fit to endow us in the way of voices. Finally we girls sank exhausted on the bare, uncovered beds, but Mr. Tucker and the mysterious visitor stood clasping hands.
"Jeff Tucker, what in Heaven's name are you doing at a young ladies' boarding school?"
"Entering my girls: Tweedles. And you, Jinny Cox, what are you doing here?" And Mr. Tucker kept on shaking her hand.
"I teach singing here. Have been here for years. And to think of your girls being old enough to go to boarding school! It seems only yesterday that you and dear little Virginia were leading the germans at the University. I haven't seen you since you married. I meant to write you when Virginia died, but somehow I just couldn't."
"That was all right, Jinny. I knew how you felt without hearing from you. She only lived a year, you know. Tweedles were just a few weeks old when she died." And the dear man who a moment before had been so cheerily singing the Lobster Quadrille, now wiped his eyes and seemed given over to melancholy.
"I want you to know our girls. This is Virginia," indicating Dum, "and this, Caroline," meaning Dee. I was rather amused at the fact that earlier in the day he could not remember their official names, as he called them. "I named this one Virginia, thinking she was going to have her mother's eyes, but the little monkey changed them on me and in a twinkling turned herself into a hazel-eyed monster," and poor Zebedee forgot to cry any more and began to laugh. "This is the much dreaded roommate, Miss Page Allison, of Milton, Virginia. The wild orgy which you so tactfully joined was in honor of the discovery that this young lady was the roommate."
"Well, girls, I am glad to see all of you and hope we can be great friends. My name is Jane Cox. I can't remember any one having the hardihood to call me Jinny for some sixteen or seventeen years. I haven't danced for at least ten years. I don't know what the management or the girls would think or say if they knew I had cut up this way. I don't know what made me do it. I came to the door to stop the racket and when I saw Jeff Tucker whirling around with three girls singing, 'Will you, won't you, won't you, will you, will you join the dance?' my discretion flew to the four winds. I just did have sense enough left to shut the door. I forgot I was an old maid, teaching singing in a boarding school."
"It was simply splendid of you to come in and help us out," exclaimed Dee. Dee was usually the one who knew what to say and when to say it. Some persons call it tact, but I have always thought it was just a kind heart that made her know what people wanted her to say. Cousin Sue Lee was the same kind of natural-born social wonder. "I think your voice is beautiful, and how on earth did you happen to know our tune?"
"Why, child, your father and I made up that tune on a picnic once years before you were born. Do you remember, Jeff, when we went to Monticello, and how it rained? We composed the tune and improvised a Lobster Quadrille to cheer up the bedraggled crowd. How Virginia did laugh! I haven't thought of that tune for ages. Perhaps it is because I have not been with the kind of people who would enjoy 'Alice in Wonderland.'"
"Zebedee has put us to sleep with it ever since we were born," said Dum. "I mean the tune."
"And I have been reading Alice in Wonderland ever since I was born," I ventured.
"Well, I'm certainly glad to meet some kindred spirits at Gresham," said Miss Cox, "and now, girls, I'm going to ask a great favor of the three of you. I want you to keep to yourselves that I broke loose as I did. I have hard enough work as it is keeping order during study hour when that task falls to me, and if the girls ever found out that I was capable of such high-jinks, I'd lose all control of them." We promised, but I, for one, thought that the more human you find your pastors and masters to be, the more apt you are to want to make things easy for them. Miss Jane Cox was much older than I, but she had yet to learn that wisdom.
"We'll all promise," we declared in unison.
"But please break loose again, sometimes, Jinny," begged Mr. Tucker. "The idea of your calling yourself an old maid! I bet you are not thirty-five yet. I'm only thirty-six myself, and, goodness knows, I am nothing but a kid!"
"Teaching is a very aging occupation," sighed Miss Cox. "I don't mind the singing, but it's teaching mathematics to the backward pupils that adds ten years a season to my already full years. Do your girls sing, Jeffry?"
"Not so's you can notice it. Dum, here, is going to be a great sculptor; and Dee is uncertain whether she wants to be a trained nurse or a veterinary surgeon."
"Vet'rinary surgeon? Surely you wouldn't let her go into such a profession?" exclaimed Miss Cox with her twisted smile.
"Why not? I'll let my girls go into any profession that appeals to them. Dum loves to make mud pies and Dee loves to nurse sick puppies. Both of them rather dirty arts, but 'Every man to his taste.'"
Miss Cox had to leave us and go to attend to various duties, but before going she assured Mr. Tucker that she would take especial care of all three of his girls. You can fancy what it meant to me to be included. I almost called him Zebedee, but I was afraid it might make him feel like the father of triplets, so I refrained.
It was almost time for the train which Mr. Tucker was to catch, as he intended to take a sleeper back to Richmond that night. I felt the tactful thing for me to do would be to leave the girls alone with their father, so I told him good-by and went off to see how Annie Pore was faring.
I found her sitting in a forlorn heap in one of the neighboring rooms, her hat and jacket still on; her disreputable telescope in the middle of the room; and the expression on her face suited to the tragic muse.
"Who's your cellmate, Annie?" said I, bursting in on her.
"I don't know, but I know she will hate me."
"Hate you, indeed! No one could hate you. Why don't you unpack and get your things in order? I am going to stay with you until Mr. Tucker leaves, so Tweedles can get a chance to be alone with him for a while. I am rooming with them, you know. Our room is quite near you and we can all be real chummy."
The rooms were all perfectly bare and bleak-looking: white walls, white iron beds, curtainless windows and carpetless floors. The pupils were supposed to decorate their own rooms if they wanted them decorated. Annie Pore had been put into a two-girl room a bit smaller than the one assigned to the Tuckers and me, but otherwise exactly like it.
"I am dreading a roommate," sighed the girl. "I have never slept in the room with any one in my life."
"Neither have I, but I am crazy about it. Just think what fun it will be to have some one to talk to and giggle with."
I could not fancy giggling with Annie Pore in her present melancholy frame of mind, but I was sure that was a phase that would pass and she would end by being as girlish as the next. She had too keen a sense of humor to be lost in gloom forever.
CHAPTER V.
LETTERS
Dearest Zebedee:
You would have to be your own daughter to know how much you can be missed. After you left the other day, Dum and I cried so much we came mighty near getting sick, but Page Allison came back and was so ridiculous in her description of Annie Pore sitting up in the bus full of Seniors with her crêpe hat cocked on one side, that we got to laughing; and you know how easy it is to be cheerful if someone only starts the ball a-rolling. Page is splendid and takes the most interest in life of anybody I ever saw. She makes a lot of fun, but somehow it is never at anyone but always with them. She loves dogs, too, so I am sure to get on with her.
I
