declared she would stay at home then. So it came about that the Martin household was not in a happy frame of mind that evening at the close of their evening meal. And the two sisters lay down to rest with hard thoughts of each other.
Effie, as she turned her light out, knelt a moment beside her window to look at the stars and murmur the form of prayer that had been so much a part of her bringing up that she scarcely realized what it all meant. “Help me to be good,” was one of the oft-repeated sentences, and Effie no longer felt it necessary for her thoughts to stay by to see that these words were spoken to the One above who was supposed to be her guard and guide. She fancied herself, on the whole, rather good as goodness in girls went. Now, to-night, as she finished her petition, which was rather a repetition, she looked up to the stars she loved and thought of a scrap of poetry she had picked up in her reading, which she was not well-enough taught to know was wonderful. It ran thus:
All that I know
Of a certain star
Is, it can throw
(Like the angled spar)
Now a dart of red,
Now a dart of blue;
Till my friends have said
They would fain see too,
My star that dartles the red and the blue!
Then it stops like a bird; like a flower hangs furled:
They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it.
What matter to me if their star is a world?
Mine has opened its soul to me; therefore I love it.
Poor little, lonely, disagreeable Effie wished as she looked out into the night that she could be like that star and be able to dartle red and blue for someone, so that others might hear of it and want to see her and know her. How nice that would be! That star language evidently meant people, and it meant there was someone, somewhere who could see beauties in some star that everybody could not see. She wondered if ever anybody would think they saw anything good like dartles of red and blue in her, and would feel that they didn’t care after that whether other people’s worlds were great or not, so long as they had her red and blue dartles.
But how silly such thoughts were. If those hateful girls who had talked about her that afternoon had known she had thoughts like this, how they would have screeched with laughter! Her cheeks burned hotly in the darkness at the very thought, and she arose and slammed the window down, warm night though it was, and went to bed feeling utterly miserable. How was it possible for her ever to be different? She could not. She had tried that afternoon and failed most miserably, and she was not one who was likely to try again in the same direction.
Was there anywhere else to turn? Oh, if she but had some wise and good helper who would tell what was the matter, and if she must go on being hated all her life as she had begun.
Then the thought of what the girls had said about her clothes came and drowned all other thoughts, and she drifted off to sleep, planning how she would fix up an old dress that should be the envy of all the town.
Poor child, she was only a little girl yet at heart and was just waking up to the fact that she was growing up and a great deal more would be expected of her.
Perhaps her guardian angel standing by, remembering that she was dear to her heavenly Father, and knowing for a surety there was light coming to her darkened pathway, brushed the tears in pity from her young face, for she dreamed that a soft hand touched her forehead and cooled and comforted her.
But downstairs, Effie’s father and mother were having a serious conference about her.
“I’m sure I don’t know what to do with her,” her anxious mother was saying. “She grows more heartless and careless every day. to-day she nearly killed the baby with her impetuosity, and when I tried to stop her before she hit his head against the chandelier, she simply ignored my commands. I wonder if it would do any good to send her away to school. I never believed much in finishing schools, but Effie really needs something to tone her down. She goes rushing through life, without any idea of manners or any thought of others. I’m sure I don’t see how we came to have a child like that!”
“I am afraid nobody understands her,” said her father, with troubled brows. “She seems to me so much like my own little sister Euphemia for whom she is named, and she was a wild little loving thing like Effie, but she would fly up into flinders if people were unjust to her——”
“Nobody has been unjust to Effie,” said her mother coldly. “Everybody would love her if she would be less selfish and rude. I have tried to tell her but she doesn’t even seem to hear me. And Sam, she isn’t in the least like your sister Euphemia. She was mild and gentle and lovely, as I remember her. We should have named Effie Joan of Arc or some outlandish masculine name, for she never will be anything but a disgrace to your sister’s name, I’m afraid.”
“Oh, don’t say that Hester,” said the father in a pained voice. “I’m sure our little Euphemia will grow up some day and understand. If you would just try to talk with her a little about——”
“Talk to her!” said her mother wearily. “I’ve talked and talked and it rolls right off from her. She goes tearing in one door and out the other on her own affairs, and never minds whether I have a headache or whether the baby is asleep or whether there are dishes to be washed on the maid’s day out! She seems a hopeless cause!”
“Now, now, Mother. You mustn’t talk that way about our little girl. I sometimes think perhaps the other children put upon her. Eleanor, now, is a bit overbearing since she has grown up, and she wants to have the whole right to the car. That really isn’t just to Euphemia. The child has as good a right to go on that ride as she.”
“Not if the other girls don’t want her,” said the mother. “They feel themselves older, you know——”
“But they’re not much older, are they? Eleanor is only two years older than Euphemia. That ought not to be such a great difference. And those Garner girls, why the youngest one was born two days later than Euphemia, for I remember congratulating her father on her birth. There is something wrong somewhere. Why don’t they want Euphemia? Aren’t her clothes right?”
“Why, yes—” said her mother hesitantly, a new trouble gathering in her eyes. “She is as well dressed for her age as need be. She has never complained. She doesn’t care much for dress. She always preferred getting out and away to play ball or hockey or skate, no matter what she had on.”
“Well, perhaps that’s it,” said the pitying father. “Perhaps she needs something a little more fancy, Mother. We haven’t realized that she was growing up, too, and needed things. She ought to be dressed right, of course. I know you’ve been trying to economize so we could get the car, but things are beginning to look up at the office a little, and I think pretty soon we’ll have things a little easier. You get Euphemia what she wants, Mother. I can’t bear to have her look the way she did to-night. It isn’t right for a child.”
“But she really has never expressed a desire for new clothes,” said her mother thoughtfully. “All she wants is to get off on that bicycle of hers. I’m afraid she’ll never grow up.”
“There are worse faults than that, Mother, worse faults. I believe it might be worse to grow up too soon.”
“Yes,” sighed the mother.
