What Katy Did at School

by Susan Coolidge

  ‘That's ours,’ said Lilly, as the carriage turned in at the gate. It stopped, and Mr Page jumped out.

  ‘Here we are,’ he said. ‘Gently, Lilly, you'll hurt yourself. Well, my dears, we're very glad to see you in our home at last.’

  This was kind and comfortable, and the girls were glad of it, for the size and splendour of the house quite dazzled and made them shy. They had never seen anything like it before. The hall had a marble floor, and busts, and statues. Large rooms opened on either side; and Mrs Page, who came forward to receive them, wore a heavy silk with a train and laces, and looked altogether as if she were dressed for a party.

  ‘This is the drawing-room,’ said Lilly, delighted to see the girls so impressed. ‘Isn't it splendid?’ And she led the way into a stiff, chilly, magnificent apartment, where all the blinds were closed, and all the shades pulled down, and all the furniture shrouded in linen covers. Even the picture-frames and mirrors were sewed up in muslin to keep off flies; and the bronzes and alabaster ornaments on the chimney-piece and étagère gleamed through the dim light in a ghostly way. Katy thought it very dismal. She couldn't imagine anybody sitting down there to read or sew, or do anything pleasant, and probably it was not intended that any one should do so; for Mrs Page soon showed them out, and led the way into a smaller room at the back of the hall.

  ‘Well, Katy,’ she said, ‘how do you like Hillsover?’

  ‘Very well, ma'am,’ replied Katy; but she did not speak enthusiastically.

  ‘Ah!’ said Mrs Page, shaking her head, ‘it takes time to shake off home habits, and to learn to get along with young people after living with older ones and catching their ways. You'll like it better as you go on.’

  Katy privately doubted whether this was true, but she did not say so. Pretty soon Lilly offered to show them upstairs to their room. She took them first into three large and elegant chambers, which she explained were kept for grand company, and then into a much smaller one in a wing.

  ‘Mother always puts my friends in here,’ she remarked; ‘she says it's plenty good enough for schoolgirls to thrash about in!’

  ‘What does she mean?’ cried Clover indignantly, as Lilly closed the door. ‘We don't thrash!’

  ‘I can't imagine,’ answered Katy, who was vexed too. But pretty soon she began to laugh.

  ‘People are so funny,’ she said. ‘Never mind, Clovy, this room is good enough, I'm sure.’

  ‘Must we unpack, or will it do to go down in our alpacas?’ asked Clover.

  ‘I don't know,’ replied Katy, in a doubtful tone. ‘Perhaps we had better change our gowns. Cousin Olivia always dresses so much! Here's your blue muslin right on top of the trunk. You might put on that, and I'll wear my purple.’

  The girls were glad they had done this, for it was evidently expected, and Lilly had dressed her hair and donned a fresh white piqué. Mrs Page examined their dresses, and said that Clover's was a lovely blue, but that ruffles were quite gone out, and everything must be made with basques. She supposed they needed quantities of things, and she had already engaged a dressmaker for them.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Katy, ‘but I don't think we need anything. We had our winter dresses made before we left home.’

  ‘Winter dresses! last spring! My dear, what were you thinking of? They must be completely out of fashion.’

  ‘You can't think how little Hillsover people know about fashions,’ replied Katy, laughing.

  ‘But, my dear, for your own sake!’ exclaimed Mrs Page, distressed by these lax remarks. ‘I'll look over your things tomorrow and see what you need.’

  Katy did not dare to say ‘No,’ but she felt rebellious. When they were half through tea, the door opened, and a boy came in.

  ‘You are late, Clarence,’ said Mr Page, while Mrs Page frowned, and observed, ‘Clarence makes a point of being late. He really deserves to be made to go without his supper. Shut the door, Clarence. O mercy! don't bang it in that way. I wish you would learn to shut a door properly. Here are your cousins, Katy and Clover Carr. Now let me see if you can shake hands with them like a gentleman, and not like a ploughboy.’

  Clarence, a square, freckled boy of thirteen, with reddish hair, and a sort of red sparkle in his eyes, looked very angry at this address. He did not offer to shake hands at all, but elevating his shoulders said, ‘How d'you do!’ in a sulky voice, and sitting down at the table buried his nose without delay in a glass of milk. His mother gave a disgusted sigh.

