Books: Missy

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"Been popping corn?"

"Yes," came mother's voice, rather stiffly. "Seems to me you've been
a long time finding out about those lessons!"

Not offering to debate that question, nor waiting to appease her
sudden craving for pop-corn, Missy moved toward the door.

"Get your wet shoes off at once!" called mother.

"That's just what I was going to do." And she hurried up the back
stairs, unbuttoning buttons as she went.

Presently, in her night-dress and able to breathe naturally again,
she felt safer. But she decided she'd better crawl into bed. She lay
there, listening. It must have been a half-hour later when she heard
a cab stop in front of the house, and then the slam of the front
door and the sound of father's voice. He had just come in on the
9:23--THAT hadn't been him, after all!

As relief stole over her, drowsiness tugged at her eyelids. But,
just as she was dozing off, she was roused by someone's entering the
room, bending over her.

"Asleep?"

It was father! Her first sensation was of fear, until she realized
his tone was not one to be feared. And, responding to that
tenderness of tone, sharp compunctions pricked her. Dear father!--it
was horrible to have to deceive him.

"I've brought you a little present from town." He was lighting the
gas. "Here!"

Her blinking eyes saw him place a big flat box on the bed. She
fumbled at the cords, accepted his proffered pen-knife, and then--
oh, dear heaven! There, fluffy, snow-white and alluring, reposed a
set of white fox furs!

"S-sh!" he admonished, smiling. "Mother doesn't know about them
yet."

"Oh, father!" She couldn't say any more. And the father, smiling at
her, thought he understood the emotions which tied her tongue, which
underlay her fervent good night kiss. But he could never have
guessed all the love, gratitude, repentance, self-abasement and high
resolves at that moment welling within her.

He left her sitting up there in bed, her fingers still caressing the
silky treasure. As soon as he was gone, she climbed out of bed to
kneel in repentant humility.

"Dear Jesus," she prayed, "please forgive me for deceiving my dear
father and mother. If you'll forgive me just this once, I promise
never, never to deceive them again."

Then, feeling better--prayer, when there is real faith, does lift a
load amazingly--she climbed back into bed, with the furs on her
pillow.

But she could not sleep. That was natural--so much had happened, and
everything seemed so complicated. Everything had been seeming to go
against her and here, all of a sudden, everything had turned out her
way. She had her white fox furs, much prettier than Genevieve
Hicks's--oh, she DID hope they'd let her go to church next Sunday
night so she could wear them! And she'd had a serious little talk
with Arthur--the way seemed paved for her to exert a really
satisfactory influence over him. As soon as she could see him again-
-Oh, she wished she might wear the furs to the Library to-morrow
night! She wished Arthur could see her in them--

A sudden thought brought her up sharp: she couldn't meet him to-
morrow night after all--for she never wanted to deceive dear father
again. No, she would never sneak off like that any more. Yet it
wouldn't be fair to Arthur to let him go there and wait in vain. She
ought to let him know, some way. And she ought to let him know, too,
that that man wasn't father, after all. What if he was worrying,
this minute, thinking she might have been caught and punished. It
didn't seem right, while SHE was so happy, to leave poor Arthur
worrying like that. . . Oh, she DID wish he could see her in the
furs. . . Yes, she OUGHT to tell him she couldn't keep the "date"--
it would be awful for him to sit there in the Library, waiting and
waiting. . .

She kept up her disturbed ponderings until the house grew dark and
still. Then, very quietly, she crept out of bed and dressed herself
in the dark. She put on her cloak and hat. After a second's
hesitation she added the white fox furs. Then, holding her breath,
she stole down the back stairs and out the kitchen door.

The night seemed more fearsomely spectral than ever--it must be
terribly late; but she sped through the white silence resolutely.
She was glad Arthur's boarding-house was only two blocks away. She
knew which was his window; she stood beneath it and softly gave "the
crowd's" whistle. Waited--whistled again. There was his window going
up at last. And Arthur's tousled head peering out.

"I just wanted to let you know I can't come to the Library after
all, Arthur! No!--Don't say anything, now!--I'll explain all about
it when I get a chance. And that wasn't father--it turned out all
right. No, no!--Don't say anything now! Maybe I'll be in the kitchen
to-morrow. Good night!"

Then, while Arthur stared after her amazedly, she turned and
scurried like a scared rabbit through the white silence.

As she ran she was wondering whether Arthur had got a really good
view of the furs in the moonlight; was resolving to urge him to go
to church next Sunday night even if SHE couldn't; was telling
herself she mustn't ENTIRELY relinquish her hold on him-for his
sake. . .

