Page:Lippincotts Monthly Magazine-34.djvu/200

198 thought about it before. So many new things are found out every day,—such as the telephone and the tricycle. Mollie Hunt, across the street, has got a tricycle. I wish I had one. To be a chaperon is a great responsibility—" This last word ran off the page, and had the appearance of a bit of South Kensington embroidery. "Do you like the country? I suppose there are pigs? Pigs are pretty much all alike. I am so excited. Isn't Miss Sherman lovely to invite us? Oh, you precious Narrowby! I'll take such care of you! Seems as if I couldn't wait. I'm going to take two white dresses, one thick and one thin.

"Ever your friend,

"P.S.—Do you think a two-cent lead-pencil is just as good for me to sketch with as a ten-cent one?—Mamma always uses a ten-cent one.

"P.P.S.— Won't we have fun?"

Jimmy drove me over to the station, asking, with a great show of interest, if the profession paid, and if I were end-man.

That Monday night I met my little chaperon, her mamma, Mrs. Howard, Jim, and the others, in a burst of pleasant excitement. A waving of hands to envying friends on the wharf, a gay good-night, a settling of bags and shawls and pretty maids, and the fashionable club of the season sailed away in the starlight.

Alice gave me a sealed envelope, and asked would I carry her shawl-strap into the state-room. Her shawl-strap held together a series of projections,—a substantial tin horn three feet long, a small banjo in its black cloth case, the Kate Greenaway parasol, a sketch-book, a white shade-hat, and Mrs. Howard's black poke bonnet.

"I've got to go to bed at once," said the child: "I can't take care of you tonight. It's horrid to be a little girl."

The paper contained this one sentence, in quotations:

"Advice to a young man.—Let not the butterflies of fashion, either male or female, allure you from the one great object of your existence."

The butterflies of fashion,—male and female! What were we twenty-five but butterflies of fashion,—male and female? Had I—had any of us a great object in our existence? I thought of the sixteen banjos on which we had been diligently playing for the last three months. This could not be called a great object, although our group was considered a great success as a drawing-room ornament, and the banjo is a highly respectable instrument, its pedigree dating back to somewhere among the Egyptians. The great object of my existence! It was a serious question,—still more serious to find I had no answer. The waves as they dashed under my state-room window seemed to be in sympathy with Alice,—every thud ceaselessly repeating, "Have an object in life,—shun butterflies." I asked myself, sleepily, if Lilian Amies were most of a butterfly in the small felt hat she wore on the steamer, or in the large white hat she wore at the garden-party, or in the pompon bonnet she wore at church? In my dreams Alice stood on the hurricane-deck, her hair blowing out to the winds of the ocean, and through her horn, which grew longer and longer, until one end rested on the far-away Camden Hills, she tooted, "Narrowby, have an object,—shun butterflies!"

Alice on the hurricane-deck—her childish figure silhouetted against the summer sky—sounded a note of triumph at eleven the next morning. This time it was not a dream, but a signal of arrival. In the harbor a yacht sent up its colors, a salute was fired, more tooting from Alice, waving of handkerchiefs and parasols from the twenty-five, waving of handkerchiefs and parasols from the yacht. On shore Miss Sherman waited to welcome us. At lunch a small canoe freighted with a rose lay at each plate.

"I shall keep mine forever," said Alice, "and so must you, Narrowby: it will mark an episode in your life."