  ‘What a boy you are!’ she said. ‘Your cousins will think that you have never been taught anything, which is not the case; for I'm sure I've taken twice the pains with you that I have with Lilly. Pray excuse him, Katy. It's no use trying to make boys polite!’

  ‘Isn't it?’ said Katy, thinking of Phil and Dorry, and wondering what Mrs Page could mean.

  ‘Hullo, Lilly!’ broke in Clarence, spying his sister as it seemed for the first time.

  ‘How d'you do?’ said Lilly, carelessly. ‘I was wondering how long it would be before you would condescend to notice my existence.’

  ‘I didn't see you.’

  ‘I know you didn't. I never knew such a boy! You might as well have no eyes at all.’

  Clarence scowled, and went on with his supper. His mother seemed unable to let him alone. ‘Clarence, don't take such large mouthfuls! Clarence, pray use your napkin! Clarence, your elbows are on the table, sir! Now, Clarence, don't try to speak until you have swallowed all that bread' – came every other moment. Katy felt very sorry for Clarence. His manners were certainly bad, but it seemed quite dreadful that public attention should be thus constantly called to them.

  The evening was rather dull. There was a sort of put-in-order-for-company air about the parlour, which made everybody stiff. Mrs Page did not sew or read, but sat in a low chair looking like a lady in a fashion-plate, and asked questions about Hillsover, some of which were not easy to answer, as, for example, ‘Have you any other intimate friends among the school-girls beside Lilly?’ About eight o'clock a couple of young, very young, gentlemen came in, at the sight of whom Lilly, who was half asleep, brightened and became lively and talkative. One of them was the Mr Hickman, whose father married Mr Page's sister-in-law's sister, thus making him in some mysterious way a ‘first cousin' of Lilly's. He was an Arrowmouth student, and seemed to have so many jokes to laugh over with Lilly that before long they withdrew to a distant sofa, where they conversed in whispers. The other youth, introduced as Mr Eels, was left to entertain the other three ladies, which duty he performed by sucking the head of his cane in silence while they talked to him. He too was an Arrowmouth Sophomore.

  In the midst of the conversation, the door, which stood ajar, opened a little wider, and a dog's head appeared, followed by a tail, which waggled so beseechingly for leave to come farther that Clover, who liked dogs, put out her hand and said, ‘Come here, poor fellow!’ The dog ran up to her at once. He was not pretty, being of a pepper-and-salt colour, with a blunt nose and no particular sort of a tail, but he looked good-natured; and Clover fondled him cordially, while Mr Eels took his cane out of his mouth to ask, ‘What kind of a dog is that, Mrs Page?’

  ‘I'm sure I don't know,’ she replied; while Lilly, from the distance, added affectedly, ‘Oh, he's the most dreadful dog, Mr Eels! My brother picked him up in the street, and none of us know the least thing about him, except that he's the commonest kind of a dog – a sort of cur, I believe.’

  ‘That's not true!’ broke in a stern voice from the hall, which made everybody jump; and Katy, looking that way, was aware of a vengeful eye glaring at Lilly through the crack of the door. ‘He's a very valuable dog, indeed – half mastiff and half terrier, with a touch of bull-dog – so there, miss!’

  The effect of this remark was startling. Lilly gave a scream; Mrs Page rose, and hurried to the door; while the dog, hearing his master's voice, rushed that way also, got before her, and almost threw her down. Katy and Clover could not help laughing, and Mr Eels meeting their amused eyes,
removed the cane from his mouth, and grew conversible.

  ‘That Clarence is a droll little chap!’ he remarked, confidentially. ‘Bright, too! He'd be a nice fellow if he wasn't picked at so much. It never does a fellow any good to be picked at – now does it, Miss Carr?’

  ‘No I don't think it does.’

  ‘I say,’ continued Mr Eels, ‘I've seen you young ladies up at Hillsover, haven't I? Aren't you both at the Nunnery?’

  ‘Yes. It's vacation now, you know.’

  ‘I was sure I'd seen you. You had a room on the side next the President's, didn't you? I thought so. We fellows didn't know your names, so we called you the “Real Nuns”.’

  ‘Real Nuns?’

  ‘Yes, because you never looked out of the window at us. Real nuns and sham nuns – don't you see? Almost all the young ladies are sham nuns, except you, and two pretty little ones in the storey above, fifth window from the end.’

  ‘Oh, I know!’ said Clover, much amused. ‘Sally Alsop, you know, Katy, and Amy Erskine. They are such nice girls.’

