THE CARTI STORY

Elma Leighton

In a pink and white bedroom where two beds, Elma's and Betty's, seemed the only pink and white things unspotted by multitudinous photographs, Elma Leighton sought sanctuary. Pursued by a tumultuous accusing conscience, which at the same time gracefully extended the uncertain friendliness of hope, for who could say--it might still be "embarr*ass*ment," she opened her little own bright red dictionary.

She prayed a trifling prayer that her self-esteem might be saved, as she turned shakingly the fine India paper of the 50,000 word compressed edition of the most reliable friend she at that moment possessed in the world. Parents commanded. Relations exaggerated. Chums could be spiteful. But friends told the truth; and the dictionary--being invariably just--was above all things a friend.

She wandered to "en," forgetting in the championship of her learning that "m" held priority. She corrected herself with dignity, and at last found the word she wanted.

It was emb*arr*assment.

Woe and desolation! A crimson shameful blush ran up the pink cheeks, her constant anxiety being that they were always so pink, and made a royal progress there. The hot mortification of despair lent it wings. She watched the tide of red creep to the soft curls of her hair as she viewed herself in her own little miniature cheval between creamy curtains, and she saw her complexion die down at last to an unusual but becoming paleness.

She had said "embarr*ass*ment."

Nothing could have been more fatal. It was like a disease with Elma, that instead of using the everyday words regarding which no one could make a mistake--such as "shyness" in this instance--she should invariably plunge into others which she merely knew by sight and find them unknown to herself as talking acquaintances. Cousin Dr. Harry Vincent, Staff Surgeon in His Majesty's Navy, eyeglass in eye, merry smile at his lips ("such a dashing cousin the Leightons have visiting them" was the comment), the sort of person in short that impressed Elma with the need of being very dashing herself, here was the particular of all particulars before whom she had made this ridiculous mistake.

"Now," had said Dr. Harry in the drawing-room when visitors arrived, "come and play something."

Any other girl overcome by Elma's habitual fright when asked to play, would have said, "I'm too shy." Elma groaned as she thought how easy that would have been.

But Dr. Harry's single eyeglass fascinated her as with a demand for showing some kind of culture.

She blinked her eyelids nervously and answered, "My embarr*ass*ment prevents me."

Dr. Harry never moved a muscle of his usually mobile and merry countenance. But the flaming sword of fear cut further conversation dead for Elma. She became subtly conscious that the word was wrong, and fled to her room.

"While I'm here," she said dismally, "I may as well look up 'melodramic.'" This was a carking care left over from a conversation in the morning.

It proved another tragedy.

Being really of a cheerful sunny nature, which never for long allowed clouds to overshadow the bright horizon of her imagination, she acquainted herself thoroughly with the right term.

"One consolation is, I shall never make that mistake again as long as I live. Melodramatic," she repeated with the swagger of familiarity.

Then "emb, emb--Oh! dear, I've forgotten again."

Concluding that embarrassment was a treacherous acquaintance, she decided to drop it altogether.

"After this I shall only be shy," she said with a certain amount of refined pleasure in her own humour.

She regarded her figure dismally in the cheval. Her chubby face had regained its undistinguished pink. She was sorry she could not remain pale, it was so much more distinguished to be pale.

"How long I take to grow up--in every way." She sighed in a reflective manner.

What she was thinking was how long she took to become like one of the Story Book Girls.

It is probable that she would never have run to long words, had it not been her dearest desire to grow up like one of the Story Book Girls. It was the desire of every sister in the Leighton family. Each worked on it differently however. Mabel, the eldest, now seventeen, in the present delights of hair going up and skirts letting down, took her ideas of fashion straight from "Adelaide Maud" the elegant one. "Adelaide Maud" wore her hair in coils and sat under heliotrope parasols. Mabel surreptitiously tried that effect as often as five times a day with the family absent.

Jean threw all her ambitions on the sporting carriage of "Madeline" who was a golfer.

