Columbus School for Girls - Topknot Yearbook (Columbus, OH)

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TOP-KNOT, 1930 in itself, but nevertheless one of Harry Blake's secret prides. Even the Clan admitted that Harry Uknewn clothes. Witness the advent of six pairs of gray jodphurs and six red polo shirts, which shocked the English sense of propriety of Harry's father, Henry Blake, the well-known sportsmann, but which delighted the eyes of youth. How was the public to know that one outfit was ten days less new than the other five? The Clan's newest passion was to dress alike for sporting events. Perhaps they, being human and female, knew the not undesired attention it brought them. Thus, outwardly, Harriet Blake was one of the Clan : she rode, golfed, swam, played tennis, and attended all social affairs with them. Yet how often of late had Harry, spurring her horse to a mad pace, or slicing a drive far into the woods, muttered between gritted teeth, Pm sick of being a hanger-onlv. For there was a wall between this girl and the others which neither she nor they could understand or surmount. Harry had known Marge and Kay, Jane, Marty, and Sis since they all were eight. She had literally grown up with them, they had attended Miss Baine's School, where honors were evenly divided. Harry was generous, likable, and not too beautiful. Money was not an element of importance among them. Thus, though Harriet tried to enter into the fun, her feeling about the situation made her appear stand-offish to the others. The wall stood high and firm, and Harry, looking over, saw bitterness. She thought she saw it in the way they laughed! VVhat's funny? VVhat on earth,s the joke? she thoguht as she emerged dripping and breathless from the Water. What is it? VVhat's going on? she asked, going from one to another of the laughing girls, seeking to make herself heard above the uproar. VVhat's funny? VVhat on earth's the joke? she thought as she turned at last to Marge Saunders, a tall and extremely beautiful girl, ringleader of the Clan , and hostess for the afternoon. What's it all about? desperately. Oh , came the laughing response. Petunia cut off his b- b- beard! D and the sound died in a gurgle. Marge turned suddenly on the questioner. You wouldn't understand! she blurted. And as suddenly, to one of the others, Did you ever hear of anything so funny in your life? Then, because she did not know how to depart gracefully, Harriet stood a little apart from the grinning, congenial five, she appeared to be U31

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COLUMBUS SCHOOL for GIRLS SHORT STORY CONTEST E ANNOUNCE with pleasure that the short story by Catherine VVeakley, of the class of 1930, entitled Fate, or What You Will, which was published in the last number of the Scroll, is the winner of the Short Story Contest sponsored by the Alumnae Association. The following story by Ellen Chubb, of the class of 1931, received honorable mention. AILAN T HUS SHRIEK louder and more piercing than those heretofore cast upon the humid July atmosphere focused all eyes upon the small group ensconced in the shadiest corner of the Saunder's pool. To the casual observer, accustomed to the ways of the terrible younger generation, the five young girls lounging in deck chairs appeared unusual in no way, they seemed at the moment to be enjoying a game in which the possessor of the most capable pair of lungs was victor. And the competitive spirit waxed great! Clad as they were in scant blue and white suits, which dis- tinguished them as a group from the other bathers and guests, one would have estimated that fifteen was their average age. Had they worn the long evening frocks which were the latest mode that summer, straight from Paris, the ignorant man would have placed his bet on twenty-one. Neither guess would have proved correct, for each boasted the tender, yet not too innocent, age of seventeen. And all five were rocking, rolling, shrieking, and even weeping with convulsions of laughter. The merest casual observer would have brightened with interest had he watched the speedy progress of a pair of flashing brown arms and a bobbing dark head across the pool towards the source of merriment. VVhoever she might be, this girl's perfect form and her amazing speed fairly took one's breath! More than one pair of eyes watched this sprint, and admired the easy grace with which Harriet Blake - for it was she - pulled herself up on the side of the pool. She, too, wore a blue and white suit, which marked her as a possible siXth member of the Clan , by which name the merrymakers were known to the Summer colony. The knowledge that the blue and white suit was in her possession exactly a week before five others like it had appeared was a matter trivial H21

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COLUMBUS SCHOOL for GIRLS smiling in the fashion of one who knows the joke and is a little bored by it. But in truth her smile was but a glassy beaming. Not only this exclusion, but the pose assumed thereafter had come to be a customary thing - the action and dialogue were rarely changed. When the strain of appearing included had become almost unbearable, the laughter broke out afresh. The pain of regret that she had rushed hopefully to join the merriment, forgetting her resolutions, became a dull, aching throb, one that was broken only by the unceremonious entree of Ailanthus. Ailanthus, baptized thus after the advent of that young hero of Saturday Evening Post fame, who never forgot a grievance or a love, was indeed a disconcerting sight. The nature of the beast was scarcely to be discerned through the overcoating of mud, flour and rose petals, stuck fast to a gummy mass of shellac with which the creature was plastered from stem to stern. Ailanthus was Harry Blake's best goat and chief consolation, an individual of considerable weight and temperament. The gleam of his eye and a strange absence of beard lent him an appearance bordering upon desperation, which sent bathers and guests alike hurriedly into the water amid a chorus of splashes. Petunia, darky cook of ample proportions whose presence in the Blake kitchen had become almost a tradition, so long had she served them, closely followed in search of the wanderer. From the kitchen of the house next door Ailanthus had charged, with Petunia Waddling in rapid pursuit. In one hand she held a pair of scissors and the remains of a bouquet of roses, in the other, what might have been a goat's beard. Her eyes bulged with fright, and her breath came in short gasps. Ailanthus, it appeared, blind with fury and shellac, had 'tackedl' her. Beating him off with the bunch of flowers which she was arranging for the dinner table, she had somehow gotten a firm grasp on his beard. So firm was the grasp, and so adhesive the shellac that Petunia, terrified on finding her hand apparently glued to the sticky strands of the beard of so disconcerting a creature, had followed an impulse to free herself at any cost. A can of flour and a pot of ferns followed the goat's flight through the kitchen door. Hence the lack of beard, the rose petals, the flour, and the mud, but now we come to the foundation of Ailanthus' woes. H 'Twarn't mah fault, Miss Harry , moaned Petunia, rolling her eyes heavenward. Dat goat done knock' mah shellac offen de she'ff on toppen hisse'f! Her frame was shaken by a ponderous sigh. f14l