Page:Pacific Monthly volumes 9 and 10.djvu/34

14 cause Adele couldn't stop. She just choked and sobbed out loud like she had been hurt a long time and had forgotten about anyone seeing her.

The next morning, proud little spitfire as I was, I hurried to school and put on Adele's desk, before she got there, a big bouquet of Uncle Max's choicest roses and a note that said:

"Dear Adele, I am so sorry, and I'm hurt worsen you because I'm wicked and you're good, and I want to love you and be just like you. If you ain't too mad at me wait for me tonight. I cried awful hard in bed last night. Eugenia Redfield."

I was so spoiled. No one had ever told me to be any different from what I was — selfish and proud and fiery tempered; but I loved gentleness and calmness in others, and I saw in Adele just what I longed to be. If I could only be just like her.

And Adele, guileless and forgiving, waited for me that night and we walked home hand in hand. I had to pass her home, the one I have described, at the foot of Queen Anne Hill. It was tiny and poor, but so clean.

Adele was the eldest of four children. The first winter following her entrance to our school the other three children were stricken with diptheria and died only a few days apart. We all sent flowers and loving messages for the timid, gentle girl had won us all, as she had Miss Perry from the first.

Always and always, after Adele returned to us, paler and quieter than ever, on up through the grades until we finished the high school together, we were constant companions.

Adele completely conquered and subdued me. She was my ideal. She will never know the bitter fights I have had to make myself like her. I grew simpler in my tastes, for Adele had an artist's eye for the true and the simple. Adele's voice appealed to everyone who heard her. It was a rich contralto. She seemed never to realize that she was always our leader and our pride when the voice teacher visited our grade. As I look back it seems to me that both the voice teacher and Adele were perfectly oblivious to the presence of anyone else. When he entered the room his quick eye searched her out. Her listlessness vanished. She drew herself up unconsciously. Her drooping eyelids opened wide over beautiful brown eyes that fixed themselves upon him and shown with a light whose whole meaning and whose source I believe only geniuses understand. He sang to her and for her, and she followed, and poured back such exquisite, perfect tones that we did not envy her, but listened and loved her.

How this poor, puny, ill-clad girl enchained me. I would have had her live with me if it had been possible. Uncle Max knew of our friendship, but I did not know then what he thought of it. As we came to be young ladies I used regularly to have Adele come to my home during my music hour, and often and often the lesson was hers and not mine. Madame and I never exchanged a word about it, but she understood. Adele was poor, and I am sure now she gladly left me to listen while she taught Adele. My voice was really indifferent, and I joyfully smuggled the lesson onto her. Music—singing, was Adele's master passion; and she was mine.

One warm June morning Madame had just left us, and Adele, flushed and excited with her lesson, walked to the long French window overlooking the blue waters of the bay. Leaning one cheek and then the other against the cool window pane she said, "Oh, I have such thoughts today. I am so greedy, I wish all of life were one music lesson. There are such sounds and such feelings in my soul that I must, I must sing them out."

At that moment Uncle Max entered the room. We both read a suppressed something in his face. He started toward Adele, and she, as if divining news of evil import, said quickly:

"What is it?"

"The boat, my child—I fear—" he hesitated, seeing Adele's face growing white and tense, "fear something has gone wrong with your parents. I—I fear the worst."

Adele was as rigid as a statue. She waited for him to go on.

"The boat went out on Lake Wash-