Betty determined to wear bangles and play the violin because "Theodora," the youngest of the lot, did that. And Elma based her admiration of "Hermione" on the fact that she had "gone in" for science. Long ago they had christened their divinities. It did not do to recognize latterly that the Dudgeons were known in society by other names altogether. One can do these dreamy, inconsequent things with the most superb pleasure while one's family remains between certain romantic ages; in the case of the Leightons at the moment when Elma ran to her bedroom--between the ages of ten and seventeen. Betty was ten, Elma twelve, Jean fifteen and Mabel seventeen.

It was an axiom with the girls that their parents need not know how they emulated the Story Book Girls. Yet the information leaked out occasionally.

It was also considered bad form to breathe a word to the one elder brother of the establishment. Yet even there one got into trouble.

"Why on earth do you call her Adelaide Maud when her name is Helen?" asked Cuthbert one day bluntly. "Met her at a dance--and she nearly slew me. I called her Miss Adelaide!"

"O--o--o--oh!"

It is impossible to explain the thrill that the four underwent. Cuthbert had met Adelaide Maud!

"Did she talk about us?" asked Elma breathlessly.

"Doesn't know you kids exist," said Cuthbert.

Here was a tumbling pack of cards.

However the idylls of the Story Book Girls soon were built up again.

Four girls at the west end of a town dreamed dreams about four girls at a still further west. They lived where the sun dropped down behind blue mountains in the sunny brilliant summer time. The Story Book Girls were grown up, of "county" reputation, and "sat in their own carriages." The others invariably walked. This was enough to explain the fact that they never met in the quiet society of the place. But one world was built out of the two, and in it, the younger girls who did not ride in carriages, created an existence for the Story Book Girls which would have astonished them considerably had they known. As it was, they sometimes noticed a string of large-eyed girls with a good-looking brother, going to church on Sunday, but it never dawned on one of them that the tallest carried a heliotrope parasol in a manner familiar to them, nor that another exhibited a rather extraordinary and highly developed golfing stride. Grown-up girls do not observe those in the transition stages, and just at the fiercest apex of their admiration, the Leightons were certainly at the transient stage. They reviewed their own growing charms with the keenest anxiety. Everybody was hopeful of Mabel who seemed daily to be shedding angularities and developing a presence which might one day be compared with Adelaide Maud's. The time of her seventeenth birthday had drawn near with the family palpitating behind her. Mrs. Leighton remembered that delicious period of her own youth, and was indulgently friendly, "just a perfect dear."

"We are going to make a very pretty little woman of Mabel," she informed her husband. He was a tall man, with a fine intellectual forehead, and handsome, clear-cut features. He stooped slightly, giving an impression of gentleness and great amiability. He answered in some alarm.

"You don't mean that our little baby girl is growing up."

"Elma declares that Mabel reaches her 'frivolity' in May," said Mrs. Leighton sedately. A quiet smile played gently over a face, lined softly, yet cleared of care as one sees the mother face where happy homes exist.

Mr. Leighton groaned sadly and rubbed his finger contemplatively along the smoothed hair which made a gallant attempt at hiding more than a hint of baldness.

"Why can't we keep them babies!"

"Betty thinks we do," said his wife.

"One boy at College, and one girl coming out! It's overwhelming. We were only married yesterday, you know," said poor Mr. Leighton.

It troubled Mrs. Leighton that Mabel insisted on wearing heliotrope. She had white of course for her coming out dress, and among other costumes the choice of colours for a fine day gown. The blue eyes of the Leightons were gifts handed down by a beneficent providence through a long line of ancestors, and one wise mother after another had matched the heavenly radiancy of these wide orbs as nearly as possible in sashes and silks for the children. Therefore Mrs. Leighton begged Mabel to have at least that one day gown in blue.

"I begin to be sorry I said you might have what you liked," she said dismally. "Heliotrope will make you look like your grandmother."

"Oh no it won't," clamoured Jean. "It will only make her look like Adelaide Maud."