Sisters

The girl, who had been gazing at the bowl of golden poppies on the middle of the table with unconscious abstraction, looked up with a bright smile. Luckily her grandfather’s remark gave her a suggestion to enlarge upon. Turning to the little old woman whose sweet blue eyes were watchfully inquiring, the girl said: “Something has happened, or rather it is going to happen.” She paused a moment, but her grandfather urged: “Do go on, Jenny. Don’t let’s stop for no guessin’ contest this time. I’ve got to get out early to the cultivatin’.”

Jenny told how the Board of Education had required Miss Dearborn to take a teacher’s examination before she had been permitted to continue instructing her one lone pupil.

“Tut! Tut! Wall now, yo’ don’ tell?” Grandma Sue was much impressed. “Did Miss Dearborn go an’ take them teachin’ examinations jest so she could keep on helpin’ yo’ wi’ your studies?”

The girl nodded. “She must set a power by you,” the old woman concluded. Grandpa Si spoke up. “Huh, how could she help it? I reckon every critter as knows Jenny sets a power by her, but thar must be more to the yarn. I don’ see anything, so far, for you to fret about.”

“Yes, there is more,” Jenny agreed, “Miss Dearborn has had a letter from the Board of Education saying that I must take the high school examinations next month. Think of it, Granny Sue! I’ve got to go to that big new high school over in Santa Barbara where I don’t know a single soul, and take written examinations, when I never have had even one in all my life.”

Again the grandfather’s faith in his “gal” was expressed. “It’s my notion when them examinations are tuk, your’s ’ll be leadin’ all the rest. Thar ain’t many gals as sober minded as yo’ be, Jenny, not by a long ways.”

The girl’s merry laughter pealed out and the twinkle in her liquid brown eyes did not suggest sober-mindedness. Rising she skipped around the table kissing affectionately her grandfather’s bald spot.

“Here’s hoping that you won’t be disappointed in your granddaughter. But really she isn’t half as wise as you think she is.” Then turning toward the smiling old woman, she concluded, “Is she, Mrs. Susan Warner?”

The sweet blue eyes told much more than the reply. “Wall, I reckon yo’ won’t come out tail-end.”

Again the girl laughed, then donning her hat and taking her books, she merrily called “Good-bye.” But her expression changed when she reached the lane and started walking briskly toward the highway.

The real cause of her anxiety returned to trouble her thoughts. “Oh, I must study so hard, so hard,” she told herself. “Then I will be able to be a teacher and make a home for my dear old grandparents. How I hope the farm will not be sold until then.”

Jenny did not follow the highway, but took a short cut trail to Miss Dearborn’s hillside home. It led over a rugged upland where gnarled live oaks twisted their rough barked branches into fantastic shapes. Jenny loved low-growing oaks and she never climbed through this particular grove of them, however occupied her thoughts might be as they were on this troubled morning, without giving them a greeting. “I’m glad that Miss Dearborn is teaching me mythology, for otherwise I wouldn’t know that each of these trees is really the home of a dryad, beautiful, slender graceful sprites, born when the tree is born and dying when the tree dies. How I would love to come here some moon-lit night in the spring and watch them dance to the piping of Pan. They would have wide fluttering sleeves in their garments woven of mist and moonbeams and they would be crowned with oak leaves, but how sad it would be if a woodchopper came and chopped down one of the trees, for that night there would be one less dryad at the dance on the hill.”

Beyond the trees there was a long sweep of meadowland down the hill side to the highway, and beyond to the rocky edge of the sea. On this bright, spring morning it was a glittering, gleaming carpet of waving poppy cups of gold.

Joyfully the girl cried, pausing on the edge of it, “O, I know the poem Miss Dearborn would quote. I thought of it right away.” Then she recited aloud, though there was no one to hear.

“I wandered lonely as a cloudThat floats on high o’er vales and hills,When all at once I saw a crowd,A host of shining daffodilsBeside the lake, beneath the treesFluttering and dancing in the breeze.Continuous as the stars that shine,And twinkle on the milky way,They stretched in never ending line,Along the margin of the bay.Ten thousand saw I at a glanceTossing their heads in sprightly dance.The waves beside them danced, but theyOutdid the sparkling waves in glee.A poet could not but be gayIn such a jocund company.I gazed and gazed, but little thoughtWhat wealth to me the show had brought.For oft when on my couch I lieIn vacant or in pensive mood,They flash upon that inward eyeWhich is the bliss of solitude.And then my heart with rapture fillsAnd dances with the daffodils.

“If only Wordsworth had lived in California,” she thought as she continued on her way, “he would have written just such a poem about these fields of golden poppies.”

Ten minutes later, the girl, feeling an inward glow from so close a communion with Nature, the greatest of artist-poets, skipped between the two graceful pepper trees that were the gate posts of Miss Dearborn’s attractive hillside home.

“Well, dearie, how bright you are this morning,” was the greeting the woman, digging about in her garden, sang out. Then, standing her hoe against a rustic bench, she began taking off her gloves, as together they walked toward the house. “I am indeed glad,” she concluded, “for you are to have a hard testing today.”

Instantly the morning glow faded from the girl’s face and a troubled expression clouded her eyes. “Miss Dearborn, what now?”

The older woman laughed. “No need of high tragedy,” she said. “It’s only that I have paid a visit to the principal of the high school, and have obtained from him the questions used on examinations for several years past, and today I am going to give you your first written test. We have nearly a month for review, and each week I shall ask you one complete set of questions of previous years and then, at least, you will be familiar with written examinations.”