So full were her thoughts that she forgot to be much afraid. And the
Lord must have been with her, for she reached the kitchen door in
safety and regained her own room without detection. In bed once
again, a great, soft, holy peace seemed to enfold her. Everything
was right with everybody--with father and mother and God and Arthur-
-everybody.

At the very time she was going off into smiling slumber--one hand
nestling in the white fox furs on her pillow--it happened that her
father was making half-apologetic explanations to her mother:
everything had seemed to come down on the child in a lump--commands
against walking and against boys and against going out nights and
everything. He couldn't help feeling for the youngster. So he
thought he'd bring her the white fox furs she seemed to have set her
heart on.

And Mrs. Merriam, who could understand a father's indulgent,
sympathetic heart even though--as Missy believed--she wasn't capable
of "understanding" a daughter's, didn't have it in her, then, to
spoil his pleasure by expounding that wanting furs and wanting beaux
were really one and the same evil.

CHAPTER VII

BUSINESS OF BLUSHING

Missy was embroiled in a catastrophe, a tangle of embarrassments and
odd complications. Aunt Nettie attributed the blame broadly to "that
O'Neill girl"; she asserted that ever since Tess O'Neill had come to
live in Cherryvale Missy had been "up to" just one craziness after
another. But then Aunt Nettie was an old maid--Missy couldn't
imagine her as EVER having been fifteen years old. Mother, who could
generally be counted on for tenderness even when she failed to
"understand," rather unfortunately centred on the wasp detail--why
had Missy just stood there and let it keep stinging her? And Missy
felt shy at trying to explain it was because the wasp was stinging
her LEG. Mother would be sure to remark this sudden show of modesty
in one she'd just been scolding for the lack of it--for riding the
pony astride and showing her--

Oh, legs(! Missy was in a terrific confusion, as baffled by certain
inconsistencies displayed by her own nature as overwhelmed by her
disgraceful predicament. For she was certainly sincere in her
craving to be as debonairly "athletic" as Tess; yet, during that
ghastly moment when the wasp was . . .

No, she could never explain it to mother. Old people don't
understand. Not even to father could she have talked it all out,
though he had patted her hand and acted like an angel when he paid
for the bucket of candy--that candy which none of them got even a
taste of! That Tess and Arthur should eat up the candy which her own
father paid for, made one more snarl in the whole inconsistent
situation.

It all began with the day Arthur Simpson "dared" Tess to ride her
pony into Picker's grocery store. Before Tess had come to live in
the sanitarium at the edge of town where her father was head doctor,
she had lived in Macon City and had had superior advantages--city
life, to Missy, a Cherryvalian from birth, sounded exotic and
intriguing. Then Tess in her nature was far from ordinary. She was
characterized by a certain dash and fine flair; was inventive,
fearless, and possessed the gift of leadership. Missy, seeing how
eagerly the other girls of "the crowd" caught up Tess's original
ideas, felt enormously flattered when the leader selected such a
comparatively stupid girl as herself as a chum.

For Missy thought she must be stupid. She wasn't "smart" in school
like Beulah Crosswhite, nor strikingly pretty like Kitty Allen, nor
president of the Iolanthians like Mabel Dowd, nor conspicuously
popular with the boys like Genevieve Hicks. No, she possessed no
distinctive traits anybody could pick out to label her by--at least
that is what she thought. So she felt on her mettle; she wished to
prove herself worthy of Tess's high regard.

It was rather strenuous living up to Tess. Sometimes Missy couldn't
help wishing that her chum were not quite so alert. Being all the
while on the jump, mentally and physically, left you somewhat
breathless and dizzy; then, too, it didn't leave you time to sample
certain quieter yet thrilling enjoyments that came right to hand.
For example, now and then, Missy secretly longed to spend a
leisurely hour or so just talking with Tess's grandmother. Tess's
grandmother, though an old lady, seemed to her a highly romantic
figure. Her name was Mrs. Shears and she had lived her girlhood in a
New England seaport town, and her father had been captain of a
vessel which sailed to and from far Eastern shores. He had brought
back from those long-ago voyages bales and bales of splendid
Oriental fabrics--stiff rustling silks and slinky clinging crepes
and indescribably brilliant brocades shot with silver or with gold.
For nearly fifty years Mrs. Shears had worn dresses made from these
romantic stuffs and she was wearing them yet--in Cherryvale! They
were all made after the same pattern, gathered voluminous skirt and
fitted bodice and long flowing sleeves; and, with the small lace cap
she always wore on her white hair. Missy thought the old lady looked
as if she'd just stepped from the yellow-tinged pages of some
fascinating old book. She wished her own grandmother dressed like
that; of course she loved Grandma Merriam dearly and really wouldn't
have exchanged her for the world, yet, in contrast, she did seem
somewhat commonplace.

