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Again the fellow nodded. Robbie Belle's wondering gaze rested a moment on Berta's gypsy face alight now with an intensity of longing. Deliberately depositing her spoon on one side of her saucer and her buttered bit of roll on the other she devoted her entire attention to this marvel. "I cannot understand," she said clearly, "it is only singing. And to-day is Thanksgiving Day.
She turned to Bea. "Now I know how Berta feels when she listens to music. I'm beginning to understand. But I think a robin is different from a brass band." "Is it now? You astonish me." Bea squeezed her understandingly, nevertheless. "I know. Being with Lila has taught me a lot. She is like a windharp every touch finds a response. Berta's a violin, I guess. It takes skill to play on her.
"It's hard work because I've slipped into the habit of being prim and precise, and I had to bend a pin intentionally. Four girls already have warned me about my hair falling down. It worries me a lot and yet it doesn't give the same effect as yours. Does yours feel loose and straggly?" Berta's hand flew to her head. "You sinner! Mine is just as usual."
Berta is raising her hand to mark time for the songs to be rehearsed for to-morrow." But Berta's hand dropped at sound of a shout from across the campus. "There!" she exclaimed, "the sophomores are coming." They certainly were coming, on a double-quick march, two by two, shouting for the seniors. As they approached the shouting changed to singing.
Bea peered around the edge of her particular door in order to catch a glimpse of this freshman so distinguished. It was the tall, fair-faced child with the splendid long braid, who lived at the end of Berta's transverse. Now the sweet mouth was drooping disconsolately, and the big eyes looked dewy with anxious tears. "I I don't think I'd like to," she said.
Likewise this impromptu on the spur of the moment " "I think it's beautiful," said Robbie. She was watching Berta's eyes as the last lingering strains died away. Oh, dear! why did they sing that good-bye serenade again? Berta was going to cry. Hark! A robin's twilight call rose melodiously from the heart of a shadowy spruce. In the thrill of it Robbie felt the sting of sudden tears.
"Do come." It was a mechanical response while Berta's eyes narrowed in the intensity of her application. "Now I wonder what that question-mark on the margin can mean. She is the vaguest critic I ever had. Suggestive, I reckon, and nothing else." Robbie sighed. "Bea always used to be interested in everything. I wish she wouldn't write poems. She walked right past four girls and didn't see them.
Berta's contributions were the result of more active exertions than the other's passive self-denial. She sat up one night till two o'clock to dress a doll. Every fall a few hundred dolls were distributed to be dressed by the girls for the Christmas tree at the Settlement House in the city. Some of the students took dolls and paid other girls to make the clothes.
Listen! Behold! Tell me, do her little feet really touch the solid humble earth?" As mischievous Bea stopped, with anxiety and awe written large on her saucy features to investigate Berta's shoes, a door near them opened and a slender woman with fast-graying hair and a curiously still face emerged. There was the ghost of a twinkle in her gray eyes. The transom had not been entirely closed.
As soon as she had gone Dora and I rushed to Father and said: "Please Father, don't be so frightfully angry; there's no reason why you should." And Father was awfully sweet and said: "I know quite well that I can trust you; you are my Berta's children."
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