Isabel Carleton's year

Front matter

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Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I A Ring and Some Other Things . . i

II Half a Dozen Adventures .... 12

Chapter I

I SABEL CARLETON rushed into the sitting-room without stopping to take off her hat and coat; her cheeks were pink with cold and excitement, and her soft blond hair was blown about her face.

“Oh, mother,” she began, “you’ll never guess! I’ve found something that I just can’t live without.”

Mrs. Carleton, a slender brown-eyed woman, was turning sheets to make them wear longer, and she was surrounded by shining white billows. She looked up from threading the machine, to smile at the girl’s eagerness. “ Well, what is it this time? ” she inquired quizzically. “ It seems to me that a good many things are absolutely necessary to your existence.”

“ But this one is/’ said Isabel, coming over to the window, where her mother was making use of the last afternoon light. “ Oh, goodness, mother, my muddy shoe went right on the sheet. Dear me, what a nuisance I am ! ”

“ Never mind,” said Mrs. Carleton, trying not to looked annoyed. “ Tell me what you have discovered.”

“ It’s a ring,” replied Isabel breathlessly — “ a chrysoprase ring. I never knew what that stone was, before. It’s green, you know — the clearest, freshest green — ”

Professor Carleton looked over the top of the book that he was reading. “ The tenth foundation stone of the New Jerusalem was of chrysoprase,” he remarked mildly. “ You remember that, don’t you, daughter? ”

“ Y-e-s, father, I suppose so,” answered Isabel. “ But, mother, there were three stones — a large one in the middle, and a smaller one on each side, and they were set in silver, with cunning little leaves and buds around them.”

“ Where did you see this wonderful ring? ” asked Mrs. Carlton, tucking a seam under the “ foot ” of the machine.

“At Miss Titus’s; you know she has that new gift-shop on State Street. I was in there after school with Caroline Harper — she was getting a brass bowl for her mother — and I saw the ring, and I just said right out, ‘ Oh, that’s my ring! ’ It seemed as if it went with all the green bows and belts and things that I have, and my green silk afternoondress.” Isabel’s light hair and clear complexion made her partial, with something of girlish vanity, to “ her colour,” as she called it.

Her mother was beginning to run up the seam, and she spoke loudly, above the hum of the machine. “ I dare say it costs a good deal, Isabel.”

The girl’s face fell. “ It was only ten dollars — ■ all hand-made, you know, and so distinctive , mother.

I knew father couldn’t afford it, but I thought if I saved it out of my allowance — ”

Mrs. Carleton smiled. Isabel’s allowance never lasted very long. “ It might take quite a while,” she said fastening the thread at the end of a seam, and reaching for another sheet.

“ I arranged — I mean, I asked about that,” the girl replied hastily. “ Miss Titus said that if I paid two dollars, she’d keep it for me — not sell it to anyone else, at least — and then I could pay the rest when I’d saved it.”

Mrs. Carleton frowned over the white linen. “ That sounds a good deal like buying things on the installment plan,” she said slowly.

Professor Carleton looked up, turning his page absently. “What does the child want, Laura?” he asked. “ Is it that set of Swinburne that she was talking about yesterday? ”

u Oh, father,” cried Isabel, “ it wasn’t Swinburne; it was William Morris. But I want this a whole lot worse.”

“ It’s a ring,” explained Mrs. Carleton — “ a chrysoprase ring.”

“ Well,” said father, returning to his Dante, “ I should think she might have a ring. Doubtless there are other young women who have them.”

u I’m afraid you’ll have to buy it all yourself,” said Mrs. Carleton thoughtfully. “ I wish I could help you, but you know father has to go to a meeting of the Classical Association — he reads a paper there — and Celia has to have her front teeth straightened, and that costs so much — ” She sighed, and began to gather up her sewing, glancing at the clock.

“ Oh, it’s Thursday, isn’t it? ” cried Isabel guiltily. “ And Olga is out, and I was going to get the dessert ready, and make the salad-dressing. May I try to buy the ring, mother? I have two dollars that I could pay for it now.”

“ Yes, dear,” replied Mrs. Carleton. “ Get it if you can, of course. But don’t be too much disappointed if you have to give it up.”

“ I won’t,” said Isabel, and she ran to hang up her wraps, humming as she went a bar from The Wearing of the Green .

