grows just where the sand creek turns off the road, and you dig a
little grave for Blue Boy, an' bury him right."
They had seldom seen such resentment in their grandmother.
Albert's throat choked up, he rubbed the tears away with his fist.
"Yes'm, Gram'ma, we will, we will," he gulped.
VII
Only Mrs. Harris saw the boys go out next morning. She slipped a
bread-and-butter sandwich into the hand of each, but she said
nothing, and they said nothing.
The boys did not get home until their parents were ready to leave
the table. Mrs. Templeton made no fuss, but told them to sit down
and eat their breakfast. When they had finished, she said
commandingly:
"Now you march into my room." That was where she heard
explanations and administered punishment. When she whipped them,
she did it thoroughly.
She followed them and shut the door.
"Now, what were you boys doing this morning?"
"We went off to bury Blue Boy."
"Why didn't you tell me you were going?"
They looked down at their toes, but said nothing. Their mother
studied their mournful faces, and her overbearing expression
softened.
"The next time you get up and go off anywhere, you come and tell me
beforehand, do you understand?"
"Yes'm."
She opened the door, motioned them out, and went with them into the
parlour. "I'm sorry about your cat, boys," she said. "That's why
I don't like to have cats around; they're always getting sick and
dying. Now run along and play. Maybe you'd like to have a circus
in the back yard this afternoon? And we'll all come."
The twins ran out in a joyful frame of mind. Their grandmother had
been mistaken; their mother wasn't indifferent about Blue Boy, she
was sorry. Now everything was all right, and they could make a
circus ring.
They knew their grandmother got put out about strange things,
anyhow. A few months ago it was because their mother hadn't asked
one of the visiting preachers who came to the church conference to
stay with them. There was no place for the preacher to sleep
except on the folding lounge in the parlour, and no place for him
to wash--he would have been very uncomfortable, and so would all
the household. But Mrs. Harris was terribly upset that there
should be a conference in the town, and they not keeping a
preacher! She was quite bitter about it.
The twins called in the neighbour boys, and they made a ring in the
back yard, around their turning-bar. Their mother came to the show
and paid admission, bringing Mrs. Rosen and Grandma Harris. Mrs.
Rosen thought if all the children in the neighbourhood were to be
howling and running in a circle in the Templetons' back yard, she
might as well be there, too, for she would have no peace at home.
After the dog races and the Indian fight were over, Mrs. Templeton
took Mrs. Rosen into the house to revive her with cake and
lemonade. The parlour was cool and dusky. Mrs. Rosen was glad to
get into it after sitting on a wooden bench in the sun.
Grandmother stayed in the parlour with them, which was unusual.
Mrs. Rosen sat waving a palm-leaf fan,--she felt the heat very
much, because she wore her stays so tight--while Victoria went to
make the lemonade.
"De circuses are not so good, widout Vickie to manage them,
Grandma," she said.
"No'm. The boys complain right smart about losing Vickie from
their plays. She's at her books all the time now. I don't know
what's got into the child."
"If she wants to go to college, she must prepare herself, Grandma.
I am agreeably surprised in her. I didn't think she'd stick to
it."
Mrs. Templeton came in with a tray of tumblers and the glass
pitcher all frosted over. Mrs. Rosen wistfully admired her
neighbour's tall figure and good carriage; she was wearing no
corsets at all today under her flowered organdie afternoon dress,
Mrs. Rosen had noticed, and yet she could carry herself so smooth
and straight,--after having had so many children, too! Mrs. Rosen
was envious, but she gave credit where credit was due.
When Mrs. Templeton brought in the cake, Mrs. Rosen was still
talking to Grandmother about Vickie's studying. Mrs. Templeton
shrugged carelessly.
"There's such a thing as overdoing it, Mrs. Rosen," she observed as
she poured the lemonade. "Vickie's very apt to run to extremes."
"But, my dear lady, she can hardly be too extreme in dis matter.
If she is to take a competitive examination with girls from much
better schools than ours, she will have to do better than the
others, or fail; no two ways about it. We must encourage her."
Mrs. Templeton bridled a little. "I'm sure I don't interfere with
her studying, Mrs. Rosen. I don't see where she got this notion,
but I let her alone."
Mrs. Rosen accepted a second piece of chocolate cake. "And what do
you think about it, Grandma?"
Mrs. Harris smiled politely. "None of our people, or Mr.
Templeton's either, ever went to college. I expect it is all on
account of the young gentleman who was here last summer."
Mrs. Rosen laughed and lifted her eyebrows. "Something very
personal in Vickie's admiration for Professor Chalmers we think,
Grandma? A very sudden interest in de sciences, I should say!"
Mrs. Templeton shrugged. "You're mistaken, Mrs. Rosen. There
ain't a particle of romance in Vickie."
"But there are several kinds of romance, Mrs. Templeton. She may
not have your kind."
"Yes'm, that's so," said Mrs. Harris in a low, grateful voice. She
thought that a hard word Victoria had said of Vickie.
