“I know that you would,” was the confident reply. Jenny then urged Dobbin to his topmost speed, and since he had rested quite a while, he did spurt ahead and around a bend to the very crest of the low foothill where stood the beautiful buildings of the seminary in a grove of tall pine trees. The majestic view of the encircling mountain range usually caused Jenny to pause and catch her breath, amazed anew each time at the grandeur of the scene, but her thoughts were so busy planning what she could do to help this poor girl that she was unconscious of aught else.
They turned into the drive, which, after circling among well-kept gardens and lawns, led back of the main building to the kitchen door.
“I’m awful late and I’ll get a good tongue lashin’ from the cook but what do I care. This’ll be the last night she’ll ever see me.” Jenny glancing at her companion, saw again the hard expression in the face that had been so radiant with joy a few moments before.
“She doesn’t believe that I’m going to loan her my money,” Jenny thought. “And maybe she’s right. Maybe Granny and Granddad will think I ought not.” But what she said aloud was: “Etta, let me go in ahead and I’ll fix things up if you’re late and going to be scolded.” And so, when they climbed from the wagon, it was the girl from Rocky Point Farm who first entered the kitchen. “Good afternoon, Miss O’Hara,” she called cheerily to the middle-aged Irish woman who was taking a roast from the huge oven of the built-in range.
“Huh,” was the ungracious reply, “soyouhad that lazy good-for-nothing out ridin’, did you?” The roast having been replaced, the cook turned and glared at Etta, her arms akimbo. “Here ’tis, five o’clock to the minute and not a potato pared. How do you suppose I’m going to serve a dinner for the young ladies at six-thirty and all that pan of peas to shell besides.”
Etta was about to reply sullenly when Jenny, who had placed her basket of eggs on one end of a long white table, turned to say: “Miss O’Hara, I want to ask you a favor. If I stay and help Etta get the vegetables ready, will you let her come over to my house to supper? Won’t you please, Miss O’Hara?”
Jenny smiled wheedlingly at the middle-aged Irish woman who had always had a soft spot in her heart for “the honey girl,” and so she said reluctantly, “Wall, if it’s what you’re wishin’, though the Saints alone know whatyousee in Etta Heldt to be wantin’ of her company.”
Ignoring the uncomplimentary part of the speech, Jenny cried joyfully: “Oh, thank you, thank you, Miss O’Hara! Now give me a big allover apron, please, for I mustn’t soil my fresh yellow muslin.”
Miss O’Hara’s anger had died away, confident that the peas would be shelled and the potatoes pared on time. She went about her work humming one of the Irish tunes that always fascinated Jenny.
Etta, without having spoken a word, took her customary place and began to pare potatoes, jabbing out the spots as though she were venting upon them the wrath which she felt toward the world in general, but even in her heart there was dawning a faint hope that somehow, some way, she had come to a gate on the other side of which, if only she could pass through, a new life awaited her.
She looked up and out of the window by which they were seated, when Jenny, pausing a moment in the pea-shelling, exclaimed: “Oh, Etta, do see those pretty girls. Aren’t they the loveliest? Just like a flock of butterflies dancing out there on the lawn. There are eight, ten, twelve! Oh, my, more than I can count! How many girls are there now at the seminary, Miss O’Hara?”
“With the three that came in today, there’s thirty-one,” the cook answered as she broke a dozen eggs into a pudding which she was stirring.
“Did three new pupils come today? Isn’t it late in the year to start in school? Only two months more and the long vacation will begin,” Jenny turned to inquire.
“It is late,” Miss O’Hara replied, then suddenly she stopped stirring the batter and stared at Jenny with a puzzled expression in her Irish blue eyes. “When I saw one of ’em, a haughty, silly minx, I thought to myself as I’d seen her before somewhere’s though I knew I hadn’t. Now I know why I thought that. There’s something about you, Jenny Warner, as looks like her. Folks do look sort of like other folks once in a while, and be no way related.”
Jenny agreed brightly. “Yes, Miss O’Hara, that’s absolutely true. My teacher has often said that the reason she has kept on tutoring me is because I look like a sister she once had. That makes two folks I resemble, and I suppose likely there are lots more. What is the new pupil’s name. Miss O’Hara?”
Then it was that the cook recalled something. “Begorrah, and maybe you know her being as her ma owns the farm you’re living on.”
Jenny looked up with eager interest. “Oh, no, I didn’t even know Mrs. Poindexter-Jones had a daughter. But I do know the son Harold. That is, I met him for a few moments once two years ago, and now I do recall that he mentioned having a sister.” Then, returning to the shelling of the peas, she concluded with: “You know they have not lived in Santa Barbara lately. I never saw the mother, that is, only once.”
