Read Ebook: The Girl Scouts at Home; or Rosanna's Beautiful Day by Galt Katherine Keene

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Ebook has 601 lines and 27870 words, and 13 pages

"Your loving grandmother,

"VIRGINIA LEE HORTON."

Rosanna read the letter twice.

"You must do what you think right, dearie," said Minnie, her kind, wise eyes searching the girl's face. "I can't tell you what to do. You must decide for yourself. It's one of the biggest things in the world to learn; that is, to decide what is right and wrong without someone telling us."

She kissed Rosanna good-night and left the room. A moment later she returned. "Mrs. Hargrave just telephoned, dearie, that she wants you and Helen to take luncheon with her to-morrow." Once more she bade the little girl good-night, and Rosanna, tired out, fell asleep before the door was closed.

She did not see Helen the next day until time for luncheon, but when she waked up she found a book lying beside her bed. Helen had sent it over to her. It was all about the Girl Scouts, and their rules and duties and pleasures, and Rosanna found it hard work not to sit down and read instead of taking her cold bath and dressing herself. Then after breakfast came the history lesson and the music and dressing again, and when Helen, very crisp and dainty, came in ready to go to Mrs. Hargrave's, she found that Rosanna had not had time to read a single line.

Mrs. Hargrave lived three houses away, and the children felt very important and fine, especially Helen, who had never been asked to luncheon with a grown-up lady before. Her eyes grew round when they entered the house. It was so dim and cool and "old timey" as Helen put it.

Mrs. Hargrave always dressed in the latest fashion for old ladies, yet somehow she always looked as though she belonged to another day and time. When she drove about the city she scorned the modern automobile. She went in the spickest and spannest little carriage drawn by an old, sleek and still frisky roan horse with a gold mounted harness and her driver was a colored man as haughty and aristocratic looking as Mrs. Hargrave herself; perhaps a little more so.

She advanced to meet the two little girls with a charming manner that made them curtsey their very prettiest and caused them to feel more important and grown up than ever.

During luncheon Mrs. Hargrave said:

"Will your brother return to college now that the war is over, Helen?"

Helen looked up in surprise. "I think you have me mixed up with some other little girl, Mrs. Hargrave," she said. "I have no brother."

Mrs. Hargrave stared at her guest. "Are you not Lucius Culver's youngest child?" she questioned. "The Lee County Culvers?"

"No, Mrs. Hargrave," said Helen. "I am John Culver's daughter."

"Another family," said Mrs. Hargrave and changed the subject politely by asking Rosanna what she had heard from her grandmother.

After luncheon was over Mrs. Hargrave took the children and showed them some of the strange and curious things about the house.

Then she had a delightful suggestion to make. She herself was obliged to go down town to see her lawyer and she thought it would be very nice for the girls to come for a little ride. To Rosanna, used only to automobiles, and Helen who rode most of the time in street cars, the idea of riding along after the proud gold-harnessed, frisky old horse in the spick-and-span carriage was a treat and an adventure. Making themselves politely small and quiet, sitting on either side of Mrs. Hargrave, they went trotting down Third Street, turned by the big white library building, and continued down Fourth Street where they eyed the crowds, read the giddy signs in front of the movie houses and looked at the window displays.

While Mrs. Hargrave talked to her lawyer, the girls sat in the carriage and pretended that they were grown-up ladies.

When Mrs. Hargrave came out, they started up Fourth Street.

"There is something I want to get here," she said, and led the way into a big jeweler's shop. The two girls stopped to look at the rings in the case near the door, but Mrs. Hargrave called them. "I need a notebook and pencil and I thought you would like to help me select it. I am a rather fussy and very forgetful old lady."

She did seem fussy over that notebook, but finally chose a dainty gold one with a square in the center for initials. Attached by a tiny gold chain was a slender pencil with a blue stone in the top.

Then, to their amazement, the clerk laid two others exactly like it on the counter. Three just alike!

"I think it would be nice for us all to remember our pleasant day, don't you?" asked Mrs. Hargrave, smiling. "I want to give you each one just like this one that I am getting for myself. Then we will think of each other whenever we use them."

Helen lifted Mrs. Hargrave's delicate old hand and laid it against her cheek.

Mrs. Hargrave's eyes filled with tears. "Bless your heart!" she said.

The very next day Mrs. Hargrave was called into the country to see a sick cousin. She telephoned Minnie before she left and told her that she felt that things were going along as well as anyone could possibly expect, and that she was delighted with Rosanna and her little friend. This message distressed Minnie for she was just about to go to see Mrs. Hargrave.

