Читать книгу The Automobile Girls at Newport: or, Watching the Summer Parade - Crane Laura Dent - Страница 4

Mollie danced into the kitchen, waving the feather duster. “I’m so happy, I can’t keep still!” she declared, waltzing in a circle around her mother and Barbara, who were in the kitchen washing the breakfast dishes.

“It is just as well you don’t have to,” Mrs. Thurston laughed. “But, children, do be sensible a minute,” she urged, as Barbara joined in the dance, still polishing a breakfast tumbler. “I’ve been thinking, that going to Newport, if only to stay a few days, does mean more clothes than automobile coats and motor veils.”

“Now, you are not to worry, mother dearest,” interrupted Barbara, “or we won’t go a single step. Beside, have you forgotten the twenty-dollar gold-pieces? They are a fortune, two fortunes really.” Barbara had been doing some pretty deep thinking herself, on the clothes question, but it would never do to let her thoughts be known. As elder daughter she tried to save her mother from all the worries she could. “While there are no men around in the family, you’ll just have to pretend I’m older son instead of daughter,” she used to say. “When Mollie marries I’ll resign.”

“I’m through dusting,” Mollie called from the dining-room. “This time I am surely going to get paper and pencil to put down what clothes we most need, if Barbara won’t stop any runaway horses while I am away.”

Mollie’s golden head and Barbara’s tawny one bent anxiously over the paper.

“Ruth’s such an impetuous dear! Starting off on our trip Monday does not give us time to get anything new. Mother, will you go in to town shopping for us, and then send the clothes on later? I suppose we shall be on the road some time. Ruth says we are to stop in any of the places we like, and see all the sights along the way,” continued Barbara.

Gloves, ribbons, stockings, hair ribbons, and – oh, dear, yes! A pink sash for Bab and a blue one for Mollie. Forty dollars wasn’t such a fortune after all. Where was the money left over for the party dresses? Both girls looked a little crestfallen, but Barbara shook her head at Mollie as a signal not to say anything aloud.

Mother had come into the open dining-room door and was watching the girls’ faces.

“I’ve a secret,” Mrs. Thurston said, after a minute. “A beautiful secret that I have been keeping to myself for over a year, now. But I think to-day is the best time I can find to tell it.” Mrs. Thurston was fragile and blond, like Mollie, with a delicate color in her cheeks, and the sweetest smile in the world.

“It’s a nice secret, mother, I can tell by your face.” Mollie put her arm around her mother and pulled her down in a chair, while she and Bab sat on either side of her. “Now, out with it!” they both cried.

“Daughters,” Mrs. Thurston lowered her voice and spoke in a whisper, “upstairs, in my room in the back part of my desk is an old bank book. What do you think is pressed between the pages?” She paused a minute, and Mollie gave her arm a little shake. “In that book,” the mother continued, “are two fifty-dollar bills; one is labeled ‘Bab’ and the other is labeled ‘Baby.’” Mrs. Thurston still called her big, fourteen-year-old daughter “baby” when no one was near.

Mollie and Barbara could only stare at each other, and at their mother in surprise.

“Please, and where did they come from?” queried Barbara.

“They came from nickels and dimes, and sometimes pennies,” Mrs. Thurston replied, as pleased and excited as the girls. “Only a week ago, I went to the bank and had the money changed into the two big bills. Oh, I’ve been saving some time. I saw my girls were growing up, and I imagined that, some day, something nice would happen – not just this, perhaps, but something equally exciting. So I wanted to be ready, and I am. I will get the prettiest clothes I can buy for the money, and I’ll have Miss Mattie, the seamstress, in to help me. When you arrive in the fashionable world of Newport, new outfits will be awaiting my two girls.”

Mrs. Thurston’s face was radiant over the joys in store for her daughters, but Barbara’s eyes were full of tears. She knew what pinching and saving, what sacrifices the two banknotes meant.

Soon Bab asked: “You don’t need me any more, do you, mother? Because, if you don’t, I am going up to look in the treasure chest. I want to find something to re-trim Mollie’s hat. The roses are so faded, on the one she is wearing, it will never do to wear with her nice spring suit.”

There was a little attic over the cottage, and it almost belonged to Barbara. Up there she used to study her lessons, write poetry, and dream of the wonderful things she hoped to do in order to make mother and Mollie rich.

Barbara skipped over to the trunk, where they kept odds and ends of faded finery, gifts from rich cousins who sent their cast-off clothes to the little girls. “This is like Pandora’s chest,” laughed Barbara to herself. “It looks as if everything, now, has gone out of it, except Hope.”