“Well, you’re not likely to do more than see the daughter. She wouldn’t speak civil to a farmer’s granddaughter.” Jenny’s bright smile seemed to reply that it troubled her not at all.
For another ten minutes the girls worked silently, swiftly; then Jenny sprang up, removed her apron and, as she donned her hat, she exclaimed: “Miss O’Hara, you just don’t know how grateful I am to you for having said that Etta might go home to supper with me.”
Although the cook regretted having given the permission, she merely mumbled a rather ungracious reply.
Etta went up to her room to put on her “’tother dress,” as she told Jenny, but on reaching there she bundled all her belongings into an ancient carpet bag, stole out of a side door and was waiting in the buggy when Jenny reached it.
“Well, I sure certain don’t see how ’twas the ol’ dragon let me go along with you,” Etta Heldt declared, seeming to breathe for the first time when, high on the buckboard seat at Jenny’s side, old Dobbin was actually turning out of the seminary gates that had for many months been as the iron-barred doors of a prison to the poor motherless, fatherless and homeless girl. And yet not really homeless, for, far across the sea on a small farm in Belgium there was a home awaiting her, and a dear old couple (Jenny was sure that they were as dear and loving and lovable as were her own grandparents) yearning for the return of their only grandchild.
Jenny, who always pictured in detail anything and everything of which she had but the meagerest real knowledge, was seeing the old couple going about, day by day, planning and striving to save enough to send for their girl, but failing because of the privation that had been left blightingly in the trail of the cruel world war. Then her fancy leaped ahead to the day when Etta would arrive at that far-away farm.
Jenny’s musings were interrupted by a querulous voice at her side.
“Don’t you hear nothing I am saying? What do you see out there between your horse’s ears that you’re starin’ at so steady?”
Jenny turned a pretty face bright with laughter. “I didn’t see the ears,” she confessed, “and do forgive me for not listening to what you were saying. Oh, yes, I recall now. You wondered what the old dragon would say when she found you were really gone.”
Then, more seriously: “Truly, Etta, Miss O’Hara isn’t dragony; not the least mite. I have sold eggs and honey to her for two years, long before you came to be her helper, and she always seemed as glad to see me as the dry old earth is to see the first rains.”
Then, hesitating and slowly thinking ahead that her words might not hurt her companion, she continued: “Maybe you didn’t always try to please Miss O’Hara. Weren’t you sometimes so unhappy that you let it show in your manner? Don’t you think perhaps that may have been it, Etta?”
“Oh, I s’posen like’s not. How could I help showin’ it when I was so miserable?”
Then, before Jenny could reply, Etta continued cynically:
“Well, I’m not goin’ to let myself to be any too cheerful even now. ’Tisn’t likely your grandfolks’ll let you loan me a hundred dollars. How’ll they know but maybe I’d never return it. How do you know?”
Jenny turned and looked full into the china blue eyes of her companion. The gaze was unflinchingly returned. Impulsively Jenny reached out a slender white hand and placed it on the rough red one near her.
“Etta Heldt,” she said solemnly, “I know you will return my money if it lies within your power to do it. I also know that when it came to it, you would not have stolen money from the Granger place safe. There’s something in your eyes makes me know it, though I can’t put it into words.”
As the other girl did not reply, Jenny continued: “I’mnotsure certain that Icanloan you my money, of course. I have been saving and saving it for two years so that I could add it to the money grandpa had if we needed it to buy Rocky Point Farm, but the farm hasn’t been put on the market, granddad says, and so I guess we can spare it for awhile.”
Suddenly and most unexpectedly the girl at her side burst into tears. “Oh, oh, how sweet and good you are to me. Nobody, nowhere has ever been so kind, not since I came to this country looking for mother. When they told me she was dead and had been buried two days before I got here, and all her belongings sold to pay for the funeral, nobody was kind. They just tagged me with a number and sent me with a crowd of other children out to an orphan asylum. And there it was just the same: no one knew me from any of the rest of the crowd.”
There were also tears in her listener’s eyes.
“Poor, poor Etta, and here I’ve been brought up on love. It doesn’t seem fair, someway.” Then slipping an arm comfortingly about her companion, Jenny said brightly: “Let’s keep hoping that you can borrow my money. Look, Etta, we’re coming to the highway now, and that long, long lane beyond the barred gate leads right up to my home. Don’t cry any more, dearie. I justknowthat my grandfolks will help you, somehow. You’ll see that they will.”
Thus encouraged, the forlorn Etta took heart and, after wiping away the tears which had brought infinite relief to her long pent-up emotions, she turned a wavering smile toward Jenny.