  ‘Are they?’ replied Mr Eels, with the air of one who notes down names for future reference. ‘Well, I thought so. Not so much fun in them as some of the others, I guess; but a fellow likes other things as well as fun. I know if my sister was there I'd rather have her take the dull line than the other.’

  Katy treasured up this remark for the benefit of the S.S.U.C. Mrs Page came back just then, and Mr Eels resumed his cane. Nothing more was heard of Clarence that night.

  Next morning Cousin Olivia fulfilled her threat of inspecting the girls' wardrobe. She shook her head over the simple, untrimmed merinos and thick cloth coats.

  ‘There's no help for it,’ she said; ‘but it's a great pity. You would much better have waited and had things fresh. Perhaps it may be possible to match the merino, and have some sort of basque arrangement added on. I will talk to Madame Chonfleur about it. Meantime I shall get one handsome thick dress for each of you, and have it stylishly made. That, at least, you really need.’

  Katy was too glad to be so easily let off to raise objections. So that afternoon she and Clover were taken out to ‘choose their material’, Mrs Page said, but really to sit by while she chose it for them. At the dressmaker's it was the same; they stood passive while the orders were given, and everything decided upon.

  ‘Isn't it funny?’ whispered Clover; ‘but I don't like it a bit, do you? It's just like Elsie saying how she'll have her doll's things made.’

  ‘Oh, this dress isn't mine! it's Cousin Olivia's!’ replied Katy. ‘She's welcome to have it trimmed just as she likes.’

  But when the suits came home she was forced to be pleased. There was no over-trimming, no look of finery; everything fitted perfectly, and had the air of finish which they had noticed and admired in Lilly's clothes. Katy almost forgot that she had objected to the dresses as unnecessary.

  ‘After all, it is nice to look nice,’ she confessed to Clover.

  Excepting to go to the dressmaker's, there was not much to amuse during the first half of vacation.

  Mrs Page took them to drive now and then, and Katy found some pleasant books in the library, and read a good deal. Clover meantime made friends with Clarence. I think his heart was won that first evening by her attentions to Guest, the dog, that mysterious animal, ‘half mastiff and half terrier, with a touch of the bull-dog’, Clarence loved Guest dearly, and was gratified that Clover liked him; for the poor animal had few friends in the household. In a little while Clarence became quite sociable with her, and tolerably so with Katy. They found him, as Mr Eels had said, ‘a bright fellow’, and pleasant and good-humoured enough when taken in the right way. Lilly always seemed to take him wrong, and his treatment of her was most disagreeable, snappish, and quarrelsome to the last degree.

  ‘Much you don't like oranges!’ he said, one day at dinner, in answer to an innocent remark of hers. ‘Much! I've seen you eat two at a time, without stopping. Pa, Lilly says she don't like oranges! I've seen her eat two at a time, without stopping! Much she doesn't! I've seen her eat two at a time, without stopping!’ He kept this up for five minutes, looking from one person to another, and repeating, ‘Much she don't! Much!’ till Lilly was almost crying from vexation, and even Clover longed to box his ears. Nobody was sorry when Mr Page ordered him to leave the room, which he did with a last vindictive ‘Much’, addressed to Lilly.

  ‘How can Clarence behave so?’ said Katy, when she and Clover were alone.

  ‘I don't know,’ replied Clover. ‘He's such a nice boy sometimes; but when he isn't nice, he's the horridest boy I ever saw. I wish you'd talk to him, Katy, and tell him how dreadfully it sounds when he says such things.’

  ‘No, indeed. He'd take it much better from you. You're nearer his age, and could do it nicely and pleasantly, and not make him feel as if he were being scolded. Poor fellow, he gets plenty of that!’

  Clover said no more about the subject, but she meditated. She had a good deal of tact for so young a girl, and took care to get Clarence into a specially amicable mood before she began her lecture. ‘Look here, you bad boy, how could you tease poor Lilly so yesterday? Guest, speak up, sir, and tell your massa how naughty it was!’

  ‘Oh, dear! now you're going to nag!’ growled Clarence, in an injured voice.

  ‘No, I'm not – not the least in the world. I'll promise not to. But just tell me' – and Clover put her hand on the rough, red-brown hair, and stroked it – ‘just tell me why you “go for to do” such things? They're not a bit nice.’

  ‘Lilly's so hateful!’ grumbled Clarence.

