They escorted Billy home. It was rather a silent walk until the end. Loraine spoke first.
"One less in the B-Hive," she said sadly.
"Yes, I suppose I'm dropped now," responded Billy, not uncheerfully. "Of course I've got to take the consequences of my—my crime. But I don't care!" she added with vivacity. "I'd rather live alone in a ten-story house than have missed that Exhibition!"
"Yes," mused Laura Ann thoughtfully, "it was a beautiful one. I'm glad I didn't miss it. When I think of what it stood for—"
She broke off suddenly and slipped her hand into Billy's arm. Another short silence. Then Laura Ann finished: "All the work and patience it stood for, day after day—girls, when I think of that I feel—"
"I know—all of us know," T.O. hastily interposed. "That's about the way we all feel, I guess. No use talking about it, though. Billy's broken the Compact and we're under oath to drop her."
"Not till we go back to work," Loraine put in emphatically, "and then she can live next door and come in every night to tea! There's nothing in the Compact against that, is there? Well, then, I invite you, Billy, for the very first tea!"
"I accept!" laughed Billy. She did not seem at all depressed. In her ears rang the pounding refrain of Old '61 marching through Georgia.
Nothing more was said on this subject. A little picnic had been planned for the afternoon, and they went briskly about making preparations for it, as soon as they got back to Mrs. Camp's little green house. While they worked they discussed Amelia.
"If she hadn't gone with her mother we'd have taken her to the picnic with us," the Talented One said, over her egg-beating. "I wonder if Amelia likes picnics?"
"Don't! You make me feel creepy," Laura Ann laughed. "What I wonder is how she'd have looked if she'd ever been born. I lay awake one night trying to imagine Amelia."
"Blue eyes and golden hair," Loraine chimed in dreamily, "and a little dimple in her chin."
"You needn't any of you lie awake nights imagining. I can tell you," the Talented One said. "She has blue eyes, but her hair is brown and the dimples are in her cheeks. Her hair just waves a little away from the parting—it is always parted. She sits very still, sewing patchwork—her mother told me," added the Talented One quietly. "She said she wished she knew how to paint so she could paint Amelia's picture. She told me where she'd like to have it hung—here in the dining-room, between the windows. Amelia'd always been very real, she said, but the picture would make her realer."
"Did she ever say what kind of dresses Amelia wears?" asked Laura Ann without looking up from her stirring.
"No, I never asked, but they must be white dresses, I think,—Amelia is such an innocent little thing," laughed T.O. softly. It was odd how they always laughed or talked softly when it was about little make-believe Amelia.
The picnic was in the woods, in a lovely little spot Loraine had discovered in her wanderings. A brook babbled noisily through the spot. They spread their lunch at the foot of a forest giant and ate it luxuriously to the tune the brook sang. It was hard to believe they had ever been toilers in a great city.
"There never were any public schools," murmured Loraine, lying back and gazing into the thick mesh of leaves overhead. "Nobody ever said 'Teacher! Teacher!' to me."
"There never were any negatives to be 'touched up'—nobody ever had their pictures taken," Laura Ann murmured, dreamy, too. "I've always been here beside this brook, lying on my back—what a beautiful world it's always been!"
The Talented One sat rigidly straight. "There have always been handkerchiefs," she sighed, "and there always will be. I shall have to go back there and sell them. When I look at all these leaves, it reminds me—there are leaves on handkerchiefs, straggling round the borders—ugh!"
It was foolish talk, perhaps, but it was the place and the time for foolish talk. After a little more of it they drifted apart, wandering this way and that in a delightful, aimless way. So little of their four lives had been aimless or especially delightful that they reveled in the sweet opportunity. Loraine wandered farthest. She came after awhile to a clearing where a small pond glimmered redly with the parting rays of the sun. A great boy lounged beside the pond dangling a pole. Loraine recognized him as Jane Cotton's Sam.
"Oh!" she said, "now I've made a noise and scared away your fish!"
"Ain't any fish," muttered the boy. He did not turn around. The pole slanted further and further, till it lay on the bank beside the boy.
"Oh, maybe there are, if you wait long enough—and nobody comes crashing through the bushes! I don't suppose—I mean if you are not going to use it any more yourself—" Loraine looked toward the idle pole. "I never fished in my life," she explained. The boy understood with remarkable quickness.
"You mean you'd like to try it?" he asked, and this time turned round. It was not at all a bad face on close inspection, Loraine decided. The veil of sullenness had lifted a little.
"Oh, but I just would! Only if I should have an accident and catch anything, whatever would I do! They—they are always cold and clammy, aren't they?"
Jane Cotton's Sam laughed outright, and Loraine decided that it was a very good face.
"I'll 'tend to all you catch," the boy said. He was busily baiting the hook; now he extended the pole to her.
"Wiggle it—up and down a little, like this," he directed, "and don't make any more noise than you can help. If you feel a bite, let me know."