“I’ll never forget what all you’re trying to do for me. Never. Never,” she ended vehemently. “And I’m hoping I’ll have the chance some day to make up for it.”
“All the reward that I want is to have you get home to your grandfolks and be as happy with them as I am with mine,” Jenny called brightly as she leaped out of the wagon to open up the barred gate.
Grandma Sue had been often to the side porch nearest the lane and had gazed toward the highway wondering why her girl did not return. The supper had been ready for some time and the specially ordered chocolate pudding was done to perfection. At last the old woman hurried back into the kitchen to exclaim: “Wall, I declare to it, if Jenny ain’t fetchin’ someone home to supper. I reckon its Mis’ Dearborn, her teacher, as she sets sech a store by.”
But, as Dobbin approached at his best speed (for, was he not nearing his own supper?) the old woman, peering from behind the white muslin curtains at a kitchen window, uttered an ejaculation of surprise. “Silas Warner,” she turned wide-eyed toward the old man, who, in carpet slippers, had made himself comfortable in his tipped back arm chair to read theRural News.
“Yeap, Susan?” his tone was one of indifferent inquiry. He presumed that his spouse was merely going to affirm what she had already suspected. Well, even if that were true, all he would have to put on was the house coat Jenny had made for him. It never would do to go to the table in shirt sleeves if teacher—he rose to carry out this indolently formed decision when he saw his wife tip-toeing across the room toward him, her finger on her lips. “Shh! Don’t say nothin’, Si!” she whispered. “Jenny’s left the horse hitched and she’s comin’ right in and trailin’ arter her is a gal totin’ a hand satchel. Who do you cal’late it can be?”
The old man hastily slipped on the plaid house coat and stood waiting, trying not to look too curious when their girl burst in with, “Oh, Granny, Granddad, this is my friend Etta Heldt. You know I told you about the girl who pares vegetables up at the seminary and who always looked so—so unhappy.” Jenny did not want to say discontented as she had that other time. “Well, I’ve found out what makes her unhappy and I’ve fetched her over to supper. Etta, this is my Grandmother Sue and my Granddaddy Si.”
The strange girl sent a half appealing, half frightened glance at each of the old people and then burst into tears.
Jenny slipped a protecting arm about her new friend, as she said by way of explanation: “Etta’s all upset about something. I’ll take her into my room to rest a bit, and then I’ll come back and tell you about it.”
Left alone, the elderly couple looked at each other in amazement.
“I reckon that poor girl is like the stray kittens and forlorn dogs our Jenny fetches home so often,” the old woman said softly. “I never saw such a hungerin’ sort of look in human eyes afore.”
The old man dropped back into his armed chair and shook his head as much as to say that their “gal’s” ways were beyond his comprehension. A moment later that same “gal” reappeared and, going at once to her grandfather, she knelt at his side and held his knotted work-hardened hand in a clinging clasp.
“Tut! Tut! Jenny, you’re all a-tremble.” The old man always felt deeply moved when the girl he loved seemed to be troubled. He placed his free hand on her curls.
“I reckon you’d better start at the beginnin’. Me’n your grandma here is powerful curious.”
The girl sprang up. “Granny dear,” she pleaded, “you sit here in your rocker and I’ll be close between you on this stool. Now I’ll tell you all and please, please, please say yes.”
The two old people looked lovingly into the eager, uplifted face of their darling and wondered what the request was to be. They never had denied their “gal” anything she had asked for in the past, but they had always been such simple desires and so easily fulfilled. However, there was an expression in the girl’s lovely face that made them both believe that this was to be no ordinary request.
Jenny glanced from one to another of her grandparents anxiously, eagerly. Then, taking a hand of each, she fairly clung to them as her words rushed and tumbled out, sometimes incoherently, but the picture was clearly depicted for all that. The two old people could see the forlorn little Belgian girl coming alone to America to join the mother who had died and been buried only two days before the child reached San Francisco. Then the long dreary years in a crowded city orphanage where no one really cared.
Grandma Sue began to wipe her eyes with one corner of her apron at that part of the story. She was thinking that their own darling might have been brought up in just such a place had not Grandpa Si happened to see the canopied wagon on that long ago day. The girl felt the soft wrinkled hand quivering in her clasp, and she looked up almost joyfully, for she believed she had an ally. Then she told of the time when Etta had reached an age where she could no longer be kept in the institution and how work had been procured for her paring vegetables at Granger Place Seminary. Food and a place to sleep were about all that orphan girls were given, and so, although she had tried and tried to save the little money she earned, she could not, for she had to buy shoes and clothes.
