It became very cool as she turned out of the sunshine of the broad highway, and the deeper she drove into the canon, the damper and more earth fragrant the air. Great old sycamore trees that had grown in most picturesque angles were on either side of the narrow dirt road, and crossing and recrossing, under little rustic bridges, rambled the brook which in the spring time danced along as though it also were brimming over with the joy of living. The cabin in which the Pascoli family lived had been long abandoned when they had taken possession. It stood in a more open spot, where, for a few hours each day, the sunlight came. It was partly adobe (from which its former white-washed crust had broken away in slabs) and partly logs. A rose vine, which Jenny had given to the older girl, was bravely trying to climb up about the door, and along the front of the cabin were ferns transplanted from the brookside.
When Jenny hallooed, there was a joyful answering cry from within, and three children, far cleaner than when they had first been found, raced out, their truly beautiful Italian faces beaming their pleasure. They climbed up on the sides of the wagon shouting, in child-like fashion, “O, Miss Jenny, did you fetch us any honey?”
“No, dearies. I didn’t! And I don’t believe you’ve eaten all that I brought you last week, have they, Mrs. Pascoli?” the girl looked over Sara’s head to the dark-eyed woman who appeared in the open door carrying a wee baby wrapped in a shawl. She replied: “No, ma’am! The beggars they are!” Then came a rebuking flow of Italian which had the effect desired, for the three youngsters climbed down and said in a subdued chorus, “No’m, we ain’t et it, and thanks for it till it’s gone.” the latter part of the sentence being added by Sara alone. Jenny smiled at them, then said to the woman:
“You’re quite well again, Mrs. Pascoli. I’m so glad! Grandpa tells me that your husband is working steadily now. Next week I’ll bring some more honey and eggs. Good-bye.”
The girl soon turned out of the canon on to a foothill road and after a short climb came suddenly upon a low built white house that had a wonderful view of the ocean and islands.
She turned in at the drive, the gate posts of which were pepper trees, and at once she saw her beloved teacher, Miss Dearborn, working in her garden.
The woman, who was about thirty-five, looked up with a welcoming smile which she reserved for this her only pupil. “Jenny Warner, you’re an hour late,” she merrily rebuked. “Hitch Dobbin and come in. I have some news to tell you.”
“O, Miss Dearborn, is it good news? I’m always so dreading the bad news that, some day, I just know you are going to tell me. It isn’t that, yet?”
The woman, whose strong, kind, intelligent face was shaded with a wide-brimmed garden hat, smiled at the girl, then more seriously she said: “Shall you mind so very much when the call comes for me to go back East?”
Jenny nodded, unexpected tears in her eyes. “East is so far, so very far away, and you’ve been here for—well—for as many years as I have been going to school.”
“Ten, to be exact,” was the reply. “But that isn’t my news today. It is something about you, and you’ll be ever so excited when you hear it.”
Miss Dearborn led the way into a long, cool living room which extended entirely across the front of the house. In one end of it was a large stone fireplace, on either side of which were glassed-in book shelves. There were Navajo rugs on the hardwood floor, a piano at the opposite end, deep, cozily cushioned seats under the wide plate-glass windows that framed such wonderful views of sea, rocky promontory and islands, mist-hung.
In the middle was a long library table and everywhere were chairs inviting ease. Great bowls of glowing yellow poppies stood in many places about the long room. This had been Jenny Warner’s second home, and Miss Dearborn a most beneficial influence in her development.
Having removed her garden hat, a mass of soft, light brown hair was revealed. Seating herself at one end of the table, the older woman motioned the girl to a chair at her side.
For a long moment she looked at her earnestly. “Jenny,” she said at last, “I believe you are old enough to be told something about me, but since it is not nearly as important as the something about you, I will begin with that.”
Jenny, not in the least understanding why, felt strangely excited. “Oh, Miss Dearborn, if only it hasn’t anything to do with your going back East.”
