Miss Lochinvar: A Story for Girls

by Marion Ames Taggart

“Ask Gwen,” said Jan, the artful, as Viva came begging for a story at dusk. She was beginning to say “Ask Gwen” as often as possible when one of the three younger Grahams implored a favor. It was long that they had waited for Gwen’s sentence, and still the doctors could not be sure of what it was to be. Gladys and Jan had resumed school, and the hours dragged while the poor child waited their return and the coming of her friends who were faithful in spending some time with her each afternoon. It was to little Jerry and Viva that Gwen found herself turning for comfort while the others were away; Viva always gentle, grave, and sweet; Jerry showing herself the dearest mite, with her headstrong, impulsive baby nature toned down to meet the needs of her whom she now invariably called her “poor, dear little Gwennie.” Gwendoline’s talent for story-making was used now chiefly to entertain Viva, while Jerry spun yarns for “poor, dear little Gwennie,” usually of thrilling interest, though briefly sustained.

“Once there was a dreat, bid lion, and he roared—like dis!” And Jerry interrupted her recital to open her mouth to its widest extent and roar fearfully in a deep alto. “And he was wery hundry, and he came to N’Yort, and he ated up seven, five, free little dirls on n’avenue, and Jewwy Draham shood him off wid her stirts in bot’ hands, and she stared him so he was awful feared, and she said: ‘Poor, poor lion, come in n’house and see little Gwennie!’ Isn’t dat er fine stowy?”

“Well, he might be an awkward caller,” laughed Gwen. “Perhaps if he’d eaten up so many little girls he wasn’t hungry, though. Yes, that’s a fine story, Jerry!” And Gwen groped for the little dimpled hands to squeeze them, and Jerry snuggled down with rapturous kisses for “poor, dear Gwennie.”

Jan rejoiced to see how unconsciously but surely the Graham household was knitting together around Gwen’s bed. At the worst they would be happier than before the accident, but Jan would not admit, even to herself, that the worst was possible.

Sydney had discovered his father. In a long, intimate talk the boy had laid before him the difficulties and temptations of his little world, and found himself telling the man, who remembered quite well, after all, how it felt to be a boy, some things that he had not said to the girls. But they had proved right in their prophecies of how his father would take Sydney’s disclosures. With unspoken self-reproach for having left a boy of sixteen unguarded, Mr. Graham set to work to undo his mistakes. If Sydney did not feel that he would be a success as a business man or as a professional one, Mr. Graham said, he would not ask him to go through college. But he did ask him now to work harder than he had ever done at his books, and prepare himself for whatever he was to be in the future by doing his duty faithfully in the present. And he promised him to send him every afternoon to a friend of his, a professor at Columbia, who had asked for an intelligent boy to copy for him notes he was making on natural history. He would pay Sydney for his labor, and thus he could set himself right in his own eyes, and pay back the money his sister had lent him. In the meantime he would be having the best possible companionship, and be in the way of making sure that he was not mistaken in deciding that college life and study had no charm for him.

Sydney felt as though the gloom in which he had walked for months had given way to a glare of sunshine, and he blessed Jan in his heart for showing him the road to the best and most needed friend that a boy of his age could have—his own kind father.

“Daisy and Ida Hammond have left school,” announced Gladys, bursting into Gwen’s room one day. “They said their mother considered the Hydra less exclusive that it had been, and was going to let them go to boarding-school.”

“I don’t see how they stood it so long after they were found out,” said Gwen scornfully. “It’s rather nice of them to make the Hydra more exclusive by removing the only girls in it who had been found out in a disgraceful act.” Gwen was stronger; she could bear sudden outbursts from the children, and Jan couldn’t help hoping that the next step would be the restoration of the wounded eyes to light and health.

“Oh, as to the exclusive, that refers to me, I suspect,” said Jan so carelessly that it showed how completely she had lost the timidity and wounded sensibility of her first days in New York. “Tommy Traddles,” she added to the cat lying at Gwen’s feet, curled over on his back, with his four feet drawn up on his white breast, and his tongue sticking out while he looked over the top of his head to see what effect his blandishments had, “Tommy Traddles, you may consider that a squirm, but I consider it a device for winning attention.” And she proceeded to bury her fingers in Tommy’s white shirt-front, while he shut his eyes in blissful satisfaction with the result of his “device.”

“Well, I am thankful they have gone,” said Gladys, removing her rubbers with her right hand while her left thoughtfully smoothed her stocking. “It was very disagreeable to have them around when you didn’t want to go with them. And your set have not been so very anxious to have me, Gwen. If it hadn’t been for Jan I’d have been quite out of it since the fuss.”