The old woman nodded understandingly. “What was she savin’ for, dearie? Anything special?”
“Oh, yes, Grandma Sue, something very special.” Then Jenny told about the feeble old grandparents far across the sea whose little farm had been laid waste by the war and how they longed for their granddaughter to be a comfort in their last days. At this point Grandpa Si took out his big red bandana handkerchief and blew his nose hard. He was thinking what it would mean to them if their Jenny was far away and couldn’t get back. Then, looking at their “gal” shrewdly, he asked, “Jenny, darlin’, what be yo’ aimin’ at? Yo’ ain’t jest tellin’ this story sort of random-like, be yo’?”
The girl shook her head. “No! No!” Her tear-brimmed eyes implored first one and then the other. Then she explained that it would take one hundred dollars to pay for Etta’s transportation in the steerage.
How the girl pleaded, her sensitive lips quivering. “Think of it, Grandma Sue, Granddad, only one hundred dollars to take that poor girl to her old grandparents who love her so. Won’t you let me loan her that much from the money I’ve made selling eggs and honey? Please, please say that you will. You’ve always told me that it is mine and oh, I do so want to help Etta.” Then, as her surprised listeners hesitated, she hurried on: “She’ll pay it back, every cent, and only the other day, Granddad, you said you didn’t think the farm was going to be sold, because nothing more had been heard about it.”
The old man’s eyes questioned his spouse. Still tearful, Grandma Sue nodded. Then drawing the girl to her, she held her close as she said, “Silas, I reckon we owe it to the good Lord to help one of His poor little children.”
“O, Granny! O, Grandpa! However can I thank you?” The flushed, happy girl sprang up, kissed each of them and ran toward the bedroom to tell the wonderful news to the waiting Etta.
Such a supper as that had been. Etta’s expression had so completely changed that Grandma Sue decided that she was almost pretty with her corn-colored hair and china blue eyes. It was the first time that Jenny had seen her smile and she found herself wishing that Miss O’Hara could see it also. They made their plans. Etta was to remain with them all night. Then early in the morning Granddad would drive both of the girls to Santa Barbara and take the money from the bank, then they would go to the railway station and buy a ticket, both for the train and the steamer. Jenny was sure that there were such tickets because she had heard her teacher, Miss Dearborn, tell about one that she purchased all the way through to Liverpool. Then there would be no fear that Etta would lose the money. When she reached Belgium, Etta promised, oh, so faithfully, that each month she would send back part of the hundred. She was so strong. She would work the farm again. The women over there all worked in the fields. She knew she would have money to send. Every time she thought of the great joy in store for the old couple, she began to cry and laugh at the same time. But once she had a thought which brought only frightened tears. What if this voyage should be like the other? What if her loved ones would be dead?
But Jenny had said that she must not think of that, though they all knew that she would, poor girl, till the very moment that she reached the farm and saw her grandparents.
“You’ll write us all about it, won’t you, dearie?” Grandma Sue said.
The chocolate pudding was eaten, but no one seemed conscious of it. They were all thinking the same thing and yet with wide variations. Grandma and Grandpa were being so thankful because they had Jenny, and that little maid was deciding how she would tell Miss O’Hara when Etta was gone.
Everything happened just as they had planned. The next day dawned in the silvery mist that so often veils the seaside mornings in California, but later it burst into a glory of sunshine, as golden as the oranges, and sweetly, spicily fragrant with the breath of the lemon groves they passed as they drove to Santa Barbara. The money was drawn from the bank, the ticket, a very long ticket, was procured. Etta, hardly able to believe that she was really awake, had expressed her thanks in all the ways that she knew, and the train at last bore her away.
It was not until Jenny was back in her own farm home that she told what she planned doing next. “I must drive right over to the seminary and tell Miss O’Hara what has become of Etta. Of course she hasn’t worried yet, because she knew that Etta was with us over here, but she’ll be getting impatient if there’s no one to pare the vegetables and help her get lunch.”
Grandmother Sue’s eyes were opened wide. “But, dearie, this is your very own Saturday. The one that’s for you to do with as you please. I thought you and Miss Dearborn were goin’ to drive way up into the foothills. Wasn’t that what you’d planned?”
The girl nodded brightly. “Yes, it was,” she said, “and maybe there’ll be time for that later, but first, I must tell Miss O’Hara about Etta’s having gone back to Belgium. I suppose she’ll send up to the orphanage for another helper, but that will take a day or two, maybe more.”
