Читать книгу Impatient Virgin - Donald Henderson Clarke - Страница 10

Table of Contents

“Well,” Ruth said, “examinations, then class day, and then no more school for another summer.”

Marion West, her roommate, wielding a paddle in the bow of the canoe, said:

“It won’t make me mad. Where you going this summer, Ruth?”

Ruth, in the stern, made a wide circular sweep with her paddle, putting her weight behind the blade, and then repeated the gesture. The canoe, responsive, swung around towards a tiny cove: brown clear water through which white pebbles showed, and grass to the water’s edge.

Elizabeth Hanley, lying on the bottom of the canoe, her back propped against a cushion, put both hands gingerly on the gunwales, as the craft slithered in against the grassy bank.

“I don’t know,” Ruth replied belatedly, “whether I’ll be a cigarette girl in a hotel, a chorus girl, or a private secretary to a millionaire.”

Marion laughed and Elizabeth gasped. “You say the most original things,” Marion gurgled.

“I’ve even thought of being a parlor maid,” Ruth said, as they carefully got out of the tipsy vessel.

“I wish I could be like you, Ruth,” Elizabeth said. “You can do anything you want.”

“I can do anything I want,” Ruth agreed, “as long as Samanthy Jane thinks it’s all right.”

“Oh, there you go with that funny talk,” Marion exclaimed.

“It isn’t funny,” Ruth protested. “It’s darned serious. You see, Elizabeth, my Uncle Ben always told me that he wasn’t my boss, my Aunt Katherine wasn’t my boss, that I wasn’t my boss, but that Samanthy Jane was my boss.”

“Why didn’t he say your conscience, then?” Elizabeth asked. “That’s what he meant.”

“May be he did,” Ruth said, “and may be he didn’t. Anyhow, if Samanthy Jane lets me, I may run away and get married.”

“To Myron Brown? To Harry Tobias?”

Marion and Elizabeth spoke together.

“Isn’t Myron handsome? I love brown eyes on a man.”

“Does it make you passionate to be kissed on the ear?” Elizabeth asked.

“Ooh!” Marion exclaimed, making a face. “The very idea is nasty.”

“Wait till a boy kisses your ear, and then you’ll see,” Elizabeth said. “It sends the shivers all over you, doesn’t it, Ruth?”

“I haven’t done any petting since I came to Sarah Langley,” Ruth said.

“What?” Elizabeth exclaimed.

“I’d like to,” Ruth said, “but I’m afraid of myself.”

“Boys are always trying to paw you,” Marion said. “They make me sick.”

“It would make me sick if they didn’t try,” Ruth observed. “I’d think there was something the matter with me.”

“All they think about is pretty legs—and things,” Elizabeth said.

“I like pretty legs myself,” Ruth said, “but I guess boys wouldn’t think girls’ legs were so attractive if the legs didn’t lead somewhere.”

Elizabeth giggled.

“You say the most awful things, Ruth,” Marion exclaimed.

“Bobby told me I had the most beautiful legs he ever had seen,” said Elizabeth.

Ruth smiled.

“If any boy is making love to you and he says anything different, he doesn’t belong to the union.”

“I’ve been told my legs were the most beautiful,” Marion said. “Freddy Holmes says he doesn’t like pipe stems.” Marion extended an extremely sturdy pair of legs along the grass in front of her, and bent her head first to one side and then to the other, as she looked at them.

“Let’s measure legs,” Elizabeth suggested. “Let’s take all our measurements.”

“Ruth and I did,” Marion said. “Ruth has the best figure in school, anyhow. What’s the use?”

“I have an old-fashioned figure,” Elizabeth said. “I have hips and a bust. I’ll bet I’m more like the Venus de Milo than either of you.”

“I wish I knew something that would cure blackheads,” Marion said. “Freddy Holmes says I have the most beautiful complexion in the world. I’m glad he doesn’t have to see me putting it on.”

“What are you thinking about, Ruth?” Elizabeth asked. “Myron?”

“Or whether you’ll be a parlor maid, or a movie star?” Marion added.

Ruth patted a strand of yellow hair back into place and showed a flash of white teeth in a smile.

“I’m always thinking about what I’m going to do; I have to.”

“Why?” Elizabeth asked.

“Because I’m an adventuress,” Ruth said.

“Isn’t she killing?” Marion cried. “Sometimes I don’t know whether I’m living with a female pirate or what.”

