CHAPTER X
HOW GIRLS CHOOSE CHUMS
When the girls had quite exhausted all their powers of teasing Babs for again going off with the boys—just as she knew they would—she decided to ride to the ice-cream place in the big car, and she also decided to sit in the back with all the girls.
“Take your boys,” Babs told them, in imitation of their own manner. “For my part I’m just dying for a chat with you girls. Don’t you realize I’ve hardly become acquainted yet?” This last was said in a comical mimicking way, just as if she were some one of real importance who had been so busy with a whole lot of social affairs that she really couldn’t reach all the friends who were—perhaps?—pining for her attention.
“Oh, we know all about that,” replied Louise. “It must be an awful bore to be so popular.” Louise was not being sarcastic, just flippant this time.
“And the peasants—those bothersome Italians——” Esther Dean remarked. “Babs dear, you really should not mingle so freely with the gentry.”
“The gentry? You mean the bourgeois——” broke in Ruth.
“Hey, hey!” called back Glenn Gaynor from the front seat. “What is this, anyway, a test or something? Where are we going? That’s what I want to know.” He was driving.
“We’re going to Hill’s, of course,” answered Cara. “And if we don’t go straight there we’ll never find a place to sit down, to say nothing of getting a dish of ice-cream.”
It was a wonderful summer evening, and behind the rose-covered lattice that so beautifully screened Hill’s ice-cream tables, the girls and boys of Cara Burke’s party thoroughly enjoyed themselves. Babs almost forgot little Nicky’s troubles, as she laughed and chatted and “showed off” to her very best advantage, her one regret being that her father didn’t happen along to the drug-store that evening to see how well she was doing.
After all it was lovely to be in a girl’s world. She was surprised to find how jolly it was, so much better than being alone and thinking about “bugs,” the term she usually applied to the bacteriological germs her father kept himself so busily occupied with.
“Different in one day,” she thought, for Babs was sure to think. She had a habit of analyzing things within and without, and she was not deceiving herself now. All that “difference” which people would insist upon ascribing to her was no difference at all. It was merely a matter of environment. When alone with her father, with Glenn for a student-companion she was one sort of Babs, but when surrounded by happy young friends, such as were with her now, she was decidedly another sort.
“Enjoying yourself, Babs?” Cara made chance to ask. She sat at the next table with Dick and Louise and had been watching Babs.
“Wonderfully,” replied Babs, smiling that Cara could have so easily divined her thoughts. But, as a matter of fact, Barbara’s expression just then was easy enough to interpret. She was smiling happily all over her face.
Persons passing in and out also smiled and whispered. It was “Cara Burke’s party”, they might have been heard to remark, and Babs was not the only one of the party proud to be in her particular place. It was well worth while to be there.
“And I didn’t want to come,” Barbara secretly charged herself. “I would never have known what I missed.”
When they reached home the boys delayed for a while out on the big white porch. It was then that Dudley spoke privately to Babs, after managing to get her apart from the others.
“Listen,” he implored. “I’ve got to tell you. I know you’re sore——”
“What did you take the girls there for?” she broke in sharply. She was referring, of course, to their slumming and the Italian children.
“But the girls were saying such crazy things about the kids,” Dudley protested. “You never heard such rot.”
“What—rot?”
“About some black handers being hidden in that shack.”
Barbara’s mark of contempt was not quite a word—a mere suggestion of one.
“As if that nonsense should have made you forget your promise,” she presently continued bitterly.
“I didn’t forget it.”
“No?” Again that seething scorn. Babs knew how to use her voice when she wanted to be sarcastic.
“Oh, say!” The boy was despairing of making her understand him. “Just wait until I tell you. You see, Louise or Esther, I don’t know which began to—well, to suggest that little Nicky was one of a gang. Oh, it was so silly, Babs, I just got mad and drove them over there to prove they were crazy.” Dudley Burke could be just as independent as Barbara Hale.
“Did you prove it?” sarcasm again.
“I tell you, honestly, I thought I was doing a good thing. I thought we would just run over there and I’d whistle for Nicky, and when he came out I’d ask him if he had any more candlesticks for sale,” Dudley explained, simply.
His distress and his sincerity broke down Babs’ fighting spirit. How could she blame him? He had actually tried to do something to help the little Italians. He could not have guessed at her unreasonable fears.
“Oh, I know, Dud,” she said more pleasantly, “and I believe you. You would not—make fun of them.”
“Make fun of them? I should say not. Those youngsters are smart, and they’re—well, they’ve got a lot of our kind of kids beat,” he ended, his selection of words having nothing to do with his loyalty to the Italians.
“And I know it’s queer of me to act so cut up about it,” Babs admitted. “You would think that I were trying to hide something too.”
“I wouldn’t, but maybe some others would,” Dud rejoined, rather hurriedly for the girls were calling them insistently.
“But say, Dud,” Babs began again, “did the children really act suspicious?”
“I should say they did. The way they snapped those old shades down. It’s a wonder they didn’t pull them off their springs.”
“I didn’t suppose they were more than just timid,” Babs continued. “You know how foreigners are. They have an idea the whole world is their enemy, I guess.”
“Not youngsters who go to American schools; they know better. No, Babs, I don’t believe it was just scare, it was alarm. They were afraid we would go to the door, although they slammed it good and hard, you just bet,” Dudley declared emphatically.
“But others must go there——”
“They stick by their own kind though, clannish, I mean,” the boy explained. “If there really was something to hide in that house I’ll bet the whole neighborhood would help them to hide it.”
“But what could it be?”
“Haven’t an idea. But, of course, Nicky will come around again. He’ll count me a good customer for his junk.” Dud laughed outright at the idea.