Granny Sue said no more and as Dobbin was not needed on the farm, Jenny again drove up the winding tree-shaded lane to the crest of the low hill on the broad top of which stood the picturesque buildings and grounds of the fashionable school for girls. This time Jenny drew rein before she entered the gate and gazed far across the valley to the range of circling mountains, gray and rugged near the peaks, but green and tree-clad lower down. Jenny always felt, when she gazed at those majestic mountains, the same awe that others do in a great cathedral, as though she were in the real presence of the Creator. “Father, God,” she whispered, “I thank Thee that at last Etta is really going home.” Then she turned in at the gate.
As Jenny had feared, Miss O’Hara was becoming very wrathful because of the delayed return of her helper, and when the kitchen door opened, she whirled about, a carving knife in her hand and a most threatening expression on her plain Irish face. When she saw who had entered, the expression changed, but her sharp blue eyes were gazing back of the girl as though to find one whom she believed was purposely lingering outside until a just wrath were somewhat appeased. But when Jenny turned and closed the door, Miss O’Hara demanded: “Where’s that wench? Are you tryin’ to shield her? You can’t do it! She’d ought to’ve been here two hours back. Me with all the silver to clean and the vegetables to pare.” Then, noting a happiness like a morning glow in the face of the girl, the woman concluded: “Well, say it out, whatever ’tis! But first let me tell you, I’mthroughwith that ne’er-do-well. I set myself down right in the middle of the mornin’ and wrote to that orphanage place tellin’ ’em they’d have to find work elsewhere for Etta Heldt, and I’d be obliged to ’em if they’d send me another girl as soon as they could. An’ what’s more, I made it plain that I didn’t want any sour face this time. I want someone who’s willin’ and agreeable, that’s what! So, if that minx is waitin’ to hear what I’m sayin’, you might as well fetch her in and let’s have it out.”
To the amazement of the irate woman, Jenny clapped her hands girlishly and then, skipping forward, gave Miss O’Hara an impulsive hug as she cried: “Oh, oh, I’m so glad you feel that way about it! Then you won’t mind so terribly because Etta Heldt is gone—gone for good, I mean?”
Miss O’Hara stared blankly. “Gone?” she repeated. “Where’s she gone to?”
Jenny glanced at the clock. It was nearing noon and she knew that the cook had little time for idle visiting, and so she said briskly: “I’ve come over to help. I’ll put on Etta’s apron and do anything you want done, and while we’re working, I’ll tell you the whole sad story, because, Miss O’Hara, it is awfully sad, and I do believe if you had known it, you would have been sorrier for Etta, and maybe, a little more patient.” Then, fearing that this might offend her listener, the tactful girl hurried on with: “I know how kind you can be. No one knows better.”
The cook, who had turned back to the slicing of cold meat, which had been the reason for the carving knife, merely grunted at this. She was not sure but that a little of her own native blarney was being applied to her. But she answered in a pleasanter voice to the girl’s repeated inquiry: “What shall I do to help?”
“Well, you might be fixin’ the salad. You’ll find the mixin’s for it all in the icebox up top.”
“Oh, goodie!” Jenny skipped to the box as she spoke: “I adore making things pretty, and salads give one a chance more than most anything else, don’t you think so, Miss O’Hara?” She had lifted the cover and was peering in where, close to the ice, lay the cheesecloth bag of crisped lettuce and a bowl of tiny cooked beets. These she carried to the long white table as she asked: “May I prepare it just as I want to, Miss O’Hara, or have you some special way of doing it?”
“Fix it to suit yourself,” was the ungrudgingly given response. “You’ll find all sort of bowls for it in the pantry, you’ll need four, there being four tables.”
Jenny chose pretty glass bowls and set about making as artistic a salad as she could, and, while she worked, she told the whole story to a listener who at first was merely curious, but who gradually became interested and finally sympathetic. “Well, I sure certain wish I’d known about her comin’ to this country and findin’ her mother dead. Like as not I’d have tried some to cheer her up. As I look back on it now, I wasn’t any too patient with her. It’ll be a lesson to me, that’s what it will. When the next orphan comes to this kitchen, I’ll try to make it as home-like for her as I can.” Then the cook recalled her own troubles. “How-some-ever, I wish Etta Heldt had given me notice. Here I’ll be without a helper for no one knows how long, a week maybe.”
Jenny, having heaped a glass bowl with a most appetizing salad, stepped back to admire it. Then she revealed her plan. “Miss O’Hara, if you’ll let me, I’ll come right over after school every day and do Etta’s work until you can get another helper.”
Miss O’Hara again turned, another knife in her hand, as she had been cutting bread. “Jenny Warner, are you meaning that? Will you help out for a few days? Well, the Saints bless the purty face of you as they’ve done already. I only wish I could have a helper all the time as cheery as you are. I could get on with after-school help. I’m thinkin’, on a scratch.”