Ruth turned to Elizabeth.

“I’m different from you and Marion. You’re going to Europe this summer, and Marion is going to Bar Harbor. You’ll both come out, and get engaged, and be married, and may be get divorced, and get married again, and neither of you will ever have to worry much about where your next meal is coming from.”

“Oh, Ruth!”

“And I’ve got to get on in the world by myself, and I’m going to. I want success, and I want love, and I want children, and I’ve been trying ever since I can remember to make up my mind how I’m going about getting ’em.”

“Couldn’t your uncle help you—he’s so wonderful,” Marion asked.

“Uncle Ben has been the biggest help in the world, by just telling me about what I really wanted before I understood what he was saying myself. But he can’t help me decide just what I’m going to do.”

“Couldn’t he suggest something?” Elizabeth asked.

Ruth tilted her head back and laughed, showing more white teeth and a healthy pink mouth in the bargain.

“Suggest something? There isn’t anything he hasn’t suggested. And if I said I wanted to go on the stage, he said ‘Great!’ If I said I wanted to go into the movies, he said ‘Bully!’ If I said I wanted to marry a nice man and have children, he said, ‘There’s nothing better in the world than that, Ruthy.’ If I said I wanted to be a secretary, a doctor, a lawyer, a Congresswoman, a trained nurse, or a cook, he always was enthusiastic.”

“Well, if you can do anything you want, why don’t you just go ahead and do it,” Elizabeth asked. “I wish my stepfather was like that.”

“What would you do?” Ruth demanded. “Go ahead. Tell me. What would you do?”

Elizabeth looked at Ruth, and then she looked at Marion.

“Go ahead,” Marion urged. “Tell us what you’d do, Elizabeth.”

Elizabeth opened her mouth, closed it, thought a moment, and then said:

“Well, I’d have to think it over. But the first thing I’d like is to have my freedom, with no one to boss me.”

Marion giggled.

“But you see Ruth has Samanthy Jane to boss her.”

“Uncle Ben wasn’t sending me out without a guardian,” Ruth explained.

“Well, the first thing I’d do would be get rid of Samanthy,” Elizabeth retorted.

“But that would spoil the game,” Ruth said. “Samanthy Jane is my guide. Samanthy is a combination of my father and mother, and my Uncle Ben, a policeman, and myself.”

“She sounds complicated,” Elizabeth said.

“She’s worse than that, if you get to know her,” Marion said. “Samanthy Jane would be glad to have Ruth live with a man before she married him, but she wouldn’t have any use for Ruth if she lived with a man she was married to, if she stopped loving him.”

“Marion has heard quite a bit about Samanthy Jane,” Ruth explained, “but I think myself that the most important thing about her is courage. If I see a man I want, I’ll get him.”

Elizabeth gasped.

“But a lady can’t do that,” she protested.

“Lady, my eye,” Ruth retorted. “I’m no lady: I’m a young female of the species who’s had a bit of polish applied so I can do my stuff.”

“I wish I dared talk like that,” Elizabeth said. “It sounds perfectly zippy.”

“I told Uncle Ben once that I thought I’d like to be a gunman’s moll—it sounded so romantic,” Ruth said.

“I’ll bet he didn’t say ‘Bully’ to that,” Marion exclaimed.

“No,” Ruth admitted. “But he didn’t tell me I couldn’t. He said it was his opinion that a girl should be even more careful in picking out a gunman to be a moll to, than a man to be a wife of.”

“How killing!” Marion cried.

“I’d just love your Uncle Ben,” Elizabeth exclaimed.

“Uncle Ben said that from the trend of the times he couldn’t assure me that some gunman might not be running the country in a few years.”

“How perfectly terrible!” Marion said.

“And he said if he was a girl he was sure he would prefer to be a gunman’s moll to a golf widow, but he figured neither of those females had brains, while I had.

“ ‘My idea would be to hook up with a man who used his head, instead of a gun, to earn a living,’ Uncle Ben said. ‘But you can use your own judgement.’ ”

“You weren’t serious?” Elizabeth charged.

“Oh, I was as serious as I was about anything—I was only about twelve—and I’ll never be so serious again.”

“With your ideas, Ruth, don’t worry, you’ll have plenty of chance to be serious in this life,” Marion said.

Ruth laughed, and arose from the grass.

“Let’s get back,” she said. “I want to write a letter before dinner.”