In a few minutes she came back, buttoning her blue gingham apron over her school dress, and continuing to hum.

“ Do you know, mother,” she said, fastening the last button, “ I was just thinking to-day that when Christmas and New Year’s are over, and we get into the middle of January, it seems as if everything is finished for the rest of the year — as if there’s nothing left to happen. And now here’s the ring for me to think about, and who knows what next? ”

Mrs. Carleton had turned on the light, and was folding the sheets into a neat pile. “ Yes, no end of interesting things will happen before next Christmas,” she said. “ Why, Isabel, you may be in Europe by that time, with your chrysoprase ring on your finger.”

Isabel laughed. “ You think of the most impossible thing you can, don’t you, mother? Going to Europe is the dream of my life — too lovely to come true. But perhaps I’ll have the ring, even if I am right here in old Jefferson, pegging away, a green freshman in the University.”

“ And there’s your high-school graduation to come between,” said Mrs. Carleton, taking up the muddy sheet, to put it into the laundry-hamper. “ You mustn’t forget that.”

“ I did, for a minute,” sighed Isabel. “ June seems so far away. We were going to have sliced oranges for dessert, weren’t we? I’ll get ’em ready in a jiffy.”

She hurried to the kitchen, where she was soon peeling the oranges, and slicing them into a glass bowl. The scent of the fruit filled the room, dominating the savoury odour from the oven.

Mrs. Carleton came out into the kitchen, and turned the roast, and put on the potatoes, which the careful Swedish maid had left peeled in a pan of cold water.

“Where are Fanny and Celia?” asked Isabel, busy with her work.

“ Up stairs,” answered her mother. “ Celia wanted Fanny to paste new paper on the walls of the doll’s-house dining-room. I suppose that’s what they’re at. I wish Fanny would come down. I want her to set the table.”

“ Perhaps she will in a minute,” said Isabel absently. She was thinking of something else than dinner.

The Carletons lived in a college town in the Middle West — a delightful little city, very old, as Middle Western cities go, and modelled after the New England villages from which most of the inhabitants or their parents had come. Two beautiful lakes crowded close upon the town, their sloping banks covered with groves of pine and maple. The irregular streets were lined with elms, and almost everybody had a lawn and a garden.

At the time that our story opens, Jefferson was under its annual fall of heavy snow, now damp with January thaws. The winters are severe in the Middle West, but the lives of young people are none the less happy for all that.

The Carleton home was comfortable but not luxurious. The Professor’s salary was not large, and the wants of growing girls were many. Isabel often felt impatient with the self-denial that the family had to practise. On this particular evening, she was feeling more than ever the irritation of limited means.

“ Oh, mother,” she said, as she finished slicing the oranges, “ it does seem hard not to have the things you want so dreadfully. Doesn’t it? ”

Mrs. Carleton stood a moment with the bastingspoon in her hand. Her face was placid and satisfied. “ I’m always so happy when your father and you children are well and contented,” she said,

“ that I don’t worry about the things I don’t have. It seems to me that I have a very great deal. I don’t know that things to wear count for so very much, Isabel.”

Isabel shook the sugar-scoop impatiently as she sprinkled the yellow heap of orange slices. “ Yes, they do, mother,” she cried — “they count for an enormous lot when you’re seventeen. Of course, I know they aren’t really anything when you compare them with fathers and mothers and good health and such things; but, dear me, you sort of take fathers and mothers and good health for granted, you know. You have those, anyway, no matter who you are.”

Mrs. Carleton was mixing flour and water in a bowl, in order to thicken the gravy. “ I suppose so,” she laughed. “ Most of us have some of the things you mention.”

“ And I can’t help it,” Isabel went on, “ I do love things to wear, Mummy, — swishy things, and lace, and cunning little sashes, and pretty pins, and rings, — the odd unusual sort of ring, that people look at and wonder about. Don’t you know? They keep glancing at it, and then they say, 4 Pardon me, but what an unusual ring you’re wearing. Did you get it abroad? ’ Don’t you think that’s fun, mother? ”

“What’s fun?” cried Fanny, bursting into the kitchen, sniffing the savour of the roast. “ Goodness, how hungry I am! What’s fun, and what about rings?” She came over to the table, and began to eat the shredded cocoanut that Isabel had set out to sprinkle the oranges with. Fanny was thirteen, a lean, dark, lively girl with bright eyes and straight black hair.