Then, glancing at the clock, she continued: “Well, if ’tisn’t eleven-thirty all ready. Here, cut the bread, will you, Jenny, while I go upstairs and see if one of the maids won’t help with the servin’ today? I can’t be in the kitchen dishin’ up, an’ in the dinin’ room at the same time.”
Jenny, glad to assist in any way, finished the task, and then wandered to a window near to await further orders. She heard a gong ringing somewhere in the big school. Then a side door opened and a bevy of girls, about her own age, trooped out on the lawn for a half hour of recreation before lunch. How pretty they were, nearly all of them, the watcher thought. By their care-free, laughing faces she concluded that they had none of them known a sorrow or felt a feather weight of responsibility. They had come from homes of wealth, Jenny knew, where they had had every pleasure and luxury their hearts could desire. But she did not envy them. Where in all the wide world was there a home more picturesque than her very own old adobe farmhouse, overgrown with blossoming vines, with the ever-changing ocean and the rocky point in front, and at the back the orchard, which, all the year round, was such a delight. And who could they have in their rich homes more lovable than Granny Sue and Grandpa Si? There couldn’t be any one more lovable in all the land. Then the watcher wondered which one of the girls was Harold P-J’s sister. “Proud and domineering,” Miss O’Hara had said that she was. Maybe she was that tall girl who had drawn apart from the rest with two companions. She carried herself haughtily and there was a smile on her face that Jenny did not like. It was as though she were accompanying it with sarcastic comment about the other girls. The two who were with her glanced in the direction which their leader had indicated. Jenny did also and saw a shy-looking girl dressed far simpler than the others, whose light brown hair hung straight down, fastened at her neck by a plain brown ribbon. “She must be a new pupil, too,” Jenny decided, “for she doesn’t seem to be acquainted with any of the girls.”
At that moment Miss O’Hara returned, more flustered than she had been an hour earlier, if that were possible. “The de’il himself is tryin’ to fret me, I’m thinkin’,” she announced. “That silly Peg Hanson’s had a letter and there’s somethin’ in it that upset her so, she took a fit of cryin’ and now she’s got one of her blind headaches and can’t stand. The other maid’s in the middle of the upstairs cleanin’, being as she had to do Peg’s work and her own. Now, I’d like to knowwhois to wait on that parcel of gigglin’ girls this noon? That’s what!”
“O, Miss O’Hara, won’t you let me? I’m just wild to have a chance to be near enough to them to hear what they say. It would be awfully interesting to me. Please say that I may?”
The cook stared her amazement. “Well, now, what doyouknow about waitin’?” she inquired.
“Nothing at all,” was the merry reply, “but my teacher has often said that I have a good intelligence, and I do believe, if you’d tell me what ought to be done, I could remember enough to get through.”
The cook’s troubled face broke into a pleased smile. “Jenny Warner,” she commented, “you’re as good as a pinch of soda in sour milk. Somehow mountain-sized troubles dwindle down to less’n nothin’ when you take a hand in them.” She glanced at the clock.
“Lunch is served at twelve-thirty,” she continued. “We’ll have to both pitch in and get things on the table, and, while we’re doin’ it, I’ll tell you what you’ll have to know about servin’.”
* * * * * * * *
Jenny was in a flutter of excitement half an hour later as she donned the white cap and apron of the waitress uniform. They were really very becoming, and soft brown ringlets peeped out from under the dainty band-like cap which was tied about her head.
“There’s very little waitin’-on to be done at noon, thanks for that,” Miss O’Hara said. “Most things are on the table, but you’ll have to go around and pour the chocolate and do the things as I told you. There now! The bell’s ringing and I hear those silly girls laughing, so they’re all in the dining room. Here’s the chocolate pot. I haven’t filled it full, fearin’ it might be too heavy. You’ll have to come back and get more when that’s gone.”
With cheeks flushed and eyes shining, as though she were about to do something which pleased her extremely, Jenny entered the dining room, where four tables, surrounded by girls, stood along the walls. Few there were who even noticed her as she went from place to place filling the dainty cups with steaming liquid.
At the first table the girls were chattering about a theatre party to which they were going with Miss Granger, and not one of them gave the waitress more than a fleeting glance. But at the second table Jenny found the girl she sought. The sister of Harold P-J, and the daughter of the proud owner of Rocky Point Farm.
The little waitress knew at once which she was, for a companion spoke her name. Jenny was disappointed when she heard her speak. There was a fretful, discontented note in her voice. And why should there be, she wondered, as she slowly approached the end of the table where Gwynette Poindexter-Jones sat with an intimate friend from San Francisco at each side.
