Janet's college career

JANET stood at her window thoughtfully tapping her lips with her forefinger. The window looked out upon the bay, but Janet was not observant of the white sails melting into the horizon, nor of the line of misty shore opposite. She was not unperceptive; in fact she rather prided herself upon her love of the beautiful, but just now she was absorbed in a problem which was one of the many that had confronted her during the past few weeks. The day before, she had successfully settled the question of a portiere and a couch cover by suddenly remembering the two home-made spreads woven by her great-grandmother, which, in their unfaded glory of blue and red, lay for years packed away in a chest in the attic. Janet would never in the world have considered them if she had not sat behind Martha Summers the last time she went up to the city. Martha was never chary of her information, and had discoursed at length, in such tones as must be overheard, upon the beauties of an apartment just furnished by a newly-married friend of undoubted position and wealth.

"The sweetest thing you ever saw, my dear, so artistic and so unique. The dearest cozy corner, and the loveliest little library, and what do you suppose she has put up as a portiere? The quaintest old spread of her grandmother's, one of those worsted things, you know, all red and blue. She has two of them as heirlooms. Yes, really. One can't buy an heirloom, you see, and she has one between her sitting room and bedroom and another on a divan. I declare they look too sweet for anything. I am wild for some."

Having listened to all this, Janet could triumphantly drag forth the heavy spreads, and, after airing them, could have them packed away with the other belongings which were to go with her to her rooms at college.

"Even if I should rip open every pillow in the house, and take a handful of feathers out of each, it wouldn't be enough," she told herself. "Dear me, I never foresaw so many expenses." She opened a letter which she held, and scanned its contents.

"We'll simply have to have a lot of pillows for our divan, and some sort of cover, and we must have a portiere to hang between the two rooms. You can furnish those, Janet, and I will promise a chafing-dish and a samovar, a lamp, and a lot of pictures and ornaments," so the letter ran. Janet folded it with an air of finality.

"There is no use," she said. "I will simply have to do it when Ted takes all those expensive things, though, for that matter, feathers are expensive. Dear me, I'll have to bother mother again, and I told myself I wouldn't. She has all she can do to get my clothes ready. I will just put the case before her and see what she says. She is such a dear, and was so pleased about those spreads, though they were hers and not mine."

She ran from the room and went singing along the hall. "What is home without a mother?" she carolled in her clear young voice as she opened the door of the room where her mother and a seamstress were hard at work.

"Momsey, dear," she began, "there is one more thing, just one more I promise you. Ted says we've got to have sofa pillows. I suppose we could have a few made of excelsior, but it would be too cheap and common to have them all stuffed with that, but I don't know where in the world we are to get feathers unless we have goose for dinner every day till it's time for me to go."

"And what good would that do?" asked her mother. "As if you could use green feathers."

"Oh, dear, I never thought of that; they would have to be cured first, wouldn't they?" Janet sat down on a low chair and gazed absently at the pile of gingham breadths upon the floor beside her.

The seamstress, a thin flat-faced person with wisps of dun-colored hair sticking out from the careless twist at the back of her head, stopped to bite off her basting thread before she said: "The sleeves are all ready for the machine, Miss Janet. Will you take them?"

"Oh, I suppose so, Miss Rosy, though pillows are on my mind at present, and I may not stitch these evenly. If any one were to ask me just now which weighed the most, a pound of feathers or a pound of lead, I should say feathers; they weigh me down heavily enough."

Miss Roxy paused in her swift movements, needle in mid-air. "Your Aunt Minerva Gilpin has two or three feather beds," she said.

"But I don't want feather beds, you see," said Janet, turning half-way around and stopping the busy wheel of the machine. "It is pillows I want."

"There'd be enough in one of her beds to make all the pillows you'd want for a month of Sundays," returned Miss Roxy. "It's a job to be sure, but everybody except the old-fashioned folks like Miss Minerva is using up their feather beds that way. I've made over at least a dozen this last year."

"Then you could make over one for me, couldn't you? Good! I'll descend upon Aunt Minerva this very afternoon. It's the least she can do for the credit of the family to present me with a feather bed. I'll have to skirmish around for covers though. Here, Miss Roxy, take these; my interest in gingham frocks has completely vanished, and I am going to hunt through the piece bags for possible pillow covers."

She dropped the sleeves into Miss Roxy's lap and went gaily from the room to pull over the bags in the attic and to come down half an hour later with pieces bright and dull which might be converted into covers for her sofa pillows.

"There," she cried, throwing them down on the floor in a heap, "I think these will be enough. However will I get them all packed, mother?"