“ Don’t, Fanny,” said Isabel, pushing aside the brown fingers that were dipping into the box; “ there won’t be enough for the dessert, and it’s so much better with cocoanut.”

“ But it’s so awfully good. Give me just another handful. I’m starving to death.”

But Isabel had caught up the box and was holding it behind her.

u Stingy! ” said Fanny crossly.

“ Set the table, Fanny,” interrupted Mrs. Carleton, “ and you’ll forget that you’re on the verge of death from starvation. Hurry, dear. It’s almost half-past six, and we don’t want the evening to be too short, for you girls have your studying to do.”

“Oh, dear!” groaned Fanny, taking an apron from behind the kitchen door, “ it’s always study and dig — almost every evening. I hate that Latin grammar. Why do I have to study Latin, anyway? Anna Paul doesn’t. Her mother says — ”

“ I can’t listen now, child. Set the table quickly. Your father thinks it best for you to study Latin, and that’s reason enough, I’m sure.”

Fanny went slowly into the dining-room to lay the table-cloth, and came back with the wicker tray for the dishes. Isabel was mixing a French salad-dressing, and Mrs. Carleton was putting the lettuce on the salad-plates.

Celia came to the door and peeped into the kitchen, — a small slim figure in a short dress of black-and-white check, with red pipings. Her brown curls fell over her shoulders, and her blue eyes were sweet and intelligent

Isabel glanced up. “ Come on in, ducky,” she called, beckoning. “ Here’s something for you.”

The child ran to the table, her face brightening. u Open your mouth and shut your eyes, And I’ll give you something to make you wise,” Isabel chanted, while Celia shut her eyes so tightly that her forehead was strained into hard lines; and her mouth was wide open. Isabel dropped into it a bit of orange, well sugared and powdered with cocoanut.

Celia’s eyes opened, and she gurgled with pleasure. “ Thank you, Fairy Princess,” she said, laughing; then she dived under the table for Bobo, her big grey cat.

“ Take this butter in and put it on the table, kiddy,” said Isabel. “ No, indeed, you mustn’t carry Bobo at the same time.”

Little sister, holding the glass dish of butter-balls carefully in both hands, walked importantly into the dining-room.

Presently she came back. u Call father, Celia,” said Mrs. Carleton, who, her face flushed with being near the stove, was pouring the gravy from the roasting-pan into the bowl. “ And see that the napio Isabel Garletoris Year

kins are on the table, and the chairs in place.” This time Celia caught up Bobo; his white paws and his white-nosed face hung over her shoulder, and he purred loudly as he rode away.

u Oh, dear, dishes to wash after dinner,” sighed Fanny, taking off her apron. “ I wish Olga didn’t have to go and see her sister every Thursday.”

“ How would you like to stay in the kitchen here all day? ” asked Isabel coldly. “ I think if you had to, you’d be glad to go and see your sister.”

“ It’d depend on which one it was,” Fanny replied, shaking the last crumbs out of the nearly empty cocoanut box. “ Even staying in the kitchen would be better than — ”

She looked up and caught her sister’s eye, and she and Isabel both burst out laughing. “ Come on, Cross-patch,” said Isabel. “ When you’ve had some roast beef, you won’t be so savage.”

“ What was it about the ring? ” asked Fanny, fastening a gold pin that had come loose at the back of Isabel’s collar. “ You didn’t tell me.”

“ I’ll tell you when we’re washing the dishes,” answered Isabel mysteriously. “ It’s a gre-at secret.”

“ Come on, girls,” called Professor Carleton, from the dining-room. “ The banquet waits.” They heard the scraping of the carving knife on the steel sharpener.

“ It’s a beauty,” added Isabel, as they pushed open

A King and Some Other Things n

the swing door. “ When you see it, you’ll turn green with envy.”

“ Well, I’ll wait till I see it, then,” said Fanny, sceptically, letting the door swing to, behind her.

