“Yes,” said Margaret, looking up gravely out of large blue eyes, heavily lashed with black.
“Margaret has braids,” said Betsy, lifting one.
They were short, but that didn’t matter, for they were almost completely concealed by giant hair bows behind each ear, yellow tonight, to match the sailor suit.
“You’re just Hobbie’s age,” said Tib, referring to her brother. She had two brothers, Frederick and Hobson. “You’ll have to come up and play with him.”
“Thank you,” said Margaret politely, but the Rays knew that she was quite unlikely to accept the invitation. Margaret didn’t play very much, even with girls. She liked books, and Washington, her cat, and Abe Lincoln, her dog, and the company of grown-ups, especially a neighbor, Mrs. Wheat. She liked to be with her father and went with him on walks and rambles, always holding his hand and standing very straight as he did. The Persian Princess, her sisters called her.
Blaming the lake air, they emptied a plateful of muffins. It was filled again. For dessert stewed plums were served with Lady Baltimore cake. There were coffee and tea, both iced and hot, and big pitchers of milk.
Betsy stole a look around the crowded, clattering dining room. She was gratified to see that Dave Hunt was looking at her as usual. He looked away when she met his eyes. Lloyd was staring frankly at Tib, and as soon as supper was over he joined them to be introduced. All the boys and girls came except Dave.
Tib was gracious, a trifle flustered. She laughed all the time, a little tinkling laugh which sounded exactly as she looked. Betsy remembered having recommended such a laugh during her visit to Milwaukee.
It was on New Year’s Eve. They had stayed awake all night planning new personalities, and Betsy had resolved to be Dramatic and Mysterious. Tib, they had decided, should be the silly type. She was really practical and exceptionally competent, but Betsy had declared that she must conceal it if she wanted to fascinate boys. Betsy had long since stopped acting Dramatic and Mysterious, but Tib was still acting adorably silly with very good effect.
Lloyd stared at her admiringly behind his glasses. He proposed getting Pete to take them all out in the launch. As they went chug-chugging into the lake, spreading ruffles of foam in the sunset-tinted water, he sat next to Tib.
When they returned he talked with Mrs. Van Blarcum and proudly announced a hop. Betsy was puzzled.
“But I thought there wasn’t going to be one tonight. So many people are making an early start tomorrow.”
“Plans have been changed. Guess why!” said Lloyd.
Tib laughed her little tinkling laugh and Betsy whispered, hugging her, “What you’re going to do to the Deep Valley High School!”
Impromptu though it was, the hop was a success. Mrs. Ray and another mother alternated at the piano. Mrs. Ray knew only two dance tunes, a waltz and a two-step, but she played them over and over, and with such zest that they eclipsed in popularity the more extensive repertoire of the other mother.
Tib flashed from boy to boy. Betsy had plenty of partners, too. Julia danced most of the evening with Roger, looking pensive, presumably because they must now be parted until the University opened its doors.
At last Mrs. Ray played “Good Night Ladies,” Mrs. Van Blarcum served lemonade, and Betsy and Tib could get away.
Tib’s room was on the second floor of the hotel. It was plainly furnished, as all the Inn rooms were, but with a drift of white towels on the wash stand and snowy linen on the bed. It smelled of the lake, and the girls were delighted to find that it had its own small balcony.
“We’ll go out there and talk,” Betsy cried, “as soon as we’re ready for bed.”
They put gaily patterned kimonos over their nightgowns. Tib tied her yellow curls with a ribbon and Betsy wound her hair on Magic Wavers. Then they went stealthily outside, sat down on the floor and looked upward.
Clouds had come into the sky; you could see the stars only through ragged holes. The tops of the apple trees stirred above the small dark cottages. Crickets were singing.
“How did you get along with your new personality after you got home?” Tib asked.
“Well, I took Phil Brandish’s scalp,” answered Betsy. “I got tired, though, of not being myself.”
“I thought you didn’t act very Dramatic and Mysterious tonight.”
“I put it on when I want to. It’s useful to know how. But as a regular thing I prefer to be myself. You were doing a grand job of acting silly, Tib.”
“Yes. I laugh all the time when I’m around boys, just like you told me to.”