A strong white hand was placed over the smaller one that was lying on the table, and for a searching moment the gray eyes met the brown. “I believe, after all, I will have to tell you the part about myself first in order that you may more clearly understand the part about you,” Miss Dearborn said. “I never told you why I came West ten years ago. It was this way. When I was fifteen, I went to a boarding school in Boston and met there a girl, Beatrice Malcolm, who became, through the four years that followed, as dear to me as an own sister would have been. She was not strong and she never had been able to bear disappointment. I always gave in to her and tried to shield her whenever I could. She clung to me, depended on me and loved me, if not quite as devotedly as I loved her, at least very dearly. When we left boarding school we visited each other for weeks at a time. She came to my Cape Cod home in the summer, and I went to her New York home in the winter, and so we shared the same friends and were glad to do so, until Eric Austin came into our lives. Eric and I were unusually companionable. He loved books and nature and especially the sea. He had come to Cape Cod to write a group of poems and I met him at our Literary Club. He came often to my home and we read together day after day. Then Beatrice came for her annual summer visit, and, after that there were three of us at the readings. Eric’s voice was deep, musical and stirringly expressive. I began to notice that Beatrice hung on every word that he uttered as though he were a young god. There was something poetically beautiful about his fine face. Then, one day, she confessed to me that if she could not win Eric Austin’s love, she would not care to live. This was cruelly hard for me, because I also loved Eric and he had told me that my love was returned. Indeed, I had not allowed myself to really care, until I knew that he cared, but I had told him that I wanted to wait until we had known each other at least through one summer.”
Miss Dearborn paused and gazed out of the window at the blue sea shimmering in the distance, then turned and smiled into the sensitive, responsive face of the girl at her side. Almost tearfully, Jenny said: “Oh, Miss Dearborn, I know what you did. You gave up the man you loved for that selfish girl.”
The woman shook her head. “Not selfish! Just spoiled, and I had helped, for I had always given up to her, and that is what I did. I pretended not to care. I left them much alone, and then, when the summer was over, I closed my Cape Cod home and came West. Eric was deeply hurt, and wrote me that, although he never could care for anyone as he did for me, he was going to marry Beatrice and would try to make her as happy as he had hoped to make me. That was all. They were married while I was settling in this new home. Year after year Beatrice has written that some day she wants me to come and visit them, and she has named her oldest girl after me. Little Catherine is now eight. That is all about me. Now I will tell the something about you.”
Jenny, deeply affected by what she had heard, said with a little half sob: “Oh, Miss Dearborn, it makes my heart ache to think that you have lived all these years so alone when you might have had the companionship of that man who really loved you. I just know he never could have loved your friend Beatrice. She must have known you cared and she let you make that cruel sacrifice.”
Before answering the older woman took the girl’s hand and held it in a close clasp as she said earnestly: “Jenny, dear, I gave up much, very much, but think what I won. You, for instance. I had thought that I might have a daughter, as I suppose all girls, growing into young womanhood, dream that, some day, they will marry and have children, and that daughter, I now believe, would have been like you. So you see I gained something very precious.” There were tears in Jenny’s tender brown eyes as she replied: “Oh. Miss Dearborn, I am the one who has gained. I just can’t picture life without you. I remember so well when you first came. You heard that our little schoolhouse down on the coast highway was to be closed because the board of education was not allowed to pay a teacher’s salary unless there were eight pupils to attend the school. There were only five of us, the four from the Anderson Bean Ranch and me. You offered to teach us for nothing, saying that you wanted to do something for children. I didn’t know that until long afterwards, then Grandma told me how it had all come about. We were too little to go on the bus to the big schools in Santa Barbara.”
“I’m glad indeed that I did it,” Miss Dearborn put in, “but, of course, when the Andersons moved back to their Iowa farm and you were the only pupil we closed that coast highway school and had our lessons here, and such an inspiration as they have been to me, Jenny Warner! I just know that you are leading up to an expression of gratitude. I’ve heard it time and again and I do appreciate it, dear girl, but now that you know the great loneliness that was in my heart when I came West, you will readily understand that having you to teach filled a void, filled it beautifully, and so, I also have a deep sense of gratitude toward you.”
“And two years ago,” Jenny continued retrospectively, “when we completed the work of the sixth grade, you can’t think how unhappy I was, for I supposed that at last I would have to leave you and go by bus each day to the Santa Barbara Junior High, and I never shall forget that wonderful day when you told me you had received permission to teach me through the eighth grade.”
Miss Dearborn laughed happily. “What I never told you, Jenny, was that the board of education insisted that I take an examination at their State Normal to prove to them that I knew enough to teach one lone pupil the higher grade work. I brushed up evenings and passed creditably.”
Impulsively the girl pressed the woman’s hand to her cheek. “Oh, Miss Dearborn,” she exclaimed tremulously, “tothinkthat you didallthatjustfor me.”
“Wrong you are, Jenny girl!” the woman sang out. “I did it first of all for Catherine Dearborn. I felt a panic in my heart I had not dreamed possible when I thought that I was to be left all alone, day in and day out, with only memory for company. I wanted to keep you, to teach you, to love you, and I did keep you, but now along comes a letter from the same board of education. If we thought they had forgotten us, we are mistaken. That’s my news about you.”