Chapter II

HALF A DOZEN ADVENTURES HE next day, which was Friday, was a very busy

JL one, and Isabel found no time to go to Miss Titus’s till after school was out in the afternoon, and even then she was delayed by a conference with her English teacher. She hurried down to the gift-shop, and stood outside for a moment, looking in at the window. A beautiful blue bowl gleamed on a brass tray, and a length of Chinese embroidery in faded red trailed over an old mahogany writing case. “ So many things that I want,” sighed the girl. “ But the ring — the ring! ”

Miss Titus, a pleasant-faced young woman with waving auburn hair, smiled knowingly at Isabel from across the room, where she was arranging some gaily flowered cups and saucers.

With a flutter of importance, Isabel laid down two silver dollars on the counter. “ The chrysoprase ring,” she said, as Miss Titus approached. Miss Titus went to a small glass case, and brought the ring, which, with other treasures, was lying in a tray of black velvet. Isabel hardly glanced at the lapis-lazuli and topaz ornaments, so eager she was to see again the ring that had been her choice. She took it up with a gentle hand, and turned it round admiringly, holding it so that the light shone through the stones.

“ It looks like drops of rain on a green leaf, doesn’t it? ” she cried. “ It seems even lovelier to me to-day than it did yesterday.”

“ Put it on,” said Miss Titus, with an appreciative smile.

Isabel slipped the handsome silver circle upon her finger, where the beauty of the craftsman’s work showed doubly fine against the white skin.

“ The band is a bit large,” said the woman, taking Isabel’s hand in hers, and examining the ring. “ We might have it altered to fit a trifle better.”

u It’s perfect as it is,” answered Isabel. “ I like to have it large, so that I can feel it slip around, and know it’s there.”

“ Do you want to take it with you? ” asked Miss Titus, getting out a paste-board box with silver printing across the cover.

“ Oh, no,” returned Isabel quickly. “ Oh, no. I shan’t take it till I’ve paid for it. I might lose it, or something. Mother wouldn’t like me to take it, I’m sure.”

“ You may if you want to, you know.”

But Isabel refused. “ No, I shouldn’t feel right about it,” she said.

“ Then I’ll give you a receipt”

Isabel tucked the bit of paper into her purse, with a happy glow. “ I’m going without everything till I get the ring,” she smiled. “ I’m sure it won’t be long, either.”

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She lingered, with the feeling of the privileged purchaser, and looked about at the medley of objects in the shop, — an old mirror in a mahogany frame, a quaint blue-and-white china tea-pot, odd wicker baskets, Japanese prints, a brass samovar, an East Indian table-cover, gay Austrian plates and flowerpots, richly figured chintz cushions, brass candlesticks, a wonderfully embroidered Chinese mandarin coat, a clear corn-yellow pitcher: such an array of interesting things that Isabel could scarcely tear herself away. The art instinct in her reached out for these attractive bits of colour and line. She sighed again in spite of the slip of paper in her purse, thinking how hard it is to deny ourselves the things we long for. “ But I’ll have the ring, anyway,” she murmured exultingly.

She went out into the street, with a pleasant vision of the time when the green rain-drops should sparkle on her finger, to the admiration of Caroline and Molly and the other girls, when they should behold its “ distinctive ” splendour.

As she walked slowly up State Street, she caught glimpses of herself in the store-windows, — a slender, bright-faced girl in a dark green coat, and a wide grey beaver hat with green velvet bows and silver buckle. The street was a queer mixture of the old and the new, with its irregular rows of buildings, where sedate sixty-year-old shops stood hand in hand with young up-standing ones of fresh cream-* coloured brick. As Isabel looked back, she saw the last light of the sun tipping the gilt figure on the white marble dome of the Capitol; and as she walked on, she could discern, nearly a mile before her, the more sober dome of University Hall, the oldest of the college buildings on the Hill.

The streets were wet and sloppy, but up and down them passed closed cabs and clanging street-cars, farmers’ “ cutters,” delivery wagons, slowly crawling loads of four-foot wood, and now and then a big motor-car, ploughing its way through the snow. A long “ bob-sleigh ” passed, too, full of school children out for a sleigh-ride, — shouting, blowing horns, and making the wild uproar that among young people indicates the happiest sort of good time. Once, at least, in the winter, each class expected to go for a sleigh ride, and revel in a supper afterward, usually at some small town a few miles from the city.

