"

"Yes," Hilary agreed.

"Patience had better have straight white, it'll be in the wash so
often."

"Why not let her choose for herself, Paul?" Hilary suggested.

"Hilary! Oh, Hilary Shaw!" Patience called excitedly, at that moment
from downstairs.

"Up here!" Hilary called back, and Patience came hurrying up, stumbling
more than once in her eagerness. The next moment, she pushed wide the
door of the "new room." "See what's come! It's addressed to you,
Hilary--it came by express--Jed brought it up from the depot!" Jed was
the village expressman.

She deposited her burden on the table beside Hilary. It was a
good-sized, square box, and with all that delightful air of mystery
about it that such packages usually have.

"What do you suppose it is, Paul?" Hilary cried. "Why, I've never had
anything come unexpectedly, like this, before."

"A whole lot of things are happening to us that never've happened
before," Patience said. "See, it's from Uncle Paul!" she pointed to
the address at the upper left-hand corner of the package. "Oh, Hilary,
let me open it, please, I'll go get the tack hammer."

"Tell mother to come," Hilary said.

"Maybe it's books, Paul!" she added, as Patience scampered off.

Pauline lifted the box. "It doesn't seem quite heavy enough for books."

"But what else could it be?"

Pauline laughed. "It isn't another Bedelia, at all events. It could
be almost anything. Hilary, I believe Uncle Paul is really glad I
wrote to him."

"Well, I'm not exactly sorry," Hilary declared.

"Mother can't come yet," Patience explained, reappearing. "She says
not to wait. It's that tiresome Mrs. Dane; she just seems to know when
we don't want her, and then to come--only, I suppose if she waited 'til
we did want to see her, she'd never get here."

"Mother didn't say that. Impatience, and you'd better not let her hear
you saying it," Pauline warned.

But Patience was busy with the tack hammer. "You can take the inside
covers off," she said to Hilary.

"Thanks, awfully," Hilary murmured.

"It'll be my turn next, won't it?" Patience dropped the tack hammer,
and wrenched off the cover of the box--"Go ahead, Hilary! Oh, how slow
you are!"

For Hilary was going about her share of the unpacking in the most
leisurely way. "I want to guess first," she said. "Such a lot of
wrappings! It must be something breakable."

"A picture, maybe," Pauline suggested. Patience dropped cross-legged
on the floor. "Then I don't think Uncle Paul's such a very sensible
sort of person," she said.

"No, not pictures!" Hilary lifted something from within the box, "but
something to get pictures with. See, Paul!"

"A camera! Oh, Hilary!"

"And not a little tiny one." Patience leaned over to examine the box.
"It's a three and a quarter by four and a quarter. We can have fun
now, can't we?" Patience believed firmly in the cooperative principle.

"Tom'll show you how to use it," Pauline said. "He fixed up a dark
room last fall, you know, for himself."

"And here are all the doings." Patience came to investigate the
further contents of the express package. "Films and those funny little
pans for developing in, and all."

Inside the camera was a message to the effect that Mr. Shaw hoped his
niece would be pleased with his present and that it would add to the
summer's pleasures,

"He's getting real uncley, isn't he?" Patience observed. Then she
caught sight of the samples Pauline had let fall. "Oh, how pretty!
Are they for dresses for us?"

"They'd make pretty scant ones, I'd say," Pauline, answered.

"Silly!" Patience spread the bright scraps out on her blue checked
gingham apron. "I just bet you've been choosing! Why didn't you call
me?"

"To help us choose?" Pauline asked, with a laugh.

But at the present moment, her small sister was quite impervious to
sarcasm. "I think I'll have this," she pointed to a white ground,
closely sprinkled with vivid green dots.

"Carrots and greens!" Pauline declared, glancing at her sister's red
curls. "You'd look like an animated boiled dinner! If you please, who
said anything about your choosing?"

"You look ever so nice in all white, Patty," Hilary said hastily.

"Have you and Paul chosen all white?"

"N-no."

"Then I shan't!" She looked up quickly, her blue eyes very persuasive.
"I don't very often have a brand new, just-out-of-the-store dress, do
I?"

Pauline laughed. "Only don't let it be the green then. Good, here's
mother, at last!"

"Mummy, is blue or green better?" Patience demanded.

Mrs. Shaw examined and duly admired the camera, and decided in favor of
a blue dot; then she said, "Mrs. Boyd is down-stairs, Hilary."