Opening a small drawer in the end of the table, Miss Dearborn took out a letter and read:
“Miss Jenny Warner will be required to take the entrance examination in all the subjects at the High School of Santa Barbara during the week of June 10th. The results of these tests will determine where she is to continue her studies.”
The girl’s lovely face was the picture of dismay. “Oh, Miss Dearborn, I can’t! I can’t! I’d be simply frightened to death to even enter the door of that imposing building, and if any of the pupils as much as spoke to me, I’d simply expire.” Her teacher laughed. “Nonsense!” she declared. “Not only must my pupil enter the door but she must pass the tests with high grades if I am to be permitted to teach her another year.”
Then to change the girl’s thought, Miss Dearborn continued brightly: “Saturday is our mythology day, isn’t it? But since you came late and we have spent so much time visiting, we will not go up into the hills as we usually do for this lesson. Let me see. Weren’t you to write something about Apollo, Diana and Echo that I might know if you fully understand just what each stands for in poetry and art?”
“Oh, Miss Dearborn,” Jenny laughed as she drew a paper from her book, “I don’t know what you will say about the composition I tried to write. It isn’t good, I know, but I ever so much wanted to write it in verse. Shall you mind my trying?” The girl’s manner was inquiring and apologetic at the same time.
“Of course not,” was the encouraging reply. “We all reach an age when we want to write our thoughts in rhyme. Read it to me.”
And so timidly Jenny began:
At Sunrise
Gray mists veil the dawn of day,Silver winged they speed away,
Gray mists veil the dawn of day,
Silver winged they speed away,
When across a road of goldIn his shining chariot rolled
When across a road of gold
In his shining chariot rolled
Young Apollo. Day’s fair KingBids the birds awake and sing!
Young Apollo. Day’s fair King
Bids the birds awake and sing!
Robin, skylark, linnet, thrushFrom each glen and flower-glad bush
Robin, skylark, linnet, thrush
From each glen and flower-glad bush
Burst their throats with warbles gayTo welcome back the King of Day.
Burst their throats with warbles gay
To welcome back the King of Day.
Diana, huntress, Apollo’s twin,Standing in a forest dim,
Diana, huntress, Apollo’s twin,
Standing in a forest dim,
A quiver on one shoulder fairFilled with arrows. (In her hair
A quiver on one shoulder fair
Filled with arrows. (In her hair
A moonlike crescent.) Calls her houndsTo new adventures with them bounds,
A moonlike crescent.) Calls her hounds
To new adventures with them bounds,
While lovely Echo in the hill,Though grieving for Narcissus still,
While lovely Echo in the hill,
Though grieving for Narcissus still,
Must need call back their song or bay,And so is dawned a glad new day.
Must need call back their song or bay,
And so is dawned a glad new day.
Miss Dearborn smiled as she commented: “Dear girl, there is no need to blush about this, your first effort at verse. I am going to suggest that you write all of your compositions on this poetical subject in rhyme. Keep them and let us see how much better the last will be than the first.” Then after a thoughtful moment: “Dawn is a subject much loved by the poets.”
Then she quoted from Byron:
“The morn is up again, the dewy morn,With breath all incense and with cheek all bloom;Laughing the clouds away with playful scorn(Living as if earth contained no tomb)And glowing into day.”
“The morn is up again, the dewy morn,
With breath all incense and with cheek all bloom;
Laughing the clouds away with playful scorn
(Living as if earth contained no tomb)
And glowing into day.”
“Oh, Miss Dearborn,” was Jenny’s enthusiastic comment, “how happy I will be when my memory holds as many poems as you know. It will add to the loveliness of every scene to know what some poet has thought about one that was similar.”
“You are right, dear, it does.” Then rising, Miss Dearborn said: “Come with me to the porch dining room. I hear the kettle calling us to afternoon tea.”
It was late afternoon when Jenny returned from Miss Dearborn’s home high in the foothills. As she drove up the long lane leading to the farmhouse, she saw three young ladies from Granger Place Seminary on horseback cantering along the highway toward the mansion-like home of Mrs. Poindexter-Jones. She was too far away, however, to be sure that among them was the girl whom she believed to be the daughter of the rich woman who owned the farm.
Going to the barn, Jenny unhitched Dobbin, patting him lovingly and chatting in a most intimate friendly manner as though she were sure that he understood.
“We’ve had a red letter day, haven’t we, Dob? First, early this morning we drove that poor Etta Heldt to the station and loaned her money to help her buy a ticket to Belgium.” Then, in silent meditation, the girl thought: “How I wish I had a magic carpet like that of The Little Lame Prince. I would love to be over on that quaint Belgian farm when the old people first see their granddaughter arriving.”