"I didn't see a thing in that Professor Chalmers, myself," Victoria
remarked. "He was a gawky kind of fellow, and never had a thing to
say in company. Did you think he amounted to much?"
"Oh, widout doubt Doctor Chalmers is a very scholarly man. A great
many brilliant scholars are widout de social graces, you know."
When Mrs. Rosen, from a much wider experience, corrected her
neighbour, she did so somewhat playfully, as if insisting upon
something Victoria capriciously chose to ignore.
At this point old Mrs. Harris put her hands on the arms of the
chair in preparation to rise. "If you ladies will excuse me, I
think I will go and lie down a little before supper." She rose and
went heavily out on her felt soles. She never really lay down in
the afternoon, but she dozed in her own black rocker. Mrs. Rosen
and Victoria sat chatting about Professor Chalmers and his boys.
Last summer the young professor had come to Skyline with four of
his students from the University of Michigan, and had stayed three
months, digging for fossils out in the sandhills. Vickie had spent
a great many mornings at their camp. They lived at the town hotel,
and drove out to their camp every day in a light spring-wagon.
Vickie used to wait for them at the edge of the town, in front of
the Roadmaster's house,
and when the spring-wagon came rattling
along, the boys would call: "There's our girl!" slow the horses,
and give her a hand up. They said she was their mascot, and were
very jolly with her. They had a splendid summer,--found a great
bed of fossil elephant bones, where a whole herd must once have
perished. Later on they came upon the bones of a new kind of
elephant, scarcely larger than a pig. They were greatly excited
about their finds, and so was Vickie. That was why they liked her.
It was they who told her about a memorial scholarship at Ann Arbor,
which was open to any girl from Colorado.
VIII
In August Vickie went down to Denver to take her examinations. Mr.
Holliday, the Roadmaster, got her a pass, and arranged that she
should stay with the family of one of his passenger conductors.
For three days she wrote examination papers along with other
contestants, in one of the Denver high schools, proctored by a
teacher. Her father had given her five dollars for incidental
expenses, and she came home with a box of mineral specimens for the
twins, a singing top for Ronald, and a toy burro for Hughie.
Then began days of suspense that stretched into weeks. Vickie went
to the post-office every morning, opened her father's combination
box, and looked over the letters, long before he got down town,--
always hoping there might be a letter from Ann Arbor. The night
mail came in at six, and after supper she hurried to the post-
office and waited about until the shutter at the general-delivery
window was drawn back, a signal that the mail had all been
"distributed." While the tedious process of distribution was going
on, she usually withdrew from the office, full of joking men and
cigar smoke, and walked up and down under the big cottonwood trees
that overhung the side street. When the crowd of men began to come
out, then she knew the mail-bags were empty, and she went in to get
whatever letters were in the Templeton box and take them home.
After two weeks went by, she grew downhearted. Her young
professor, she knew, was in England for his vacation. There would
be no one at the University of Michigan who was interested in her
fate. Perhaps the fortunate contestant had already been notified
of her success. She never asked herself, as she walked up and down
under the cottonwoods on those summer nights, what she would do if
she didn't get the scholarship. There was no alternative. If she
didn't get it, then everything was over.
During the weeks when she lived only to go to the post-office, she
managed to cut her finger and get ink into the cut. As a result,
she had a badly infected hand and had to carry it in a sling. When
she walked her nightly beat under the cottonwoods, it was a kind of
comfort to feel that finger throb; it was companionship, made her
case more complete.
The strange thing was that one morning a letter came, addressed to
Miss Victoria Templeton; in a long envelope such as her father
called "legal size," with "University of Michigan" in the upper
left-hand corner. When Vickie took it from the box, such a wave of
fright and weakness went through her that she could scarcely get
out of the post-office. She hid the letter under her striped
blazer and went a weak, uncertain trail down the sidewalk under the
big trees. Without seeing anything or knowing what road she took,
she got to the Headmaster's green yard and her hammock, where she
always felt not on the earth, yet of it.
Three hours later, when Mrs. Rosen was just tasting one of those
clear soups upon which the Templetons thought she wasted so much
pains and good meat, Vickie walked in at the kitchen door and said
in a low but somewhat unnatural voice:
"Mrs. Rosen, I got the scholarship."
Mrs. Rosen looked up at her sharply, then pushed the soup back to a
cooler part of the stove.
"What is dis you say, Vickie? You have heard from de University?"
"Yes'm. I got the letter this morning." She produced it from
under her blazer.
Mrs. Rosen had been cutting noodles. She took Vickie's face in two
hot, plump hands that were still floury, and looked at her
intently. "Is dat true, Vickie? No mistake? I am delighted--and
surprised! Yes, surprised. Den you will BE something, you won't
just sit on de front porch." She squeezed the girl's round, good-
natured cheeks, as if she could mould them into something definite
then and there. "Now you must stay for lunch and tell us all about
it. Go in and announce yourself to Mr. Rosen."
Mr. Rosen had come home for lunch and was sitting, a book in his
hand, in a corner of the darkened front parlour where a flood of
yellow sun streamed in under the dark green blind. He smiled his
friendly smile at Vickie and waved her to a seat, making her
understand that he wanted to finish his paragraph. The dark
engraving of the pointed cypresses and the Roman tomb was on the
wall just behind him.
