Blue Wednesday

The first Wednesday in every month was a Perfectly Awful Day--a day
to be awaited with dread, endured with courage and forgotten with haste.
Every floor must be spotless, every chair dustless, and every bed
without a wrinkle. Ninety-seven squirming little orphans must be
scrubbed and combed and buttoned into freshly starched ginghams;
and all ninety-seven reminded of their manners, and told to say,
`Yes, sir,' `No, sir,' whenever a Trustee spoke.

It was a distressing time; and poor Jerusha Abbott, being the
oldest orphan, had to bear the brunt of it. But this particular
first Wednesday, like its predecessors, finally dragged itself
to a close. Jerusha escaped from the pantry where she had been
making sandwiches for the asylum's guests, and turned upstairs
to accomplish her regular work. Her special care was room F,
where eleven little tots, from four to seven, occupied eleven little
cots set in a row. Jerusha assembled her charges, straightened their
rumpled frocks, wiped their noses, and started them in an orderly
and willing line towards the dining-room to engage themselves
for a blessed half hour with bread and milk and prune pudding.

Then she dropped down on the window seat and leaned throbbing temples
against the cool glass. She had been on her feet since five that morning,
doing everybody's bidding, scolded and hurried by a nervous matron.
Mrs. Lippett, behind the scenes, did not always maintain that calm
and pompous dignity with which she faced an audience of Trustees
and lady visitors. Jerusha gazed out across a broad stretch of
frozen lawn, beyond the tall iron paling that marked the confines
of the asylum, down undulating ridges sprinkled with country estates,
to the spires of the village rising from the midst of bare trees.

The day was ended--quite successfully, so far as she knew.
The Trustees and the visiting committee had made their rounds,
and read their reports, and drunk their tea, and now were hurrying
home to their own cheerful firesides, to forget their bothersome
little charges for another month. Jerusha leaned forward
watching with curiosity--and a touch of wistfulness--the stream
of carriages and automobiles that rolled out of the asylum gates.
In imagination she followed first one equipage, then another,
to the big houses dotted along the hillside. She pictured herself
in a fur coat and a velvet hat trimmed with feathers leaning back
in the seat and nonchalantly murmuring `Home' to the driver.
But on the door-sill of her home the picture grew blurred.

Jerusha had an imagination--an imagination, Mrs. Lippett told her,
that would get her into trouble if she didn't take care--but keen
as it was, it could not carry her beyond the front porch of the
houses she would enter. Poor, eager, adventurous little Jerusha,
in all her seventeen years, had never stepped inside an ordinary house;
she could not picture the daily routine of those other human beings
who carried on their lives undiscommoded by orphans.

Je-ru-sha Ab-bott
You are wan-ted
In the of-fice,
And I think you'd
Better hurry up!


Tommy Dillon, who had joined the choir, came singing up the stairs
and down the corridor, his chant growing louder as he approached
room F. Jerusha wrenched herself from the window and refaced
the troubles of life.

`Who wants me?' she cut into Tommy's chant with a note of sharp anxiety.

Mrs. Lippett in the office,
And I think she's mad.
Ah-a-men!


Tommy piously intoned, but his accent was not entirely malicious.
Even the most hardened little orphan felt sympathy for an erring
sister who was summoned to the office to face an annoyed matron;
and Tommy liked Jerusha even if she did sometimes jerk him by the arm
and nearly scrub his nose off.

Jerusha went without comment, but with two parallel lines on her brow.
What could have gone wrong, she wondered. Were the sandwiches
not thin enough? Were there shells in the nut cakes? Had a lady
visitor seen the hole in Susie Hawthorn's stocking? Had--O horrors!--
one of the cherubic little babes in her own room F `sauced' a Trustee?

The long lower hall had not been lighted, and as she came downstairs,
a last Trustee stood, on the point of departure, in the open door that
led to the porte-cochere. Jerusha caught only a fleeting impression
of the man--and the impression consisted entirely of tallness.
He was waving his arm towards an automobile waiting in the curved drive.
As it sprang into motion and approached, head on for an instant,
the glaring headlights threw his shadow sharply against the wall inside.
The shadow pictured grotesquely elongated legs and arms that ran
along the floor and up the wall of the corridor. It looked,
for all the world, like a huge, wavering daddy-long-legs.

Jerusha's anxious frown gave place to quick laughter. She was by nature
a sunny soul, and had always snatched the tiniest excuse to be amused.
If one could derive any sort of entertainment out of the oppressive
fact of a Trustee, it was something unexpected to the good.
She advanced to the office quite cheered by the tiny episode,
and presented a smiling face to Mrs. Lippett. To her surprise the
matron was also, if not exactly smiling, at least appreciably affable;
she wore an expression almost as pleasant as the one she donned
for visitors.

`Sit down, Jerusha, I have something to say to you.' Jerusha dropped
into the nearest chair and waited with a touch of breathlessness.
An automobile flashed past the window; Mrs. Lippett glanced after it.

`Did you notice the gentleman who has just gone?'

`I saw his back.'

`He is one of our most affluential Trustees, and has given large sums
of money towards the asylum's support. I am not at liberty to mention
his name; he expressly stipulated that he was to remain unknown.'