Then as she led the faithful horse out to the watering trough under a blossoming peach tree, another thought presented itself. “Dobbin.” she again addressed her companion, “now that we have loaned part of the honey and egg money, wouldn’t it be dreadful if Mrs. Poindexter-Jones should decide to sell this farm?” She sighed. “Though I suppose that hundred dollars wouldn’t go very far toward buying it.” For a contemplative moment the girl gazed across the meadow where a pale green of early grain was beginning to show, and then at the picturesque old adobe partly hidden by the blossoming orchard. It was all the home she had ever known and it was hard to even think of moving to another. “Don’t climb over a stile till you get to it,” Grandpa Si had often told her. Remembering this, she turned her attention to her companion, who had lifted his dripping head. “My, but you were thirsty, weren’t you, Dob? Come on now into your nice cool stall. I’m eager to tell Grandma about that dreadful examination I am to take.”
Later, as she walked along the path which led past the rows of beehives where there was ever a cheerful humming, through the orchard and to the side porch, her thoughts were varied. “How I wish I could tell Grandma Sue about Miss Dearborn’s romance, butthatwas meant just for me. Maybe it’s wrong, but I can’t help wishing that something will happensome daywhich will make it possible for that romance to end happily, as stories always should, whether they are real or in books.”
At the corner of the porch she stopped to breathe in the fragrance of the heliotrope blossoms that grew on a riotous bush which seemed to be trying, vine-fashion, to reach the roof.
“Home again, after a day crowded full of unusual happenings,” her thoughts hummed along. “I don’t suppose that anything morecanhappen in it.”
But Jenny Warner was mistaken, for something of vital importance to her (though she little guessed it) was yet to happen on that day.
Skipping into the kitchen, the girl beheld her grandmother busy at the ironing board. Self rebukingly she cried: “Oh, Grandma Sue, why did you iron today? You promised me faithfully, since I had to go over to the seminary, and then to my teacher’s, that you wouldn’t iron until next week, when I could help. Now you look all hot and tired, and as thirsty as Dobbin was. Please stop and rest while I make us some lemonade.”
The flushed face of the old woman was smiling contentedly as she protested: “I like to iron, dearie. I’m not doing much, just pressin’ out our church-goin’ things. Grandpa Si needed a fresh shirt and I reckoned as how, mabbe, you’d like to wear that white muslin o’ yourn with the pink flowers on the bands, so I fetched it out an’ washed it an’ ironed it, an’ there ’tis, lookin’ as purty again this year as it did when it was furst made. Shouldn’t you think so. Jenny?” This a little anxiously—“or do you reckon we’d better buy you a new Sunday dress for this comin’ summer?”
Jenny whirled toward the clothes-horse where hung the pink sprigged muslin which had been “church goin’” dress for the past three summers. The hem had twice been let down, but, except that the pink had somewhat faded, it was as pretty as it ever had been. “Oh, it’s a love of a dress.” The girl was sincere. “I hope I never will have to give it up. I’ve been so happy in it, and then it matches that sweet parasol Miss Dearborn gave me and the wreath on my white leghorn hat. I’m glad I may begin wearing it tomorrow, Grandma Sue, and it was mighty nice of you to iron it for me, but now, as soon as we’ve had our drink, I’m going to iron your Sunday go-to-meeting lavender dress. Please say that I may. I’ll do the ruffles just beautifully. You will be so vain!”
“Tut! Tut! dearie.” Susan Warner sank down in Grandpa’s armed chair to wipe her warm face and rest while her beloved Jenny made lemonade. “It wouldn’t do to wear that dress to meetin’ if it’s goin’ to make me vain.”
How the girl laughed as she squeezed the juicy lemons that grew on the big tree close to the back porch. Nearly all the year round that tree was laden with blossoms, green and ripe fruit at the same time. “The most obliging kind of tree,” Jenny had often said. “It provides a perfume, delicious lemon pies and a refreshing drink whenever its owners wish.”
“There now, Granny Sue, if only we had ice to clink in it as Miss Dearborn has we’d think that we were rich folks, but it’s real nice as it is.” The girl drank her share with a relish.
“That was mighty good tastin’,” Susan Warner commented. “I wish your Grandpa could have a drink of it. He’s cultivatin’ close to the high hedge. That’s a hot place when the sun is beatin’ down the way it has been all day. Couldn’t you carry a little pailful over to him, dearie?”
“Of course I can and will, Mrs. Susan Warner, if you will promise me one thing.” The girl gazed down into the smiling face of the old woman. “I have my suspicions that you’re trying to get rid of me so that you may iron the lavender dress. Is that the truth?”
