Front matter
Reading edition
“‘Here is a little souvenir for you, Judge Arthur.’” Frontispiece. See page 266.
The Wide Awake Girls Series
THE
WIDE AWAKE GIRLS
IN WINSTED
BY
KATHARINE RUTH ELLIS
Author of “The Wide Awake Girls”
Illustrated from drawings by
SEARS GALLAGHER
Boston
Little, Brown, and Company
Copyright, 1909, By Little, Brown, and Company.
All rights reserved
Printers S. J. Parkhill & Co., Boston, U. S. A.
To
GLADYS GODDARD
who has been the friend of many boys and girls this book is affectionately inscribed.
PREFACE
The author wishes to acknowledge gratefully the kindness of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin and Company in allowing her to use the poem Vantage, by Josephine Preston Peabody in this book. She also thanks Miss Margaret Sherwood for consenting to a similar use of her poem, Indian Summer.
Books for girls are frankly suggestive, their value lying in their kindling power. Among the girls of all sorts who may read this story, there will be, here and there, one who loves right words. It is for the sake of such an occasional reader that the poems mentioned have been included. The schools sometimes lead their pupils to believe that English literature, like Latin, belongs to the past. But there are, here and now, “musicians of the word” who, partly because they are living, can touch our hearts as none of the dead-and-gone ones can. If through these pages some girl finds her way to the little green volume of Singing Leaves, or the sweet stories of Daphne and King Sylvaine and Queen Aimée, Catherine Smith and her friends will have done the world of girls a service worth the doing.
CONTENTS
CHAPTERPAGE
I.Catherine’s Inspiration3
II.Getting Started15
III.Organization28
IV.With Pail and Broom46
V.A Day Off58
VI.The Opening71
VII.A Party at Polly’s86
VIII.A Fortunate Meeting101
IX.Landing109
X.The Making of a Compact120
XI.Brookmeadow133
XII.Arrival at Winsted151
XIII.Caught in a Shower164
XIV.An Interlude176
XV.Sunday School186
XVI.Alice on the Way203
XVII.Finding a Vocation212
XVIII.Doctor’s Orders221
XIX.Journalism246
XX.The Three R’s254
XXI.The Last Party271
XXII.Auf Wiedersehen284
ILLUSTRATIONS
“Here is a little souvenir for you, Judge Arthur”Frontispiece
PAGE
“We must find a good place for it”17
“How much for your tickets?”77
“Sure I am not too heavy, Karl?”112
Frieda was telling a story and the others were listening attentively184
PART ONE
STARTING A LIBRARY