Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/328

302 listen to my stories, too, and look at us with the awe which is fitting in the presence of the gifted. Most of them seem to admire me more than the others, but of course I know it is for my Art, of which I am but the humble instrument.

Well, we expected that Adeline Thurston would do this too, but from the very first it was different with her, somehow. She was fourteen, and tall for her age, and she had brown hair and very light blue eyes, and they were near-sighted, so she squinted a little, and she didn't dress very well. She wore queer-looking, baggy dresses with girdles around the waist, and she told Maudie Joyce she designed them all herself, and that her mother let her. She said they were individual and artistic. She had her collars cut low at the neck to show the curves of the throat, she said; but there weren't any curves, and Mabel Blossom said perhaps they had been thoughtlessly left at home. She didn't say this to Adeline, of course; only to us. Adeline didn't seem to mind a bit because we didn't take her into our very innermost circle right away. She kept by herself a great deal, and was very reserved and mysterious, so all the girls began to talk about her. Then I studied her a little myself, for if she had a carking care or a secret sorrow I wanted to discover it and write a story about it. But I couldn't discover anything except that she chewed chalk during the history hour, and wore the same collar three days, and wasn't careful about sewing buttons on her shoes when they fell off, and never had the parting of her hair straight, and had a tooth 'way back that needed to be filled. I was not giving her much of my attention, for I was almost sure a new plot was working in me, and at such times I just sit and wait with bated breath to see what it is going to be. All the girls let me alone then, for fear they will divert my mind from my Art. But the plot didn't come and nothing happened, and I got tired waiting.

So, finally, when Mabel Blossom and Maudie Joyce began to tell me the things that were being said about Adeline Thurston, I turned a lenient ear to their girlish prattle. They said that Adeline spent hours and hours and hours by herself in the different parts of the grounds, dreaming on the river bank or musing under the trees. And they said she was doing some kind of special work, they didn't know what, and that after the Grand Silence had fallen and the convent lay dark and still, Adeline Thurston arose from her snowy bed and did things most of the night. No one knew what the things were, for Adeline wouldn't tell. She only looked mysterious when they asked, and sighed and said perhaps they'd know some day.

I could see that Maudie Joyce was getting excited about it, and terribly interested. You know now romantic she is, and I guess perhaps she thought Adeline was eating out her girlish heart over some hidden grief. She began to be nice to Adeline, and went and sat beside her several times, and walked with her one evening in the grounds; but Adeline took it all as quietly as if Maudie had been one of the minims instead of the queenliest girl in school. Once when Maudie asked her to take a walk she excused herself and said she had something else to do! Maudie's face looked funny when she told me that, for her proud nature had never before known such a rebuff, but she didn't get angry. She just got more interested than ever and kept right on being nice to Adeline, and was with her so much that Mabel and I hardly saw her for days at a time. I could tell just here how our sensitive natures suffered over it, too, but I won't, for this story is not about us. It is about Adeline, though of course my dear friend Mabel Blossom comes into it a great deal, on account of the deeds she did.

Well, one afternoon Maudie Joyce came to me looking as excited as if she had just been an ordinary girl with no queenly carriage and no control over her emotions. She said she would confide to me a great secret if I would never, never, never tell, and of course I promised. I kept my word, too, as a General's daughter must do, and you'd better believe it wasn't easy, either, with Mabel Blossom asking me what it was and then looking hurt because I wouldn't tell. My sufferings were dreadful. So were Mabel's. Hers were worse, I guess; anyhow, she seemed to think they were. So finally I got Maudie to tell her, too, and then we all three knew. I will now tell the in-