  ‘Well, she is sometimes, I know,’ admitted Clover, candidly. ‘But because she is hateful is no reason why you should be unmanly.’

  ‘Unmanly!’ cried Clarence, flushing.

  ‘Yes, I call it unmanly to tease and quarrel, and contradict like that. It's like girls. They do it sometimes, but I didn't think a boy would. I thought he'd be ashamed.’

  ‘Doesn't Dorry ever quarrel or tease?’ asked Clarence, who liked to hear about Clover's brothers and sisters.

  ‘Not now, and never in that way. He used to sometimes, when he was little, but now he's real nice. He wouldn't speak to a girl as you speak to Lilly for anything. He'd think it wasn't being a gentleman.’

  ‘Stuff about gentleman, and all that!’ retorted Clarence. ‘Mother dings the word into my ears till I hate it.’

  ‘Well, it is rather teasing to be reminded all the time, I admit; but you can't wonder that your mother wants you to be a gentleman, Clarence. It's the best thing in the world, I think. I hope Phil and Dorry will grow up just like papa, for everybody says he's the most perfect gentleman, and it makes me so proud to hear them.’

  ‘But what does it mean, anyway? Mother says it's how you hold your fork, and how you chew, and how you put on your hat. If that's all, I don't think it amounts to much.’

  ‘Oh, that isn't all. It's being gentle, don't you see? Gentle and nice to everybody, and just as polite to poor people as to rich ones,’ said Clover, talking fast, in her eagerness to explain her meaning – ‘and never being selfish, or noisy, or pushing people out of their place. Forks, and hats, and all that are only little ways of making one's self more agreeable to other people. A gentleman is a gentleman inside, all through. Oh, I wish I could make you see what I mean!’

  ‘Oh, that's it, is it?’ said Clarence.

  Whether he understood or not, Clover could not tell, or whether she had done any good or not; but she had the discretion to say no more; and certainly Clarence was not offended, for after that day he grew fonder of her than ever. Lilly became absolutely jealous. She had never cared particularly for Clarence's affection, but she did not like to have anyone preferred above herself.

  ‘It's pretty hard, I think,’ she told Clover. ‘Clare does everything you tell him, and he treats me awfully. It isn't a bit fair! I'm his sister, and you're only a second cousin.’

  All this time the girls had seen almost nothing of Louis
a Agnew. She called once, but Lilly received the call with them, and was so cool and stiff that Louisa grew stiff also, and made but a short stay; and when the girls returned the visit she was out. A few days before the close of the vacation, however, a note came from her.

  ‘DEAR KATY,

  ‘I am so sorry not to have seen more of you and Clover. Won't you come and spend Wednesday with us? Mamma sends her love, and hopes you will come early, so as to have a long day, for she wants to know you. I long to show you the baby and everything. Do come. Papa will see you home in the evening. Remember me to Lilly. She has so many friends to see during vacation that I am sure she will forgive me for stealing you for one day.

  ‘Yours affectionately,

  LOUISA’

  Katy thought this message very politely expressed; but Lilly, when she heard it, tossed her head, and said she ‘really thought Miss Agnew might let her name alone when she wrote notes’. Mrs Page seemed to pity the girls for having to go. They must, she supposed, as it was a schoolmate; but she feared it would be stupid for them. The Agnews were queer sort of people, not in society at all. Mr Agnew was clever, people said; but really, she knew very little about the family. Perhaps it would not do to decline.

  Katy and Clover had no idea of declining. They sent a warm little note of acceptance, and on the appointed day set off bright and early with a good deal of pleasant anticipation. The vacation had been rather dull at Cousin Olvia's. Lilly was a good deal with her own friends, and Mrs Page with hers; and there never seemed any special place where they might sit, or anything in particular for them to do.

  Louisa's home was at some distance from Mr Page's, and in a less fashionable street. It looked pleasant and cosy as the girls opened the gate. There was a small garden in front with gay flower-beds; and on the piazza, which was shaded with vines, sat Mrs Agnew, with a little work-table by her side. She was a pretty and youthful-looking woman, and her voice and smile made them feel at home immediately.

  ‘There is no need of anybody to introduce you,’ she said. ‘Lulu has described you so often that I know perfectly well which is Katy and which Clover. I am so glad you could come! Won't you go right in my bedroom by that long window and take off your things? Lulu has explained to you that I am lame and never walk, so you won't think it strange that I do not show you the way. She will be here in a moment. She ran upstairs to fetch the baby.’