Surely she had everything her heart could desire. But evidently this was not true, for, as Jenny drew nearer, she could hear what was being said.
“Patricia Sullivan, you make me weary! You certainly do!” she addressed the girl on her right. “How can you say that this is a pleasant place? When I think of my mother in France luxuriating in the sort of life I most enjoy, it makes me rebellious. Sometimes I feel that I just can’t forgive her. What right has a mother to send her daughter to an out-of-the-way country boarding school if the girl prefers to be educated abroad?”
The friend who had been called “Patricia” now put in, almost apologetically: “But I merely said that it is a beautiful country, and I repeat that it is. I think that it is wonderful to be so high up on a foothill and have a sweeping view of the ocean from one side of the school and a view of the mountains from the other side.”
A shrug, accompanied by an utterance of bored impatience, then Gwynette’s reply: “Scenery isn’t what I want, and if I did, I prefer it in France.”
After glancing critically from one table to another, she continued:
“There isn’t a single girl in this room who belongs to our class, really. They are all our social inferiors.”
But Beulah Hollingsworth, the friend on Gwynette’s left, leaned forward to say in a low voice, which was audible to Jenny merely because she had reached the trio and was filling Patricia’s cup:
“I’ve heard that there is a girl in this school whose father is a younger son of some titled English family. She ought to be in our class, don’t you think?”
Patricia, whose back was toward the room, could not turn to look at the other pupils, but suddenly she recalled one of them, and so, leaning forward, she also said in a low voice:
“Look at Clare Tasselwood. She’s stiff enough at least to be a somebody.” Gwynette and Beulah agreed.
They both glanced at a tall blonde girl at the table across the room, whose manner was neither disagreeable nor pleasant, expressing merely bored endurance of her present existence. Gwynette’s face brightened. “I believe you are right. Let’s cultivate her!”
Jenny could hear no more of their conversation as she had to go back to the kitchen to refill the silver pot, and when she returned she began to fill cups at a third table, the one at which sat the supposed daughter of a “younger son.” Clare Tasselwood was so deeply engrossed in her own thoughts that she seemed scarce aware that the timid girl at her left was offering her a platter of cold meat. She took it finally with a brief nod; absently helped herself to a slice and passed it to the neighbor on her right.
Jenny found herself feeling sorry for the little girl whom she had noticed at the recreation hour; the one so simply dressed in brown with whom no one had been talking, and about whom Gwynette and her friends had evidently been making uncomplimentary comment. When the new waitress poured that girl’s cup full of chocolate, the little maid smiled up at her and said, “Thank you.”
More than ever Jenny’s heart warmed toward her. “Poor thing! I’d like to be friends with her if she were not a pupil of this fashionable school. She looks more like real folks than some of them do.”
Then, having completed the round with the chocolate pot, the waitress went out to the kitchen to get the tray on which were to be heaped the plates after the first course had been finished. Jenny really dreaded this task, fearing that she would break something, and was relieved to find that the upstairs maid who had been cleaning had come down and was ready to assist.
“Here, Jenny,” Miss O’Hara said, “you follow and give each girl her dessert. Then you come out and eat your own lunch. After that you can go. Tomorrow, being Sunday, I can get along alone, and probably by Monday the new helper’ll be here.”
An hour later Jenny drove away, laughing to herself over her amusing adventure and eager to tell Grandma Sue and Granddad Si all about it.
It was two o’clock when Jenny skipped to the side porch of the Rocky Point farmhouse. Her grandmother, who was sitting there with her mending basket at her side, looked up with the welcoming smile that she always had for the girl. Dropping down on the wooden bench, back of which hung a blossom-laden garland of Cecil Brunner rose vine, Jenny took off her wide, flower-wreathed straw hat and began fanning her flushed face. The sparkle in her soft brown eyes told the watcher at once that something of an unusual nature had occurred. The old woman dropped her sewing on her lap, pushed her spectacles up under her lavender-ribboned cap and then said with a rising inflection: “Well, Jenny dearie, what have you been up to?”
A peal of amused laughter was the girl’s first answer, followed by a series of little chuckles that tried to form themselves into words but couldn’t. Mirth is contagious and the old woman laughingly said: “Tut! Tut! Jenny, don’t keep all the fun of it to yourself. What happened over to the seminary that was so amusing? I reckoned you’d have sort of a hard tune making things straight with Miss O’Hara, if she’s as snappy as poor Etta Heldt said she was.”
