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The Wide Awake Girls Series

THE WIDE AWAKE GIRLS IN WINSTED

by

KATHARINE RUTH ELLIS

Author of "The Wide Awake Girls"

Illustrated from drawings by Sears Gallagher







[Illustration: "'Here is a little souvenir for you, Judge Arthur.'"
Frontispiece. See page 266.]



Boston
Little, Brown, and Company

Copyright, 1909,
By Little, Brown, and Company.
All rights reserved

Printers
S. J. Parkhill & Co., Boston, U. S. A.




To

GLADYS GODDARD

who has been the friend of many boys and girls
this book is affectionately inscribed.




PREFACE


The author wishes to acknowledge gratefully the kindness of Messrs.
Houghton, Mifflin and Company in allowing her to use the poem
_Vantage_, by Josephine Preston Peabody in this book. She also
thanks Miss Margaret Sherwood for consenting to a similar use of her
poem, _Indian Summer_.

Books for girls are frankly suggestive, their value lying in their
kindling power. Among the girls of all sorts who may read this story,
there will be, here and there, one who loves right words. It is for the
sake of such an occasional reader that the poems mentioned have been
included. The schools sometimes lead their pupils to believe that
English literature, like Latin, belongs to the past. But there are, here
and now, "musicians of the word" who, partly because they are living,
can touch our hearts as none of the dead-and-gone ones can. If through
these pages some girl finds her way to the little green volume of
_Singing Leaves_, or the sweet stories of _Daphne_ and _King
Sylvaine and Queen Aimee_, Catherine Smith and her friends will have
done the world of girls a service worth the doing.




CONTENTS

 CHAPTER                                              PAGE

       I.  CATHERINE'S INSPIRATION                       3
      II.  GETTING STARTED                              15
     III.  ORGANIZATION                                 28
      IV.  WITH PAIL AND BROOM                          46
       V.  A DAY OFF                                    58
      VI.  THE OPENING                                  71
     VII.  A PARTY AT POLLY'S                           86
    VIII.  A FORTUNATE MEETING                         101
      IX.  LANDING                                     109
       X.  THE MAKING OF A COMPACT                     120
      XI.  BROOKMEADOW                                 133
     XII.  ARRIVAL AT WINSTED                          151
    XIII.  CAUGHT IN A SHOWER                          164
     XIV.  AN INTERLUDE                                176
      XV.  SUNDAY SCHOOL                               186
     XVI.  ALICE ON THE WAY                            203
    XVII.  FINDING A VOCATION                          212
   XVIII.  DOCTOR'S ORDERS                             221
     XIX.  JOURNALISM                                  246
      XX.  THE THREE R's                               254
     XXI.  THE LAST PARTY                              271
    XXII.  AUF WIEDERSEHEN                             284




ILLUSTRATIONS

  "Here is a little souvenir for you, Judge Arthur"  Frontispiece

                                                             Page

  "We must find a good place for it"                           17
  "How much for your tickets?"                                 77
  "Sure I am not too heavy, Karl?"                            112
  Frieda was telling a story and the others were
  listening attentively                                       184




PART ONE

STARTING A LIBRARY




THE WIDE AWAKE GIRLS IN WINSTED




CHAPTER ONE

CATHERINE'S INSPIRATION


"Alma Mater, Dexter darling, do re mi--O dear! It's much harder to write
than I supposed. I wonder why! When your heart is full of love, why
should it be hard to express it?"

Catherine Smith, sitting on the top step of the porch of her home, Three
Gables, bent her red-gold head over the pad of paper on her knee and
wrote painfully, her forehead puckered earnestly. She had been a year at
college and was just beginning her summer vacation. All through the busy
year, full of delightful new experiences, she had looked forward to the
leisure of summer, in which she might adequately declare her devotion to
the college which had been her mother's and was now her own. From the
day, the June before, when she had gone there to visit her friend,
Hannah Eldred, she had felt a keen sense of "belonging," especially
pleasant because her frail health had compelled her to lead a somewhat
secluded life at home, and she had not felt really acquainted with the
young people in the little town of Winsted, where she had always lived.

Now all that was changing. At college she had been forced to conquer her
shyness, and, to her delight, she soon found that the boys and girls at
home were more than glad to receive her into their circle upon equal
terms. Her physician parents were everybody's friends, and Catherine,
who adored her father and mother, was eager to show herself worthy to be
their daughter. In order to do so, she reasoned, she must be of real
service to the town and to her college. The only way she had thought of
so far was to write an Alma Mater song, expressive not only of the
rapturous loyalty of undergraduates, but of the graver love of alumnae
like her mother.

"It is very hard," she sighed. "It must be stately and yet not heavy. O
me! And here comes Algernon."

With a resigned air she folded her scribbled papers and thrust her
pencil into the coil of red braids encircling her head. Algernon
Swinburne, ever since his foolish mother had christened him for the
poet, had, by turns, amused and wearied his fellow-citizens. While
Catherine had lived apart, she had been spared his lengthy visits, but
with the pleasures of social life had come its penalties and she was now
on Algernon's list and obliged to spend frequent hours in his really
trying society. He came up the long walk now with a curious springing
gait, and Catherine tried to summon a hospitable smile to her lips.

Algernon refused a chair. He always appeared to be just going, "and
yet," as Polly Osgood said with a groan, "he almost never goes!" He
perched uncomfortably upon the railing and opened fire at once.

"Have you seen the last _North American Review_?"

Catherine confessed that she had not.

"There was a corking article in it on municipal corruption, comparing
San Francisco, New York and Pittsburg as to graft, police efficiency and
so on. They say Pittsburg spends two million dollars a year--"

"My upper legs is going barefoot."

Catherine lifted her eyes with a flash of pleasure. Elsmere Swinburne
was the occasional relief from his big brother's monotony. Catherine
loved little folk, and though Elsmere was known to be a rascal who would
have tried the patience of Job, she somehow always found forgiveness for
his enormities, and a delighted appreciation for his funny sayings