Mrs. Rosen came into the back parlour, which was the dining-room,
and began taking things out of the silver-drawer to lay a place for
their visitor. She spoke to her husband rapidly in German.
He put down his book, came over, and took Vickie's hand.
"Is it true, Vickie? Did you really win the scholarship?"
"Yes, sir."
He stood looking down at her through his kind, remote smile,--a
smile in the eyes, that seemed to come up through layers and layers
of something--gentle doubts, kindly reservations.
"Why do you want to go to college, Vickie?" he asked playfully.
"To learn," she said with surprise.
"But why do you want to learn? What do you want to do with it?"
"I don't know. Nothing, I guess."
"Then what do you want it for?"
"I don't know. I just want it."
For some reason Vickie's voice broke there. She had been terribly
strung up all morning, lying in the hammock with her eyes tight
shut. She had not been home at all, she had wanted to take her
letter to the Rosens first. And now one of the gentlest men she
knew made her choke by something strange and presageful in his
voice.
"Then if you want it without any purpose at all, you will not be
disappointed." Mr. Rosen wished to distract her and help her to
keep back the tears. "Listen: a great man once said: 'Le but
n'est rien; le chemin, c'est tout.' That means: The end is
nothing, the road is all. Let me write it down for you and give
you your first French lesson."
He went to the desk with its big silver inkwell, where he and his
wife wrote so many letters in several languages, and inscribed the
sentence on a sheet of purple paper, in his delicately shaded
foreign script, signing under it a name: J. Michelet. He brought
it back and shook it before Vickie's eyes. "There, keep it to
remember me by. Slip it into the envelope with your college
credentials,--that is a good place for it." From his deliberate
smile and the twitch of
one eyebrow, Vickie knew he meant her to
take it along as an antidote, a corrective for whatever colleges
might do to her. But she had always known that Mr. Rosen was wiser
than professors.
Mrs. Rosen was frowning, she thought that sentence a bad precept to
give any Templeton. Moreover, she always promptly called her
husband back to earth when he soared a little; though it was
exactly for this transcendental quality of mind that she reverenced
him in her heart, and thought him so much finer than any of his
successful brothers.
"Luncheon is served," she said in the crisp tone that put people in
their places. "And Miss Vickie, you are to eat your tomatoes with
an oil dressing, as we do. If you are going off into the world, it
is quite time you learn to like things that are everywhere
accepted."
Vickie said: "Yes'm," and slipped into the chair Mr. Rosen had
placed for her. Today she didn't care what she ate, though
ordinarily she thought a French dressing tasted a good deal like
castor oil.
IX
Vickie was to discover that nothing comes easily in this world.
Next day she got a letter from one of the jolly students of
Professor Chalmers's party, who was watching over her case in his
chief's absence. He told her the scholarship meant admission to
the freshman class without further examinations, and two hundred
dollars toward her expenses; she would have to bring along about
three hundred more to put her through the year.
She took this letter to her father's office. Seated in his
revolving desk-chair, Mr. Templeton read it over several times and
looked embarrassed.
"I'm sorry, daughter," he said at last, "but really, just now, I
couldn't spare that much. Not this year. I expect next year will
be better for us."
"But the scholarship is for this year, Father. It wouldn't count
next year. I just have to go in September."
"I really ain't got it, daughter." He spoke, oh so kindly! He had
lovely manners with his daughter and his wife. "It's just all I
can do to keep the store bills paid up. I'm away behind with Mr.
Rosen's bill. Couldn't you study here this winter and get along
about as fast? It isn't that I wouldn't like to let you have the
money if I had it. And with young children, I can't let my life
insurance go."
Vickie didn't say anything more. She took her letter and wandered
down Main Street with it, leaving young Mr. Templeton to a very bad
half-hour.
At dinner Vickie was silent, but everyone could see she had been
crying. Mr. Templeton told Uncle Remus stories to keep up the
family morale and make the giggly twins laugh. Mrs. Templeton
glanced covertly at her daughter from time to time. She was
sometimes a little afraid of Vickie, who seemed to her to have a
hard streak. If it were a love-affair that the girl was crying
about, that would be so much more natural--and more hopeful!
At two o'clock Mrs. Templeton went to the Afternoon Euchre Club,
the twins were to have another ride with the Roadmaster on his
velocipede, the little boys took their nap on their mother's bed.
The house was empty and quiet. Vickie felt an aversion for the
hammock under the cottonwoods where she had been betrayed into such
bright hopes. She lay down on her grandmother's lounge in the
cluttered play-room and turned her face to the wall.
When Mrs. Harris came in for her rest and began to wash her face at
the tin basin, Vickie got up. She wanted to be alone. Mrs. Harris
came over to her while she was still sitting on the edge of the
lounge.
"What's the matter, Vickie child?" She put her hand on her grand-
daughter's shoulder, but Vickie shrank away. Young misery is like
that, sometimes.