Isabel recognised one of the children in the sleigh, and waved merrily. Then she turned to look into the windows of a flower-shop, and met Molly Ramsay, a bright-eyed girl with red cheeks and black hair. She and Isabel stopped to talk, though they had been together in the high school all day.

“ Buying out the stores? ” queried Isabel.

Molly held up a parcel. “ Yes; a ball of crochet cotton and two yards of red ribbon,” she laughed. “ All I could find the money for. Whew ! how one’s allowance goes, doesn’t it?”

“ Simply melts away,” answered Isabel feelingly. “ Look at that window. Wouldn’t you like to rush in and carry away an armful? ” A mass of pale pink carnations banked the front of the window, and shaded into the deeper rose of azaleas tied up with rosier gauze.

“ I should say,” assented Molly absently. She did not care for flowers as much as Isabel did. “ But I’d rather carry away an armful of that.” She pointed to the heap of candy in the next window, where the lights had just been turned on. Luscious brown chocolates, and candied nuts and fruit were ranged about loaves of nougat, sprinkled through with raisins, citron, almonds, and cherries. “ Don’t you love the Pal? ” she added impulsively.

“ Yes, I do,” Isabel replied rather wistfully, gazing at the delicious things in the window of the Pal-, ace of Sweets — popularly called “the Pal;” “but mother doesn’t think it’s nice for young girls to go in there without an escort or a chaperone, and the candy’s so expensive just to buy by the box, — so I don’t get a chance to go in very often.”

“ Neither do I,” confessed Molly, her eyes on a pile of glace-t d pineapple and orange-peel.

“ When I get rich, I’ll send you a bushel of candy every day,” said Isabel.

“ And when I marry a millionaire, I’ll send you a cart-load of roses and azaleas every morning,” responded Molly gaily.

“ Hurry up and find him,” Isabel cried, and they parted, laughing.

Isabel stood a minute after Molly had gone on. “ I’ll get mother a tiny bunch of marguerites,” she thought, feeling in her muff for her purse; and then

1 7 she stopped. She had left nearly all her money at the gift-shop as a deposit on the ring. “ Oh, dear,” she sighed, “ no more posies or anything till I’ve paid for my jewels. I’ll have to be dreadfully selfish. No presents for anybody, — and that’s pretty hard.”

Just then she saw Rodney Fox on the other side of the street. She knew him even in the dusk, by his way of carrying his shoulders, and by the light grey cap he was wearing. Usually the University freshmen were obliged to wear green caps, with red buttons, but this particular tyranny of the sophomores was relaxed in cold weather. Rodney- had been in the high school with Isabel, but had finished the course last June, and was now in the University. He raised his cap when he saw Isabel, and then motioned her to wait while he came across the street. Isabel stood at the crossing, jumping up and down, because her toes were getting cold with tramping through the slush, even in her heavy shoes and rubbers.

“ Awfully glad I met you,” said Rodney, coming up. He was slender but tall and well proportioned, with dark brown hair, fresh red cheeks, and hazel eyes that looked one squarely in the face. “ Just getting home from school?”

“ Well, I stopped to do an errand or two,” said Isabel. “ How horribly early it gets dark, doesn’t it?”

“ Yes; and it’s getting good and cold, too. Don’t you want to come into the Pal and have some hot chocolate? ”

“ Oh, I’d love to, Rodney. I was beginning to get hungry, — and it’s quite a while yet to dinner.”

“ Gee ! how hollow a fellow gets between lunch and dinner! ” laughed the boy. “ At least I do. I don’t suppose girls ever do anything so vulgar.”

“ Don’t they? ” returned Isabel, tucking up some stray blond locks. “ You’ve known me long enough to be pretty sure that I’m always ready to eat.”

Secretly, she felt rather excited at going into the “ Pal,” even with so good a chum as Rodney. This was the hour when it was full of University students, brilliant young persons in gay costumes, who seemed very much grown up and at their ease. Isabel couldn’t help feeling dazzled as they entered the big confectionery shop, with its rows of yellow-shaded lights, and mirrors where one kept seeing oneself over and over; its glittering cases of candy, shelves of glasses, and marble soda-fountain; its gay paper flowers and streamers and favours and college banners, and its generally gorgeous and “ city-fled ” air. As they went down the long aisles to the section where the tables were arranged, she peeped into the mirrors to see if her hat were on straight, and her hair in good trim.

