The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted

Katharine Ellis Barrett

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• Publié par: urma
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 59
• Langue: English

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The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted, by Katharine Ellis Barrett, Illustrated by Sears Gallagher This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted Author: Katharine Ellis Barrett Release Date: February 1, 2010 [eBook #31200] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WIDE AWAKE GIRLS IN WINSTED*** E-text prepared by Roger Frank and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.fadedpage.com) “‘Here is a little souvenir for you, Judge Arthur.’” FRONTISPIECE. See page 266. THE WIDE AWAKE GIRLS SERIES THE WIDE AWAKE GIRLS IN WINSTED BY KATHARINE RUTH ELLIS Author of “The Wide Awake Girls” Illustrated from drawings by SEARS GALLAGHER Boston Little, Brown, and Company Copyright, 1909, BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND C OMPANY. All rights reserved Printers S. J. PARKHILL & C O ., BOSTON, U. S. A. To GLADYS GODDARD who has been the friend of many boys and girls this book is affectionately inscribed. PREFACE The author wishes to acknowledge gratefully the kindness of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin and Company in allowing her to use the poem Vantage, by Josephine Preston Peabody in this book. She also thanks Miss Margaret Sherwood for consenting to a similar use of her poem, Indian Summer . Books for girls are frankly suggestive, their value lying in their kindling power. Among the girls of all sorts who may read this story, there will be, here and there, one who loves right words. It is for the sake of such an occasional reader that the poems mentioned have been included. The schools sometimes lead their pupils to believe that English literature, like Latin, belongs to the past. But there are, here and now, “musicians of the word” who, partly because they are living, can touch our hearts as none of the dead-and-gone ones can. If through these pages some girl finds her way to the little green volume of Singing Leaves, or the sweet stories of Daphne and King Sylvaine and Queen Aimée, Catherine Smith and her friends will have done the world of girls a service worth the doing. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. C ATHERINE’ S INSPIRATION II. GETTING STARTED III. ORGANIZATION IV. WITH PAIL AND BROOM V. A D AY OFF VI. THE OPENING VII. A PARTY AT POLLY’ S VIII. A FORTUNATE MEETING IX. LANDING X. THE MAKING OF A C OMPACT XI. BROOKMEADOW XII. ARRIVAL AT WINSTED XIII. C AUGHT IN A SHOWER XIV. AN INTERLUDE XV. SUNDAY SCHOOL XVI. ALICE ON THE WAY XVII. FINDING A VOCATION XVIII. D OCTOR’ S ORDERS XIX. JOURNALISM XX. THE THREE R’ S XXI. THE LAST PARTY XXII. AUF WIEDERSEHEN 3 15 28 46 58 71 86 101 109 120 133 151 164 176 186 203 212 221 246 254 271 284 ILLUSTRATIONS “Here is a little souvenir for you, Judge Arthur” “We must find a good place for it” “How much for your tickets?” “Sure I am not too heavy, Karl?” Frieda was telling a story and the others were listening attentively Frontispiece PAGE 17 77 112 184 PART ONE STARTING A LIBRARY THE WIDE AWAKE GIRLS IN WINSTED CHAPTER ONE CATHERINE’S INSPIRATION “Alma Mater, Dexter darling, do re mi–O dear! It’s much harder to write than I supposed. I wonder why! When your heart is full of love, why should it be hard to express it?” Catherine Smith, sitting on the top step of the porch of her home, Three Gables, bent her red-gold head over the pad of paper on her knee and wrote painfully, her forehead puckered earnestly. She had been a year at college and was just beginning her summer vacation. All through the busy year, full of delightful new experiences, she had looked forward to the leisure of summer, in which she might adequately declare her devotion to the college which had been her mother’s and was now her own. From the day, the June before, when she had gone there to visit her friend, Hannah Eldred, she had felt a keen sense of “belonging,” especially pleasant because her frail health had compelled her to lead a somewhat secluded life at home, and she had not felt really acquainted with the young people in the little town of Winsted, where she had always lived. Now all that was changing. At college she had been forced to conquer her shyness, and, to her delight, she soon found that the boys and girls at home were more than glad to receive her into their circle upon equal terms. Her physician parents were everybody’s friends, and Catherine, who adored her father and mother, was eager to show herself worthy to be their daughter. In order to do so, she reasoned, she must be of real service to the town and to her college. The only way she had thought of so far was to write an Alma Mater song, expressive not only of the rapturous loyalty of undergraduates, but of the graver love of alumnæ like her mother. “It is very