"The easiest way will be to put them in a barrel."

"And they'll think I am going to set up a grocery shop. Oh, me!" She clasped her knees, and looked off dreamily.

"Come, come, child," chided her mother, when five minutes had passed, "you'll never get ready if you sit there dreaming the time away. If you expect this sewing to get done you will have to lend a hand."

"Yes, and there are those pillows," put in Miss Roxy. "That will be no small job, I tell you. I got so sick of the last that I made up my mind I'd do no more for anybody, and I wouldn't do it for another soul, for it certainly does make a mess about, and you feel as if you were breathing feathers for a week afterward."

"Dear me," said Janet, jumping up and attacking the breadths of gingham, "I am afraid I am a lot of bother, but one goes to college only once in a lifetime and it is really more important than getting married, for one can marry more than once, and one doesn't go to college so often. How do these gores go, Miss Roxy? I'll be good, mother, and work hard, for it is a shame to keep you cooped up here. I hope I haven't made a mistake in taking Edna for a roommate, for it seems to me my very modest array of necessities are mounting up into a tremendous list of requirements. The sofa pillows are the last straw."

"Are you going to make them of straw?" inquired Janet's small brother, Dicky, putting his head into the room. "I know where to get some."

"Of course not, silly," said Janet. "What are you doing here, anyhow? I told you to keep out of the way and not bother mother."

"I don't have to," replied Dicky. "I've as much right to my mother as you have. Say, momsey, I've torn a hole in my trousers, and I can't go to town till they are mended unless I put on my best ones."

"Oh dear, Dicky, you are such a destructive child," Janet remarked. "It is a shame when mother is so busy to give her anything extra to do."

"Well, I'd like to know who it is that is keeping her busy. She's been sewing for you all week. If you're so particular, I'll bring them to you and you can mend them yourself."

Janet looked decidedly put out. "I'll do no such thing. When I am so up to my eyes in work I think it is very inconsiderate in you to say such things. Why you have to go to town anyhow, I don't see. Hooker can get the mail and do any errands that are necessary."

Dicky made a face at her and began to joggle the back of his mother's chair so that its occupant in self-defense said: "Oh, Janet, do let him go. I'd rather mend the trousers ten times over than have him around here bothering everybody. Go get them, Dicky, and put on your old ones till these are mended."

Dicky scrambled from the room in tumultuous boy fashion, returning in a moment with the unlucky trousers which were speedily mended and he was sent off forthwith.

"I wish I had gone, too," said Janet after watching the light wagon disappear down the lane. "I might have stopped at Aunt Minerva's and have had them pick me up on the way back. Never mind, I'll get this done and go there this afternoon."

She worked away with a will, saying little for the next hour. Her thoughts were busy with the future, for these were exciting times for Janet Ferguson. She had been prepared for college at a small boarding-school where life had not offered many sensations. One of her fellow students, who had been graduated at the same time as herself, was to enter college with her and would be her roommate. Edna Waite's circle of friends included a number who were college girls and these she had considered her authority in all matters. In consequence, every few days she dashed off a letter to Janet with some new item of information, and with some necessity added to the list which at first had seemed a sufficiently long one.

So now Janet was beginning to feel that the burden of her preparations would soon threaten to swallow up not only her every moment, but every penny which the resources of the family could furnish. Janet was also beginning to have misgivings. If difficulties arose thus early in her career what would happen later when all sorts of unexpected expenses might drain her pocketbook to the last penny of her allowance, for Edna discoursed at length upon the various directions in which, as college girls, they would be expected to make a showing.

She looked so serious, as she pulled out the basting threads from the hem of one of her frocks, that her mother said, in the absence of Miss Roxy in the kitchen: "Not homesick already, Janet?"

The girl smiled. "No, momsey, not that; I was only wondering if I should find it hard to get through on my allowance."

"You thought it ample when your father suggested it."

"Yes, I know, but Edna keeps adding some new expense to the list till I get fairly swamped in trying to figure it all out."

"Well, my dear, perhaps you will find that you will do better to establish your own standard rather than to accept Edna's. You will not have to do as any special girl prefers to do, but as you find all the girls must do. If you find there is really no need of every expenditure which Edna thinks necessary, simply lop that off, and go without it."

Janet did not reply, for experience at boarding-school had taught her that this was an easier proceeding in theory than in practice. However, her spirits were of an elastic quality, and she did not allow forebodings to trouble her long, and when she came back that afternoon from her Aunt Minerva's, a feather bed stuffed in behind her in the buggy, she was in such a state of hilarity that she could hardly manage her new possession.