Hope Benham: A Story for Girls

"Tired us out? No, indeed, you haven't," cried the girls in a breath; and one of the girls was Hope, who had come in softly just as Kate had begun to read, and who now added,—

"It's lovely to listen to anything when you read it, Kate."

"Isn't it!" took up Myra. "Miss Marr ought to pay Kate a salary for the good she does in this history business. I hate to study it; I always get all in a wabble with the dates and the names and the places, and by and by, when I try to tell about it or think about it, I get a fifteenth-century king into the sixteenth century just as likely as not. But when Kate picks out her little nuggets of gold from the mass, and sets them before me, I begin to see daylight."

"So do I, so do I!" cried Anna Fleming; "and another thing,—I am not ashamed to ask Kate ignorant questions."

"Nor I," declared Myra; and then they all laughed, and Myra followed up the laugh by immediately proceeding to ask two or three of these "ignorant questions,"—the first being, "If Spain had possession of Breda, what does it mean by the Italian infantry and cavalry being there to defend it?"

"It means that at that time," answered Kate, "Philip II., called Philip the Prudent, had possession of the better portion of Italy, with other territory that he had gobbled up, and so, of course, he made use of Italian soldiers."

"Who was Lewis William?"

"He was the stadt of Friesland,—Friesland was part of the Netherlands."

"Oh, and what became of the dare-devil skipper,—Van der Berg,—your ancestor?"

"Oh, he didn't come to anything wonderful,—he 'fought and bled' in freedom's cause like most of those Dutchmen, I suppose."

"But there was a family of Van den Bergs who were cousins to Maurice," here spoke up Hope. "Were these any relations to Van der Berg, the skipper?"

"Oh, no,—we didn't descend from princes and counts," laughed Kate.

"I don't believe but that it is the Van den you belong to, anyway," said Anna.

"Nonsense," cried Kate; "if we 'belong,' as you say, to a family of that early day, it is to the dare-devil Van der Bergs, and that's good enough for me. My brother Schuyler ought to hear you give preference to the Van den Bergs. He would be ready to fight a duel with you; for, from a little boy, he has been perfectly enchanted with that story of the dare-devil, and when we were all at home five years ago,—little things of ten and eleven and twelve,—we used to play the story, and we called it 'The Siege of Breda.' It was when we were up at our summer place on the Hudson. It was such fun. We had a queer little cottage on the place, that had a lot of gables and turrets. It was unoccupied, except as a sort of storehouse for fruit; and this cottage we called 'the castle.' A rather wide stream of water runs through the grounds, and broadens out into a sort of miniature lake at the foot of the garden. It was just across this broader part, where it was also quite deep, that the cottage showed its turrets and gables, and we got the gardener and one of the stable men to build up a sort of palisade of bricks and stones and boards all about it. Inside this we made a guard-house, and the arsenal was in the castle itself. Then we knew an old sailor who fixed up our little yacht, made a cabin and hold, where the boys crept in,—the boys who represented the attacking party, the seventy Hollanders,—and we packed around them a lot of dry moss we had prepared, to represent turf. Mr. Brown—our old sailor—also fixed up something that did duty for a water-gate. Well, when we had got everything as near to our minds as possible, we dressed ourselves up in our costumes,—oh, yes, we had regular costumes. My uncle Schuyler said it was a real history lesson for us, and he should do all he could to help it along; and so he hunted up some books that had the illustrations of the costumes of that time, and we got mamma and a seamstress we had to help us make up suits for us."

"And did you take part?" asked Myra.

"Did I take part? Well, I should think I did. I was Captain Charles de Heraugiere, if you please. And oh, the cunning little suit I had,—a regular fighting suit of imitation leather and a rough-looking sort of stuff like frieze, and a sort of waistcoat of chamois skin, and then a dear little hat with a feather;—oh, and boots with tops that came 'way up to the knee-bend. We made the tops ourselves of mock leather, russet color, and sewed them to our russet shoes. Oh, it was such fun!"

"But your brother—what character did he take?"

"Oh, there was but one character that he would take, and that was the dare-devil boatman who stood on the deck and joked with the purchasers of the peat. You should have seen Schuyler as he did it. It was moonlight, for mamma and papa wouldn't let us play it as we wanted to on a dark night, for there might be an accident; but we ran the boat down by some sheltering bushes, and the boys who took the part of the purchasers from the castle stood in the lighter place where the moonlight fell, and that left the place where our hidden soldiers were quite dusky and mysterious. But Schuyler stood in the light, the moon shining straight in his face. His suit was a good deal rougher than mine, but a good deal like it; only he had a cap on, and that was pushed back, and he looked so handsome and bold when he joked and laughed and answered the purchasers. Then when we soldiers stole out of the ship where we were in hiding—What! how could I see Schuyler when I was hidden? Oh, I peeped through the moss. And how many boys had we? Oh, twenty in all,—about eight in the boat,—it wouldn't hold any more; but the eight of them made such a show in their costumes. They were all our neighbors and close friends, the whole twenty of them. Four were the Dyker brothers, and the Burton boys with their cousins who had come up a-visiting them from Philadelphia; and there were our boys and the Van Loons and Delmars to make up the twenty. But, as I was saying, when we soldiers stole up out of the vessel, and I marched at the head of my band, the dare-devil would lead the way. I told him it was all out of order, but he declared that Captain Heraugiere couldn't know the way as the dare-devil who had carried the peat so often must know it, and that of course he must be guided; so I had to give in.

"We started our play at the point where the officer of the guard puts off from the castle in a skiff, and comes on board our vessel; then, after that, we slip down through the water-gate,—of course we don't have any leak,—the Burton boys and the Van Loons come to the shore and drag us into the harbor and make the vessel fast, close to the guard-house. It was just after that, you know, that the dare-devil receives the purchasers, and goes through all that joking and sending the people off, saying that he was tired. And then I followed as Captain Heraugiere; and what do you think!—Schuyler at first wanted to be Captain Heraugiere too. He said he could easily manage it; but it was when he found he wouldn't be allowed to gobble up the two characters, he insisted upon showing the captain the way, and so he stuck to me all through, flourishing his wooden sword on the slightest excuse. But how we did lay about us! Whack, whack, we knocked over the Burtons, and all the rest of the Italians, with the young Lanzavecchia at their head; and then came the great end of the victory, the arrival of Hohenlo with the vanguard of Maurice's troops, and then Prince Maurice himself with his fine attendants,—his counts and admirals, and these were the Van Loons and the Burtons again, who had rigged themselves up in other clothes,—nice honest Dutch clothes to play the Netherlander parts. So we turned and twisted our twenty boys, just as they do on the stage, and you'd have thought there were a host of them. Well, when the vanguard arrived, we all joined together and marched into the town—that is, around our grounds and into the castle, the Dyker brothers, who are musical, playing the national air with a drum and fife and cornet, and some of the rest of us, breaking out now and then at the top of our voices into the chorus,—

which means,

William from Nassau, you know, was the great Prince of Orange.