"But I don't see how I can feel a bite unless they bite me—"
Again the boy laughed wholesomely. They were getting acquainted. The fishing began, and for what seemed to her a long time Loraine sat absolutely still, dangling the pole. Nothing happened for a discouraging while. Then Loraine whispered: "I feel a bite, but it's on my wrist! If it's a mosquito I wish you would 'shoo' it off."
Another wait. Then a real bite in the right place. In another moment Loraine landed a wriggling little fish in the grass. She did not squeal nor shudder, but sat regarding it with gentle pride.
"Poor little thing! I suppose I ought to put you back, but you're my first and only fish, and I've got to carry you home for the girls to see. You'll have to forgive me this time!" She turned to the boy. "I suppose he ought to be dressed, or undressed, or something, before he's fried, oughtn't he? I thought I'd like to fry him for breakfast, to surprise the girls—"
"I'll dress him for you," Jane Cotton's Sam said eagerly, "and bring him over in the morning in plenty o' time."
"Thank you," Loraine said heartily. "Now you'll have to let me do something for you. 'Turn about is fair play.' Couldn't I—" She hesitated, looking out over the still reddened water rather than at the boy's face. "Couldn't I help you in some way with your studies? That's my business, you know. It would really be doing me a kindness, for I may get all out of practice unless I teach somebody something!" Had Loraine, too, forgotten the Compact on the screen door?
The boy fidgeted, then burst out angrily: "I s'pose they've all been telling you I failed up in my exams? They have, haven't they? You knew it, didn't you?"
"Yes," Loraine answered quietly. "But I've heard a good many worse things in my life. I've heard of boys that smoked and drank and—and stole. What does missing a few examinations amount to beside things like those?" But the boy did not seem to have been listening to anything except his own angry thoughts. All his sun-browned young face was flooded with red; he had run his fingers through his hair till it stood up fiercely.
"They needn't trouble themselves 'bout me, nor you needn't, nor anybody needn't!" he declaimed loudly. "Anybody'd think they were saints themselves!"
"And I was a saint and everybody was saints!" laughed Loraine softly. But Jane Cotton's Sam did not laugh. He went striding away into the woods, his head flung up high. Loraine and the little dead fish were left behind. Oddly the girl was not thinking of the boy's rudeness in return for her kind offer of help, but of the flash of spirit in his eyes. It augured well for him, she was thinking, for spirit was spirit, although "gone wrong." In the right place, it should spur him on to a second attempt to get into college. What if she were to persist in her offer—were to work with him, urge him to work with her?
But he had chosen to spurn her advances. She shook her head sadly. On his own head be it. She turned her attention to the little dead fish.
"You poor dear, you look so dead and forlorn—what am I going to do with you? Someway you've got to go home with me and be fried." She took him up gingerly, but dropped him again—he was so slippery and damp! Wrap him in her handkerchief? But she had no pocket and she could never, never carry him in her sleeve which she had adopted as a pocket. So then she must leave him, must she? Poor little useless sacrifice!
Back at the picnic spot the girls were waiting for her. They went home in the late, sweet twilight.
A letter was tucked under the screen door where some friendly neighbor had left it. "Miss Thomasia O. Brown," Billy read aloud, and waved the letter in triumph, for the secret was out. The 'T' in T.O. stood for Thomasia!
"Well?" bristled the Talented One, "it had to stand for something, didn't it? It's awful, I know, but I'm not to blame—I didn't name myself, did I? I wish people could," she added with a sigh.
"Is it for a Thomas?" questioned Laura Ann curiously.
Thomasia nodded: "There was always a Thomas in the family until they got to me. They did the best they could to make me one." She was opening the letter with careful precision. "Why, of course, it's from Mrs. Camp!" she cried delightedly.
"My dear, I hope you are well and your friends have come, and Jane Cotton's Sam has not forgotten to paint the pump. I arrived here safely after a very long journey—my dear, I never dreamed the world was so big! This part of it is well enough, but give me Placid Pond! Now I am going to tell you something, and you may laugh all you're a mind to—I sha'n't hear! What I'm going to tell is, Amelia came, too. After I'd got good and settled down on the cars I looked up and knew she was sitting right opposite, on the seat I'd turned over. She seemed there—and you may laugh, my dear. I laughed, I was so pleased to have Amelia along. John doesn't know she came—Amelia never makes a mite of trouble! But everywhere I go she goes, my dear. I shouldn't tell you if I didn't feel you'd understand. If he hasn't painted it yet, the blue paint is on a shelf in the woodhouse, and you can paint it. I'm afraid Jane Cotton's Sam won't ever amount to much. Poor Jane!"
Thomasia read the letter aloud, and at this point Loraine interposed warmly: "Jane Cotton's Sam is abused! It's a shame everybody groans over him—I like him. If there isn't a lot of good in him, then I don't know how to read human nature, that's all."
