"Mercy, no! "
exclaimed Juliet. "That's for Gabrielle Melville. It would never do for
you two to miss each other to-night. I put them down for her, as she's
to play later in the evening on the violin, you know, and I knew she'd
never get here in time to do it herself. She always has such frantic
times dressing. Just struggles into her things, never can find half her
clothes, and what she does manage to fall into catches and rips in the
struggle. Her hat is always over one ear, and her belts never make
connection in the back, but she's so adorable that nobody minds her wild
toilets. They laugh and say, 'Oh, it's just Gay.' That's her nickname,
you know. Here's Emily Chapman coming to claim, you. Emily, you can tell
Lloyd some things about Gay, can't you?"
"I rather think so,"
laughed Emily. "We roomed together last year, and I got her again this
term. It took a fight, though, for she's the most popular girl in
school."
"Is she pretty?"
asked Lloyd.
"We think so, don't
we, Juliet? If she had any enemies, they might say that she has red hair
and a pug nose. But that would be exaggerating. Her hair is that
beautiful bronzy auburn that crinkles around her face and blows in her
eyes till she always seems to be bringing a breeze with her."
"And her nose isn't
pug exactly," chimed in Juliet. "There's just a darling, saucy little
tip to it, that seems to suit her. She wouldn't be half as pretty with
the approved Gibson girl kind, no matter how perfect it was."
"And her complexion
is so lovely," Emily resumed, enthusiastically. "And her eyes are a
jolly, laughing kind of brown, with an amber sparkle in them, except
when she gets into one of her intense, serious moods. Then they are
almost black, they're so deep and velvety. She's never twice in the same
mood. Oh! There she comes now."
A side door opened,
and a slim little thing all in white, with a violin under her arm and a
distracted pucker on her face, hurried up to the piano. Nervously
feeling her belt to make sure that she was presentable before turning
her back on the audience, she whispered to the girl who was to play her
accompaniments, and began tuning the violin. Then, tucking it under her
chin as if she loved it, she listened an instant to the piano prelude,
and drew her bow softly across the strings.
"Good!" whispered
Emily. "It's that Mexican swallow song. She always has such a rapt
expression on her face when she plays that. She makes me think of St.
Cecilia. She's so earnest in all she does. If it's no more than making
fudge, she throws her whole soul into it, just that way. She's as
intense as if the fate of a nation depended on whatever she happens to
be doing."
…
"Doesn't Gay play splendidly?" she exclaimed, not knowing that she had
been the previous topic of conversation. "We think she's a genius. She
improvises little things sometimes in the twilight that are so sweet and
sad they make you cry. Then she's unconventional enough to be a genius.
She's always shocking people without meaning to, and so careless, she'd
lose her head if nature hadn't attended to the fastenings.
"We all love her
dearly, but we vowed the last time we went sightseeing that she should
never go with us again unless she let us tie her up in a bag, so that
nothing could drop out by the way. First she lost her hat. It blew off
the trolley-car, one of those 'seeing Washington' affairs, you know.
She had to go bareheaded all the rest of the way. Then she lost her
pocketbook, and such a time as we had hunting that. The time before, she
lost a locket that had been a family heirloom, and we missed our train
and got caught in a shower looking for it."
"Where does she
live?" asked Lloyd, watching the bright face that was making its way
toward them across the crowded room.
"At Fort Sam
Houston, down in San Antonio. Her father is an army officer at that
post."
There was no time
for further discussion, for Gabrielle was coming toward her with
outstretched hand.
"This is Juliet's
Princess, isn't it?" she asked, with a smile that captivated Lloyd at
once, flashing over the whitest of little teeth. "You're getting all
sorts of titles to-night. I heard a girl speak of you as a mermaid in
that pale sea-green gown and corals, but I've come over here on purpose
to call you the 'Little Colonel.' You don't know how much good it does
me to hear a military title once more. Out at the fort it's all majors
and captains and such things."
Then, dropping her
grown-up society manner, she suddenly giggled, turning to include Emily
in the conversation.
"Oh, girls, I had
the worst time getting dressed this evening that I ever had in my life.
When I unpacked my trunk yesterday, everything was so wrinkled that
there was only one dress I could wear without having it pressed; this
white one. So I laid it out, but, when I went to put it on to-night, I
found that mamma had made a mistake in packing, and put in Lucy's skirt
instead. Lucy is my older sister," she explained to Lloyd. "We each had
a dotted Swiss this summer, made exactly alike, but Lucy is so much
taller than I that her skirts trail on me. Just look how imposing!"