"And marching to this playing and singing, we entered the castle,—our cottage,—where a table had been set with a lot of Dutch dainties, made by our German cook, Wilhelmina, who had lived in Holland and knew everything about the dear little Dutch cakes and things they eat there. Then, after we had partaken of the feast, the table was carried out, and we danced to our heart's content. Oh, we did have such a good time, and we kept it up every year until we got too old for it."

"What fun it must have been!" cried Myra. "I wish I could have been there; but didn't you have any other girl but yourself in the play with those twenty boys?"

"No, not in the play; but we had plenty of girls as spectators and at the feast and dancing."

"And did you ever make a play out of any other historical incident?" asked Anna Fleming.

"Yes, several; and I think that is the reason why historical events became so fixed in my mind, and I got so interested in reading history. It began by accident, as you might say,—that is, by Schuyler's delight in the Van der Berg story, and insisting on playing it. It's the best way in the world, let me tell you, to play history like this,—it teaches you more than any ordinary study possibly can, and you find that through it you get events and epochs perfectly clear in your mind, and everything by and by spreads out before you like reality."

"I wish Miss Marr would let us have history lessons this way," said Myra.

"Perhaps she will, some time, if Kate tells her what she has told us," said Anna, hopefully; "and you will tell her some time, won't you, Kate?"

"Yes, I'll tell her, but I don't think it is the thing to do in school days; you ought to get it up in the summer, during vacations. It would interfere with other studies to go into all the preparation and work of such performances in school."

"Did you ever like any other of your plays as well as the Siege?" asked Hope.

"No, never; but what made you ask that, Hope?"

"Because it was so stirring and out-door-sy, and the boatman was so jolly and brave, I thought it wasn't possible that there could have been another story quite so playable as that."

"I said the Van der Bergs were proud of only one thing,—this performance of the boatman; but there was another of our ancestors of a later day who is very interesting, I think, and just as plucky and brave in another way."

"Oh!" ejaculated Anna Fleming, with such an air of anticipation that they all laughed, for they all knew Anna's weakness for ancestors; and this "Oh," said very plainly, "Now we are to hear of something more worth while than an old boatman, something probably about those aristocratic Knickerbocker ancestors of Kate's."

Kate herself, thoroughly appreciating Anna's state of mind, went on demurely: "This ancestor was my mother's great-great-grandfather. He was the son of a small farmer in England, and he came to New York a poor boy, with only a few shillings in his pocket; and with these few shillings he started, and, working at all sorts of things,—as a stevedore, and anything else he could find to do,—he at last worked his way up to a little clerkship in a little mercantile house, and from there he climbed step by step into a bigger clerkship, in the same little house, and then step by step into a clerkship in a big house, until after a while, after all sorts of working and waiting and hardships, he came to be at the head of the big house, and one of the first merchants of the day in New York. We have in our family now one of those English shillings that he brought over and saved for luck when he was working on the wharves, and we keep it for luck; and there is a packet of old letters and a diary he kept, telling the whole story, that we have too. Oh, yes, we are very proud of our great-great-great-grandfather, I can tell you," smiling up at the girls.

"But where did those lovely old shoe-buckles and gold buttons, and that old silver with the V. der B. engraved on it, that I saw when I visited you,—where did those come from, if that boatman was the only Dutch ancestor you had that you were proud of?" anxiously and disappointedly asked Anna here.

"Oh, they came from some of the later V. der B.'s; some descendants that had nothing specially interesting about them,—were not heroes of any kind, but just rich old burghers."

"But weren't they what are called the Knickerbocker families?"

"Yes; but you know how that name came to be given to them, don't you?"

"No, not exactly," answered Anna, shamefacedly.

"And I haven't the least idea. I know I ought to know, but I don't," burst out Myra, blithely and boldly; "so do tell us."

"Well, it came about in this way. Washington Irving wrote a burlesque history of New York,—that is, it was a burlesque on a pompous handbook of the city, that had just been published. He called it 'A History of New York from the beginning of the world to the end of the Dutch Dynasty, by Diedrich Knickerbocker.'

"He made up the name of Knickerbocker probably, as people now make up a name for a nom de plume. But at the time by a facetious advertisement, such as Hawthorne might have written at a later day,—an advertisement 'inquiring for a small, elderly gentleman, dressed in an old black coat and cocked hat, by the name of Knickerbocker, who was said to have disappeared from the Columbus Hotel in Mulberry Street, and left behind a very curious kind of a written book,'—he fooled some of those Dutch ancestors of mine into thinking that this was a veritable Dutch name, and that this old gentleman was a veritable owner of the name, and writer of the History of New York, which they thought was meant for a veritable history. Then some of them finding it was a burlesque were seriously offended, and made a great fuss about it; but in spite of all this, the name stuck, and as it was really meant as a sort of interpretation of the aristocratic Dutch character, it was after a while accepted as a title for the descendants of the old Dutch burghers, and so grew into a term for the gentry or aristocratic class. That is all there is to it."

"Well, then, that proves that you are from the Dutch gentry,—an old Knickerbocker family!" exclaimed Anna, in a tone of satisfaction, that brought forth a perfect shout of laughter from Kate, and after the laughter the immediate answer, "Oh, yes; and the New York head of this old Knickerbocker family of mine kept a shop down near the wharves, where he bought and sold flour and molasses, just as that dear old Joris Van Heemskirk did in Mrs. Barr's dear, delightful story, 'The Bow of Orange Ribbon.' In trade, you see,—shopkeepers!" and Kate nodded her head and laughed again, as she looked at Anna, who had a silly way sometimes of talking as she had heard some English people talk of "people in trade."

But Anna, who did not like to be laughed at, any more than the rest of us, retorted here: "It will do for you to go on in this way about family, and ancestors, and all that. You can afford to tell the truth because you do belong and have belonged, or your family has belonged, for years to the upper class; but if you had only just come up from—from—"

"Selling flour and molasses," struck in Kate, mischievously.

"No, I did not mean that, for I suppose things were different then; but if you belonged to new rich people,—people who had just made money, people who had been common working-people, mechanics, or something of that sort,—you wouldn't talk like this, you'd keep still."

"Yes, if I belonged to common working-people, people whose minds were common and vulgar; but how if I belonged to working-people like George Stephenson, the father of English railways, and the locomotive? Oh, Anna, don't you remember we had to study up about Watt and Boulton and the Stephensons last term in connection with our applied-science lessons?"

"Last term!" cried Anna; "you can't expect me to remember everything I studied up on, last term. Things like that don't stick in my mind as they do in yours."

"Well, you ought to remember about George Stephenson, who was the son of a fireman of a colliery engine in England, and how he worked up, and educated himself, and finally constructed the steam locomotive that made him famous, and led to his being employed in the construction of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. And there was his son Robert, who followed in his father's footsteps and became an authority on everything connected with railways and engines; and then there was James Watt, who preceded them as the inventor of the condensing steam-engine for manufacturing purposes, which led the way to Stephenson's locomotive. Watt was only a poor boy, the son of a small trader in Scotland, and was an apprentice to a philosophical-instrument maker, where he worked so hard and lived so poorly that he nearly lost his health. Do you think that men like these wouldn't dare to talk about their humble beginnings? Do you think they would keep still, or do you think their families would keep still, because they were ashamed of the humble beginnings? No, no, not unless they were miserable cowards and didn't know what to be proud of, and that indeed would make them dirt common and vulgar, and not deserving their good fortune."

