CHAPTER VIII

“SMILE, SMILE, SMILE”

It was incredible what a variety of activities the girls were able to get into their three days’ stay. They went canoeing down the canal, they rode, they went for long hikes, they studied the birds; they gathered wild flowers, they cleaned house, they cooked, washed and ironed, and started off on Saturday morning, feeling that there was still much of which they had not availed themselves.

But they did not, as Winnie remarked, “mourn as those without hope,” for before they started for the station who should appear upon the scene but Mr. Pattison, who announced that he had come up ahead of his friends in order to see if there was anything left for them to come to.

“With a lot of scatter-brained girls on hand,” he said, “I didn’t know but I should find the house burned down.”

“You horrid mean thing!” cried Joanne, “you know you didn’t expect anything of the kind. I’ll leave it to anybody if you ever saw the place in such apple-pie order. Just come and see.” She led him from spot to spot till he was obliged to confess she spoke truly.

“I give in,” he exclaimed. “You are fairies or brownies or anything you choose, and I take off my hat to the Girl Scouts. Of course I didn’t think you would do any harm deliberately, but I didn’t know but you would be more or less careless. Where’s Miss Dodge?”

Joanne hunted her up and a long conference followed between the captain and Mr. Pattison. The girls, all ready to go, stood around impatiently. “I wonder what they are talking about,” said Joanne.

“Miss Dodge looks mightily pleased,” returned Winnie.

“Probably he is complimenting her upon being at the head of such a fine troop,” remarked Claudia.

“Oh, Claudia, what a conceited remark,” exclaimed Esther.

Claudia laughed. “How literal you always are, Ess,” she said.

“All the same,” remarked Winnie serenely, “we are a fine troop; no one can deny.”

“Oh, Win,” Esther began but stopped short as she saw that the conference had broken up and that the two were coming toward them.

“It is evident that Miss Dodge’s smile is the kind that won’t come off,” whispered Winnie to Joanne; “it is getting broader and broader.”

Miss Dodge was not long in giving them the reason for her pleased expression. “Girls,” she began, “I want you to give three cheers for Mr. Pattison; he has offered this place to us for the month of July so we can have our summer camp here.”

It is needless to say that the cheers were given with a will, then the girls crowded around with a dozen questions and with vociferous thanks. Finally they started off on their eight mile hike to the station singing “We feel just as happy as big Sunflowers,” a song which Miss Dodge had resurrected from an old book, and which they had taken over as particularly fitting for a Sunflower troop.

Joanne reached home tired but very happy. She flung down her pack and bounced into the room where her grandparents were sitting. “We’ve had just the gloriousest time,” she exclaimed, “and just think of it, I have walked eight miles this morning.”

“Oh, Joanne,” cried her grandmother, “you must be quite exhausted. You’d better go right up-stairs and go to bed. I will send your lunch up.”

Joanne made a funny little grimace at her grandfather. “But, Gradda, I don’t want to go to bed, and I am as hungry as a hunter. I have grown such an appetite you wouldn’t recognize it. I shouldn’t like to tell you how many cakes I ate for supper last night. Miss Dodge has learned to make just as good griddle cakes as Unc’ Aaron’s, and we all have tried, too. Mine aren’t quite so good yet, but they weren’t so bad.” She turned to her grandfather. “Please, Grad, say I don’t have to go up and even lie down. I feel fine as silk.”

He took her by the shoulders and looked her over critically. “I must say I never saw you looking so well,” he declared. “I don’t think she need go to her room, my dear,” he said to his wife.

“But I am sure she will have a headache if she eats when she is exhausted,” returned Mrs. Selden.

“But I don’t feel exhausted or even tired,” persisted Joanne. “We came home on the cars and that rested me. Why, Gradda, I have been going like a steam engine ever since I left.”

“How many headaches have you had?”

“Not one. Isn’t this fine? We are going to spend July up at that heavenly place, all our troop.”

“Oh, Joanne, but we shall be at Jamestown by July,” her grandmother spoke. “I heard from Mrs. Abercrombie only this morning. The Admiral will spend the summer there, and they are counting on our coming.”

“Oh, but Gradda, I don’t want to go to any of those stupid watering places and I don’t see why I have to.”

“My dear, of course you have to. Do you suppose I would think of leaving you behind? The idea is preposterous. I shouldn’t spend a peaceful moment.”

“But why, Gradda, why?” The old fretful whine came into Joanne’s voice.

“For excellent reasons. A delicate child like you exposed to, I don’t know what dangers, far from your home, your family, your doctor. No, no, put that notion out of your head at once and think no more about it.”

Joanne stood still for a moment with clenched hands and frowning brows, then she burst out with, “I think it’s horrid mean to deprive me of my only pleasures. I’ll run away; I’ll hide, but I won’t go up to that stupid place, I won’t, I won’t.”

“Joanne!” her grandfather’s voice came sternly.

“If this is what you learn from your Girl Scouts, to be impertinent and rebellious,” said her grandmother stiffly, “I think you’d better resign from the troop.”