"How nice!" Hilary jumped up. "I want to see her most particularly."

"Bless me, child!" Mrs. Boyd exclaimed, as Hilary came into the
sitting-room, "how you are getting on! Why, you don't look like the
same girl of three weeks back."

Hilary sat down beside her on the sofa. "I've got a most tremendous
favor to ask, Mrs. Boyd."

"I'm glad to hear that! I hear you young folks are having fine times
lately. Shirley was telling me about the club the other night."

"It's about the club--and it's in two parts; first, won't you and Mr.
Boyd be honorary members?--That means you can come to the good times if
you like, you know.--And the other is--you see, it's my turn next--"
And when Pauline came down, she found the two deep in consultation.

The next afternoon, Patience carried out her long-intended plan of
calling at the manor. Mrs. Shaw was from home for the day, Pauline and
Hilary were out in the trap with Tom and Josie and the camera. "So
there's really no one to ask permission of, Towser," Patience
explained, as they started off down the back lane. "Father's got the
study door closed, of course that means he mustn't be disturbed for
anything unless it's absolutely necessary."

Towser wagged comprehendingly. He was quite ready for a ramble this
bright afternoon, especially a ramble 'cross lots.

Shirley and her father were not at home, neither--which was even more
disappointing--were any of the dogs; so, after a short chat with Betsy
Todd, considerably curtailed by that body's too frankly expressed
wonder that Patience should've been allowed to come unattended by any
of her elders, she and Towser wandered home again.

In the lane, they met Sextoness Jane, sitting on the roadside, under a
shady tree. She and Patience exchanged views on parish matters,
discussed the new club, and had an all-round good gossip.

"My sakes!" Jane said, her faded eyes bright with interest, "it must
seem like Christmas all the time up to your house." She looked past
Patience to the old church beyond, around which her life had centered
itself for so many years. "There weren't ever such doings at the
parsonage--nor anywhere else, what I knowed of--when I was a girl.
Why, that Bedelia horse! Seems like she give an air to the whole
place--so pretty and high-stepping--it's most's good's a circus--not
that I've ever been to a circus, but I've hear tell on them--just to
see her go prancing by."

"I think," Patience said that evening, as they were all sitting on the
porch in the twilight, "I think that Jane would like awfully to belong
to our club."

"Have you started a club, too?" Pauline teased.

Patience tossed her red head. "'The S. W. F. Club,' I mean; and you
know it, Paul Shaw. When I get to be fifteen, I shan't act half so
silly as some folks."

"What ever put that idea in your head?" Hilary asked. It was one of
Hilary's chief missions in life to act as intermediary between her
younger and older sister.

"Oh, I just gathered it, from what she said. Towser and I met her this
afternoon, on our way home from the manor."

"From where, Patience?" her mother asked quickly, with that faculty for
taking hold of the wrong end of a remark, that Patience had had
occasion to deplore more than once.

And in the diversion this caused, Sextoness Jane was forgotten.

"Here comes Mr. Boyd, Hilary!" Pauline called from the foot of the
stairs.

Hilary finished tying the knot of cherry ribbon at her throat, then
snatching up her big sun-hat from the bed, she ran down-stairs.

Before the side door, stood the big wagon, in which Mr. Boyd had driven
over from the farm, its bottom well filled with fresh straw. For
Hilary's outing was to be a cherry picnic at The Maples, with supper
under the trees, and a drive home later by moonlight.

Shirley had brought over the badges a day or two before; the blue
ribbon, with its gilt lettering, gave an added touch to the girls'
white dresses and cherry ribbons.

Mr. Dayre had been duly made an honorary member. He and Shirley were
to meet the rest of the party at the farm. As for Patience H. M., as
Tom called her, she had been walking very softly the past few days.
There had been no long rambles without permission, no making calls on
her own account. There _had_ been a private interview between herself
and Mr. Boyd, whom she had met, not altogether by chance, down street
the day before.

The result was that, at the present moment, Patience--white-frocked,
blue-badged, cherry-ribboned--was sitting demurely in one corner of the
big wagon.

Mr. Boyd chuckled as he glanced down at her; a body'd have to get up
pretty early in the morning to get ahead of that youngster. Though not
in white, nor wearing cherry ribbons, Mr. Boyd sported his badge with
much complacency. Winton was looking up, decidedly. 'Twasn't such a
slow old place, after all.

"All ready?" he asked, as Pauline slipped a couple of big pasteboard
boxes under the wagon seat, and threw in some shawls for the coming
home.

