The House Of Truth
by
It was plain to be seen that Bess Keats was very much disturbed about something. She sat in the couch hammock on the porch, talking to herself and occasionally giving a sharp punch to the sofa pillow by her side.
“Mother is so old-fashioned,” she said to herself, “and she gets worse every year. Last year she wouldn’t let me wear the kind of dresses I wanted to and I looked different from the rest of the girls all the year. Then she wouldn’t let me go camping with the party because only one mother was going to take care of us. Surely one woman can take care of twenty boys and girls. Of course I was glad I hadn’t gone when they had the accident and partly burned the cottage, but she wouldn’t let me go just because she had old-fashioned notions. Girls these days don’t do as they did when she was young.
“I just can’t see a reason in the world why I shouldn’t invite Henry Mann to take me to the leap-year party at the beach. Every girl in the crowd is asking a fellow to take her. Of course if George were here, mother might let me go with him; but he isn’t and all the girls want Henry to go because he spends his money in such a dandy way; so I said I would invite him to take me, never thinking for a minute that mother would object. And now she says, not only that I can’t ask him, but that I can’t go. Well, I will, anyway. So there! I just will go.”
Then Bess pushed her head far down in the pillow to think out a way. If grandmother were only alive she would help her. She had always found a way to get what Bess wanted. But grandmother was dead and Bess must work it out alone, so she began to think.
Suddenly she heard a voice saying,
“Why, Bessie dear, whatever is the matter? You look very unhappy. Tell me all about it.”
And there was grandmother with the neat, black silk dress and the dainty white collar, and even the pretty white apron that she used to wear. Oh! Oh! how glad Bess was to see her!
Hand in hand, they went away from the house to where the trees in the orchard were bending with fruit, and, sitting there on a stone, Bess told her all about her trouble. Whatever would the girls think of her when she had promised to invite the boy they all wanted? And after she had told it every bit, she squeezed grandma’s hand very hard and said,
“And now, Granny dear, you will help me, won’t you? It is perfectly all right to ask him for all the girls do it. I want him to take me.”
“Well, well, dear,” said the grandmother, “if we find that it is all right, I shall be glad to find a way to help you. But we must see. We must see.”
“See what, grandmother?” asked the girl. “There is nothing to see.”
“Indeed there is, child,” said Granny. “In times of trouble one must always see the Truth. Then the way is easy. After I see the Truth, I shall be able to tell what to do. Come and we shall soon find out. You see you belong to my family and my family is proud of the fact that its girls have all been ladies. So we must go to the keeper of the book and see what a lady can do in this case.”
On and on they went till they came to a queer little old man standing before a big, big book. Granny went daintily up to him and said,
“Will you tell me if it is ever right for a young lady to ask a strange young man to take her to a dance, and pay out his money for her, when he has not even been to her home or met her mother? My grandchild says all the girls do it, so I suppose it must be a new thing that has been written in the book since I was a girl. I want her to be sure to be a lady, so before I help her to ask the boy to take her, I want you to look for the rule.”