It was interesting to sit and look at Grandma Shears and to hear her
recount the Oriental adventures of her father, the sea captain. But
Tess gave Missy little chance to do this. Tess had heard and re-
heard the adventures to the point of boredom and custom had caused
her to take her grandmother's strange garb as a matter of course;
Tess's was a nature which craved--and generally achieved--novelty.

Just now her particular interest veered toward athleticism; she had
recently returned from a visit to Macon City and brimmed with
colourful tales of its "Country Club" life--swimming, golf, tennis,
horseback riding, and so forth. These pursuits she straightway set
out to introduce into drowsy, behind-the-times Cherryvale. But in
almost every direction she encountered difficulties: there was in
Cherryvale no place to swim except muddy Bull Creek--and the girls'
mothers unanimously vetoed that; and there were no links for golf;
and the girls themselves didn't enthuse greatly over tennis those
broiling afternoons. So Tess centred on horseback riding, deciding
it was the "classiest" sport, after all. But the old Neds and
Nellies of the town, accustomed leisurely to transport their various
family surreys, did not metamorphose into hackneys of such spirit
and dash as filled Tess's dreams.

Even so, these steeds were formidable enough to Missy. She feared
she wasn't very athletic. That was an afternoon of frightful chagrin
when she came walking back into Cherryvale, ignominiously following
Dr. O'Neill's Ben. Old Ben, who was lame in his left hind foot, had
a curious gait, like a sort of grotesque turkey trot. Missy
outwardly attributed her inability to keep her seat to Ben's
peculiar rocking motion, but in her heart she knew it was simply
because she was afraid. What she was afraid of she couldn't have
specified. Not of old Ben surely, for she knew him to be the
gentlest of horses. When she stood on the ground beside him,
stroking his shaggy, uncurried flanks or feeding him bits of sugar,
she felt not the slightest fear. Yet the minute she climbed up into
the saddle she sickened under the grip of some increasingly heart-
stilling panic. Even before Ben started forward; so it wasn't Ben's
rocking, lop-sided gait that was really at the bottom of her fear--
it only accentuated it. Why was she afraid of Ben up there in the
saddle while not in the least afraid when standing beside him? Fear
was very strange. Did everybody harbour some secret, absurd,
unreasonable fear? No, Tess didn't; Tess wasn't afraid of anything.
Tess was cantering along on rawboned Nellie in beautiful unconcern.
Missy admired and envied her dreadfully.

Her sense of her own shortcomings became all the more poignant when
the little cavalcade, with Missy still ignominiously footing it in
the rear, had to pass the group of loafers in front of the Post
Office. The loafers called out rude, bantering comments, and Missy
burned with shame.

Then Arthur Simpson appeared in Pieker's doorway next door and
grinned.

"Hello! Some steed!" he greeted Tess. "Dare you to ride her in!"

"Not to-day, thanks," retorted Tess insouciantly--that was another
quality Missy envied in her friend, her unfailing insouciance. "Wait
till I get my new pony next week, and then I'll take you up!"

"All right. The dare holds good." Then Arthur turned his grin to
Missy. "What's the matter with YOU? Charger get out of hand?"

The loafers in front of the Post Office took time from their chewing
and spitting to guffaw. Missy could have died of mortification.

"Want a lift?" asked Arthur, moving forward.

Missy shook her head. She longed to retrieve herself in the public
gaze, longed to shine as Tess shone, but not for worlds could she
have essayed that high, dizzy seat again. So she shook her head
dumbly and Arthur grinned at her not unkindly. Missy liked Arthur
Simpson. He wore a big blue-denim apron and had red hair and
freckles--not a romantic figure by any means; but there was a
mischievous imp in his eye and a rollicking lilt in his voice that
made you like him, anyway. Missy wished he hadn't been a witness to
her predicament. Not that she felt at all sentimental toward Arthur.
Arthur "went with" Genevieve Hicks, a girl whom Missy privately
deemed frivolous and light-minded. Besides Missy herself was, at
this time, interested in Raymond Bonner, the handsomest boy in "the
crowd." Missy liked good looks--they appealed to the imagination or
something. And she adored everything that appealed to the
imagination: there was, for instance, the picture of Sir Galahad, in
shining armour, which hung on the wall of her room--for a time she
had almost said her prayers to that picture; and there was a
compelling mental image of the gallant Sir Launcelot in "Idylls of
the King" and of the stern, repressed, silently suffering Guy in
"Airy Fairy Lilian." Also there had recently come into her
possession a magazine clipping of the boy king of Spain; she
couldn't claim that Alphonso was handsome--in truth he was quite
ugly--yet there was something intriguing about him. She secretly
treasured the printed likeness and thought about the original a
great deal: the alluring life he led, the panoply of courts, royal
balls and garden-parties and resplendent military parades, and
associating with princes and princesses all the time. She wondered,
with a little sigh, whether his "crowd" called him by his first
name; though a King he was just a boy--about her own age.