"All ready. Good-by, Mother Shaw. Remember, you and father have got
to come with us one of these days. I guess if Mr. Boyd can take a
holiday you can."

"Good-by," Hilary called, and Patience waved joyously. "This'll make
two times," she comforted herself, "and two times ought to be enough to
establish what father calls 'a precedent.'"

They stopped at the four other houses in turn; then Mr. Boyd touched
his horses up lightly, rattling them along at a good rate out on to the
road leading to the lake and so to The Maples.

There was plenty of fun and laughter by the way. They had gone
picnicking together so many summers, this same crowd, had had so many
good times together. "And yet it seems different, this year, doesn't
it?" Bell said. "We really aren't doing new things--exactly, still
they seem so."

Tracy touched his badge. "These are the 'Blue Ribbon Brand,' best
goods in the market."

"Come to think of it, there aren't so very many new things one can do,"
Tom remarked.

"Not in Winton, at any rate," Bob added.

"If anyone dares say anything derogatory to Winton, on this, or any
other, outing of the 'S. W. F. Club,' he, or she, will get into
trouble," Josie said sternly.

Mrs. Boyd was waiting for them on the steps, Shirley close by, while a
glimpse of a white umbrella seen through the trees told that Mr. Dayre
was not far off.

"It's the best cherry season in years," Mrs. Boyd declared, as the
young folks came laughing and crowding about her. She was a prime
favorite with them all. "My, how nice you look! Those badges are
mighty pretty."

"Where's yours?" Pauline demanded.

"It's in my top drawer, dear. Looks like I'm too old to go wearing
such things, though 'twas ever so good in you to send me one."

"Hilary," Pauline turned to her sister, "I'm sure Mrs. Boyd'll let you
go to her top drawer. Not a stroke of business does this club do,
until this particular member has her badge on."

"Now," Tom asked, when that little matter had been attended to, "what's
the order of the day?"

"I hope you've worn old dresses?" Mrs. Boyd said.

"I haven't, ma'am," Tracy announced.

"Order!" Bob called.

"Eat all you like--so long's you don't get sick--and each pick a nice
basket to take home," Mrs. Boyd explained. There were no cherries
anywhere else quite so big and fine, as those at The Maples.

"You to command, we to obey!" Tracy declared.

"Boys to pick, girls to pick up," Tom ordered, as they scattered about
among the big, bountifully laden trees.

"For cherry time,
Is merry time,"

Shirley improvised, catching the cluster of great red and white
cherries Jack tossed down to her.

Even more than the rest of the young folks, Shirley was getting the
good of this happy, out-door summer, with its quiet pleasures and
restful sense of home life. She had never known anything before like
it. It was very different, certainly, from the studio life in New
York, different from the sketching rambles she had taken other summers
with her father. They were delightful, too, and it was pleasant to
think of going back to them again--some day; but just at present, it
was good to be a girl among other girls, interested in all the simple,
homely things each day brought up.

And her father was content, too, else how could she have been so? It
was doing him no end of good. Painting a little, sketching a little,
reading and idling a good deal, and through it all, immensely amused at
the enthusiasm with which his daughter threw herself into the village
life. "I shall begin to think soon, that you were born and raised in
Winton," he had said to her that very morning, as she came in fresh
from a conference with Betsy Todd. Betsy might be spending her summer
in a rather out-of-the-way spot, and her rheumatism might prevent her
from getting into town--as she expressed it--but very little went on
that Betsy did not hear of, and she was not one to keep her news to
herself.

"So shall I," Shirley had laughed back. She wondered now, if Pauline
or Hilary would enjoy a studio winter, as much as she was reveling in
her Winton summer? She decided that probably they would.

Cherry time _was_ merry time that afternoon. Of course. Bob fell out
of one of the trees, but Bob was so used to tumbling, and the others
were so used to having him tumble, that no one paid much attention to
it; and equally, of course, Patience tore her dress and had to be taken
in hand by Mrs. Boyd.

"Every rose must have its thorns, you know, kid," Tracy told her, as
she was borne away for this enforced retirement. "We'll leave a few
cherries, 'gainst you get back."

Patience elevated her small freckled nose, she was an adept at it. "I
reckon they will be mighty few--if you have anything to do with it."

"You're having a fine time, aren't you, Senior?" Shirley asked, as Mr.
Dayre came scrambling down from his tree; he had been routed from his
sketching and pressed into service by his indefatigable daughter.