“Maybe ’tis,” was the smilingly given confession, “but if you’ll let me iron that one while you’re gone, you can do Grandpa’s best shirt when you come back.”
Filling a quart pail with the lemonade, Jenny snatched her garden hat from its nail by the door and skipped away, although she had to walk more carefully when the ploughed ground was reached. “It makes me think of Robert Burns, and how, in far-away Scotland, his plough turned over the home nest of a poor little old field mouse,” she thought. “Oh, how glad, glad I am that Miss Dearborn is teaching me to love poetry. I can just see that tender-hearted young poet leaning over, ever so sorry because he had destroyed the little creature’s home and telling it not to be frightened.
“‘Wee, sleekit, cowrin’, tim’rous beastie,O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!Thou needna start awa’ sae hastyWi’ bick’ring brattle.I wad be laith to rin and chase theeWi’ murd’ring prattle.’”
“‘Wee, sleekit, cowrin’, tim’rous beastie,
O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!
Thou needna start awa’ sae hasty
Wi’ bick’ring brattle.
I wad be laith to rin and chase thee
Wi’ murd’ring prattle.’”
“Jenny gal, what air yo’ sayin’, talkin’ to yourself that a-way?” The girl suddenly looked up, realizing that she had neared the high hedge that separated the farm from the mansion-like home and its grounds. Laughing happily, she replied: “What you’d call up to my old tricks, Granddad, reciting poetry that Miss Dearborn has had me learn. See, here is a pail brimming full of cool lemonade, if it hasn’t warmed while I crossed the field. I’m sure you must be as thirsty as Grandma and Dobbin and I were.” For answer the old man pushed his wide brimmed straw hat to the back of his head, lifted the pail to his lips and drank it all without stopping. Then said gratefully: “I reckon I kin keep on now fer a spell longer. I was most petered out an’ I do want to finish this field afore I quit.”
The girl left at once, as she wished to hurry home to help with the ironing. She followed the hedge, as the walking was easier, but suddenly she paused and her hand went to her heart. She had heard the voices of girls talking on the other side of the evergreens and what one of them was saying greatly startled the listener.
“Oh, yes, indeed,” a proud voice was saying, “we own about one hundred acres, Ma Mere, brother Harold and I. Our property extends along the seacoast to the highwater mark, then back across the highway up into Laurel Canon, and includes the farm just beyond the hedge.”
Another voice commented, “If your mother should die, you and your brother would be very rich.”
“Oh, yes, fairly,” this with a fine show of indifference. “But if I had my way, all of our country property would be turned into money, then we could live abroad ever after. Mother promised that when she comes in July she will consider selling the farm and the canon property at least. She would have sold the farm two years ago had it not been for my brother Harold. For some reason, which Ma Mere and I cannot in the least understand, he pleaded to have the farm kept. He even offered to take it as part of his share, that and the canon acreage, and let me have the home and estate.”
“What did your mother say to that?” a third voice inquired.
“Too utterly ridiculous to consider, and that, since she wishes to turn something into cash, if we are to live abroad, she will sell one or the other, and, of course, there will be a more ready market for the farm. It’s a most picturesque old place. That is, from a distance. I have never really been there. You see, we have practically lived away from our country home ever since I was born. I have always supposed that, because of our father’s long lingering illness here, Ma Mere has dreaded returning to stay, so imagine my surprise when she wrote that we were all three to spend this summer at the old place.”
Jenny, who had stood transfixed, listening, though against her will, for she scorned eavesdropping, started to run across the ploughed field, stumbling and almost falling in her haste. Oh, what should she do? Should she tell Grandma and Grandpa the terrible possibility that, after all, Rocky Point Farm might be sold, and that very summer? No! No! She couldn’t do that. Oh, if only she had not loaned Etta Heldt part of the honey and egg money, and yet, with a crushing sense of depression, Jenny realized that it did not in the least matter about that paltry sum. If Mrs. Poindexter-Jones wished to sell part of her land, all that her grandfather had saved or could procure would be no inducement to her.
When the orchard was reached, she stood very still for a moment, her hand again on her heart, as though to quiet its anxious beating that was almost a pain. “Jenny Warner,” she said to herself, “youmustnot let Grandma suspect that anything is wrong because, perhaps, nothing really is. If Harold does not want the farm sold, his mother may heed his wishes.”