Nevertheless, though Arthur Simpson was neither handsome nor
revealed aught which might stir vague, deep currents of romance,
Missy regretted that even Arthur had seen her in such a sorry
plight. She wished he might see her at a better advantage. For
instance, galloping up on a spirited mount, in a modish riding-
habit--a checked one with flaring-skirted coat and shining boots and
daring but swagger breeches, perhaps!--galloping insouciantly up to
take that dare!

But she knew it was an empty dream. Even if she had the swagger
togs--a notion mad to absurdity--she could never gallop with
insouciance. She wasn't the athletic sort.

At supper she was still somewhat bitterly ruminating her failings.

"Missy, you're not eating your omelet," adjured her mother.

Missy's eyes came back from space.

"I was just wondering--" then she broke off.

"Yes, dear," encouraged mother. Missy's hazy thoughts took a sudden
plunge, direct and startling.

"I was wondering if, maybe, you'd give me an old pair of father's
trousers."

"What on earth for, child?"

"Just an old pair," Missy went on, ignoring the question. "Maybe
that pepper-and-salt pair you said you'd have to give to Jeff."

"But what do you want of them?" persisted mother. "Jeff needs them
disgracefully--the last time he mowed the yard I blushed every time
he turned his back toward the street."

"I think Mrs. Allen's going to give him a pair of Mr. Allen's--Kitty
said she was. So he won't need the pepper-and-salts."

"But what do you want with a pair of PANTS?" Aunt Nettie put in.
Missy wished Aunt Nettie had been invited out to supper; Aunt Nettie
was relentlessly inquisitive. She knew she must give some kind of
answer.

"Oh, just for some fancy-work," she said. She tried to make her tone
insouciant, but she was conscious of her cheeks getting hot.

"Fancy-work--pants for fancy-work! For heaven's sake!" ejaculated
Aunt Nettie.

Mother, also, was staring at her in surprise. But father, who was a
darling, put in: "Give 'em to her if she wants 'em, dear. Maybe
she'll make a lambrequin for the piano or an embroidered smoking-
jacket for the old man--a'la your Ladies' Home Companion."

He grinned at her, but Missy didn't mind father's jokes at her
expense so much as most grown-ups'. Besides she was grateful to him
for diverting attention from her secret purpose for the pants.

After supper, out in the summerhouse, it was an evening of such
swooning beauty she almost forgot the bothers vexing her life. When
you sit and watch the sun set in a bed of pastel glory, and let the
level bars of thick gold light steal across the soft slick grass to
reach to your very soul, and smell the heavenly sweetness of dew-
damp roses, and listen to the shrill yet mournful even-song of the
locusts--when you sit very still, just letting it all seep into you
and through and through you, such a beatific sense of peace surges
over you that, gradually, trivial things like athletic shortcomings
seem superficial and remote.

Later, too, up in her room, slowly undressing in the moonlight, she
let herself yield to the sweeter spell. She loved her room,
especially when but dimly lit by soft white strips of the moon
through the window. She loved the dotted Swiss curtains blowing, and
the white-valanced little bed, and the white-valanced little
dressing-table all dim and misty save where a broad shaft of light
gave a divine patch of illumination to undress by. She said her
prayers on her knees by the window, where she could keep open but
unsacrilegious eyes on God's handiwork outside--the divine miracle
of everyday things transformed into shimmering glory.

A soft brushing against her ankles told her that Poppylinda, her
cat, had come to say good night. She lifted her pet up to the sill.

"See the beautiful night, Poppy," she said. "See!--it's just like a
great, soft, lovely, blue-silver bed!"