"Scrumptious! Shirley, you've got a fine color--only it's laid on in
spots."

"You're spattery, too," she retorted. "I must go help lay out the
supper now."

"Will anyone want supper, after so many cherries?" Mr. Dayre asked.

"Will they?" Pauline laughed. "Well, you just wait and see."

Some of the boys brought the table from the house, stretching it out to
its uttermost length. The girls laid the cloth, Mrs. Boyd provided,
and unpacked the boxes stacked on the porch. From the kitchen came an
appetizing odor of hot coffee. Hilary and Bell went off after flowers
for the center of the table.

"We'll put one at each place, suggestive of the person--like a place
card," Hilary proposed.

"Here's a daisy for Mrs. Boyd," Bell laughed.

"Let's give that to Mr. Boyd and cut her one of these old-fashioned
spice pinks," Hilary said.

"Better put a bit of pepper-grass for the Imp," Tracy suggested, as the
girls went from place to place up and down the long table.

"Paul's to have a pansy," Hilary insisted. She remembered how, if it
hadn't been for Pauline's "thought" that wet May afternoon, everything
would still be as dull and dreary as it was then.

At her own place she found a spray of belated wild roses, Tom had laid
there, the pink of their petals not more delicate than the soft color
coming and going in the girl's face.

"We've brought for-get-me-not for you, Shirley," Bell said, "so that
you won't forget us when you get back to the city."

"As if I were likely to!" Shirley exclaimed.

"Sound the call to supper, sonny!" Tom told Bob, and Bob, raising the
farm dinner-horn, sounded it with a will, making the girls cover their
ears with their hands and bringing the boys up with a rush.

"It's a beautiful picnic, isn't it?" Patience said, reappearing in time
to slip into place with the rest.

"And after supper, I will read you the club song," Tracy announced.

"Are we to have a club song?" Edna asked.

"We are."

"Read it now, son--while we eat," Tom suggested.

Tracy rose promptly--"Mind you save me a few scraps then. First, it
isn't original--"

"All the better," Jack commented.

"Hush up, and listen--

"'A cheerful world?--It surely is.
And if you understand your biz
You'll taboo the worry worm,
And cultivate the happy germ.

"'It's a habit to be happy,
Just as much as to be scrappy.
So put the frown away awhile,
And try a little sunny smile.'"

There was a generous round of applause. Tracy tossed the scrap of
paper across the table to Bell. "Put it to music, before the next
round-up, if you please."

Bell nodded. "I'll do my best."

"We've got a club song and a club badge, and we ought to have a club
motto," Josie said.

"It's right to your hand, in your song," her brother answered. "'It's
a habit to be happy.'"

"Good!" Pauline seconded him, and the motto was at once adopted.

CHAPTER VIII

SNAP-SHOTS

Bell Ward set the new song to music, a light, catchy tune, easy to pick
up. It took immediately, the boys whistled it, as they came and went,
and the girls hummed it. Patience, with cheerful impartiality, did
both, in season and out of season.

It certainly looked as though it were getting to be a habit to be happy
among a good many persons in Winton that summer. The spirit of the new
club seemed in the very atmosphere.

A rivalry, keen but generous, sprang up between the club members in the
matter of discovering new ways of "Seeing Winton," or, failing that, of
giving a new touch to the old familiar ones.

There were many informal and unexpected outings, besides the club's
regular ones, sometimes amongst all the members, often among two or
three of them.

Frequently, Shirley drove over in the surrey, and she and Pauline and
Hilary, with sometimes one of the other girls, would go for long
rambling drives along the quiet country roads, or out beside the lake.
Shirley generally brought her sketch-book and there were pleasant
stoppings here and there.

And there were few days on which Bedelia and the trap were not out,
Bedelia enjoying the brisk trots about the country quite as much as her
companions.

Hilary soon earned the title of "the kodak fiend," Josie declaring she
took pictures in her sleep, and that "Have me; have my camera," was
Hilary's present motto. Certainly, the camera was in evidence at all
the outings, and so far, Hilary had fewer failures to her account than
most beginners. Her "picture diary" she called the big scrap-book in
which was mounted her record of the summer's doings.

Those doings were proving both numerous and delightful. Mr. Shaw, as
an honorary member, had invited the club to a fishing party, which had
been an immense success. The doctor had followed it by a moonlight
drive along the lake and across on the old sail ferry to the New York
side, keeping strictly within that ten-mile-from-home limit, though
covering considerably more than ten miles in the coming and going.