“How does it work?”
“Fine. I didn’t know many boys in Milwaukee, but I met some on the train and they seemed perfectly fascinated. It annoys Mamma. She keeps saying that I make such a false impression.”
“Which is just what you’re trying to do!”
They rocked with hushed laughter.
Betsy told Tib about the plans she had made in Babcock’s Bay, how she was going to triumph in school that year and that she expected to go with Joe Willard. Tib listened raptly.
“You’ll like Joe,” Betsy said. “He’s not only the handsomest boy I know, but he has so much character. Just think of him putting himself through school!”
“He sounds wonderful,” said Tib. “I’m sure he’s just the one for you, Betsy. Who shall I go with?”
“We’ll pick out someone grand.”
“It’s going to be fun going to high school.” Tib put her arm around Betsy. “I loved Browner and hated to leave it, but it will be thrilling to be in a school with you and Tacy—and boys.”
The next morning the sky was overcast. Treetops were lost in mist. The chairs lining the Inn porches were too wet to sit down in, although there had been no rain.
The Rays and Tib packed grips and stowed them into the surrey. Good-byes flew over the green lawn, along the narrow porches. Mr. Van Blarcum, looking courtly, and Mrs. Van Blarcum, looking harried, followed them out to the carriage.
Roger looked melancholy. “I’ll meet your train if you’ll let me know when you expect to arrive at Minneapolis,” he said to Julia.
Lloyd smiled at Tib. “We’ve just bought a new auto. How about a ride when I get back to Deep Valley?”
Tib gave an enchanting little giggle. “Maybe. I’m afraid of autos,” said Tib, who was afraid of nothing.
Lloyd gave Betsy only an absent handclasp but she didn’t mind, for from the outskirts of the crowd Dave was looking at her out of his deep-set eyes.
“If I weren’t going to go with Joe this year, I’d try to make that Dave Hunt talk. I really would,” thought Betsy.
3
Introducing the Crowd
THE RAY HOME STOOD AT the corner of High Street and Plum, facing on High which ran horizontally along one of Deep Valley’s many hills. High was a broad leafy street full of comfortable homes. Two blocks from the Rays the red brick high school lifted its turreted roofs, and on top of the Hill stood the German Catholic College, a grey pile with a look of the old world about it. The nuns offered classes in English as well as in German, and Tacy’s sister Katie was enrolled there for the fall term.
The Ray house was painted green, and although obviously new, it had a homelike look. Vines climbed the walls. There were bridal wreath and hydrangea bushes on the lawn, and hanging baskets filled with flowers festooned the small square porch.
This porch didn’t look natural in the summer time without boys and girls perched on the steps and railings. Inside, too, the house seemed most like itself with a gay young crowd around. The piano, the center of everything, stood in a square entrance hall from which the golden oak staircase ascended. Julia always called this hall the music room.
The day the family returned from the lake Betsy’s Crowd arrived in force. Tony Markham lounged in first. He tried to act nonchalant about their return but the affection he felt for them all shone in his big black eyes. He sat down on the couch and Betsy and Julia sat on either side of him, with Margaret cross
-legged on the floor in front.
“Hi!” he called to Mrs. Ray. “Call off your daughters, can’t you?”
“But we’re glad to see you, Tony,” the girls protested.
“Heck, I’ll bet you never thought of me all summer!”
He gave Margaret a souvenir he had brought back for her from his own vacation to Chicago, a metal teddy bear holding a red pin cushion in its arms.
“I’ll keep it on my bureau,” Margaret said, her small face crinkling in delight. Tony was her special favorite.
He strolled out to the kitchen to see Anna, who turned from the oven, smiling. She wore a clean coverall apron; her hair was twisted into a tight knot above her broad face. She too had been away on a vacation, to the Twin Cities.
“I saw your Charlie. He looked lonesome,” Tony said.
“Ja, he was lonesome. He wants me to get married, Charlie does.”
“Oh, Anna!” cried Betsy. “Are you going to?”
“Na, I’m not much on the marrying. Mrs. McCloskey used to say to me, ‘Anna, why don’t you marry Charlie? He’s got such a good job as barkeep down at the Corner Café. He’d be a good provider.’; But I’d say, ‘Na, Mrs. McCloskey, I’d rather cook for you.’”