Jenny became serious at once, and, leaning forward, she began earnestly: “Miss O’Hara is kindhearted, Granny Sue, but she does seem to have a powerful lot to worry her. Etta didn’t try to be real helpful, I know that, although I was so sorry for her, and when I told Miss O’Hara all about the poor orphan, there were tears in her eyes, honestly there were, Granny, and she said that when the next orphan came, she’d try to make that kitchen more homelike.”
Her listener was pleased and nodded many times, as she commented: “Well, well, that’s somethin’ now that my Jenny gal has brought to pass, but it wasn’t about that you were having such a spell of laughin’, I reckon.”
Again there were twinkles in the brown eyes as the girl confessed: “No, Granny Sue, it wasn’t, and in as many years as Rip Van Winkle slept, you couldn’t guess what it was.”
The old woman looked puzzled, as she always did when Jenny quoted from some of her “readin’ books.” “Wall, I reckon I couldn’t, bein’ as I don’t know how long the lazy fellow slept, so I reckon you’d better tell me what you’ve been up to over to the seminary.”
She had replaced her glasses and was again sewing a patch on an old shirt of Grandpa Si’s, but she looked up when the girl said: “You’ll be astonished as can be, because you never even guessed that your granddaughter knew how to wait on table, stylish-like, with all the flourishes.”
Down went the sewing, up went the glasses, and an expression of shocked displeasure was in the sweet blue eyes of the old woman.
“Jenny Warner, am I hearin’ right? Are yo’ tellin’ me that my gal waited on table over to the seminary?”
The girl looked puzzled. Grandma Sue was taking almost tragically what Jenny had considered in the light of a merry adventure.
“Why, yes, Granny, I did. You don’t mind, do you? You have always wanted me to help where help was needed, and surely poor Miss O’Hara needed a waitress. If we hadn’t spirited Etta away, she would have been there. You see, don’t you, Grandma, that I just had to help?”
“Yes, yes, I reckon like as not you did, but don’t do it again, Jenny, don’t! Promise, just to please your old Grandma Sue.”
The girl placed her hat on the bench and went to her grandmother’s side and knelt, her head nestled lovingly against the old woman’s shoulder. “Why, Granny, dearie,” she said contritely, “I didn’t suppose you’d mind. Why is it that you do?” She was plainly perplexed.
But the old woman had no intention of telling the girl she so loved that she could not bear the thought of having her act as a servant to her own sister, Gwynette. And so she replied with an assumed cheeriness: “Just a notion, dearie, like as not. I feel that our gal is as good, and heaps better’n a lot of them seminary pupils, and I guess I sort of don’t like the idea of you waitin’ on ’em.” Then anxiously: “It won’t happen again, will it, Jenny?”
The girl kissed her grandmother lovingly. Then rising, she put her hat on her sun-glinted head as she replied: “It won’t be necessary, because Peg, the real waitress, will be well again tomorrow. She had one of her blind headaches today, but I did promise to go over Monday after school and do Etta’s work, preparing vegetables. You don’t mind that, do you, Granny dear. The new orphan will be there by Tuesday surely.”
“Well, well, you do whatever you think right. That heart o’ yourn won’t take you far wrong. You’re goin’ over to your school-teacher’s now, aren’t you, dearie? She’ll be expectin’ you.”
The girl nodded, skipped into the house to get a book, returned, saying as she went down the path: “This is our mythology lesson day. Good-bye, Granny dear. I’ll be home in time to get supper.”
As Jenny drove Dobbin along the coast highway, she wondered why her grandmother had objected so seriously to the act of kindness that she had done. Her teacher, Miss Dearborn, had so often said: “Jeanette, it isn’t what we do that counts, it is what we are.” Surely Jenny had been no different from what she really was when she had been filling cups with steaming golden brown chocolate. Moreover, Granny Sue hadn’t minded in the least that time, last year, when Jenny had gone over to the cabin home of the poor forlorn squatter family in the sycamore woods and had cleaned it out thoroughly.
She had found the mother sick in bed and the three children almost spoiling for a bath. Jenny smiled as she recalled how she had taken them, one after another, down to the creek in the canon below the cabin, and had washed them, showing the oldest, Rosa, who was eight, how to give future baths to Sara, aged five, and Elmer, aged two. And after that she had driven, at Miss Dearborn’s suggestion, into Santa Barbara to tell the Visiting Nurse’s Association about the poor squatter family. Grandma Sue had been pleased, then, to have Jenny serve others. Why did she object to a similar service for Miss O’Hara? This being unanswerable, the girl decided to drive through the Sycamore Canon Road, as it was really but a little out of her way, and see how the squatter’s family was progressing.