Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller
Dainty's Cruel Rivals; Or, The Fatal Birthday
CHAPTER I.
"A SWEET GIRL GRADUATE."
"It's a perfect godsend, this invitation!" cried Olive Peyton, with unwonted rapture in her cold voice.
"Yes, indeed!" assented her chum and cousin, Ela Craye, joyfully. "I have wondered over and over how we were going to buy our summer clothes and spare enough money for a trip, and here comes Aunt Judith's invitation to her country home just in the nick of time."
"And how lucky, to think of her step-son, Lovelace Ellsworth, getting home at last from Europe! Either you or I must capture him, Ela!" added Olive, eagerly, her black eyes sparkling with the hope of getting a rich husband.
But Ela Craye snapped shortly:
"We might—if only she had not invited Dainty Chase."
Olive frowned, but answered, courageously:
"Pshaw! aunt might just as well have saved her manners. Dainty can not possibly go. She hasn't a decent thing to wear at such a grand place as Ellsworth."
"She would look pretty in a rag, and we both know it. Dainty by name, and dainty by nature," Ela returned, gloomily, yielding reluctant homage to a fair young cousin of whose charms both were profoundly jealous.
Olive and Ela, who were school-teachers in the southern city, Richmond, Virginia, boarded with a widowed aunt who took this means of supporting herself and her only child Dainty, who had but just graduated at a public school, and hoped to become a teacher herself next year. They were poor, but Dainty, with her fair face and gay good-nature, was like an embodied ray of sunshine.
It had been very kind in the rich Mrs. Ellsworth to invite her three nieces to her grand West Virginia home, and to offer to pay the expenses of their journey. But for her generosity Dainty could not have gone; but now, at her mother's wish, she wrote, gratefully accepting the invitation.
"How thankful I am!" cried the mother, joyfully. "It's just what Dainty needs, this trip to the mountains! She looks so pale and wan since she graduated."
"So you really mean to let her go?" Ela exclaimed, with pretended surprise, while Olive added, spitefully:
"We thought Aunt Judith might be ashamed of her shabby clothes. She hasn't anything to wear, has she, but her last summer's gowns and the cheap white muslin she had for her graduation?"
"Mrs. Ellsworth knows we are poor, and that Dainty must dress plainly. I dare say she is too kind-hearted to be ashamed of her dead half-brother's only child," Mrs. Chase returned, spiritedly; while the thought would intrude, that if only Olive and Ela would pay their neglected board bills she might afford Dainty a new summer gown and dress.
She summoned up courage to hint this fact to them next day, but they met the timid appeal with angry reproaches.
"Don't think we are going to cheat you of our board bill because we can not spare the money till school begins next fall!" cried Olive, sharply; while Ela chimed in scornfully:
"To think of our own aunt dunning two orphan girls for board!"
The poor lady's face fell, thinking of the rent and the grocer's bill, both due, and not enough money in her purse to meet them; but she sighed patiently, and answered:
"I didn't mean to hurt your feelings, dears, but you know how poor I am, and that I must take boarders for a living! I'm sure I would be glad to board you for nothing if I could afford it, though, after all, I'm not really any kin to you, you know, only your dead half-uncle's widow."
It was true, what the sweet, patient woman said; she was not related to them at all, but she had boarded them at the cheapest rates, and been most kind and motherly. They had intended to pay what they owed that very day, but jealousy of her daughter, their lovely cousin, crept in between and made them withhold the pittance, in the malicious hope of preventing Dainty's trip to Ellsworth.
Both girls were handsome and stylish in their way—Olive, a tall, dark, haughty brunette of twenty-four, while Ela Craye was twenty-two, pretty and delicate-looking, with a waxen skin, thick brown hair, and limpid, long-lashed gray eyes. Each girl cherished a hope of winning the rich and handsome heir of Ellsworth, and they feared the rivalry of a girl as fresh and lovely as the morning, and with the rounded slenderness of eighteen, piquant features, rose-leaf complexion, delicious dimples, a wealth of curling golden hair, and large, deep, violet-blue eyes full of soul and tenderness.
How could Love Ellsworth, as his step-mother called him, keep from losing his heart to such winsome beauty joined to the exquisite timidity of a very innocent and shy girl? Olive and Ela knew but too well that finery would not cut much figure in the case. Dainty had a real French art in dress, and could look as lovely in a print gown as they appeared in their finest silks. Give her a cheap white gown, and a few yards of lace and ribbon, and she could look like a Peri just strayed away from paradise.
Her cousins fairly cudgeled their brains for some scheme to keep Dainty from going with them, and a happy thought struck them at last.
They knew that Dainty had never traveled alone in her life, and that she was an arrant little coward among strangers. If they could only give her the slip, she would sooner give up the trip than to follow alone.
They were to go on Wednesday morning, and Mrs. Chase and her daughter were up betimes, packing the girl's trunk with her freshly laundered clothing, after which the mother said:
"All is ready, dear, and you'd better go and tell Olive and Ela that breakfast will be ready in five minutes, for there's no time to lose."
But when Dainty knocked at the door of the room the girls shared together, it flew wide open, and she saw that it was vacant, while a note pinned on the pillow conveyed this explanation:
"Dear Aunt,—Just for a lark, we concluded, ten minutes ago, to start to Ellsworth to-night instead of in the morning. It will be so much cooler traveling at night, you know. As our trunks were sent down to the station this afternoon, we will have no trouble going, and will not wake you to say good-bye for fear of giving you a midnight scare. It would be no use anyway, for we knew Dainty could not go with us, as her fresh ironed clothes would not be dry enough to pack till morning. So, good-bye, and tell her she can follow us to-morrow, if she is not afraid to travel alone. Hastily,
Dainty flew downstairs, the pearly tears streaming down her rose-leaf cheeks.
"They have done it on purpose, mamma! I knew all along they did not want me to go!" she sobbed, sinking into a chair by the window, quite unconscious that a tall young man stood outside, having just pulled the old-fashioned knocker at the cottage door.
In their excitement they did not hear him, and Dainty continued, in a high-pitched, indignant young voice:
"I didn't intend to tell you, mamma, but I overheard Olive and Ela saying to each other that they were sorry I was invited to Ellsworth, and planning not to pay their board so as to keep you from buying me anything new to wear."
Mrs. Chase's gentle, care-worn face expressed the keenest surprise and pain as she exclaimed:
"Oh, how cruel they were! And what good reason could they have for wishing to deprive you of the pleasure of such a trip?"
"Jealousy, mamma!" Dainty answered, with flashing eyes and burning cheeks. "They did not tell you all that was in their letter from Aunt Judith, but I overheard Olive saying that aunt's step-son, Lovelace Ellsworth, had returned at last from Europe, and that they must set their caps for him. They were afraid I might rival them. Ela said I would look pretty even in a rag, and she wished they could leave me at home. So you see"—bitterly—"they have succeeded in doing it."