Two moments later a smiling girl entered the kitchen, hung her hat on its nail by the door as she said, “Well, Granny Sue, I was longer than I expected to be and you have started on the shirt. Let me have the iron. I’ll promise not to scorch it, the way I did that towel you let me iron when I was just head above the ironing board. Do you remember it? You were so sweet about it when I cried. I recall, even now, how you comforted me by saying that the two ends of the towel would make such nice wash cloths, hemmed up, and that it was lucky the scorch was in the middle of the towel because that would make the wash cloths just the right size.” The old woman had relinquished the iron, and, sitting near in Grandpa’s armed chair, she smiled lovingly at the girl, who continued: “That’s just the way you’ve overlooked all the mistakes I ever made. I do wish that every girl in all the world had a grandmother like you.” Jenny was purposely chattering to keep from telling what was uppermost in her mind.
“What a proud, vain girl that Gwynette Poindexter-Jones must be!” Jenny’s thoughts were very different from her spoken words. “How cold and superior the tone of her voice when she informed her friends that she had never visited the farm, but that it looked very picturesque from a distance.” Jenny’s cheeks flushed as she indignantly told herself that she certainly hoped that the farm never would be visited by——. Her thought was interrupted by her exclamation of dismay. “Grandmother Sue.Herethey come!”
The old woman rose hastily from the armed wooden chair. “Who, dearie? Who is it you see?” No wonder she asked, for the girl with the iron safely upheld, that it might not scorch the shirt front, was staring with a startled expression out of the window toward the long lane.
Susan Warner had not seen the missionary’s older daughter in many years, and so she did not recognize her as being the young lady in the lead mounted on a nervous, high-stepping black horse. Following were two other girls in fashionable riding habits on small brown horses. But the old woman did not need to be told who the visitor was, for at once she knew. There was indeed a resemblance to her own Jenny in the face and the very build of the girl in the lead. However, a stranger who did not know the relationship would think little of it because of the difference in the expressions. One face indicated a selfish, proud, haughty nature, the other was far more sensitive, joyous and loving. Jenny was again ironing when the old woman turned from the window to ask, “Do yo’ know who they be?”
“Why, yes, Granny; the one ahead is Gwynette Poindexter-Jones, and the two others are her best friends, the ones who came to Granger Place with her from San Francisco. You know I saw them all close up this noon when I waited on table over at the seminary.”
Susan Warner had stepped out on the side porch when the young lady in the lead drew rein. She wanted to close the door, shutting Jenny in, but since the door stood open from dawn until sunset each day, she knew that such an act would arouse suspicion. Buthowshe did wish she could prevent Jenny’s meeting her very own sister and being treated as an inferior.
The girl at the ironing board listened intently, strainingly, that she might hear if the selling of the farm was mentioned.
Gwynette was saying, “My mother told me to ride over to our farm some day and ask you to see that the big house is put in readiness for occupancy by the first of July. Ma Mere said that you could hire day labor to have the cleaning done, but that she prefers to engage our permanent servants after she arrives.”
How unlike her dear grandmother’s voice was the one that was coldly replying: “I reckon your ma’ll write any orders she has for me. She allays does.”
If Gwynette recognized a rebelliousness in the remark and manner of the farmer’s wife, she put it down to ill-breeding and ignorance, and so said in her grandest air, “Kindly bring us each a drink of milk.” Then, turning to her friends, she added, “All of the produce of the farm is for our use, but since we are seldom here, it is, of course, sold in the village. I suppose Ma Mere receives the profits.”
“Aren’t you being unnecessarily rude?” Beulah Hollingsworth inquired. Gwynette shrugged. “Oh, nobody heard,” she said in a tone which implied that she would not have cared if they had. But she was mistaken, for Jenny had heard and her cheeks flamed with unaccustomed anger.
“Are the bees yours also?” Patricia Sullivan inquired, glancing back at the orchard where a constant humming told that swarms of tiny winged creatures were gathering sweets.
“Why, of course,” was the languidly given reply. “We’ll take some of the honey back with us. These people have to do as I say. They are just our servants.” To the amazement of the three, a flashing-eyed girl darted out on the porch as she cried, “You shallnotcall my grandmother and my grandfather your servants. And those beesdo notbelong to you. I bought them, and the white hens, with myvery ownChristmas and birthday money.”
Susan Warner, coming from the cooling cellar with three goblets of milk, was amazed, for very seldom had she seen a flash of temper in the sweet brown eyes of her girl.
“Never mind, dearie, whatever ’twas they said,” she murmured in a low voice. “Go back to your ironin’, Jenny; do, to please your ol’ granny.”
Obediently the girl returned to the kitchen, but she felt sure, from the fleeting glance she gave the companions of Gwynette, thattheywere not in sympathy with her rudeness.
After drinking the milk, the three rode away, and from the indignant tones of one of them the listeners knew that the proud daughter of Mrs. Poindexter-Jones had been angered by the attitude of her mother’s servants.
