“HAF ANYBODY SEEN MY UMBREL?”
It was the last week in February, and in a few days the school dance was to be given. One afternoon a dozen or more girls were gathered in Ethel’s room to see her dress which had been sent out from town. It was as dainty an affair as one could wish to see, and many were the admiring glances cast upon it, and many the praises it received. Possibly it was a trifle elaborate for a girl of fifteen, for it was made of delicate white chiffon over pale yellow satin, and exquisitely embroidered with fine silver threads. But Ethel looked very lovely in it as she preened herself before the mirror, and was fully aware of the fact.
“What are you going to wear, Toinette?” she asked.
“I’ve never worn anything but white yet,” answered Toinette. “At Miss Carter’s all my dresses were ordered by Miss Emeline, and she said I ought not to wear anything else till I was eighteen. I hope Miss Preston won’t say the same.”
“I should think you would have hated to have the teachers say just what you must wear, as well as what you must study. Didn’t your father ever send you any clothes?”
“Papa was too far away to know what I wore or did,” answered Toinette, rather sadly.
“Aren’t you glad he is home again?” asked quiet little Helen Burgess, who somehow always managed to say soothing things when one felt sort of ruffled up without knowing just why.
“You had better believe I am!” was the emphatic reply. “What will you wear, Helen?”
“The same thing I always wear, I guess. I haven’t much choice in the matter, you know.”
Toinette colored slightly at her thoughtless remark, for she had not paused to think before speaking. All the girls knew that Helen’s purse was a very slender one, and that it was only by self-sacrifice and close economy that her parents were able to keep her at such an expensive school. She made no secret of her lack of money, but worked away bravely and cheerfully, always sunny, always happy, with the enviable faculty of invariably saying the right thing at the right time. She had pronounced artistic tendencies, and Miss Preston was anxious to encourage them in every possible way. Her great desire was to go to Europe and there see the originals of the famous paintings of which she read. Each year Miss Preston went abroad and took with her several of the girls whose parents could afford such indulgences for them, and Helen longed to be one of them, although she never for a moment hoped to be.
She did really remarkable work for a girl of her age, and was improving all the time, but the trip over the sea seemed as far off as a trip to the moon. Toinette was somewhat of a dilettante, and pottered away with her water-colors with more or less success. But she admired good work, and was quick to see that Helen was a hard student, and to respect her for it. Although so unlike in disposition, as well as position, a warm regard had sprung up between them, and Toinette spent many hours watching Helen work away at her drawing. The girl’s ambition was to illustrate, and there was hardly a girl in the school who had not posed for her, and the drawings in her sketch-book were excellent.
Toinette had never been taught to think much about others, and so it is not surprising that, while she admired Helen, and wished that she could have those things she so longed for, it never occurred to her that perhaps there were other and more fortunate girls who might have helped a trifle if they chose to do so. That she, herself, had it within her power to do it never entered her head till the girls began to talk about their new dresses, and what put it there then would be hard to tell. Nevertheless, come it did, and when she heard Helen speak so composedly of wearing to the school dance, the event of the season, in their eyes, the same dress which had done service for many a little entertainment given through the winter, and which gave unmistakable signs of having done so, she realized for the first time what it must mean to be deprived of those things which she had always accepted as a matter of course.
Still, no definite plans took shape in her head regarding it, and it is quite possible that none might ever have done so had not something occurred within a short time which seemed to be the hinge upon which her whole after-life swung.
As the girls were in the midst of their chatter about the new gowns a tap came at the door, and Fraulein Palme looked in to ask:
“Haf anyone seen my umbrel? I haf hunt eferywhere for him, and can’t see him anywhere.”
“No, Fraulein, we haven’t seen it,” answered several voices.
“Where did you last have it?” asked Ruth.
“Right away in my room a little while before I am ready to go out. I go down to the post-office and must get wet without him.”
Two or three of the girls went into the hall to look for the missing umbrella, and others went back to Fraulein’s room with her to make a more exhaustive search. But without success.
“Have you more than one?” asked Edith.
“No, it is but one I haf got. It is very funnee,” and poor Fraulein looked sorely perplexed.
“Take mine, Fraulein. Yours will turn up when you least expect it,” said Toinette.
“What did it look like, Fraulein?” asked Cicely.
“Chust like thees,” was the astonishing answer, as absent-minded Fraulein held forth the missing umbrella, which all that time she had held tightly clasped in her hand, and which had been the cause of Edith’s question as to whether she had more than one, for she supposed, of course, that the one Fraulein was so tightly holding must either be one she did not care to carry, or else one she was about to return to someone from whom she had probably borrowed it.
The shout which was raised at her reply speedily brought poor Fraulein back to her senses, and murmuring:
“Ach, so! I think I come veruckt,” she hurried off down the hall with the girls’ laughter still ringing in her ears.