Joanne burst into tears and rushed up to her room, angry, ashamed, distressed. Where were her high hopes, her promises? She threw herself across her bed in a fit of passionate weeping. It was too hard, too hard; it was more than she could bear to have her beautiful dreams shattered. To think that the girls would be there at the lodge without her, at the place they would never have heard of but for her! They would be riding Chico--no, they should not. He was her pony; she would give orders that no one should use him but Pablo. They would be rowing up to that dear little island in _her_ cousin’s boat; they would be partaking of _her_ cousin’s hospitality. They would be laughing and playing while she was miserable. She wished she might go into a decline, and then her grandparents would see what it meant to be cruel to her. She already felt a headache coming on. She hoped they would realize that it was they who made her suffer. Even her grandfather, on whose support she always counted, even he had not taken her part. She fell to sobbing again spasmodically.

Suddenly she sat up. She heard the maid coming along the hall, then a tap at the door. “Well, what is it?” asked Joanne.

“Mrs. Selden wants to know if you aren’t coming to lunch, Miss Joanne,” came the answer.

“Tell her I don’t want any. I have a splitting headache.”

The maid went away. Joanne sat on the side of the bed, her feet dangling over, her eyes red, her hair disordered, altogether a forlorn little figure. They didn’t love her. They didn’t understand her. There was nobody to sympathize with her. To whom could she go for comfort? She thought of Winnie, but decided that Winnie was too candid and outspoken to deal with the situation. She wanted sympathy, not advice. There was Miss Dodge, or Claudia, but a little feeling of embarrassment came over her as she considered any of these. She was not sure that she could present her case so as to win entire commiseration. “I’ll go to Cousin Sue,” she said after a few minutes’ thought. “She will understand, for she knows Gradda so well and she is fond of me. They’ll be at lunch and they won’t miss me. I don’t care if they do; let them.”

She bathed her face, straightened her dress, brushed her hair and then stole softly down the back stairs and out a side door. The fresh air felt grateful; the little park through which she walked was green, and lively with laughing children. By the time she reached Mrs. Pattison’s apartment the world did not appear such a dreary place.

“Come right out and have lunch with me,” said Mrs. Pattison when Joanne appeared. “I’m all alone, for Ned has gone up to the country, as perhaps you know, and I’m delighted to have company. They’re having a stag party up at the lodge, you know, and so, of course I am out of it, though just as well pleased. Did you have a good time? Come in and tell me all about it.”

Joanne entered the pleasant dining-room and took a place at the table. “We had a perfectly gorgeous time,” she said, “and the girls are so enthusiastic about the place, as well they may be.”

Mrs. Pattison looked at her rather critically. “Now I come to see you at close range it appears to me that you look rather done up by your trip.”

Joanne colored up and bit her lip. “It wasn’t the trip that did me up, but what has occurred since.”

“My dear! I hope there is nothing serious with aunt or uncle. Didn’t you find them well?”

“Oh, yes, it’s all to do with me.”

“You? Why, I thought things were going beautifully with you. I am sure we have all been remarking on how well you look.”

Joanne drew a long sigh and looked down into her plate. “I shall not be looking well if I have to be bored to death all summer.”

“That doesn’t sound cheerful. What’s the idea? as Ned would say.”

“Gradda wants to drag me off with her to one of those horrid, stupid watering places she likes to go to, where they do nothing but dress up and do fancy work. I loathe them, more than ever now since I know what really good times are. I never knew why I was so discontented at one of those fashionable resorts, but now I know.”

Mrs. Pattison smiled. “What special one rouses your ire on this occasion?”

“Oh, that Jamestown near Newport.”

“Why, that’s rather a nice place.”

“For some,” returned Joanne plaintively. “Did you know, Cousin Sue,” she went on impressively, “that Cousin Ned has offered the lodge to our troop for the month of July, and that the girls are simply wild about it?”

“Has he? The dear fellow, it’s just like him. You see we are going down to Virginia, to my sister’s, for July, and shall not be using the lodge.”

“But don’t you see,” Joanne laid down her fork, “don’t you see, Cousin Sue, that if Gradda insists upon dragging me off with her I shall miss all those heavenly times.”

“Of course. I hadn’t thought of that.”

“And--and,” continued Joanne with a little gasp, “the reason I look done up is because I cried myself nearly sick about it. I told Gradda what I thought and then I went up-stairs and cried and cried till I hadn’t a tear left, then I slipped off and came here. I was so perfectly wretched and I wanted some one to comfort me. Please sympathize with me.”

“I do sympathize with you, certainly I do, but Joanne, dear, doesn’t your grandmother know where you are?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care. Probably she thinks I am still in my room. She isn’t concerning herself about my misery; she is thinking only of depriving me of my pleasures.”

“Dear, dear, that’s a harsh way to talk. Of course she hasn’t any such motive. It is because of her deep concern in you that she wants you always with her. There are always two sides to a question, my dear, and I think half the trouble in the world comes from our not putting ourselves in the other fellow’s place.”

“Then please put yourself in my place.”