Jerusha's eyes widened slightly; she was not accustomed to being
summoned to the office to discuss the eccentricities of Trustees
with the matron.

`This gentleman has taken an interest in several of our boys.
You remember Charles Benton and Henry Freize? They were both sent
through college by Mr.--er--this Trustee, and both have repaid with
hard work and success the money that was so generously expended.
Other payment the gentleman does not wish. Heretofore his
philanthropies have been directed solely towards the boys;
I have never been able to interest him in the slightest degree
in any of the girls in the institution, no matter how deserving.
He does not, I may tell you, care for girls.'

`No, ma'am,' Jerusha murmured, since some reply seemed to be expected
at this point.

`To-day at the regular meeting, the question of your future was
brought up.'

Mrs. Lippett allowed a moment of silence to fall, then resumed
in a slow, placid manner extremely trying to her hearer's suddenly
tightened nerves.

`Usually, as you know, the children are not kept after they are sixteen,
but an exception was made in your case. You had finished our school
at fourteen, and having done so well in your studies--not always,
I must say, in your conduct--it was determined to let you go on in
the village high school. Now you are finishing that, and of course
the asylum cannot be responsible any longer for your support.
As it is, you have had two years more than most.'

Mrs. Lippett overlooked the fact that Jerusha had worked hard
for her board during those two years, that the convenience
of the asylum had come first and her education second;
that on days like the present she was kept at home to scrub.

`As I say, the question of your future was brought up and your
record was discussed--thoroughly discussed.'

Mrs. Lippett brought accusing eyes to bear upon the prisoner in the dock,
and the prisoner looked guilty because it seemed to be expected--
not because she could remember any strikingly black pages in her record.

`Of course the usual disposition of one in your place would be to
put you in a position where you could begin to work, but you have
done well in school in certain branches; it seems that your work
in English has even been brilliant. Miss Pritchard, who is on our
visiting committee, is also on the school board; she has been talking
with your rhetoric teacher, and made a speech in your favour.
She also read aloud an essay that you had written entitled,
"Blue Wednesday".'

Jerusha's guilty expression this time was not assumed.

`It seemed to me that you showed little gratitude in holding up
to ridicule the institution that has done so much for you. Had you
not managed to be funny I doubt if you would have been forgiven.
But fortunately for you, Mr.--, that is, the gentleman who has
just gone--appears to have an immoderate sense of humour.
On the strength of that impertinent paper, he has offered to send
you to college.'

`To college?' Jerusha's eyes grew big. Mrs. Lippett nodded.

`He waited to discuss the terms with me. They are unusual.
The gentleman, I may say, is erratic. He believes that you
have originality, and he is planning to educate you to become
a writer.'

`A writer?' Jerusha's mind was numbed. She could only repeat Mrs.
Lippett's words.

`That is his wish. Whether anything will come of it, the future
will show. He is giving you a very liberal allowance, almost, for a girl
who has never had any experience in taking care of money, too liberal.
But he planned the matter in detail, and I did not feel free to
make any suggestions. You are to remain here through the summer,
and Miss Pritchard has kindly offered to superintend your outfit.
Your board and tuition will be paid directly to the college,
and you will receive in addition during the four years you are there,
an allowance of thirty-five dollars a month. This will enable you
to enter on the same standing as the other students. The money will
be sent to you by the gentleman's private secretary once a month,
and in return, you will write a letter of acknowledgment once a month.
That is--you are not to thank him for the money; he doesn't care
to have that mentioned, but you are to write a letter telling of
the progress in your studies and the details of your daily life.
Just such a letter as you would write to your parents if they
were living.

`These letters will be addressed to Mr. John Smith and will be sent
in care of the secretary. The gentleman's name is not John Smith,
but he prefers to remain unknown. To you he will never be anything
but John Smith. His reason in requiring the letters is that he
thinks nothing so fosters facility in literary expression as
letter-writing. Since you have no family with whom to correspond,
he desires you to write in this way; also, he wishes to keep
track of your progress. He will never answer your letters,
nor in the slightest particular take any notice of them.
He detests letter-writing and does not wish you to become a burden.
If any point should ever arise where an answer would seem
to be imperative--such as in the event of your being expelled,
which I trust will not occur--you may correspond with Mr. Griggs,
his secretary. These monthly letters are absolutely obligatory
on your part; they are the only payment that Mr. Smith requires,
so you must be as punctilious in sending them as though it
were a bill that you were paying. I hope that they will always
be respectful in tone and will reflect credit on your training.
You must remember that you are writing to a Trustee of the John
Grier Home.'

Jerusha's eyes longingly sought the door. Her head was in a whirl
of excitement, and she wished only to escape from Mrs. Lippett's
platitudes and think. She rose and took a tentative step backwards.
Mrs. Lippett detained her with a gesture; it was an oratorical
opportunity not to be slighted.

`I trust that you are properly grateful for this very rare good fortune
that has befallen you? Not many girls in your position ever have
such an opportunity to rise in the world. You must always remember--'

`I--yes, ma'am, thank you. I think, if that's all, I must go
and sew a patch on Freddie Perkins's trousers.'

The door closed behind her, and Mrs. Lippett watched it with dropped jaw,
her peroration in mid-air.