“And now you’d rather cook for us, wouldn’t you, Anna?” asked Betsy, squeezing her arm. “Aren’t we nicer than the McCloskeys?”
“Don’t bother me now,” said Anna, who wouldn’t be disloyal either to the Rays or to the distant, perhaps fictional McCloskeys. “Go away and I’ll have hot cookies for you in a minute.”
Before the cookies were ready more visitors had come—Tom Slade, who hadn’t yet left for the military school which he attended; Dennis Farisy, who had curly hair and a dimple in his chin; Cab Edwards, his boon companion. Cab lived just behind the Rays, a spruce smiling boy with shiny black hair. His father owned a furniture store, in which Cab had been working during vacation.
Tacy only telephoned from Tib’s house but Alice Morrison, Winona Root and Irma Biscay came together. Irma had large soft eyes and a rounded figure, and although she made no effort, seemingly, to attract boys, she drew them as clover does bees. Other girls might lack a beau for long periods or short, but never, never Irma.
Winona was tall and dashing. There was an irrepressible gleam in her eyes, mischief in the white flash of her smile. Alice, as blonde as Winona was dark, was more sedate. She had to be; her parents were strict.
“Kids! Kids!” Carney Sibley rushed in, showing her dimple. She had a dimple in her left cheek only and the effect was piquant. Carney wore glasses but her prettiness triumphed over glasses. She was a senior, a frank, forthright girl, enormously popular with both boys and girls.
“What is it? What’s the matter?” The Crowd started up.
“Come on out and look! Papa’s bought an automobile!”
They rushed out the front door and a Buick was, indeed, standing at the hitching post where Phil Brandish’s machine was wont to stand last year. Mr. Sibley, smiling broadly, sat behind the wheel.
Mr. Ray and Margaret hurried out, too.
“Where’s Dandy?” Margaret wanted to know. Dandy was the Sibley’s horse.
“He’s gone to the country to live with my uncle,” Carney said. She glanced slyly at her father. “We can’t forget him though. Papa says ‘Giddap!’ when he wants the auto to go faster and ‘Whoa!’ when he wants it to stop.”
Margaret slipped her hand into her father’s, and Betsy knew she felt lonesome for Dandy. Her own heart yearned briefly toward the old bay horse who had driven the Crowd all over the county on endless high jinks. But the new automobile with its brass lamps, the high seats padded and upholstered in leather, was fetching indeed.
“I’m going to learn to drive it and then I’ll take you all out riding,” Carney said.
Her father drove away, but Carney remained to eat cookies and hear about Tib. Betsy had told the great news that Tib was back for keeps in Deep Valley. Alice, Winona and Tom remembered her. The others knew her only from Betsy’s rhapsodic descriptions.
“Is she really as nifty as you say?” demanded Cab.
“Niftier,” Betsy declared. “She came out to the lake with Papa last night, and you should have seen her bowl Lloyd Harrington over.”
“When is Lord Byron Edwards going to meet her?”
“What about Casanova Farisy?”
“Neither of you has a chance,” drawled Tony, sticking his thumbs in his vest. “Get out of the way, boys!”
Irma’s laughter was appreciative of this wit.
“Maybe she’ll come to my party. It’s for girls only, though. I’m giving a party for Phyllis Brandish, Betsy.” Irma had gone out with Phil frequently since he and Betsy had quarreled the previous spring.
“Do you know, Betsy,” Winona asked, “that Phyllis is coming here to school?”
“How nice! Maybe she’ll go with our Crowd.” But Betsy said that only to sound casual. Personally, she thought Phyllis Brandish was too worldly for their Crowd. She didn’t really like Phil’s sister.
Julia came in just then and sat down at the piano. She began to play, and the Crowd, as though at a signal, hooked arms and formed a semicircle behind her. There were some good voices, Tony’s deep bass, Dennie’s tenor, Betsy’s soft alto, Irma’s sweet soprano. They missed Tacy, whose voice had a vibrant heart-stirring quality. Tacy had temperament, Julia always said.