Mrs. Pattison smiled. “All right. I am Joanne Selden, a fatherless, motherless girl, cared for and watched over by her grandmother ever since she was a baby, who cared for and nursed her delicate young mother, and who is now so fearfully afraid that something will happen to the beloved child of her adored son that she cannot endure the thought of being parted from her.”

Joanne’s head drooped and her lips trembled, but she said nothing.

“I am Joanne Selden, who is not always a source of unadulterated joy, being a rather spoiled little somebody, but who wants to be the best ever and who truly loves her grandparents, and is pouty and saucy only when she can’t have her own way.”

“Oh, Cousin Sue,” Joanne began tremblingly, then she left her place and went around to her cousin, dropping on her knees and burying her face on her cousin’s shoulder. “I didn’t think you would be cruel, too,” she sobbed.

“Was I cruel? Perhaps I was, but I wanted you to see the other side of the question and how else was I to do it? We all love you very dearly, darling child, so please don’t think we are down on you. Don’t take this too seriously, for maybe there will be a way out. What is that about always being cheerful and going about with a smile? It seems to me that I saw something of the sort in your Girl Scout handbook, didn’t I?”

Joanne lifted her wet eyes. “Yes, Cousin Sue, I know, but there are times when one can’t be cheerful, when the tragedies of life crush one utterly.”

Mrs. Pattison repressed a smile. “You poor little dear, I suppose it does look like a tragedy to you, but it strikes me this is a time to turn your clouds inside out. Chirk up, dear. It isn’t July, and won’t be for over two months. No one can tell what will happen by then. Come now, finish your lunch and let’s talk of something cheerful. I’ll call up your grandmother and tell her you will be with me this afternoon, so she won’t be uneasy.”

Joanne rose to her feet and went back to her scarcely tasted luncheon. “Just one thing, Cousin Sue,” she said, “before we leave this subject. Won’t you use your influence with Gradda and try to make her see that it will be for my good to spend that month with my troop? I’m afraid she thinks I don’t profit by being a Girl Scout.”

“Why?”

“Because I did fly out and say raging things to her.”

“Then you might, for your soul’s good, offer her an apology.”

“Oh, Cousin Sue, I couldn’t. I never did such a thing in my life.”

“High time you began. Don’t you see, you blind little mole, that if you do now, she will think it is the yeast of scouting working in you? Don’t you owe it to yourself as a Girl Scout to do something that will show you are making progress in character?”

“You talk as if you were a captain of a troop yourself.”

“I’m not, but I have friends who are and I know that good times are not all you girls must look for. The big thing is the training of yourselves into such women as the country can be proud of. There’s an old Sunday school text which was the motto of our class when I was a little girl of your age: ‘Be not weary of well doing, for in due season ye shall reap if ye faint not.’ I remember that our teacher told us the essence of the thing lay in that ‘if ye faint not’; in other words: Don’t fall down on your job. If you are going to be a Girl Scout, be a first-rate one.”

Joanne finished her meal in silence. She was thinking too hard to talk. It came over her that she had not realized what a serious person this pretty young wife of her Cousin Ned could be. She had always appeared full of fun, rather fond of pretty things, of social affairs, and here suddenly she was preaching. Then all at once she understood why Cousin Sue was popular. Underneath the laughter and gay spirits lay sterling character, and she realized that to be a Girl Scout one mustn’t think only of fun and badges, but of the intangible things that lasted forever.

As they left the room, Cousin Sue cuddled up to her little guest “I was awfully preachy, wasn’t I? But it was just because I love you so hard. Let’s go to a movie; that will cheer us up.”

The play they saw happened to be just the one to raise Joanne’s spirits, and she went home a much more cheerful person than the one who left it. All the way up to her room she was trying to make up her mind to offer that apology. It was the hardest task ever set her. She did not see how in the world she could do it, but she must. “I’ve just got to do it, somehow,” she told herself. Then all of a sudden the happy thought came to her that she could write it. Her grandmother was out. She would write her a little note and leave it on the dressing table in her grandmother’s room. No sooner planned than done. The note ran:

“DEAREST GRADDA:

“I was a babyish pig to speak to you as I did. Please forgive me.

“Your very loving “JOANNE.”

Having done this she felt a great load lifted, and went about getting ready for dinner, singing softly to herself: “Smile, smile, smile.”

After a while the front door shut. Her grandparents came up-stairs. Joanne heard the murmur of their voices, then in the hall her grandmother’s footsteps. She turned toward her door. Her grandmother came in swiftly holding out her arms. “Dear child, dear child,” she murmured as Joanne went to her.

Her grandfather smiled down at her as they all went down-stairs together. “Well, Pickings,” he said, “are the skies clear?”

Joanne smiled back at him. “It has cleared off beautifully,” she answered.

Not a word was said about Jamestown either at table or during the evening. Joanne told of the amusing play she had seen. She played cribbage with her grandmother, and in answer to one or two anxious looks she smiled. “No, Gradda, not a sign of headache,” she said.

When she went to kiss her grandfather good-night he drew her close and whispered: “Congratulations on the victory.” And Joanne understood. She went to her room smiling.