Bump! bang! crash! the chandelier shivered over Mrs. Thurston and Mollie’s heads. Both started up with the one word, “Bab,” on their lips. It was impossible to know what she would attempt, or what would happen to her next.

Just as they reached the foot of the attic steps an apologetic head appeared over the railing. “I am not hurt,” Bab’s voice explained. “I just tried to move the old bureau so I could see better, and I knocked over a trunk. I am so sorry, mother, but the trunk has broken open. It is that old one of yours. I know it made an awful racket!”

“It does not matter, child,” Mrs. Thurston said in a relieved tone, when she saw what had actually happened. “Nothing matters, since you have not killed yourself.”

She bent over her trunk. The old lock had been loosened by the fall, and the top had tumbled off. On the floor were a yellow roll of papers, and a quaint carved fan. Mrs. Thurston picked them up. The papers she dropped in the tray of the trunk, but the fan she kept in her hand. “This little fan,” she said, “I used at the last party your father and I attended together the week before we were married. I have kept it a long time, and I think it very beautiful.” She opened, with loving fingers, a fan of delicately-carved ivory, mounted in silver, and hung on a curious silver chain. “Your great-uncle brought it to me from China, when I was just your age, Mollie! It was given him by a viceroy, in recognition of a service rendered. Which of my daughters would like to take this fan to Newport?”

Barbara shook her head, while Mollie looked at it with longing eyes. “I don’t believe either of us had better take it,” protested Bab, “you have kept it so carefully all this time.”

But her mother said decidedly: “I saved it only for you girls. Here, Mollie, suppose you take it; we will find something else for Bab.”

As Mollie and her mother lifted out the tray of the old trunk, Bab’s eyes caught sight of the roll of papers, and she picked them up.

“Hello, hello!” a cheerful voice sounded from downstairs.

“It’s Grace Carter,” said Mollie. “You don’t mind her coming up, do you, mother?”

Grace was almost a third daughter at the little Thurston cottage. Her own home was big and dull! her mother was a stern, cold woman, and her two brothers were much older than Grace.

“No,” said Mrs. Thurston, going on with her search.

“I couldn’t keep away, chilluns,” apologized Grace as she came upstairs. “Mother told me I’d be dreadfully in the way, but I just had to talk about our trip. Isn’t it too splendid! You are not having secrets, are you?”

“Not from you,” Mrs. Thurston said. “See what I have found for Bab.” Mrs. Thurston held out an open jewel-case. In it was a beautiful spray of pink coral, and a round coral pin.

“I think, Bab, dear,” she said, “you are old enough, now, for such simple jewelry. I will buy you a white muslin, and you can wear this pin at your throat and the spray in your hair. Then, with a coral ribbon sash, who knows but you may be one of the belles of a Newport party?”

Barbara flushed with pleasure over the gifts, but she looked so embarrassed at her mother’s compliment that Mollie and Grace both laughed.

“I declare,” Grace said, “you have less vanity than any girl in the world. Oh, wasn’t it fortunate I discovered your money yesterday? Just as we all jumped out of the car I heard something clink, and picked up one of your twenty dollars. Harry Townsend said he found the other tucked away in the leather of the front seat.”

“And I sat in the back seat all the time I was in the car,” reflected Barbara, under her breath.

When a turquoise blue heart on a string of tiny beads had been added to Mollie’s “going-away” treasures, she and Grace went down stairs.

Barbara still held the roll of papers in her hand and kept turning them over and over, trying to read the faded writing. She caught sight of her father’s signature. “Are these papers valuable?” she asked her mother.

Mrs. Thurston sighed deeply as she answered: “They are old papers of your father’s. Put them away again. I never like to look at them. I found them in his business suit after he was dead. He had sent it to the tailor, and had forgotten all about it.” Mrs. Thurston took the papers from Barbara’s hand and put them back into her trunk.

“Do you think they are valuable, mother?” persisted Barbara.

“I don’t think so,” her mother concluded. “Your uncle told me he looked over all your father’s papers that were of any value.”

After the two had mended the lock of the old trunk, and turned to leave the attic, Barbara was still thinking. “Dearest,” she said thoughtfully, “would you mind my going through those papers some time?” To herself Bab added: “I’d like to ask a clever business man, like Mr. Stuart, to explain them to me.”

But Mrs. Thurston sighed as she said: “Oh, yes, you may look them over, some day, if you like. It won’t make any difference.”

What difference it might make neither Mrs. Thurston or Barbara could then know.