Jenny’s heart was indeed heavy as she contemplated the dreary possibility that her angry words might hasten the day when her loved ones would lose their home.
Sadly she finished her task and put away the ironing board. Then she recalled that an hour before she had assured herself that nothing else of an unusual nature was apt to happen in that day already crowded with events, but she had been mistaken. She had met Harold’s sister and had quarreled with her. Then, and for the first time, she realized that she had half hoped that the daughter of their next door neighbor and she might become friends. Jenny had never had a close girl friend, and like all other girls she had yearned for one.
“Dearie,” her grandmother was making an evident effort at cheeriness, “if you’ll be settin’ the table, I’ll start the pertatoes to fryin’. Here comes your grandpa. He looks all petered out, and he’ll want his supper early.”
Jenny smiled her brightest as she began the task of consoling herself with the thought that Harold Poindexter-Jones was their true friend, and how she did wish that she might seehimand ask him if the farm was to be sold.
The next morning, while Jenny was standing in front of her mirror in her sun-flooded bedroom nearest the sea, she reviewed in memory the events of the day previous. She found it hard to understand her own anger or why it had flared so uncontrollably. After all Grandpa Siwasthe farmer in Mrs. Poindexter-Jones’ employ and, what was more, Grandma Suehadbeen housekeeper over at the big house for years before Jenny had been born, and there was no disgrace in that. The girl challenged the thought that had recalled this almost forgotten fact. Didn’t Miss Dearborn say that it is not your occupation but what you are that really counts?
Determinedly she put from her the troubling memory and centered her attention for the first time on the reflection before her. She did indeed look pretty in the ruffled white muslin with the pink sprig embroidery, and tender brown eyes looked out from under a wide white hat, pink wreathed. There was no complaining thought in her heart because both dress and hat were many summers old.
Opening a drawer in her old-fashioned bureau, Jenny took out her prized pink silk parasol and removed its soft paper wrappings.
A mocking bird just outside her open window poured one joyous song after another into the peaceful sunlit air. For a thoughtful moment the girl gazed out at the shimmering blue sea. “I’m sorry I flared up at Harold’s sister,” she said aloud. Then hearing her grandmother calling from the side porch, she sang out: “Coming, Granny Sue.”
Jenny could not have told why everything and everyone revolved around Harold P-J. She thought of the proud woman, whom she had once seen in the long ago, as “Harold’s mother,” and of the girl whom she had defied as “Harold’s sister,” yet she had not seen the boy since that stormy day two years before.
Skipping to the side porch, she found Grandma Sue looking very sweet in her lavender muslin, and tiny black bonnet with lavender ribbons, already up on the wide seat of the buggy. Breaking a few blossoms from the heliotrope at the corner of the house, Jenny handed them up to her. “Put them on, somewhere,” she called merrily, “and I shall have a cluster of pink Cecile Brunner roses for my belt. Granddad, how dressed up you look in the shirt that I ironed. Do you want a buttonhole bouquet?”
“Me?” the old man’s horrified expression amused the girl. Standing on tiptoe, she kissed his brown, wrinkled cheek, then clambered up beside her grandmother.
Silas Warner climbed over the wheel and took up the loose rein. Dobbin was indeed a remarkable horse. He seemed to know that on Sunday he was to turn toward the village, and yet he stopped after having cantered about two miles and turned down a pine-edged lane that led to St. Martin’s-by-the-Sea. It was the only church in all that part of the country, and so was attended by rich and poor alike. The seminary girls attended the service all together and filled one side of the small church. Jenny, near the aisle, close to the back, was kneeling in prayer when a late arrival entered and knelt in front of her. It was a young man dressed in a military school uniform.
Grandpa Si was the first to recognize the stranger and he whispered to his companion: “Ma ain’t that little Harry?”
Discreetly the good woman nodded, her eyes never leaving the face of the preacher who was beginning his sermon. Jenny’s heart was in a flutter of excitement. Surely it was her friend Harold P-J, and yet, two years before he had been just a boy. Now he was much taller with such broad shoulders and how straight he stood when they rose to sing a hymn. She had not seen his face as she was directly behind him. Perhaps, after all, she was mistaken, she thought, for she had plainly heard his sister tell her friends that Harold was not expected until the mother returned from France in July and it was only the first week in May. But she had not been wrong, as she discovered as soon as the benediction had been said, for the young man turned with such a pleased expression on his good looking face, and, holding out his hand to the older woman, he said with ringing sincerity in his voice. “It’s great, Mrs. Warner, to see you looking so well.” Then, after giving a hearty handshake, and receiving two from the farmer, the boy turned smilingly toward Jenny. “You aren’t, youcan’tbe that little, rubber-hooded girl whom I picked up two years ago in the storm!”