hard,” she sighed. “It must be stately and yet not heavy. O me! And here comes Algernon.” With a resigned air she folded her scribbled papers and thrust her pencil into the coil of red braids encircling her head. Algernon Swinburne, ever since his foolish mother had christened him for the poet, had, by turns, amused and wearied his fellow-citizens. While Catherine had lived apart, she had been spared his lengthy visits, but with the pleasures of social life had come its penalties and she was now on Algernon’s list and obliged to spend frequent hours in his really trying society. He came up the long walk now with a curious springing gait, and Catherine tried to summon a 3 4 5 hospitable smile to her lips. Algernon refused a chair. He always appeared to be just going, “and yet,” as Polly Osgood said with a groan, “he almost never goes!” He perched uncomfortably upon the railing and opened fire at once. “Have you seen the last North American Review?” Catherine confessed that she had not. “There was a corking article in it on municipal corruption, comparing San Francisco, New York and Pittsburg as to graft, police efficiency and so on. They say Pittsburg spends two million dollars a year–” “My upper legs is going barefoot.” Catherine lifted her eyes with a flash of pleasure. Elsmere Swinburne was the occasional relief from his big brother’s monotony. Catherine loved little folk, and though Elsmere was known to be a rascal who would have tried the patience of Job, she somehow always found forgiveness for his enormities, and a delighted appreciation for his funny sayings. Just now he stood proudly before her, his hands in his pockets, his eyes fixed upon his fashionably clad little legs, with bruised brown knees showing above new half-hose. “My mamma buyed ’em for me. Her buys me everything.” Catherine smiled, but shook her head a little. Mrs. Swinburne was a source of grief to all her neighbors, because of her persistent refusal to allow Algernon the chance at college that he desired, and even more because of her unwise indulgence of her younger son’s lightest wishes. Algernon cleared his throat and took up the thread of his narrative. “Pittsburg, this fellow Chapman in the Review says, spends two million dollars a year on–” “Talking, talking, all the time Algy talking,” Elsmere broke in. “I want to talk. Tell Caffrin ’bout my cat-pussy. Her awful sick. Her–” Catherine sprang up. Elsmere’s conversation often needed to be suppressed. “Let’s play tennis. Algernon, will you get the balls and rackets? You know where they are,–just inside the hall there. And Elsmere may run after balls for us. He can, so nicely!” Algernon obeyed the unexpected request patiently, and when he was gone, Catherine averted her face for the space of a minute. What she had hoped for came to pass, and when Algernon returned, his small brother had quietly vanished. “The older one may be monotonous, but the younger one is positively dangerous,” Catherine thought to herself, as she took the balls from Algernon, saying: “Let’s not play, after all. It’s so very warm and Elsmere thought he didn’t want to run after balls. You don’t mind, do you?” “Why, no, I wasn’t keen about playing,” and Algernon, unconscious of the maneuver he had helped to execute, dropped back upon the railing and continued his résumé of the North American article. 7 6 Catherine, meanwhile, having slipped the balls one by one into the pocket of her steamer chair, rested her long white hands upon the chair arms and sat quietly, hearing nothing of Mr. Chapman’s statistics, her brown eyes dreamily fixed upon the sloping lawn, but seeing instead the Dexter campus, across which girls were moving, as she loved best to see them, in pretty light gowns on the way to evening chapel. Among them all her thought rested most lovingly upon a little girl with a plain face and big round glasses. “You dear old Alice!” she murmured, almost aloud, and roused herself guiltily to hear Algernon saying: “There are a lot of wide-awake men in Pittsburg.” “Wide-awake girls in Winsted!” This time Catherine really did speak aloud, and Algernon looked up in surprised inquiry. “I beg your pardon,” she said contritely. “It was very rude of me, but you set me off, yourself. The Wide Awake Girls are really going to be in Winsted this summer. Don’t you know about them?” as Algernon still looked puzzled. “Why, no. All the Winsted girls seem wide-awake enough, I should say.” “But I’m the only one who has a right to be called so in capital letters. I’ll tell you all about it, but it has been such an important part of my life for the last year and more, that I forget every one who knows me doesn’t know about it all. “You see, about two years ago, when I was fifteen and Hannah Eldred, who lives in Massachusetts, was not quite fourteen, she wrote a letter to Wide-Awake, the magazine, you know, asking for correspondents. And I answered it. Several other girls did, too. One was Alice Prescott, who lives out in Washington, and another was Frieda Lange,