There had been picnics of every description, to all the points of
interest and charm in and about the village; an old-time supper at the
Wards', at which the club members had appeared in old-fashioned
costumes; a strawberry supper on the church lawn, to which all the
church were invited, and which went off rather better than some of the
sociables had in times past.

As the Winton _Weekly News_ declared proudly, it was the gayest summer
the village had known in years. Mr. Paul Shaw's theory about
developing home resources was proving a sound one in this instance at
least.

Hilary had long since forgotten that she had ever been an invalid, had
indeed, sometimes, to be reminded of that fact. She had quite
discarded the little "company" fiction, except now and then, by way of
a joke. "Who'd want to be company?" she protested. "I'd rather be one
of the family these days."

"That's all very well," Patience retorted, "when you're getting all the
good of being both. You've got the company room." Patience had not
found her summer quite as cloudless as some of her elders; being an
honorary member had not meant _all_ of the fun in her case. She wished
very much that it were possible to grow up in a single night, thus
wiping out forever that drawback of being "a little girl."

Still, on the whole, she managed to get a fair share of the fun going
on and quite agreed with the editor of the _Weekly News_, going so far
as to tell him so when she met him down street. She had a very kindly
feeling in her heart for the pleasant spoken little editor; had he not
given her her full honors every time she had had the joy of being
"among those present"?

There had been three of those checks from Uncle Paul; it was wonderful
how far each had been made to go. It was possible nowadays to send for
a new book, when the reviews were more than especially tempting. There
had also been a tea-table added to the other attractions of the side
porch, not an expensive affair, but the little Japanese cups and
saucers were both pretty and delicate, as was the rest of the service;
while Miranda's cream cookies and sponge cakes were, as Shirley
declared, good enough to be framed. Even the minister appeared now and
then of an afternoon, during tea hour, and the young people, gathered
on the porch, began to find him a very pleasant addition to their
little company, he and they getting acquainted, as they had never
gotten acquainted before.

Sextoness Jane came every week now to help with the ironing, which
meant greater freedom in the matter of wash dresses; and also, to
Sextoness Jane herself, the certainty of a day's outing every week. To
Sextoness Jane, those Tuesdays at the parsonage were little short of a
dissipation. Miranda, unbending in the face of such sincere and humble
admiration, was truly gracious. The glimpses the little bent, old
sextoness got of the young folks, the sense of life going on about her,
were as good as a play, to quote her own simile, confided of an evening
to Tobias, her great black cat, the only other inmate of the old
cottage.

"I reckon Uncle Paul would be rather surprised," Pauline said one
evening, "if he could know all the queer sorts of ways in which we use
his money. But the little easings-up do count for so much."

"Indeed they do," Hilary agreed warmly, "though it hasn't all gone for
easings-ups, as you call them, either." She had sat down right in the
middle of getting ready for bed, to revel in her ribbon box; she so
loved pretty ribbons!

The committee on finances, as Pauline called her mother, Hilary, and
herself, held frequent meetings. "And there's always one thing," the
girl would declare proudly, "the treasury is never entirely empty."

She kept faithful account of all money received and spent; each month a
certain amount was laid away for the "rainy day"--which meant, really,
the time when the checks should cease to come---"for, you know, Uncle
Paul only promised them for the _summer_," Pauline reminded the others,
and herself, rather frequently. Nor was all of the remainder ever
quite used up before the coming of the next check.

"You're quite a business woman, my dear," Mr. Shaw said once, smiling
over the carefully recorded entries in the little account-book she
showed him. "We must have named you rightly."

She wrote regularly to her uncle; her letters unconsciously growing
more friendly and informal from week to week. They were bright, vivid
letters, more so than Pauline had any idea of. Through them, Mr. Paul
Shaw felt himself becoming very well acquainted with these young
relatives whom he had never seen, and in whom, as the weeks went by, he
felt himself growing more and more interested.

Without realizing it, he got into the habit of looking forward to that
weekly letter; the girl wrote a nice clear hand, there didn't seem to
be any nonsense about her, and she had a way of going right to her
point that was most satisfactory. It seemed sometimes as if he could
see the old white parsonage and ivy-covered church; the broad
tree-shaded lawns; the outdoor parlor, with the young people gathered
about the tea-table; Bedelia, picking her way along the quiet country
roads; the great lake in all its moods; the manor house.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9