“With all these vacant rooms,” said she, “why not stay with Cathalina?” And Cathalina had added her persuasions. There were regular guest rooms, but they were too far from his little girl.
After breakfast the next morning, Mr. Van Buskirk told Cathalina that he preferred to take the lake walk back to the town. His bag was sent by the old-fashioned Greycliff express wagon, while he strolled down the shady walk with Cathalina. He talked earnestly and cheerfully of different matters, and at the arched gateway, where the vines climbed riotously and a little grey squirrel with a nut scolded them both, he kissed Cathalina goodbye and walked away briskly, turning once to give her a military salute and a parting smile. Cathalina blew a kiss and blithely waved her handkerchief, soon, alas, to be put to another use.
“His dear old straight shoulders!” she said, for there was only the squirrel to hear; and in spite of her determination the tears would come. With a sob she collapsed into the rustic seat and was ready for a good cry. But suddenly she gathered herself together, mopped away the tears and stood up, as straight as her father. “No, I will not! It always makes me sick to cry! I’ll see if I can not show a little nerve for once. That is what Father’s military salute meant. He was saying to me, ‘Remember Martin Van Buskirk and the rest of your Revolutionary ancestors, little daughter of the Revolution!’ I’m a goose! I’m past fourteen years old and I’ve been away from home before, and I guess if I wanted to go home awfully I could—but I’m going to stay!”
So the descendant of Martin Van Buskirk and Captain Hart walked as firmly and briskly as her father, up the walk, the front steps and the stairs to her own rooms, where she looked around to see what was to be done. “As Phil says, ‘Here goes!’” she remarked to herself, throwing back the top of a trunk; for before her father left, Cathalina’s trunks had been sent up and stood unlocked and unstrapped in the hall by the door.
“I wish my roommate were here,” she thought; “still, perhaps it will be less confusing if I get my things put away first. And perhaps she’ll be homesick, too, poor thing, and I can have a decent looking place for her. Dear me! This does not look much like home! Such teeny rooms, and only one dresser.” But thinking of some one else as homesick as herself helped brace poor little Cathalina. She shook out her pretty, simple frocks and hung them on one side of the large closet which the girls were to share.
“O, dear, I wish I had Etta,” she sighed; for by the time the dresser and wraps were hung up and the hats on the shelf, she was tired with the trips from trunks to closet. But she kept on, nevertheless, and spread on the table a pretty embroidered runner that Ann Maria had made for her, and carried there by armfuls books and boxes of finery.
“Can’t put anything in the bureau drawers, I suppose, until we divide them. I’m going to buy a big chiffonier, for I don’t see how we are ever going to get along. I wish that steamer trunk could have been brought in. I wonder why they won’t allow trunks in the rooms. It wouldn’t have done any good if I had brought the wardrobe trunk I wanted.”
At last the trunks were emptied and all that was to go in the bureau drawers arranged in neat piles on one of the beds. She was standing and considering the windows, bare of curtains, when cheerful sounds drew her over to lean out and see what was going on. Girls were climbing out of one automobile. Another was rounding the curve, ready to stop as soon as the first should move on, and a third was entering the drive. Two express wagons and a motor truck, piled high with trunks, went rattling to the rear of Greycliff Hall.
Waving of handkerchiefs or hands, calls, laughter and “feminine shrieks” met eye and ear. A more mournful girl than Cathalina would have smiled at the sight. Some of the girls, in neat traveling suits, ran up the steps to meet and embrace several hatless ones who hurried down to great them. One girl tossed aside bag and purse to throw her arms enthusiastically around three of her friends. “O, you’re all here, after all! Aren’t you glad to get back? And you really did come, Mary!”
“Do you know when Gertrude will get in?”