Free Girl Sleuth by Melanie Rehak Page A

were surprised to find Aunt Jane down for breakfast. Later, she helped wash the dishes without even grumbling.
Weeks passed. Aunt Jane became so helpful and cheerful it was a pleasure to have her around.
When spring came, the Gardners wanted her to remain, but, declining, she announced her intention of traveling, providing Andrea would accompany her. Andrea—not from courtesy, but because she really liked Aunt Jane—accepted.
No one except Aunt Jane knew, and she never told, that it was Andrea who had first shown her the need for true courtesy.
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    The story clearly had its roots in Mildred’s experience of being a smart, impatient child to whom adults did not defer as often as she thought they should. Having exorcised her demons in print in a most satisfactory manner, she was more certain than ever that writing was what she wanted to do with her life.
    She began to send short stories incessantly to church magazines and newspapers. Her first big sale came when she was sixteen, to the Nazarene Publishing Company, which bought “Midget” for the grand sum of $3.50. Midget, the title character, was a girl who would reappear regularly in Mildred’s writing throughout the next two decades. Like her creator, she was an excellent swimmer, a girl who agonized when her “fancy diving” wasn’t up to par, and who, in a later story, would rescue a panicked, drowning swimmer, holding her in a “safe and scientific way” until the swimmer gave in to Midget’s experience. She also played basketball, like Mildred. In one episode, she is being relied upon to bring the home team to victory and told that luck is with her as she goes out for the final moments of the game. “Luck was it? Well she guessed it wasn’t luck. She would show them what it was.” By the end of the tale, having won the game, of course, she is speaking with hard-headed, Mildred-like practicality: “After this, I will never be foolish enough to think that people get things in this world unless they get out and work for what they want. There isn’t any such thing as luck.”
    Midget’s assessment of the world closely mirrored a clipping that Mildred had cut from a publication called the
American Magazine
and pasted in her high school memory book. It was titled “Code of a ‘Good Sport’” and listed the ten requirements for that honor:
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Thou shalt not quit.
Thou shalt not alibi.
Thou shalt not gloat over winning.
Thou shalt not be a rotten loser.
Thou shalt not take unfair advantage.
Thou shalt not ask odds thou art not willing to give.
Thou shalt not always be ready to give thine opponents the shade.
Thou shalt not overestimate an opponent, nor overestimate thyself.
Remember that the game is the thing and that he who thinketh otherwise is a mucker and not a true sportsman.
Honor the game thou playest, for who playeth the game straight and hard wins even when he loseth.
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    Mildred must have cut this out on her birthday, for pasted onto the same page of the book are two horoscope readings for the day that she thought rang true enough to save. The first one ran, “You have a rather stern and rigid disposition, quite vain and self-satisfied. You believe in your way of thinking and doing things, too intolerant of the beliefs of others for your own good . . . A child born on this day should prove steady and persevering with every chance of rising in life.” The other astrological reading added, “A child born on this day is likely to be given to disputes and wrangling, and may be proud and imperious unless carefully trained in early youth.”
    This, then, was Mildred when she graduated from Ladora High School in 1922, one member of a class of four. She played baseball, volleyball, and basketball, and she had been a “decided hit” as the character of the landlady in the senior class play. She also played the xylophone extremely well, usually as a