"Now, Dum, cut it out. You don't even know that your roommate gets chapped," said a whimsical voice.
"The Tuckers!" I exclaimed, but naturally had a delicacy in entering, after what I had heard Dum say about a roommate from the country. "Could she know that I am the one?" I asked myself.
"Well, how are Dee and I to fight it out the way you have brought us up to do if we have got some old mutt in here with us? We might just as well have left our boxing gloves at home."
"Oh, Dum, you are making it hard for me," said poor Mr. Tucker.
"That's good, I want to make it hard," sobbed the wretched Dum.
"I have told you over and over that I think it best for you and Dee to have to control yourselves more, and the only way to do it is to realize how your tantrums affect other people. You are the best old Tweedles in the world, but you have no self-control. I am surely sorry for your roommate, whoever she may be."
"Well," broke in Dee, "I think it all depends on who she is. I must say it is some lottery. Roommates ought to be carefully chosen; one should not just trust to this grab-bag method."
"Well, how do you know Miss Peyton has not chosen someone she feels will be suitable? I wish it would turn out to be somebody like the little girl on the train. Don't you, Tweedles?"
"Yes, yes!" tweedled Tweedles. "But no such luck."
This reassured me and I knocked on the open door. There was perfect silence, broken only by the sound of Dum's blowing her nose and Mr. Tucker's clearing his throat; and then a faint little "Come in," from both girls.
"Oh, it's you! How good of you to come look us up!" exclaimed Mr. Tucker. "We were afraid it was the hated roommate. Tweedles are treating me so terribly because I insist on their having a roommate so they can broaden out a bit and learn to control themselves some, which they will never do so long as they stay together all the time. I'll leave it to you, Miss Page, don't you think it will be best?"
"Well, I have a delicacy in saying," laughed I. "You see, I am that poor unfortunate, despised roommate. This is 117 Carter Hall, isn't it?"
Then all the weeping was turned to laughter and the irrepressible Tuckers, father and all, grabbed hands and danced around me singing, "Gayly cheer the bride." They made such a racket that a sad, crooked face was poked into the door, evidently feeling a duty to admonish, but Zebedee in his most Zebedeeish humor, sang out in a friendly voice:
"Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance? Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, won't you join the dance?"
Then the strangest thing happened to that long, sad, crooked face. The plain features were illuminated by a smile, the person who owned the face came impulsively into the room, and after she had carefully shut the door, she caught hold of hands with the crazy trio and the dance went on; and all of us sang:
"'Will you walk a little faster!' said a whiting to a snail,
'There's a porpoise close behind us and he's treading on my tail.
See how eagerly the lobsters and the turtles all advance!
They are waiting on the shingle – will you come and join the dance?'"
Then the chorus: "Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance?"
I refused to play "frog in the middle" any longer and broke into the dance, soon dropping into the unfamiliar tune but very familiar words of the Lobster Quadrille. We sang all four of the verses from that immortal nonsense.
"'What matters it how far we go?' his scaly friend replied,
'There is another shore, you know, upon the other side.
The farther off from England, the nearer is to France.
Then turn not pale, beloved snail, but come and join the dance.'"
The owner of the long, sad, crooked face was also owner of a singularly clear, true, well-trained voice, and Mr. Tucker's fresh baritone fitted in finely, while Dum and Dee and I did the best we could with what Nature had seen fit to endow us in the way of voices. Finally we girls sank exhausted on the bare, uncovered beds, but Mr. Tucker and the mysterious visitor stood clasping hands.
"Jeff Tucker, what in Heaven's name are you doing at a young ladies' boarding school?"
"Entering my girls: Tweedles. And you, Jinny Cox, what are you doing here?" And Mr. Tucker kept on shaking her hand.
"I teach singing here. Have been here for years. And to think of your girls being old enough to go to boarding school! It seems only yesterday that you and dear little Virginia were leading the germans at the University. I haven't seen you since you married. I meant to write you when Virginia died, but somehow I just couldn't."
"That was all right, Jinny. I knew how you felt without hearing from you. She only lived a year, you know. Tweedles were just a few weeks old when she died." And the dear man who a moment before had been so cheerily singing the Lobster Quadrille, now wiped his eyes and seemed given over to melancholy.
"I want you to know our girls. This is Virginia," indicating Dum, "and this, Caroline," meaning Dee. I was rather amused at the fact that earlier in the day he could not remember their official names, as he called them. "I named this one Virginia, thinking she was going to have her mother's eyes, but the little monkey changed them on me and in a twinkling turned herself into a hazel-eyed monster," and poor Zebedee forgot to cry any more and began to laugh. "This is the much dreaded roommate, Miss Page Allison, of Milton, Virginia. The wild orgy which you so tactfully joined was in honor of the discovery that this young lady was the roommate."
"Well, girls, I am glad to see all of you and hope we can be great friends. My name is Jane Cox. I can't remember any one having the hardihood to call me Jinny for some sixteen or seventeen years. I haven't danced for at least ten years. I don't know what the management or the girls would think or say if they knew I had cut up this way. I don't know what made me do it. I came to the door to stop the racket and when I saw Jeff Tucker whirling around with three girls singing, 'Will you, won't you, won't you, will you, will you join the dance?' my discretion flew to the four winds. I just did have sense enough left to shut the door. I forgot I was an old maid, teaching singing in a boarding school."
"It was simply splendid of you to come in and help us out," exclaimed Dee. Dee was usually the one who knew what to say and when to say it. Some persons call it tact, but I have always thought it was just a kind heart that made her know what people wanted her to say. Cousin Sue Lee was the same kind of natural-born social wonder. "I think your voice is beautiful, and how on earth did you happen to know our tune?"
"Why, child, your father and I made up that tune on a picnic once years before you were born. Do you remember, Jeff, when we went to Monticello, and how it rained? We composed the tune and improvised a Lobster Quadrille to cheer up the bedraggled crowd. How Virginia did laugh! I haven't thought of that tune for ages. Perhaps it is because I have not been with the kind of people who would enjoy 'Alice in Wonderland.'"
"Zebedee has put us to sleep with it ever since we were born," said Dum. "I mean the tune."
"And I have been reading Alice in Wonderland ever since I was born," I ventured.
"Well, I'm certainly glad to meet some kindred spirits at Gresham," said Miss Cox, "and now, girls, I'm going to ask a great favor of the three of you. I want you to keep to yourselves that I broke loose as I did. I have hard enough work as it is keeping order during study hour when that task falls to me, and if the girls ever found out that I was capable of such high-jinks, I'd lose all control of them." We promised, but I, for one, thought that the more human you find your pastors and masters to be, the more apt you are to want to make things easy for them. Miss Jane Cox was much older than I, but she had yet to learn that wisdom.
"We'll