“I am though.” Jenny’s rose-tinted cheeks were of a deeper hue, “But you also have grown.”
Standing very straight and tall, the boy looked down beamingly upon all three. “I’ll say I have,” he agreed, “but honestly I do hope I’m not going up any higher.” Then after a quick glance across the aisle, where the Granger Place Young Ladies were filing out, he said hastily. “Mrs. Warner, won’t you invite a stranded youth to take dinner with you today? I’ve got to see sister this afternoon, and return to the big city tonight, but I’m pining to have a real visit with you.” Then to Jenny, by way of explanation. “Perhaps you never heard about it, but your Grandma Sue took care of me the first three years of my life and so I shall always consider her a grandmother of mine.” Susan Warner’s mind had flown hastily back to the home larder. What did she have cooked that was fine enough for company. But the youth seemed to understand. “Just anything that you have ready is what I want. No fuss and feathers, remember that. I’ll be there in one hour. Will that be time enough?”
Grandpa Si spoke up heartily. “I reckon you’ll find a dinner waitin’ whenever you get there, Harry-boy.”
Gwynette received her brother with a sneering curve to her mouth that might have been pretty. “Well, didn’t you know that everyone in the church was watching you and criticizing you for making such a fuss over our mother’s servants,” was her ungracious greeting. A dull red appeared in the boy’s cheeks, but he checked the angry words before they were uttered. Instead he said: “Gwynette, may I call at the seminary this afternoon? I have had a letter from Mother and I want to talk it over with you.”
“This afternoon?” a rising inflection of inquiry. “Aren’t you going to take me to The Palms to dine? I’m just starved for a real course dinner and the minute I saw you I made up my mind that was what we would do.”
The boy hesitated. His conscience rebuked him. He knew that their mother would expect him to be chivalrous to his sister. He also knew that a vision in pink and white, a pair of appealing liquid brown eyes had, for the moment caused him to forget his duty. “All right, sis,” he said, trying not to let the reluctance in his heart show in his voice. “Ask your chaperone if you may go with me now.”
As soon as he was alone, Harold hurried around the vine-covered church to the sheds where he hoped to find the Warner family. They were just driving out of the lane, but the old man drew rein when he saw the lad hurrying toward them.
“I’m terribly sorry, Mrs. Warner,” he began with a ring of sincerity in his voice, which carried conviction to the listeners. “Gwynette wants me to take her to The Palms for dinner, and, of course,thatis what our mother would wish me to do.”
“Wall, wall, that’s all right, Harry,” Grandpa Si put in consolingly. “’Taint as though you can’t come again. You’re welcome over to the farm whenever you’re down this way.”
Harold’s last glance was directed at the girl as also was his parting remark. “I’m going to run down from the city real soon. Good-bye.”
Jenny was truly disappointed as she had hoped to have an opportunity to ask the lad if it were true that his mother planned selling the farm during the summer.
She consoled herself by recalling his promise to come back soon. And then as Dobbin trotted briskly homeward, the girl fell to dreaming of the various things that might happen during the summer.
“The Palms,” architecturally a Mission Inn, was gorgeously furnished and catered only to the ultra-rich. It was located picturesquely on a cliff with a circling palm-edged drive leading to it.
Santa Barbara was both a winter and summer resort and its hostelries were famed the world over.
Gwynette led her brother to the table of her choice in the luxurious dining room, the windows of which, crystal clear, overlooked the ocean. She was fretful and pouting. Harold, after having drawn out her chair, seated himself and looked almost pensively at the shimmering blue expanse, so close to them, just below the cliff.
“You aren’t paying the least bit of attention to me,” Gwynette complained. “I just asked if you weren’t pining to be over in Paris this spring.”
The lad turned and looked directly at the girl, candor in his clear grey eyes.
“Why no, sister, I do not wish anything of the sort,” he replied sincerely. “What Idohope is that our mother will be well enough to return to us, and that the quiet of our country home will completely restore her health.”
Gwynette shrugged her shoulders, but said nothing, until their orders had been given; then she remarked:
“I don’t see why our mother needs to rusticate for three months in this stupid place. Ifwecould have a house party, of course, that would help to make it endurable forme, but in her last letter Ma Mere distinctly said that we were to invite no one, as her nerves were in need of absolute quiet.”
The boy, who had folded his arms looked at his sister penetratingly, almost critically. Suddenly he blurted out:
“Do you know, Gwynette, sometimes I think you do not care, really care, deep in your heart for our mother as much as I do. In fact, I sometimes wonder if you care for anyone except yourself.”