|
Old Mrs. HarrisIX
Vickie was to discover that nothing comes easily in this world. Next day she got a letter from one of the jolly students of Professor Chalmers`s party, who was watching over her case in his chief`s absence. He told her the scholarship meant admission to the freshman class without further examinations, and two hundred dollars toward her expenses; she would have to bring along about three hundred more to put her through the year.
She took this letter to her father`s office. Seated in his revolving desk-chair, Mr. Templeton read it over several times and looked embarrassed.
"I`m sorry, daughter," he said at last, "but really, just now, I couldn`t spare that much. Not this year. I expect next year will be better for us."
"But the scholarship is for this year, Father. It wouldn`t count next year. I just have to go in September."
"I really ain`t got it, daughter." He spoke, oh so kindly! He had lovely manners with his daughter and his wife. "It`s just all I can do to keep the store bills paid up. I`m away behind with Mr. Rosen`s bill. Couldn`t you study here this winter and get along about as fast? It isn`t that I wouldn`t like to let you have the money if I had it. And with young children, I can`t let my life insurance go."
Vickie didn`t say anything more. She took her letter and wandered down Main Street with it, leaving young Mr. Templeton to a very bad half-hour.
At dinner Vickie was silent, but everyone could see she had been crying. Mr. Templeton told Uncle Remus stories to keep up the family morale and make the giggly twins laugh. Mrs. Templeton glanced covertly at her daughter from time to time. She was sometimes a little afraid of Vickie, who seemed to her to have a hard streak. If it were a love-affair that the girl was crying about, that would be so much more natural--and more hopeful!
At two o`clock Mrs. Templeton went to the Afternoon Euchre Club, the twins were to have another ride with the Roadmaster on his velocipede, the little boys took their nap on their mother`s bed. The house was empty and quiet. Vickie felt an aversion for the hammock under the cottonwoods where she had been betrayed into such bright hopes. She lay down on her grandmother`s lounge in the cluttered play-room and turned her face to the wall.
When Mrs. Harris came in for her rest and began to wash her face at the tin basin, Vickie got up. She wanted to be alone. Mrs. Harris came over to her while she was still sitting on the edge of the lounge.
"What`s the matter, Vickie child?" She put her hand on her grand- daughter`s shoulder, but Vickie shrank away. Young misery is like that, sometimes.
"Nothing. Except that I can`t go to college after all. Papa can`t let me have the money."
Mrs. Harris settled herself on the faded cushions of her rocker. "How much is it? Tell me about it, Vickie. Nobody`s around."
Vickie told her what the conditions were, briefly and dryly, as if she were talking to an enemy. Everyone was an enemy; all society was against her. She told her grandmother the facts and then went upstairs, refusing to be comforted.
Mrs. Harris saw her disappear through the kitchen door, and then sat looking at the door, her face grave, her eyes stern and sad. A poor factory-made piece of joiner`s work seldom has to bear a look of such intense, accusing sorrow; as if that flimsy pretence of "grained" yellow pine were the door shut against all young aspiration.
|