Poppy gave a gentle purr of acquiescence. Missy was sure it was
acquiescence. She was convinced that Poppy had a fine, appreciative,
discriminating mind. Aunt Nettie scouted at this; she denied that
she disliked Poppy, but said she "liked cats in their place." Missy
knew this meant, of course, that inwardly she loathed cats; that she
regarded them merely as something which musses up counterpanes and
keeps outlandish hours. Aunt Nettie was perpetually finding fault
with Poppy; but Missy had noted that Aunt Nettie and all the others
who emphasized Poppy's imperfections were people whom Poppy, in her
turn, for some reason could not endure. This point she tried to make
once when Poppy had been convicted of a felonious scratch, but of
course the grown-ups couldn't follow her reasoning. Long since she'd
given up trying to make clear the real merits of her pet; she only
knew that Poppy was more loving and lovable, more sympathetic and
comprehending, than the majority of humans. She could count on
Poppy's never jarring on any mood, whether grave or gay. Poppy
adored listening to poetry read aloud, sitting immovable save for
slowly blinking eyes for an hour at a stretch. She even had an
appreciation for music, often remaining in the parlour throughout
her mistress's practice period, and sometimes purring an
accompaniment to tunes she especially liked--such tunes as "The
Maiden's Prayer" or "Old Black Joe with Variations." There was, too,
about her a touch of something which Missy thought must be
mysticism; for Poppy heard sounds and saw things which no one else
could--following these invisible objects with attentive eyes while
Missy saw nothing; then, sometimes, she would get up suddenly,
switching her tail, and watch them as they evidently disappeared.
But Missy never mentioned Poppy's gift of second sight; she knew the
old people would only laugh.

Now she cuddled Poppy in her lap, and with a sense of companionship,
enjoyed the landscape of silvered loveliness and peace. A sort of
sad enjoyment, but pleasantly sad. Occasionally she sighed, but it
was a sigh of deep content. Such things as perching dizzily atop a
horse's back, even cantering in graceful insouciance, seemed far,
far away.

Yet, after she was in her little white bed, in smiling dreams she
saw herself, smartly accoutred in gleaming boots and pepper-and-salt
riding-breeches, galloping up to Pieker's grocery and there, in the
admiring view of the Post Office loafers and of a dumbfounded
Arthur, cantering insouciantly across the sidewalk and into the
store!

Her dream might have ended there, nothing more than a fleeting
phantasm, had not Tess, the following week, come into possession of
Gypsy.

Gypsy was a black pony with a white star on her forehead and a long
wavy tail. She was a pony with a personality--from the start Missy
recognized the pony as a person just as she recognized Poppy as a
person. When Gypsy gazed at you out of those soft, bright eyes, or
when she pricked up her ears with an alert listening gesture, or
when she turned her head and switched her tail with nonchalant
unconcern--oh, it is impossible to describe the charm of Gypsy. That
was it--"charm"; and the minute Missy laid eyes on the darling she
succumbed to it. She had thought herself absurdly but deep-rootedly
afraid of all horseflesh, but Gypsy didn't seem a mere horse. She
was pert, coquettish, coy, loving, inquisitive, naughty; both Tess
and Missy declared she had really human intelligence.

She began to manifest this the very day of her arrival. After Tess
had ridden round the town and shown off properly, she left the pony
in the sideyard of the sanitarium while she and Missy slipped off to
the summerhouse to enjoy a few stolen chapters from "The Duchess."
There was high need for secrecy for, most unreasonably, "The
Duchess" had been put under a parental ban; moreover Tess feared
there were stockings waiting to be darned.

Presently they heard Mrs. O'Neill calling, but they just sat still,
stifling their giggles. Gypsy, who had sauntered up to the
summerhouse door, poked in an inquisitive nose. Mrs. O'Neill didn't
call again, so Tess whispered: "She thinks we've gone over to your
house--we can go on reading."

After a while Missy glanced up and nudged Tess. "Gypsy's still
there--just standing and looking at us! See her bright eyes--the
darling!"

"Yes, isn't she cute?" agreed Tess.

But, just at that, a second shadow fell athwart the sunny sward, a
hand pushed Gypsy's head from the opening, and Mrs. O'Neill's voice
said:

"If you girls don't want your whereabouts given away, you'd better
teach that pony not to stand with her head poked in the door for a
half-hour without budging!"

The ensuing scolding wasn't pleasant, but neither of the miscreants
had the heart to blame Gypsy. She was so cute.

She certainly was cute.

The second day of her ownership Tess judged it necessary to give
Gypsy a switching; Gypsy declined to be saddled and went circling
round and round the yard in an abandon of playfulness. So Tess
snapped off a peach-tree switch and, finally cornering the pony,
proceeded to use it. Missy pleaded, but Tess stood firm for
discipline. However Gypsy revenged herself; for two hours she
wouldn't let Tess come near her--she'd sidle up and lay her velvet
nose against Missy's shoulder until Tess was within an arm's length,
and then, tossing her head spitefully, caper away.

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