“ Over here in the corner,” said Rodney. They sat down at a little square table, near the fire-place where a coal-fire burned redly. A maid in a white apron took the written order that Rodney scrawled on one of the blanks furnished for that purpose. Isabel looked around as she drew off her gloves.

“ How warm and gay it seems, after the dusk and snow ! ” she exclaimed happily.

“It’s some place, isn’t it?” answered Rodney. “ Great joint for the studes.”

The room seemed very full, and it rippled with the sound of chatting and laughter. There were college girls in stylish suits, and furs thrown back from fresh merry faces and white throats. Some of the girls wore bunches of roses or violets at the front of their jackets; and one tall languid creature in a dark purple suit and lynx furs was wearing two lovely jewel-like purple orchids, — flowers that one did not often see in Jefferson.

“Isn’t she a picture?” murmured Isabel breathlessly.

Rodney turned his head and glanced at the self-conscious beauty. “ Well enough,” he answered, “ but there are others.” He turned back and smiled at Isabel across the table. u I’m better pleased with what I see from here,” he added.

“Oh, Rod, aren’t you funny! ” said the girl, incredulously; but she felt a glow in her heart just the same. She continued to let her eyes wander about the room, while the maid placed the chocolate and wafers on the table. After she had noted the costumes of the young women, Isabel gave tardy heed to the young men, very square-shouldered fellows, in well-fitting, stiffly-creased suits, and correct neckties. It seemed as if they were all handsome and well-groomed, though the lights may have been responsible for the attractiveness of some of them.

“ What good times you college people have,” said Isabel, with a half-sigh, stirring the hot chocolate, with its whipped cream and melted marshmallow on top.

“ Yes, we do have the time of our lives,” assented Rodney. “ Great Caesar, this is hot! We do have mighty gay times, — but you haven’t any idea how we dig and slave. I never dreamed what work was like, when I was in the high school. Why, I’ve studied till twelve o’clock every night this week. Don’t you see how pale and haggard I’m looking? I think I’m going into a decline.” His glowing cheeks and clear flashing eyes were scarcely those of a sick man.

“You certainly look delicate!” laughed Isabel. “ What else have you been doing — besides burning the midnight electricity, and cramming your brain with knowledge ? ”

“ Nothing much since I saw you last. Ski-ing a little, but the snow’s too soft now. No dances or pink teas this week. It’s too bad, Isabel,” he said regretfully, “ that your mother doesn’t let you come to our fraternity parties. I’m going to ask her again pretty soon. Maybe she’ll change her mind.”

“ Oh, I do hope she will let me, just once. But I’m afraid I’d be frightened stiff among all those college people. I’m sure I shouldn’t be able to dance, or to utter a word.”

“ Oh, bosh! You’d have ’em all skinned a mile, — beg pardon, Mademoiselle! I mean you’d outshine the entire assembly.”

“ Not I. I’d be petrified.”

“ Well, we’ll try it and see. If you petrify, we’ll set you up among the palms for a statue, — and that wouldn’t be so bad, either.”

u There’s no use in talking about it,” said Isabel wistfully, “ for mother doesn’t think I ought to go until I’m out of the high school.”

“ I believe she will let you go once or twice,” said Rodney, “ and I’m going to ask her before long. By the way, that’s one of our men over there, — just getting up. I spoke to him when we came in. Guess I’ve pointed him out to you before. That’s Fred Delafield, — best dancer in our frat. Good student, too — fine fellow. Entered as a Junior this year. I want you to meet him sometime.”

“ I’d like to. He looks nice. Who is the girl with him? ”

“Evelyn Taylor. She’s a splendid girl — you’d like her, too. Oh, I wish you were in college, Isabel ! ”

“ Well, I shall be in college pretty soon,” answered Isabel ruefully, crumbling a wafer. “ And this has been a good year so far. I’ve enjoyed it. You know I’ve been having a very good time. And it’s nice to have college to look forward to. I think it’s beautiful to be expecting something delightful — trips to Europe and diamond tiaras, and all sorts of things. I believe that expecting happiness is the best part of life.” She wanted to tell him about the ring but she thought he might consider her vain and silly.