"Well, I wasn't thinking of geniuses, of course. I don't suppose that anybody who was connected with such people as you speak of would be ashamed exactly of the 'humble beginnings,' as you call them,—the people I mean are the ordinary people, who have just come up from nowhere, with a lot of money made out of—"

"Flour and molasses; yes, I see—you think the molasses sticks to them, and they pretend to ignore it. Well, all I've got to say is that I do so hate cowardice, I think, if I were in their places, with the molasses so new and sticky, that I should blurt out, 'Molasses! molasses!' if anybody so much as looked at me attentively. But goodness, girls, do you know what time it is?"

"Half-past eight," guessed Myra and Anna, confidently.

"Half-past eight! you geese, it's half-past nine."

There was a chorus of "Oh's" and "Ah's," and then a general good-night and scampering off to bed.

It was very late before Hope fell asleep that night. Generally sleep came to her quickly while Myra dawdled and pottered about, until the lights were put out. But on this night Myra, from her little bed in the opposite corner of the room, heard her usually quiet room-mate tossing and turning in a very restless fashion.

"What in the world is the matter with you, Hope?" she asked her at length. "Are you ill?"

"Ill? Oh, no; I'm only a little restless," Hope answered. "I am sorry I disturbed you,—I'll try to be quieter."

"Oh, you didn't disturb me, Hope,—such a little thing as that wouldn't disturb me,—but I thought you must have something the matter with you, you are such a mouse generally. You're sure there isn't anything the matter?"

"Yes, quite sure."

"Not even Dorothea?"

"Not even Dorothea? What do you mean?"

"Well, I didn't know but you had Dorothea on your mind,—that you might be worrying over her persecution of you,—her determination to make you play that duet with her," said Myra, laughing.

"Oh, no, I don't worry over Dorothea," answered Hope, laughing a little herself at this suggestion.

"How Kate does dislike her!" exclaimed Myra.

"Dislike Dorothea?" cried Hope, startled at this strong assertion.

"Well, I should say so; and you don't like her any better, either, Hope-y dear. I think that you and Kate know something about her that the rest of us don't, for I've noticed from the very first that you were very distant to her."

"'Know something about her!' Now, Myra, just because I was not pleased with Dorothea's ways and have held off from playing duets with her, you take that extraordinary notion into your head. 'Know something about her!' Of course, you mean by that, something to her disadvantage. I know just what you all know, that she is the daughter of the Hon. Mr. Dering of Boston. What I know to her disadvantage is her lack of good manners, and that you all know. There, if that isn't enough—"

"Oh, it is, it is, Hope-y, do forgive me, that's a dear; I was only half in fun, anyway. I feel just as you and Kate do about Dorothea; her manners are horrid, horrid,—so forward and consequential."

"But I do hope I haven't influenced you to feel in this way, Myra; that is, that my manner—"

"No, no, I didn't like her ways at the very first,—they are so domineering. I dare say the outside is the worst of her, though, and that very likely she may be good-hearted. But there's Kate Van der Berg, she's good-hearted, and has good manners too; and isn't she jolly, Hope? Wasn't it fun to hear her go on with Anna about the flour and molasses? And, Hope, I do believe that she would do just as she said, if she were a new rich person,—that is, if she were the kind of girl she is now. She would just come right out with the flour and molasses,—talk about everything perfectly frankly, because she hates anything that looks like being ashamed, anything that looks like cowardice. Yes, I do believe she would. But I couldn't, could you?"

There was no answer to this question; and after a moment or two, Myra looked across at the motionless figure clearly outlined in the moonlight, and thought, "She's gone to sleep."

But Hope had not gone to sleep. She was never more widely awake in her life than she was when Myra asked her question,—never more widely awake and never more unhappy; for as she lay there motionless and silent, she knew that she was acting a lie because she did not want to answer that question,—a question that was almost the same that she had been asking herself ever since she had listened to Kate's emphatic arraignment of cowards; for from that moment she had said to herself: "I wonder if I am not just this kind of a coward, because I have kept silent before these girls,—have not told them that I belonged to the new rich people,—that my father was a poor mechanic, and that I—had sold mayflowers at the Brookside station? Kate would have told them long ago, I suppose, if she had been in my place. She'd say I was 'dirt common' and vulgar not to speak of father,—that I ought to be so proud of him that I couldn't help speaking. And I am proud of him,—I am, I am, nobody could be prouder,—it isn't that I'm in any way ashamed of anything,—of anything,—the engineer cab, the workman's clothes, or the flower-selling; but—but, oh, I couldn't talk about it to those girls,—they have never known what it was to live differently from the way they live now, and they would stare at me, as if I were a curiosity, something unlike themselves, and they'd have so many questions to ask, because it would all be so odd to them; and then there is Dorothea now, to make it worse,—Dorothea would take all the dignity out of anything; and how she would go on about the mayflowers and our quarrel, and exclaim and wonder and laugh! No, no, I can't bring all this on myself,—it may be very cowardly of me, but I can't, I can't."

Agitated by thoughts like these, it was not strange that sleep failed to come quickly to Hope that night, and that, in consequence, she should look heavy-eyed and pale the next morning, and that, in further consequence, Miss Marr, who was very observant, should say: "What is the matter, Hope? You don't look well." And when Hope had no answer to give but that she was restless and didn't sleep very well, Miss Marr glanced at her rather anxiously, and said admonishingly, "I'm afraid you've been studying too hard, Hope. You haven't? Then you must be homesick." But when Hope assured her that she couldn't be homesick in her house, Miss Marr, laughingly declaring that she was a little flatterer, came to the conclusion that there was nothing amiss that the week's vacation so near at hand and the New Year festivities would not rectify.

Where Hope was to spend her week's vacation had been a matter of some consideration. She would have gone to her grandmother Benham up in the New Hampshire hills if the distance at that season of the year had not been an objection. Miss Marr, too, would gladly have kept her little favorite with her; and there was Kate Van der Berg pining for her company, backed by Mrs. Van der Berg's cordial note of invitation; and the Sibleys also—the friends whom the Benhams had met abroad, and who had spoken to Miss Marr so admiringly of John Benham's "dearest little daughter"—had entreated her to come to them. Another invitation was from the Benhams' old neighbors and friends,—the Kolbs. All these invitations had been received by Hope early in November, and she had immediately sent them to her parents in Paris, with a little note of her own, that simply said, without a word of her own personal preference: "I want you to tell me which place you would rather I would choose. I like them all."

Mr. and Mrs. Benham laughed as they read these words. They laughed because this was so like Hope. When she was quite a little girl, her mother had thought it would be a good plan to teach her to be careful in her selections, by making her choose entirely for herself what she would like, and abiding by that choice for the time being. Hope was delighted with this plan at first. She fancied that with such liberty she was going to have a very happy time; but after she had made several mistakes, had chosen what had brought her, if not serious disappointment and discomfort, a knowledge that she had much better have chosen differently, she hit upon a little change of plan; and this was to submit to her mother and father whatever was set before her for her choosing, with the provision that they should give her the benefit of their opinions, while still leaving her her own liberty of choice. They were very much amused at this proposed change, but readily consented to its being tried; and the trial, on the whole, had turned out very satisfactorily, the child only upon rare occasions, when greatly tempted by some special predilection, going against the parental opinion. The odd plan thus childishly begun had settled into a fixed habit, though as Hope had grown older it had become little more than an interchange of opinions. On the present occasion, however, the girl had very evidently gone back to her first idea, for it was quite plain to both father and mother that while she had some special predilection for one of these invitations, she did not want to betray it, as she wanted a perfectly unbiassed opinion from them,—or, in other words, wanted to know their preference before she acknowledged her own; and this Mr. Benham decided at once not to give. "I will write to her that she must make her choice quite independent of us," he said to his wife. "There can be no harm in her accepting any one of these invitations, but what we want to know now is the bias of her own mind."

John Benham, as well as his wife, had tried, from the very first of their change of fortunes, to keep Hope untouched by the temptations of sudden wealth; and one of their fears in regard to the New York school had been that Hope would meet there girls whose influence might be of a worldly and fashionable nature. But Miss Marr's reputation for right thinking and right doing had carried the day over all these fears, and they had seen no reason from term to term to regret this decision. It was with no little curiosity, then, coupled with some anxiety, that she and her husband awaited Hope's choice of invitations. She had now been a pupil of Miss Marr's a year, a year in close association with the young people in the school. The parents had seen her twice in this time, and she had seemed to them the same child Hope. Her letters, too, gave them very satisfactory accounts of her school life and companions. In all these accounts the name of Kate Van der Berg held a prominent place, and they could see that this friend was of more importance to Hope than any of the other girls. When, therefore, they pondered over Mrs. Van der Berg's invitation, with its hints of luxurious entertainment, they thought it quite natural that any girl should choose to accept it. Then, too, there was Mrs. Sibley, with her offer of hospitality in a fine house where the visitor would be petted and made much of. If not to the Van der Bergs', would not any ordinary girl choose to go to this delightsome place? The Kolbs could offer nothing like this hospitality. Their house at Riverview was small, their means not large, and their acquaintance, outside the musicians with whom the old violinist was brought in contact, very limited, and in this limited acquaintance there were no young people, except Mr. Kolb's nephew and his little German wife. But the old violinist's heart was full of warm regard for the little mädchen whom he had taught for love five years ago, and what he did offer was out of the fulness of this regard, as the following quaint letter will show:—

My dear little Mädchen,—The good frau and myself have wondered for long time if the little mädchen remembers the Christmas Day when she stood beside Papa Kolb, to help him strip the Christmas tree; and if she remembers, the good frau and myself wonders if she would not like to stand by Papa Kolb again and strip a Christmas Tree that shall grow up purposely for her if she will come to Papa Kolb's house for the holiday week that is near at hand. The good frau will take best care of the little mädchen. She shall have the blue and white chamber with the little porcelain stove, and the good frau will herself make for her the little cakes she likes so well, and Papa Kolb will make his violin sing the music that they both love.

"How can the child resist this letter?" exclaimed Mr. Benham, as he laid it down after reading it twice over.

"Yes; but you might have asked the same question after reading Mrs. Sibley's and Mrs. Van der Berg's, with their cordial offers of Christmas dances and performances," said Mrs. Benham.

"Yes, I might, but I didn't," replied Mr. Benham, with a smile.

"No, you didn't; but you must remember though, John, that to Hope, Christmas dances and matinée performances in a big city must naturally be more attractive than they are to you."

"Oh, yes, yes, of course; and it's of course, I suppose, that any young girl would naturally prefer the fine gay things that fine gay people can offer to the more humdrum things that the Kolbs can give."

It will readily be seen, from this little conversation, where John Benham's preference lay in this question of invitations; and as a matter of fact, Mrs. Benham's interests were in the same quarter. They both leaned very strongly to Papa Kolb's affectionate home offer, but they were both agreed in their resolve that they would say nothing to Hope of their feeling.

In this way they looked to find out the natural bias of the girl's mind, and ascertain exactly the direction that her tastes and inclinations were now taking. But as Mrs. Benham read over again the notes from the Van der Bergs and Sibleys, she felt that it was absurd for her to expect that a young creature like Hope would turn from such attractions to the Kolbs, and she told her husband so. Like the man of sense that he was, Mr. Benham admitted the truth of his wife's conclusions. It was but a step from this admission to a final agreement that Hope of course, thus left to herself, would choose the New York gayeties, like any other girl; and when her next letter arrived, Mrs. Benham ran her little pearl paper-cutter through the envelope, with the remark, "Now we shall hear all about the fine preparations for the fine doings at the Van der Bergs', for I am quite sure it will be to Kate Van der Berg and not to Mrs. Sibley that the child has chosen to go; and I do hope that Miss Marr has seen to her preparations, and helped her to choose some new things, if she needs them. And she must need a new gown or two, and gloves, and perhaps a fresh wrap, going about as she will with the Van der Bergs to the holiday entertainments. I told Miss Marr when we came away, to order anything that Hope needed, if at any time—"

There was a sudden cessation of Mrs. Benham's voice; then after a moment: "John, John, what do you think!—"

Mr. Benham looked up from his desk, where he was busy studying the plan of a new French locomotive.

"What do you think, John? She isn't going to the Van der Bergs'!"

"She prefers the Sibleys, then; well, they'll be very good to her."

"No, she doesn't prefer the Sibleys,—it's the Kolbs, after all. Do listen to her letter!" and Mrs. Benham read aloud:—

Dear Papa and Mamma,—I'm going to the Kolbs'. I wanted to go the minute I got Papa Kolb's dear kind invitation; but when on the very same morning I received the two others, I thought I would send them all off to you, hoping that you would say that you would like to have me go to the Kolbs'. But when your answer came, and I knew that I must make my own choice quite independently of you, I wrote at once to Mrs. Van der Berg and to Mrs. Sibley, that I had had an invitation from some old friends who had known me from a little child and been very kind to me, and I loved them very much, and felt that I must go to them.

I told Kate what I had written, and I told her something about the Kolbs, and that Papa Kolb had been my first teacher; and she laughed, and said that nobody need expect to get me away from a fiddler. And she is quite right when the fiddler is Mr. Kolb. I love Kate Van der Berg dearly, and so would you if you knew her; and if you had heard her talk the other day about the right and the wrong kind of pride of ancestry, you would admire her very much. And I love Mrs. Sibley too, and if there had been no invitation from the Kolbs, I should have been very glad to have gone to her or to Kate. But the Kolbs are like—well, like—like my very own. They have known me so long and I have known them so long that I feel at home with them all the time; and then the fiddles and the music and the Christmas Tree—everything there is what I love best.

Mr. Benham forgot for the moment the locomotive plan that lay before him, as he listened to this portion of his daughter's letter; and when his wife put the letter down and said, "We needn't be afraid of Hope's being spoiled by these fine people, John," his eyes lighted up, as he replied smilingly,—

"Hope is set to a home tune, Martha, that she is never going to forget."

Dolly Dering was beating time with her fan to the closing passages of the Mendelssohn concerto, when she suddenly caught sight of Hope Benham, three seats before her. Dolly's quick start, and a smothered "Oh!" excited the curiosity of her companion,—a young cousin of hers,—Jimmy Dering, who, following the direction and expression of her eyes, whispered,—

"What's the matter with her, Dolly?"

Dolly made no reply, but continued to stare, and, Jimmy repeating his question, Dolly whispered back: "'Matter with her'? That girl I was looking at? Nothing; what do you mean?"

"You looked so astonished I thought she was a ghost, or that something was the matter with her."

Dolly giggled under her breath, and whispered: "No, it's only that I was so surprised to see her here in Music Hall. She is one of the girls from my school,—Hope Benham. I thought she was going to stay in New York this week with the Van der Bergs,—awful swells! I wonder who she's visiting here."

"Some other 'awful swells,'—Boston swells, I suppose. She looks that way herself. Why didn't you invite her to stay with you, Dolly?"

"I should as soon have thought of inviting Bunker Hill Monument,—though I like her,—sort of—she's stiffish, but fascinating, and plays the violin like—Oh!" with an emphatic emphasis, to convey the inexpressible.

"Like 'Oh'! You must waylay her and introduce me to her, Dolly. I want to know any girl who plays the violin like 'Oh.' I never heard it played like that. Say, Dolly—"

"H—ush!" breathed Jimmy's mother, Mrs. Mark Dering, shaking her head at the two whisperers, as the violin solo began. Jimmy, who was enthusiastically fond of the music of the violin, was now quite willing to be hushed, and, leaning back, gave himself up to silent enjoyment. Toward the close of the exquisite strains he happened to glance at the girl three seats in front of him. Her lips were slightly parted, her eyes were shining, her whole attitude expressive of the deepest delight.

"How she does like it, and how she knows music!" thought Jimmy. "I'd like to hear her play the violin. I wonder if I can't manage it. I mean to make Dolly introduce me to her."

Hope was pulling up her little sealskin cloak at the end of the concert, when she heard a voice say: "How de do, Hope? I never was so surprised in my life as when I saw you here. I thought Kate Van der Berg had invited you to stay with her through the vacation."

"How de do, Hope?"

The "deep delight" on Hope's face vanished as if by magic as she heard this; and as she turned to the speaker, Jimmy said to himself:

"My! how she does dislike Dolly!"

When, in the next breath, Dolly repeated, "I thought Kate Van der Berg invited you to stay with her," Jimmy, who was a little gentleman with much tact and taste, groaned in spirit: "How could she; oh, how could Dolly put the thing in that way? As if—as if a girl had only to be invited by a Kate Van der Berg to accept! As if she couldn't refuse a Kate Van der Berg, or anybody—such a girl as this!"

But the next instant Jimmy's groan had become a chuckle as he heard this girl say: "Yes, Kate invited me to spend my vacation with her, but I had older friends than the Van der Bergs."

Not much in the words, but, oh, the way they were spoken,—the tone, the little straight stare at Dolly! Jimmy, little gentleman though he was, had a wild desire to throw up his cap and "hurrah" as he looked and listened. "It was all such a set-down for Dolly," as he told his mother later. But Dolly didn't seem to mind it much. She colored a bit, and then she laughed, and then before Hope could make a move away from her, she was introducing her to "my cousin, Jimmy Dering;" and Jimmy, tactful little fellow, began to speak in his soft, sweet voice that was like the G string of a violin, of the music they had been listening to; and he spoke so intelligently and appreciatively that Hope could not but be interested; and when, by the greatest good luck in the world for him, he asked her if she had noticed the beautiful expression on the face of the first violinist when he played, and then proceeded to tell her that this violinist was a German, and that his name was Kolb, and that he was a real genius, Hope turned such a radiant face towards the boy that he was quite taken aback at the first start; then he thought to himself, "She appreciates old Kolb as well as we do;" and delighted at this, was going on to say more, when Dolly's voice again broke in with,—

"Hope, I want to introduce you to my aunt, Mrs. Dering. This is Miss Hope Benham, auntie, one of the girls at my school."

"My school!" Jimmy groaned again when he heard this; and as he observed Hope's sudden stiffening and coolness, he inwardly exclaimed: "I shall never hear this girl play if Dolly goes on like this, with 'my school,' and that my-everything-way of hers!"

But when Mrs. Dering came up with that pretty manner, and said that she was always glad to meet one of Miss Marr's girls, Jimmy breathed easier; and when she asked Hope if she was fond of music, and Dolly burst out, "Fond? You wouldn't ask that question if you could hear Hope play the violin," Jimmy took courage and said,—

"Mother, if Miss Benham would only come to our Monday night musicale!"

"Yes, to be sure," cried Mrs. Dering, delighted at the suggestion. If Hope was a musical genius, she might perhaps be interested to help them, for the musicale was for a charity. That she was one of Miss Marr's girls spoke for her desirability in all other ways. It had got to be a sort of voucher to be one of Miss Marr's girls.

"And if you have your violin with you—she's got a wonderful violin, auntie—and will bring it, and play something for us—it's for a charity, you know—"

"Yes, if you would, it would be so kind of you; the charity is such a worthy one,—a little kindergarten bed at the children's hospital," took up Mrs. Dering, persuasively.

"I haven't my violin with me; and—"

"Oh, well, that needn't make any difference. I have two, and you can have one of mine," interrupted Dolly, with perfect confidence.

"And I have an engagement on Wednesday to another musicale, or rather a concert," said Hope, finishing the answer that Dolly had so confidently interrupted.

"But can't you come and see me some day and—if you'll tell me where you're staying I'll call on you—I'll call and fetch you any day you'll say, and Jimmy'll come, and we'll all play together—Jimmy plays very well."

Dolly, with this, pulled out a little tablet, and fixing her eyes on it in a business-like way, said, "Now, then, give me your address; and—"

"It would be of no use, I cannot come to you, for I return to New York Thursday morning."

"But it's only Saturday now—there's four days to Thursday—if you'd say Monday or Tuesday."

"I am engaged Monday and Tuesday,—you must excuse me—Ah!" with an air of relief, "there's Mr. Kolb, I must bid you good-by;" and with a very polite bow, including the three,—Mrs. Dering, her son, and Dolly,—and with a very small smile, Hope made her escape, and hastened towards Mr. Kolb.

"She knows old Kolb, after all," exclaimed Jimmy, in astonishment.

"She knows all the musical people that were ever born, I believe," snapped out Dolly; "stiff as she is, she's just crazy over musical folks. But did you ever see anybody so stiff and offish as she was?"

"I never saw anybody so persistent as you were, Dolly; you fairly pushed her into stiffness and offishness. You asked her to help in the musicale as if it would be simply a privilege for her, and then, when anybody could see with half an eye she didn't want to come and didn't mean to come, you went at her in the same way about coming to you, whipping out that tablet with a 'Now, then, give an account of yourself' air that was—that was—" But Jimmy could find no words to express adequately his feelings on this point, and finished up suddenly in his wrath and disappointment, "Dolly, you are the biggest bully I ever met. If you were a boy amongst boys, you'd get a licking!"

"Children, children, stop quarrelling, right here in public!" admonished Mrs. Dering, in a low, shocked tone.

"'Tisn't me that's quarrelling," said Dolly, regardless of grammar and in a tearful sniffle. "Jimmy's always setting me up to do things for him, and then he's al-al-always finding fault with the way I do 'em," Dolly went on, in a still more tearful sniffle.

"Setting you up to do things for him? What did he set you up to do now?" asked her aunt.

"To introduce him to Hope. He wanted to know her, he wanted to hear her play; and I"—sniff, sniff, sniff—"I—"

"Well, there, never mind; tell me when we get into the carriage," broke in Mrs. Dering, mindful of the proprieties, as she saw several persons observing Dolly.

"Yes, don't cry on the street,—you might get taken up for a nuisance, Dol; a policeman's got his eye on you now," growled Jimmy, with a savage little grin. Dolly had a queer, childish way of accepting everything seriously sometimes; and the startled seriousness of her face at this was too much for Jimmy's gravity, and he burst into a fit of laughter that cleared the atmosphere not a little, and made Dolly herself forget to sniffle. She forgot also to air her grievance against Jimmy, when, as they were seated in the carriage, her aunt said animatedly,—

"Benham—I wonder if this girl is the daughter of a Mr. and Mrs. Benham I met when I was in Paris."

"Her father and mother are in Paris now; that is the reason why Hope doesn't spend her vacations with them," said Dolly.

"This Mr. Benham was a distinguished scientific man of some sort, I believe. He was distinguished for something, I know, and he was with scientific men. I met him at Professor Hervey's, and he came into the room, I remember, with two or three English gentlemen of note. I recollect it, because I know I felt quite proud at the time that he was an American,—he looked so manly and earnest,—and some one told me he had just had a fortune come to him."

"Well, Hope's father must have a lot of money, for she's got a violin that cost enough. It's a regular Cremona."

"No!" exclaimed Jimmy, incredulously.

"Yes; she told me it was made by an Italian who was a pupil of Stradivari and lived in Cremona."

"You don't say so!" cried Jimmy, excitedly. "How I should like to see it, for I tell you to see a real old Cremona would be worth while. Lots of people think they've got a Cremona, when it's only an imitation. Karl Myerwitz, who makes violins, and knows all about them, told me that if everybody who claims to have a Cremona violin, really had one, the number of them would count up to twice as many as had ever been made."

"Well, all I know is that Hope told me that her violin was made in seventeen hundred and something by a pupil of Stradivari."

"Where did her father get it, do you know,—did she tell you that?"

"An old teacher of hers got it,—a German who has a brother who deals in rare violins in Paris."

"How soon did she begin to take lessons?"

"Oh, when she was quite a little girl."

"What kind of music—whose compositions, I mean, does she play?"

Dolly rattled off what she knew of Hope's repertoire.

"Well, she must have been at it from a small youngster," ejaculated Jimmy, emphatically, at the list Dolly gave. "And she must have a great—a great taste for music. The idea of your thinking I would play with any one who was up to what she is!"

"But you play very well,—you play better than I do."

"What's that to do with it? You don't mean to say that you think—that you propose—" But Jimmy stopped short, remembering the recent outbreak of sniffles and tears. But he had gone far enough for Dolly to understand, and she took up his words, not tearfully, but indignantly, as she replied,—

"I do mean to say that I propose to play a duet with Hope at school this very winter."

"Is it a school arrangement,—Miss Marr's plan? I didn't know that you studied the violin at Miss Marr's."

"Well, we do, if we wish to. There is a teacher, a very fine teacher, who comes in from the outside for that, as there is for the harp, or any other special accomplishment."

"Oh! and Miss Benham wants you to practise with her,—I suppose you can help each other,—I see," remarked Jimmy, demurely.

"I didn't say she wanted me to practise with her. I said that I proposed to play a duet with Hope sometime this winter."

Jimmy made no further remark concerning the matter, but he said to himself: "Yes, that's it; Dolly has had the nerve to propose to play a duet with that girl, and my opinion is that she'll get snubbed. Miss Hope Benham isn't going to stand Dolly's impudence,—not a bit of it."

"What concert is it, Jimmy, that comes off on Wednesday?" suddenly asked Mrs. Dering here.

"I don't know of any except that affair at the Somersets'."

"Oh, that for Mr. Kolb! I wish I had been told of that earlier. I only heard about it at the last minute, and then I couldn't get any ticket for love or money."

"Mamma tried to get tickets too," said Dolly, "but they seemed to be all snapped up at the very start by that Somerset clique. I think it was real mean. There are other people in Boston, besides the Somersets, that know about music, and can appreciate—"

"But there was a limit of tickets,—there had to be; for Mrs. Somerset's parlors, big as they are, can only hold just so many," put in Jimmy, in explanation.

"Your young friend may be going to this concert," suggested Mrs. Dering, reflectively.

Dolly bounced up like an India-rubber ball at this suggestion, and cried out,—

"Why, of course that's where she's going, I might have known it." And then Dolly leaned back discontentedly, and reflected upon the good fortune that seemed to attend Hope Benham at every step. There was Kate Van der Berg lavishing all sorts of attentions upon her; and here was this testimonial concert that the Somersets had got up for Mr. Kolb, and that everybody was pining to go to, open to her! "Wonder who she is visiting, anyway," Dolly pondered, in the course of these reflections,—"perhaps the Somersets themselves,—'twould be just like her luck."

And while Dolly pondered these things, Mrs. Dering mused with regret of what her musicale had lost, and Jimmy chuckled anew as he recalled "that girl's" high and mighty manner with Dolly. But his chuckle ended in a sigh, as he thought: "It's of no use for me to expect to hear that girl play; Dolly has spoilt all that."

It was "New Year's night" at Miss Marr's, and every girl was as bright and fresh as if the night before she had not watched the old year out and the new year in; for the happiness of it all, and the long morning rest had been like a tonic.

"Didn't we have a good time last night!" exclaimed Myra Donaldson, in a sort of general questioning tone, as she stood with a group of the girls by the big hall-fire, just before the hour appointed for the guests to assemble.

"A tip-top time, for that kind of a time," answered Dolly, speaking first, in her usual forward fashion.

"What do you mean by 'that kind of a time'?" asked Myra.

"I mean a girl-party. It was the best girl-party I ever went to; but I like parties best with boys in 'em, just as I like cake best with currants or raisins in it."

The girls all laughed; and Kate Van der Berg called out: "The boys then stand for the currants and raisins with you, Dorothea?"

"Of course they do. I hate to dance with a girl; that's one reason I don't like a girl-party. I never can remember which I am, the boy or the girl, when the figures are called, and I'm just as likely to prance out in the square dances as a girl when I'm taking the boy's place, and to set off in a waltz with the wrong foot, and muddle things generally. Then we girls see girls all the time, or we see so much more of girls than we do of boys that we like a change, or I do. I dare say the rest of you," making up a defiant little face, "don't feel like this at all. I dare say you had just as lief dance with girls, and wouldn't care if you never had boys at your parties."

"Oh, yes, we would; we like currants and raisins in our cake, too, don't we, Hope?"

"Yes, indeed," laughed Hope.

"You'd have thought so last year if you could have seen Hope with my youngest brother, my little eleven-year-old," continued Kate, merrily. "He thought Hope was just perfect, and the way he followed her up! He wasn't in the least bashful, like some of the older boys, and he didn't have the slightest hesitation in trotting after her. I believe he asked her to dance every dance with him. I know I had to interfere and curb his ardor, or Hope wouldn't have danced with anybody else, for she really encouraged him in his attentions in the most decided manner."

"He was such a dear little fellow," said Hope,—"he told me I was just as good company as a boy."

When the laugh that this called forth had subsided, Dorothea said rather soberly, "I didn't know that you had such young boys."

"Look at her, look at her!" cried Kate. "Did you ever see such a worried, disappointed face? But cheer up, Dorothea, cheer up; we do have a few older ones. My brother Schuyler will be here this year."

"Oh!" exclaimed Hope, with a falling inflection to her voice, "and not Johnny?"

"And not Johnny," laughed Kate; "one at a time, you know."

"How old did you say your brother Schuyler is?" asked Dorothea.

"Seventeen,—quite old, you see, for a boy. He'll do for you to dance with, won't he?"

"Johnny dances beautifully; one couldn't have a better partner," said Hope.

"Oh, 'tisn't only a dancing partner Dorothea wants," spoke up Bessie Armitage, a keen-eyed, keen-witted girl, whose quiet observation was never very much at fault. "Dorothea wants a talking partner as well."

Dolly gave a little conscious giggle, and simperingly declared, with a toss of her head: "Oh, I know what you mean. You mean that I want a flirting partner; people are always accusing me of that, and I—"

"Flirting! how I hate that word, and how I hate the thing itself!" burst out Kate Van der Berg. "It's the cheapest word, and the cheapest thing to do; and for girls like us to put on such airs, and think we are doing something fine and grown-up. My brother Maurice, my oldest brother, has told me enough what young men think of half-grown girls who do such things."

"Oh, yes, I know; you told me, before I went away, how your brother made fun of young girls," cried Dorothea, angrily.

The hot color rose to Kate's very forehead, in her sudden shock of indignation. Then, as it slowly ebbed away, she said in a low, intense tone: "I told you that I had heard my brother tell how men either disliked the pertness of young girls, or else amused themselves by it for a little while, and then made fun of it,—that was what I said to you. He did not say that he made fun of them,—he couldn't do such a thing; and the reason he told me what others did, was to show me how such things were looked upon."

"And you told me because you thought I was one of those pert, forward, bold girls!" snapped out Dorothea.

"I was not telling you what he said, any more than the rest of the girls who were present; and what I told was brought out by something that was said at the time."

"Something that I said, I know. I was talking about my sister's gentlemen friends, and I said that I never found it hard to talk to them; and then you—"

"Hush, girls, there's the bell; the company is coming," broke in Myra Donaldson, "and we must get back into the 'drorrin'-room,' as Patrick calls it."

"Yes, it is high time we were all there," said some one here who was coming up from the lower end of the hall. It was Miss Marr.

"I wonder if she has heard any of this talk, and how much of it?" thought Hope.

But Miss Marr gave no sign of having heard anything of it. She came forward brightly, smiled on this one and that with equal sweetness, and playfully drove them all before her into the long flower-scented room.

The guests were all received in this room; then by twos and threes and fours, after a little interchange of greetings and introductions, they were conducted to the elevator and taken up to the great hall at the top of the house. It was an immense room that Miss Marr had had built several years ago, when her school plan had grown from its first modest limit to a promise of its present more liberal dimensions, and was intended at the start for a gymnasium and play-room. Later it was fitted up so that the gymnastic appliances could be easily removed, and a dance-room or recital-hall made of it upon short notice. On the night of the New Year's parties it always presented a most enchanting aspect, with its flower and fern and palm decorations, and its soft yet brilliant lights. Dolly, to whom it was all new and fresh, cried out enthusiastically as she entered, "Oh, how perfectly beautiful!"

"Isn't it?" agreed another new-comer, a visitor, who was following close upon Dolly's heels; and this visitor was no less a person than our friend Jimmy Dering, who had come on from Boston at Dolly's particular request and to his own particular satisfaction; for now, he argued, "I may stand a chance of hearing 'that girl' play on that Cremona violin."

It was Jimmy's ring at the door-bell that had interrupted that gusty little conversation in the hall. He was the first guest; and as he came into the drawing-room quite alone, and heralded portentously by the solemn butler's loudly spoken "Mr. James Dering," he might have been expected to flinch a little, especially under the battery of all those girls' glances; but Jimmy was not a self-conscious youth, and he had a happy knack of always adjusting himself to circumstances, and making the best of a trying situation. So now he came forward in his own modest, pleasant way, without a bit of awkwardness; and though he blushed a little, it was with such a confiding sort of manner,—a manner that seemed to say, "Now do be friendly to me,"—that every girl there, including Miss Marr herself, was his friend at once.

"He is charming," thought Miss Marr, "so modest and well-mannered, and with such a bright merry boyishness about him."

Even Dolly couldn't spoil the impression he made, as she put up her head and looked about her with a self-congratulatory air, that said plainly,—

"Now, this is my guest and my cousin!"

No, even Dolly couldn't spoil Jimmy Dering's popularity. People liked him in spite of Dolly, and oftentimes they softened towards Dolly herself, and forgave her her blundering, domineering tactlessness, because she was Jimmy's cousin, as these girls did on this occasion, before the evening was over.

Kate Van der Berg, who had been very wroth at the start, very much disgusted with Miss Dolly, who had felt as if she never wanted to have anything more to do with her, before the evening was over began to say to herself,—

"Dorothea must have some good in her, and must belong to nice people—really nice, well-bred people—to have such a cousin."

And then when the other boy visitors appeared,—when Schuyler Van der Berg, Raymond Armitage, Peter Van Loon, and others of the New York youngsters were in full force,—it was found that they too were taken captive by Jimmy's pleasant ways.

"Nice little chap!" said Schuyler to his great friend, Peter Van Loon.

"Yes," responded Peter; "nicest Boston fellow I've ever seen. Don't like Boston fellows generally, they're so cocky."

"And this little chap might be cocky, easy. What do you think,—he's the quarter-back in the Puritan eleven!"

"No!" and Peter looked up with greater animation than he had shown since he came into the house.

"And he's coxswain in the Charlesgate boat-crew."

"I say now!" ejaculated Peter, with increased animation.

"Yes, and he plays the fiddle too,—knows all about music."

Peter rounded his lips into a whistling shape. Then, "How'd you find all this out?"

"His cousin—that big, handsome, black-eyed girl over there, I've just been dancing with—told me."

"That girl with the yellow gown and all those daffodils?"

"Yes."

"She is handsome, and she knows how to dance."

"Yes, she knows how to dance, but she rattles too much."

"But she knows how to dance," repeated Peter, "and I'm going to ask her to dance with me in the Virginia reel. I always get mixed up in those old-fashioned things; but this girl will fetch me through, I know."

And Peter was right. Dorothea fetched him through beautifully, and Peter didn't in the least mind her rattling. Indeed, he seemed to encourage it and to be amused by it; for Peter, I am afraid, was that kind of young man that Kate Van der Berg declared that her brother was not,—the young man who encourages rattling, to make fun of it. But whatever Peter did was very lazily done, and his fun-making was confined mostly to his own inward reflections, with now and then the dropping of a humorous word to some favorite companion. To be sure, this humorous word of Peter's had its full effect, for Peter was not a great talker, and as he was known to be a keen-witted fellow, whatever he did say was made much of. But Peter himself hadn't a bit of malice in him, and if he had his laugh now and then at some foolish rattler, I, for one, think the rattler deserved the laugh, and came off very easily at that; for, as Jimmy Dering said once of his cousin,—

"Girls of Dolly's sort have got to learn that people are not going to be careful of them and their feelings, unless they are careful, to begin with."

And I will add that girls of Dolly's sort teach all girls how not to do it,—how not to romp and rush and rattle, and make themselves objects of ridicule, in the fond delusion that they are objects of admiration, as Dolly did on this very night.

She began her rattle with Schuyler Van der Berg; she kept it up with Peter Van Loon and fine handsome Victor Graham, and concluded it at the end of the evening with Raymond Armitage, who was of a very different fibre from the others,—a harder, coarser fibre altogether.

But Dolly found Raymond Armitage the most interesting of the four, for it was Raymond who to her mind was the most polite, the most attractive in his way of doing and saying things,—his way of listening admiringly to everything she said, of laughing and applauding all her blunt speeches and frisky ways. If Jimmy had not been so popular, and consequently so necessarily engaged in responding to this popularity, he would have noticed how Dolly was "carrying on," and have tried at least to check her; but when Jimmy was not talking with a little knot of boys and girls about boat-crews and foot-ball and the coming season's races, he was dancing with Hope, and in every pause of the dance he talked about music; and that entirely absorbed both of them. But there came at last the grand concluding dance that brought them all more closely together. It was that concluding dance that Kate Van der Berg had spoken of as the best fun of all. This dance had been introduced and taught by Miss Marr herself at the very start of her school, and was by this time perfectly well known to all her girls, and readily understood by any new guest of the evening under the guidance of his partner. It was an old French dance,—a "gavotte," so called. Miss Marr had told them its history. It was a kind of minuet that Marie Antoinette had introduced as a pendant to the minuet proper, adding other steps, and renaming it. She told them that another point in its history was, that the name was said to be derived from the town of Gap, whose inhabitants were called "Gavots" and "Gavottes," and that it was not unlikely that it was an old country dance of that region, and that Marie Antoinette made use of it in her re-arrangement, and also called it a minuet de la cour.

But wherever it had its origin, it was a charming dance, and Miss Marr had been taught it thoroughly in her early youth when she visited her French relations in France as a pretty French costume-party dance; and she in her turn had introduced various pretty changes, the prettiest and most novel being at the very end, where, swinging all around together, they pair off at last in regular appointed order, and pass through an archway of flowers, each pair receiving in this passing a beautiful little basket, its woven cover of flowers concealing two New Year's gifts,—one a pretty trinket, a ring or brooch or bracelet, sent by some member of the pupil's family for the pupil herself; the other a comic accompaniment in the way of a gay mirth-provoking toy, to be bestowed upon the partner,—the guest of the pupil on this occasion,—these latter being furnished by Miss Marr, and most choicely selected, some of them coming from Paris and Vienna. The girls were quite as much interested in these funny toys as in their own trinkets; and when all had passed the archway, there was a gathering together of the whole party, and a great frolic over the examination of the basket's contents; Kate almost forgetting the glow and sparkle of her new amethyst ring in the fun of the little gutta-percha man, who was made to wink and laugh and shake his fist at Victor when it was presented to him by Kate. And when Hope lifted her basket-cover and found beside the tiny Geneva watch sent to her by her father, the merry little figure of a girl playing a violin, while a woolly bear danced before her on a wooden stand, Jimmy, who was Hope's partner, with gay mimicry began to imitate the bear, and Kate cried out,—

"Wouldn't you, wouldn't you though, really like to dance to Hope's playing?" and quick as a flash, Jimmy answered, with a gallant little bow,—

"I'd like better to listen."

"You'd like to listen and to dance, too, if you could hear Hope play the Gungl' waltzes; you couldn't keep your feet still," added Kate.

"Oh, if I could hear you play, Miss Benham!" and Jimmy turned eagerly to Hope. "There are no waltzes I like so well as those. I'm coming in to-morrow afternoon to bring my cousin some music that I've brought on for her from her old teacher in Boston, and she is going to try it with me in the music-room here at half-past three o'clock. Miss Marr has kindly given us permission, and oh, would you, could you, Miss Benham, join us at four o'clock and play one of the Gungl' waltzes, just one? It would give me such pleasure."

"I—I don't know that Miss Marr would—"

"Oh, I am sure she would; I'll ask her.—Miss Marr," and Jimmy put out a detaining hand, as Miss Marr at that moment was passing, and in three minutes more his request was made and granted. Hope had her full permission to join the two in the music-room the next afternoon and play the Gungl' waltzes if she would like to do so.

"And you will like, won't you?" pleaded Jimmy, in his naive boyish way.

Hope hesitated a second; then, with a little laugh, assented to his pleading. All this had been a little aside, in the midst of the hum and buzz of the frolic; and then, just then, it was, that suddenly, over the ordinary clamor, Dorothea's voice rose in a noisy laugh above everything, and her exclamation, "I told you I'd get even with you!" was heard from end to end of the hall.

Jimmy started as he heard it.

"What is Dolly carrying on like that for?" he thought.

Miss Marr, too, started forward, with the same thought. And there was Dolly, still laughing loudly, and shaking a carnival figure of paper, free of the last scrap of its contents of sugary snow, over the person of Mr. Raymond Armitage, her gay threat of getting even with him the culmination of some joke that had passed between them. Miss Marr, as she started forward, had evidently an intention of putting a decided check upon Miss Dorothea then and there; but a look at Jimmy's face, and his half-uttered "Oh, if Dolly would think what she's about!" seemed to change Miss Marr's intention somewhat, as it tempered her feeling; for as she caught sight of the boy's face, she said to herself,—

"Poor little fellow, I won't add to his discomfort by speaking now."

And so Dolly went on in her wild way unchecked except by Jimmy's, "Don't, Dolly, don't! You 're making such a noise, and everybody's looking at you."

But Dolly only laughed at this. She was having a very jolly time. She fancied it was a very successful time, and that she was really the belle of the evening, because Raymond Armitage plied her with flattery, and because a good many of the others watched her with what she supposed were entirely admiring glances. Getting glimpses of herself, too, in a large long mirror occasionally, she saw that she had never looked better; and, in fact, she did look very handsome, with her clear, bright complexion, her silky black hair and brilliant eyes, framed in golden yellow, and "all those daffodils," as Peter Van Loon had said. Yes, she was looking very handsome; they all recognized this,—all these young fellows who looked at her, and laughed and chatted with her, and criticised her as "a rattler."