“Not just that. I don’t mind that. But Dy-the Allen–”
“Stop a minute, Catherine. Once for all, what is her ridiculous name? I have wanted to know for nearly a year and never think to ask.”
Catherine laughed. “She was christened Edith, but when she was in High School she had a silly streak and wrote it with a ‘y’ for the ‘i’ and an ‘e’ on the end, so her brother called her E-dy-the, the way it looks, you know, just to tease her, and it turned into Dy-the and stayed that, though she signs herself Edith. She is one of the very dearest girls I ever knew, and how we shall get along without her next year at Dexter is more than 60 I can guess. All the little preps adore her. But that was the very thing that made me crossest about her carelessness. She would go out in the snow with little thin dancing slippers on and lace stockings, and then take a horrible cold and be ill for days, and shut herself up in her room and have everybody bringing her flowers and meals and writing her notes. And then all her little satellites did similar things and it made a lot of bother for everybody. Little Hilda went to see a measles child because she thought it was fine to be reckless the way Dy-the is, and then she gave it to her roommate and two other girls. I got quite angry once and let Dy-the know just how it looked to me. I told her she ought to be ashamed to disobey Nature and be sent to bed for it, and she only laughed and quoted things from Stevenson about people who live on tepid milk and wear tin shoes. I told her Stevenson certainly tried to look out for his own health, for all that, but I couldn’t make her think it a serious matter at all. She just laughed. She’s such a dear, she doesn’t know how to be angry, Dy-the doesn’t,” and Catherine smiled, in spite of her own earnestness, at the visions the name brought to her mind.
“Here comes somebody else of the dear variety,” said Dr. Helen. “Go and let Polly in.”
“She doesn’t need to be let in,” said that young person, appearing with the words. “She let her 61 own self in. I’m on an errand, Catriona darling. I want your mother’s advice and yours. What do you think of a regular library opening, with refreshments and all that? And have people bring books for admission fees?”
“Do sit down, Polly, and rest for a minute. You look as though you expected to be called to the telephone.”
Polly dropped, sighing, into a comfortable chair.
“It does feel good to let down for a minute,” she admitted. “I get so into the habit of tearing through space at college that I can’t stop rushing for a month after I get home, and this library business has kept me jumping. I suppose the public could get on a day or two longer without it, seeing they have so many years. I worked all day yesterday with Algernon, and then in the evening it was too hot to stay in the house, and the mosquitoes were so thick outside that it was harder work trying to keep comfortable than anything I had done all day.”
“They are worse than ever this year,” sighed Dr. Helen, “and, really, I think they are harder to bear when we all know that a little public-spirited co-operation would rid us of them. Can’t you get the people who draw books at the new library to agree to sprinkle the breeding-places with oil?”
Polly suddenly chuckled. “I beg your pardon, 62 Dr. Helen, for being rude, but I just remembered a woman who addressed an open air meeting on the campus this spring. She was a missionary returned from somewhere and she appeared at one of the houses and wanted to talk, so we got a few girls together on the lawn to hear her. The mosquitoes were simply unbearable. We all sat there slapping ourselves and making grabs at the air, and trying to look interested, and then she opened her Bible and read about being encompassed about with a cloud of witnesses: That was bad enough, when you could see them settling all about us like a great dotted veil, but nobody cracked a smile until she gave out the hymn. And that, if you please, was ‘My soul be on thy guard, ten thousand foes arise!’ You know how it goes.” And Polly sang: