Dumps - A Plain Girl

by L. T. Meade

My name is Rachel Grant, and I expect I was a very ordinary sort of girl. Alex said so. Alex said that if I had beautiful, dancing dark eyes, and very red lips, and a good figure, I might queen it over all the boys, even on the days when it wasn’t my birthday; but he said the true name for me ought not to be Rachel, but Dumps, and how could any girl expect to rule over either boys or girls with such a name as Dumps? I suppose I was a little stodgy in my build, but father said I might grow out of that, for my mother was tall.

Ah dear! there was the sting of things; for if I had had a mother on earth I might have been a very different girl, and the boys might have been told to keep their place and not to bully poor Dumps, as they called me, so dreadfully. But I must go on with my story.

I was Rachel or Dumps, and there were two boys, Alex and Charley. Alex was a year younger than I, and ought really to have been very much under my control; and Charley was two years younger. Then there was father, who was quite elderly, although his children were comparatively young. He was tall and had a slight stoop, and his hair was turning grey. He had a very beautiful, lofty sort of expression, and he did wonders in the great school or college where he spent most of his time. Our house belonged to the college; the rooms were large, and the windows looked out on the grounds of the college and I could see the boys playing, Alex and Charley amongst them, only I never dared to look if I thought Alex or Charley could see me; for if they had caught sight of me it would have been all over with me, for they did not particularly want the other boys to know they had a sister.

“If she was a beauty we’d be awfully proud,” said Alex, “but being only Dumps, you know,”—and then he would wink at me, and when he did this I felt very much inclined to cry.

Well, these things went on, and I went to school myself and learnt as hard as I could, and tried to keep the house in order for father, whom I loved very dearly, and who sometimes—not very often, but perhaps once or twice, on a birthday or some special occasion of that sort—told me that I was the comfort of his life, and I knew that I was patient, whatever other virtue I might lack.

There came a special evening in the beginning of November. It had been a drizzling sort of day, and rather foggy, and of course the old house looked its worst, and it was six months—six whole months—before I could have a birthday, and the boys were so loud, and father’s head was so bad, and altogether it was a most discouraging sort of day. I had invited Rita and Agnes Swan to come and have tea with me. They were my greatest friends. I hardly ever dared to ask them to come, because something would be sure to happen on the nights when they arrived. But at school that morning it had seemed to me that I might certainly enjoy a quiet hour with them, so I said, “If you will come in exactly at four o’clock—father won’t be in, I am sure, for two hours, for it is his late day at the school, and it is half-holiday for the Upper Remove and Alex will be out of the way, and if Charley does come in we can manage him—we’ll have the entire house to ourselves from four to five, and can have a glorious game of hide-and-seek.”

Rita said she would be charmed to come, and Agnes said the same, and I hurried home to do the best I could for my friends.

Rita and Agnes were not exactly beautiful; but they were not like me—no one could have called either of them Dumps. They had soft, pretty hair which waved about their little heads, and their features were quite marked and distinct, and I think their eyes were beautiful, although I am not absolutely sure. They were rather clever, and often got praised at school. I am afraid they were inclined to patronise me, but I thought if I could have them to tea, and could show them over our large house, and let them see what a splendid place it was for hide-and-seek, it being a very old house with lots of queer passages and corners, they might respect me more and get the other girls in the school to do so also.

Accordingly, when I got home about one o’clock on that November day I was in high spirits. But there was my usual lesson in patience waiting for me; for father came in at three o’clock instead of at six, as he had done every single Thursday since I could remember.

“Where are you, Rachel?” he called out when he entered the house.