Minnie was not happy. Silly and foolish as it was, she well knew that the proud old Mrs. Horton would not be willing to accept as poor and simple a child as Helen for Rosanna's closest friend, no matter how sweet and well mannered she might be. Minnie, who knew real worth when she saw it, despised Mrs. Horton for her overbearing ideas, but what to do she didn't know. She feared a storm if she let things go until Mrs. Horton's return, yet she dreaded a separation for the children, when they might enjoy each other for two or three weeks longer.

Rosanna was improving daily. Minnie was pleased and proud to see how she continued to do for herself and learn in every way to be independent. Her sewing was wonderful. She was working eagerly on a little dark blue dress like Helen's for herself, and with Minnie's help was even putting a little simple cross-stitching on the cuffs and yoke. Rosanna was prouder of that dress than of anything she had ever had in her beautiful, crowded wardrobe.

Minnie felt that she wanted to consult with someone, and the most sensible person she knew was Mrs. Hargrave. But with Mrs. Hargrave away, all Minnie could see to do was to let things go along, and "trust to luck" as she put it. Minnie didn't like "trusting to luck" at all; and every time she saw the two children playing together so happily and busily she shook her head and sighed.

Rosanna, too, in a dim way was feeling troubled, because she too knew her grandmother, and remembered other times when she had been severely scolded for trying to make friends with children whose parents did not measure up to the standard set by Mrs. Horton.

In fact, for all the seeming happiness, no one was wholly happy but Helen!

Helen had been taught by her wise young mother that the most important things in life are not to be measured as anything that money can buy. According to Mrs. Culver, a little girl must be obedient and truthful and well behaved and kind. She must have a low and pleasant voice and be able to sit in the presence of her elders without trying to enter the conversation unless asked to do so. These things she had taught Helen, and her little girl had been a ready pupil. Mrs. Culver was justly proud of her.

Because she did not know just how to turn around and explain everything to her grandmother and still be sure of her happy time, to say nothing of protecting her dear Helen from distress, when she answered her grandmother's letter she wrote as follows:

Dear Grandmother:

"I was glad to get your letter, and I am glad Uncle Robert is home again. Give my love to him, please. I am glad you are having a good time, and I hope you will stay away as long as you like. I am having a very good time. Oh, grandmother, I am having a lovely time. What do you think? Mrs. Hargrave had Helen and me to luncheon with her, and she likes Helen as much as I do, only she doesn't belong to the Lee family, and after luncheon Mrs. Hargrave took us down town with her, and before we came home she bought each of us a gold notebook with a gold pencil on a gold chain fastened to it. She bought herself one too so we each have one just like a secret society.

"I am learning to cook and to sew. I am making myself a dress. It is very pretty. I shall make a good many of my dresses after this. It saves a good deal of money, Minnie says, and I can help the poor with it.

"We went out to Jacobs Park for a picnic, and five poor little children had lost their basket of supper. So I thought what you would do if you saw five little children who had lost their supper, and I asked them to have supper with us. There was enough, on account of our taking Uncle Robert's hamper, and Uncle Robert always liking to be generous.

"We have planned a great many things. If they don't all get done before you come home, grandmother, perhaps you will enjoy doing them too.

"I am learning a great deal about the Girl Scouts. I want to be one.

"Did you know our cook has a little lame boy at home? I was glad to find it out. It is one more person to be kind to. I have sent him all my set of puzzle pictures.

"Minnie is planning to get married. She has a trunk of things. When you come home won't it be nice because we can go down town and buy something for her. She will like something you have given her.

"She likes you very much, I am sure, because she always says, 'Well, all I can say is there's not many like your grandmother in this world.'

"I think it is so nice to be liked. I want to grow up to be liked. I think being a Girl Scout will help. Helen says all sorts of girls belong, rich as well as poor, and that it broadens you.

"This is a long letter, grandmother, but I had a good deal to tell you. So please have a good time, grandmother, and I am your loving little girl

"ROSANNA."

Minnie sent a letter too. It read:

"Mrs. Horton:

"I wish to report that everything seems to be going smoothly. Mrs. Hargrave has taken a great liking to Miss Rosanna, and her new friend Miss Helen, and likes to have them with her. Miss Rosanna practices and studies faithfully, and her music teacher says she never had such a bright pupil. I have her take a rest in the middle of each day. The day you left she broke her bottle of tonic, and I could not get more, as you have the prescription. But I do not think she needs it. She has gained two pounds since you left us. I give her hair a hundred strokes each night. I think she wants to bob her hair, it is so very long and heavy, but I tell her not for worlds, as you are so proud of it.

"We are keeping to the routine you ordered except when Mrs. Hargrave has made some slight change, but of course I know that is all right, as you told me she might wish to do so.

"Respectfully,

"MINNIE."

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