“And here we have been getting the girls after us again,” laughed Babs in her turn. “Isn’t it dreadful the way I’ve been running off with you today? I’ll never hear the end of it.”
“Good thing to give them something to gab about,” Dud flung over his shoulder as the girls and boys flocked around them, pretending all sorts of punishment for their delay in joining in the general fun.
Dudley was so nice, Babs had to admit later, when quiet was descending upon the Burke household.
“Just as nice as Glenn,” she reasoned, “but perhaps all boys were almost as nice when they had had such chances of refinement and environment.”
And the girls? Still a little stubborn on that point, Babs was not willing to pay her own sex such a sweeping compliment. The girls were “nice” of course, much nicer than she had ever given them credit for being, but they were “show-offs” just the same. If they hadn’t been they would never have gone down into the Italian district.
And if Esther and Louise were not always picking flaws in folks’ affairs they wouldn’t have told and retold the silly stories about poor Nicky’s father, who was locked up in jail. The idea of even suspecting that he might have escaped and might be in hiding there, was absurd. As if his house would not have been searched, had he escaped. And who ever said he had escaped, anyhow?
Cara was returning from her bathroom now and she was wearing the loveliest yellow silk gown. It had little flutings of blue ribbons and there were blue-birds embroidered on it, just as if they had flown there.
Babs had not yet undressed, but the sight of Cara recalled her own robe—the hideous black cloth college gown! However could she take that out? How explain her idea of the dormitory masquerade? How could she make a joke of it, anyway?
“I left some robes in the rooms,” Cara said indifferently. “I thought the girls would hardly bring any, just around the corner.” This was Cara’s way of doing kindness without display.
And this was Barbara’s chance to mention the college gown. She hesitated. Pride was stronger than reason with her, and she didn’t know that all her boasted frankness about her humble place in life, about her home-made clothes, her own-made hats, her preference for study instead of for play—all this was merely humoring her pride. And yet it had been brave of her to accept and make the most of her position. Thousands of girls might consider her “well off,” and very fortunate because, compared to themselves, she was fortunate. Compared to Cara Burke she was poor. Of course it was all merely a matter of what one compared with.
Barbara watched Cara brush her hair. It was bobbed, of course, but lovely and glossy, crow black, and it encased Cara’s head like a sculptured cap.
“Your hair is lovely,” Babs said as she watched her. “Aren’t you dreadfully tired of curls?”
“Well, since I’ve never had any I suppose I’m not really tired of them, but I do think the boys have the best of us in the matter of hair styles.” She paused in her brushing to make a better part. “If we just got used to ourselves fixed up more simply I suppose we would like ourselves quite as well.”
“Surely we would,” chimed in Babs. “It’s only training. Our eyes expect certain effects and we feel we must humor our eyes.”
Cara laid her brush down on the dressing table and swung around to face Barbara.
“You know an awful lot, don’t you Babs?” she said. Her tone was filled with admiration.
“Why, no I don’t, Cara. About lots of things I am terribly—ignorant.”
“I mean in your way of thinking things out. Dud says you’re as smart as a boy, and that from Dud is—something!”
Babs laughed. “To be as smart as a boy, as smart as some boys wouldn’t mean a lot; would it, Cara?” she countered.
“No. But he meant, of course, as smart as a smart boy——”
“Smarter than a smart boy?”
“Just let’s call it smart,” suggested Cara, but there was a seriousness about her manner that did not chime in with her words. Cara Burke was evidently trying to understand Barbara Hale.
Barbara was merely beginning to undress. She had never been so poky. She felt very unreal. All, or at least most of the things, she had planned to do she wasn’t doing, and she hated to change her mind. Pride again ruled her, for in the “making up of her mind” to anything, Barbara was what would be commonly called stubborn. She didn’t call it that; she considered it weak and foolish to be changeable. All of which must be explained to explain Barbara.
“But, just the same,” Cara continued speaking after a short pause, “you are smart.”
Barbara sighed. “Cara,” she sort of whispered for she was feeling queer, “I’m not really. Because I do things I am called upon to do I may seem different. But it isn’t that. It’s just because I am differently situated.”
Cara jumped up and coming over to where Barbara was sitting, on one of the ivory twin beds, threw her arms around her.
“We’re going to be chums, aren’t we, Babs?” she said warmly. “You may not admit you’re smart, but I think you are, and I’ve always longed to be chums with a girl like you.”
“Like me?” Barbara could feel her face burn. She was not at all what this lovely, simple-minded, frankly honest girl was thinking her to be. She wasn’t smart, she wasn’t different, she wasn’t “high-brow,” she was only a poser, one who was pretending. “Cara, I’m afraid you are going to be dreadfully disappointed in me,” she managed to say finally. “I’m not really anything but plain stubborn.”
“Babs!” exclaimed Cara, bestowing upon her more and more girlish admiration. “Do you know I planned this little party just to get acquainted with you?”
“You didn’t, really!”
“Yes I did,” pursued the girl in that golden robe. “I even bet with Dud that I could get you to come.”
“And now that you’ve got me here, what have I brought you?” Babs’ deep-blue eyes were as soft as velvet violets, as she, in turn, gazed lovingly at Cara Burke.
“Oh, a lot. You couldn’t understand, of course, Babs, but you must have noticed how jealous all the other girls were. I’m sure they have been talking about it all night or they would have been at our door. Here they come now.”
And at the unmistakable sounds of suppressed merry-making (it was almost midnight) Babs jumped up, and without giving herself a second for any silly consideration, she got into the black cap and gown.
The girls were knocking at the door.