She swept across the
floor and back to show the effect of her trail.
"Of course there was
nothing to do at that late hour but pin it up in front and go ahead. I'm
afraid every minute that I'll trip and fall all over myself, but I do
feel so dignified when I feel my train sweeping along behind me. The
pins keep falling out all around the belt, and I can't help stepping on
the hem in front. I love trains," she added, switching hers forward with
a grand air that was so childlike in its enjoyment that Lloyd felt
impelled to hug her. "It gives you such a dressed-up, peacocky feeling."
Then she looked up
in her most soulful, intense way, as if she were asking for important
information. "Do you know whether it's true or not? Does a peacock stop
strutting if it happens to see its feet? My old nurse told me that, and
said that it shows that pride always goes before a fall. I never was
where they kept peacocks before I came to Warwick Hall, and I've spent
hours watching Madam's to see if it is true. But they are always so busy
strutting, I've never been able to catch them looking at their feet."
She glanced at her
own feet as she spoke, then gasped and, covering her face with her
hands, sank limply into a chair in the corner behind her.
"What's the matter?"
cried Juliet, alarmed by the sudden change.
"Look! Oh, just
look!" was the hysterical answer, as she thrust out both feet, and
sat pointing at them tragically, with fingers and thumbs of both hands
outspread.
"No wonder they felt
queer. I was so intent on getting my dress pinned up, and in rushing out
in time to play, that I couldn't take time to analyze my feelings and
discover the cause of the queerness. Madeline blew in at a
critical point to borrow a pin, and that threw me off, I suppose."
From under the white
skirt protruded two feet as unlike as could well be imagined. One was
cased in dainty white kid, the other in an old red felt bedroom slipper,
edged with black fur.
"And it would have
been all the same," sighed Gay, "if I had been going to an inaugural
ball to hobnob with crowned heads. And I had hoped to make such a
fine impression on the Little Colonel," she added, in a plaintive tone,
with a childlike lifting of the face that Lloyd thought most charming.
If the mistake had
been made by any other girl in the school, it would not have seemed half
so ridiculous, but whatever Gay did was irresistibly funny. A laughing
crowd gathered around her, as she sat with the red slipper and the white
one stretched stiffly out in front of her, bewailing her fate.
"Anyhow," she
remarked, "I'll always have the satisfaction of knowing that I put my
best foot foremost, and if they had been alike I couldn't have done
that. Now could I?" And the girls laughed again, because it was Gay who
said it in her own inimitable way, and because the old felt slipper
looked so ridiculous thrust out from under the dainty white gown. As
others came crowding up to see what was causing so much merriment in
that particular corner, Gay attempted to slip out and go to her room to
correct her mistake. But Sybil Green, pushing through the outer ring,
came up with Allison and Kitty.
"Gay," she began,
"here are the girls that you especially wanted to meet: General Walton's
daughters."
Gay's face flushed
with pleasure, and, forgetting her errand, she impulsively stretched out
a hand to each, and held them while she talked.
"Oh, I'm so glad to
meet you!" she cried. "I wish that I had known that you girls were here
yesterday before papa left. He is Major Melville, and he was such a
friend of your father's. He was on that long Indian campaign with him in
Arizona, and I've heard him talk of him by the hour. And last week" ---
here she lowered her voice so that only Allison and Kitty heard, and
were thrilled by the sweet seriousness of it. "Last week he took me out
to Arlington to carry a great wreath of laurel. When he'd laid it on the
grave, he stood there with bared head, looking all around, and I heard
him say, in a whisper, ` No one in all Arlington has won his laurels
more bravely than you, my captain.' You see it was as a captain
that papa knew him best. He would have been so pleased to have seen you
girls."
Kitty squeezed the
hand that still held hers and answered, warmly: "Oh, you dear, I hope
we'll be as good friends as our fathers were!" And Allison answered,
winking back the tears that had sprung to her eyes: "Thank you for
telling us about the laurel. Mother will appreciate it so much."
According to both the 1900 and 1920 U.S. Census, the McAfee family
lived on what is now Old Forest Road in Pewee Valley in the elaborate
two-story (and probably two-family) log cabin pictured below.
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