Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/326



HIS story is about Adeline Thurston, and how she came into my life and 'most wrecked it. Also about how she was foiled by Mabel Blossom, my noble schoolmate and friend at St. Catharine's. Thank you, Mabel, for what you did, and forgive me if I have not always seemed to appreciate your beautiful nature in these stories. I do now. This one will show it. These lines are a preface. The real story begins on the line below this one:

Adeline Thurston was a new girl at St. Catharine's; but I would not write about her for that reason, as there are a great many new girls every year, and all too few of them, alas! are worthy of the time and attention of a Literary Artist. They are pretty much alike, you know. Usually they are very unhappy and quite haughty for a few days, and they talk a good deal about their homes and the clothes they have brought with them, and during this time Maudie Joyce and Mabel Blossom and Mabel Muriel Murphy and I stand slightly aloof and study them with our wise young eyes that have probed life so deeply. We four girls are the leaders of the school, and though we are only fourteen, we are so mature and experienced that all the others naturally look up to us and let us decide things for them, as is fitting. Nor is their girlish confidence misplaced. Sister Irmingarde once told a visitor that we are "an exceptionally bright quartet." It came back to us afterwards, because the visitor repeated it to some one, and you can imagine whether we were pleased! Then we knew why that guest had gazed upon us admiringly, and had hung upon our words the way she did when we were introduced to her on the campus.

It is indeed extraordinary how quickly we are discovered by strangers. I suppose it is Maudie Joyce's queenly carriage they notice first. Then they see Mabel Blossom trying to look like St. Cecilia (she always does when visitors come), and next they observe Mabel Muriel Murphy's dignified mien that she learned from Sister Edna. I don't quite know which quality they admire most in me. Perhaps it is my aloofness from worldly interests, that is growing upon me more and more when new plots for stories come to me. You cannot expect the literary artist, who lives in a dream-world, to be conscious of the small affairs of those around her; so, very often, I don't even see people when I pass them. The other day in the hall I walked right over two minims and upset them, and, my! didn't they yell! But when they found out who had done it they flushed with childish joy and pride, and I could hardly make them get up. They seemed to want to stay right there. They were nice little things, only eight, so I spoke to them very kindly after I stood them on their feet, and I advised them concerning their studies; they are bragging about it yet. How easy it is to make the young happy! Oh, innocent, care-free days of childhood, how oft do I recall ye now in these grim months of intellectual strife, when we seem to be having written examinations all the time! But I must not digress. I am learning not to. I will return to Adeline.

As I said before, when new girls come to St. Catharine's, Maudie and Mabel Blossom and Mabel Muriel and I spend a few days in quiet observation of them before we decide whether to admit them into our very innermost circle right away, or to leave them for a few months in "outer darkness," as Mabel Blossom calls it. Outer darkness is a kind of probation, and if they are eager and humble they can learn things there that help to fit them for our society. At first they are apt to be quite haughty about it, and say they don't care, and try to act as if they didn't; but in the end they are glad indeed to sit at our feet. And they all