The next morning very early someone knocked at the kitchen door. It was Laura Ann's turn to make the fire, and she answered the knock. Jane Cotton's Sam stood on the steps outside. He had a mysterious little package in his hand. He looked up eagerly, but it was evident from the disappointed look on his face that Laura Ann was the wrong girl. And he did not know the right one's name!
"Good-morning!" nodded Laura Ann, sublimely unconscious of the soot-patch over her nose.
"Good-morning. I'd like to see—I've brought something for the one that teaches school."
"Loraine? But she isn't up yet—"
"Yes, I am up, too," called a voice overhead, "but I won't be long! I'll be down."
It was a little fish, dressed and ready to fry, that was in the tiny bundle. The boy extended it blushingly. Then his eyes lifted to Loraine's in frank petition for pardon.
"I was mighty rude," he said. "I went back to the pond to say so, but you were gone. I beg your pardon."
She liked the tone of his voice and his good red blushes. "That's all right," she nodded reassuringly. But he did not go away. There was something else.
"If—you know what you said? If you'd offer again—"
Loraine glanced over her shoulder. Laura Ann was rattling stove-lids at the other end of the kitchen. "I offer now," Loraine said in a low voice.
"Then I accept." The boy's voice was eager. "I'll study like everything! I thought about it in the night—I thought I'd like to surprise my mother. If I could get into college next year—" His eyes shone. "Oh I say, I'd do 'most anything for that!"
The little plan was hurriedly made, in low tones, there on Emmeline Camp's little doorsteps. The boy was to take his books to the pond where Loraine had caught her fish. He was to study there alone for a time every day, and in the afternoon she was to stroll that way and go over the work with him and set him right in all the wrong places.
"It was in Latin and mathematics I failed up," Jane Cotton's Sam explained.
"It's Latin and mathematics we'll tackle!" softly laughed Loraine. "You wait—you see—you grind!"
He strode away, whistling, and the tune was full of courage and determination. Loraine smiled as she listened. She stood a moment, then opened the screen door and went in. The "Compact" swung and tilted with the jolt of her energetic movements. She adjusted it with a queer little smile.
For summer days on summer days the covert, earnest lessons went on beside the bit of sunny water. Teacher and pupil pored intently over the problems and difficult passages, and steadily the pupil's courage grew. The old sullen look had vanished—Jane Cotton's Sam put on manliness and a splendid swing to his shoulders. In her heart Loraine exulted. What if she were disobeying the Compact—death to the Wicked Compact!
Laura Ann suspected, but for reasons of her own kept her own counsel. She had begun to suspect, when Jane Cotton's Sam brought the little fish. At that time the "reasons of her own" had begun to influence her and she had omitted to mention to Billy and T.O. that the boy had stood on the doorsteps in earnest conversation with Loraine. Mentioning it to Billy might not, indeed, have mattered, since Billy was already an "outsider." But Loraine might not want T.O. to know, anyway.
It was significant that Laura Ann, in going in and out, now chose to ignore the gayly-illuminated placard that swung on the door—that she herself had adorned and hung there. But she did not go in and out as much now; for whole mornings she slipped away to a little attic room upstairs and busied herself alone.
It was getting grievously near the time to go back to the great city again. Emmeline Camp was coming back then.
All but T.O. mourned audibly the rapidly lessening days, but T.O. made no useless laments. One day she surprised them.
"Girls, I want to go back!" she announced. "I shall be ready when it's time—now anybody can say what anybody pleases. Scoff at me—do. I expect it! But I'm getting homesick to see a street-car and a—a policeman! It's lovely and peaceful here, but I've had my fill of it now—I want to go home and bump into crowds and hear big, stirry noises. It's different with you girls—you weren't born in the city; you didn't play with street-cars and policemen and get sung to sleep by the noises! I was tired—tired—and now I'm rested. I've had a perfectly beautiful time, but I shall be ready to go back. Honestly, girls, it would break my heart not to!"
It was so much like T.O., Billy said, to keep all her feelings to herself and then suddenly spring them on people like that, and take people's breath away. Billy did not keep things to herself.
Jane Cotton came up the kitchen path one day when all but Loraine were sitting on the doorsteps—Loraine had strolled nonchalantly down the street as her afternoon habit was.
"Well, I've found out!" announced Jane Cotton. She was beaming; her sallow face was oddly cleared and lighted—her lips trembled with eagerness to deliver her news. "I've found out! Where's the rest o' you?" She counted them over. "It's the rest o' you I want—well, you tell her I've found out. Tell her I hardly slept a wink last night, I was so happy! Tell her I bless her, and I know the Lord will. They didn't want me to know yet but I couldn't help finding out. And they won't mind when they know how happy it's made me—oh, I ain't afraid but he'll pass this time! I know he will—I know it! You tell her she's saved my boy." And without further delay the slender figure turned and walked jubilantly down the path. It was as if she marched to the melody of the joy in her heart.
They looked at each other silently, then at the Wicked Compact behind them. There did not seem any explanation needed.
"Another one dropped," murmured T.O. sighingly. But Laura Ann said nothing.
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