“School days, school days,
Dear old golden rule days….”
They sang ardently, and
“San Antoni…Antonio,
She hopped upon a pony,
And ran away with Tony….”
Tony seized Betsy and galloped madly around the music room to show how it was done.
It was a typical gathering of the Crowd, but there wasn’t another for several days. Until school began Betsy spent every waking moment at the Mullers’.
They had moved back into their chocolate-colored house, near Tacy’s in the Hill Street neighborhood. It was large, with a tower in one corner and a pane of colored glass over the front door. In their childhood Betsy and Tacy had thought it the most beautiful house in the world.
It gave Betsy a queer feeling, such as you get from hearing a strain of old music or from smelling a perfume associated with bygone days to see the blue velvet furniture back in the Mullers’ round front parlor, to smell coffee cake baking in Matilda’s shining kitchen, and to watch Mr. Muller sipping beer.
Tacy, too, was happy and excited over Tib’s return. She was a tall girl who wore her auburn hair in coronet braids. There was a peachy bloom on her cheeks; her Irish blue eyes looked both laughing and afraid. Tacy had been shy as a child and she was still diffident with teachers, some parents, most boys. But with Betsy and Tib she bubbled over with fun.
“I didn’t laugh so much all the time I was in Milwaukee,” said Tib, the day the three of them took a picnic up on the Big Hill.
They built a fire and made cocoa, smoky but delicious. Looking down the long slope, pied with goldenrod, asters and sumac, they told stories of their childhood, recalling how they had splashed themselves with mud and gone begging and how Tib had offered to marry the King of Spain. They planned triumphs for Tib in high school, paired her off hilariously with this boy and that one. Betsy repeated all the comments she had heard about Tib’s coming.
“Heavens, Betsy!” cried Tib. “What have you been saying about me? I can never live up to it all.”
“You can.” Betsy was serenely sure.
“They’ll be expecting a Billie Burke.”
“You’re prettier than Billie Burke.”
“I admit I’m kind of cute,” said Tib, prancing about. “I can fasten my father’s collar around my waist.”
“Tib! Not really!”
“Yes, I can. Of course,” she added with characteristic honesty, “my father has a very thick neck. And I have a dark secret, a skeleton in my closet.”
“What is it? What?”
“Gott sei Dan
k, skirts are long.”
Betsy reached back to her Milwaukee visit for a shred of German. “Was ist los? Was ist los?”
“Erin go braugh!” shouted Tacy. “If you two are going to throw foreign phrases around, so will I. What is your dark secret?”
“Look!” Tib lifted her skirts dramatically, halfway to her knees. “I’m bowlegged! My dancing teacher broke the news to me. She doesn’t think I can be another Adeline Genée.”
“Do you mind awfully? About your dancing, I mean,” Betsy asked.
“No. If I can’t be a dancer, I’ll be an actress.”
Tacy was consoling.
“Well, the Deep Valley High School will never find out about your shame. Skirts are getting longer.”
“And tighter,” added Tib.
She began to tell them about the new styles, the long tight sleeves, the high directoire waistlines, the princesse dresses, the enormous hats. After the picnic they trooped down to her house and inspected her clothes.
She was very fond of purple in all shades. There were touches of purple, lavender and lilac on almost all the dresses which hung neatly on hangers in her closet, smelling of lavender water.
Tib now wore a pompadour like Betsy’s. They tried to tease Tacy into wearing one.
“No,” said Tacy. “I want to go down in history as the only female of my generation who didn’t wear a pompadour.”
“But Tacy, you’ll be a junior this year! An upper classman, just think!”
“I’ll be an upper classman in coronet braids.”
“Next Tuesday,” said Tib, with a long expectant sigh, “is the first day of school.”
On the first day of school, according to custom, Anna made muffins for breakfast. Betsy had a new sailor suit, navy trimmed with red and white, and Margaret had a brown one with brown and white checked ribbons. Nevertheless, it didn’t seem like the first day of school.
In the first place, Julia wasn’t going back. She didn’t even get up for breakfast. By special permission from her father, who usually liked the family all present at meals, Julia celebrated her independence by sleeping through the breakfast gong.