“Oh, Miss Dearborn, how kind, how wonderfully kind you are to me. It would be most ungrateful of me to fail.”

“Fail? There is no such word for the earnest student who has worked faithfully day by day all through the term as my pupil has. There will be no need of that nerve-racking system called cramming for you.” Then, as they ascended the steps to the wide veranda, Miss Dearborn exclaimed, “See, I’ve put a table in the glassed-in corner. I’m going to shut you in there until noon with the questions, and I shall expect your average to be 90 at least.”

Jenny felt a little thrill of excitement course over her, and she started at her new task with a determination to try her best to be worthy of the faith placed in her by the three who loved her so dearly.

CHAPTER XII.

PLOTS AND PLAYS

Meanwhile a very different scene was being enacted in the Granger Place Seminary.

Gwynette Poindexter-Jones occupied the largest and most attractively furnished room on the second floor of the dormitory building, and her two best friends shared the one adjoining. There was a bath between with doors opening upon a narrow private corridor.

Gwynette had not liked the room when she first arrived, as it was, she declared, too “barnlike” in its barrenness. Miss Granger regretted this, as she assured the daughter of her richest patron, but she really could not furnish the rooms to please the young ladies, and there was no other apartment available at that late period of the term.

The haughty Gwynette had then requested that the furniture in the room be removed. After this had been done, she brought from her mother’s home by the sea handsome mahogany pieces upholstered in rich blue. There were portieres and window hangings to match and priceless pictures adorned the walls. The furnishing in the room of her friends had remained unchanged and was far more appropriate, in that it suggested studiousness rather than indolence and luxury.

Gwynette, in a velvet dressing robe of the same rich blue embroidered with gold in chrysanthemum design, was lying at full length on a many-cushioned lounge, a blue and gold slipper dangling from the toe of one foot. She was reading a forbidden novel, and eating chocolate creams, when there came a soft tap on the door leading into the main corridor. Gwynette always kept it locked that she need not be surprised by the appearance of Madam Vandeheuton, monitor of the dormitory, or by one of the infrequent visits of Miss Granger herself. Sitting erect, the girl’s eyes narrowed as she pondered.

Should she keep very still and pretend that she was out, or —

Her thought was interrupted by a low voice calling: “Gwyn, let us in, can’t you!” Languidly the girl rose and, after unlocking the door, she inquired of the two who entered: “What’s the idea? You know the door between our rooms is always unlocked. Couldn’t you come in that way?”

Beulah Hollingsworth reached down to the little blue velvet stool near the couch and helped herself to a chocolate. “Of course we could have come the usual way, only we were passing through the corridor and so this door was nearer.”

“Well, don’t do it again. I implore.” Gwynette once more stretched at full length and ease as she remarked indolently, “It’s easier for you to go around than for me to get up. Well?”

She looked inquiringly at Patricia Sullivan. “Did you call on the sphynx and get at her secret? Sit down, do! It makes me tired to see you standing so stiffly as though you had ramrods for backbones.”

Both of the girls sat down, one on a Louis XVI chair and the other on one of recent and more comfortable design. Beulah began —

“Yes, we called and found Clare Tasselwood as uncommunicative as she was when we met her in the garden and tried to draw her out.”

Patricia continued —

“But I am more than ever convinced that the secretive Clare is the daughter of a younger son of a noble English family. My theory is that she is going to keep quiet about it until the older son dies, and then those who befriended her when she was unknown will be honored as her guests when she takes her rightful place.”

“Well, I for one shall cultivate her. An invitation to visit the castle home of Lord Tasselwood would be most welcome to me. You girls may do as you please about it.” Gwynette was again in a sitting posture and she glanced inquiringly at her companions. They both declared that they wished to be included. “Then, firstly, we must obtain permission to give a spread worthy of her presence, at The Palms, no less, even if it costs our combined allowances for a month.”

Then they planned together what they would wear and whom they would invite. “We’ll ask my brother to bring down as many cadets as we have girls,” was Gwyn’s final decision.

When Clare Tasselwood received the gilt-edged invitation, there was a little twist to one corner of her month which was her way of smiling when she was amused, and cynical. She had overheard a conversation the day they had met in the garden. “The Lady Clara of Tasselwood Manor accepts with pleasure,” she told her reflection in the mirror.

CHAPTER XIII.

FERNS AND FRIENDS

True to her promise, Jenny Warner went to the seminary on Monday, after her lessons were over, to see if she could be of assistance to Miss O’Hara.

The kindly Irish woman saw the girl coming and met her at the open kitchen door with so beaming a face that the newcomer was convinced that something of a pleasant nature had occurred, nor was she wrong.

“Colleen, it’s true blue you are, keepin’ your word so handsome, but there’s no need for you to be stayin’. Another of them orphans blew in along about noon-time, and it did me heart good to set eyes on the bright face of her. She went to work with a will, not wishin’ to rest even. Her name’s Nora O’Flynn, and her forebears came from the same part of old Ireland which gave birth to mesilf. ’Twon’t be hard to be makin’ the kitchen homelike for this orphan,” she concluded.

Jenny went away joyfully. Things had turned out wonderfully for them all. Miss O’Hara could never have been happy with Etta Heldt, who was of a race she could not understand, but now that she was to have with her one of her own people, her long days of drudgery would be lightened and brightened.

As Jenny tripped down the box-bordered path leading from the seminary to a canyon trail that would be a short-cut to the farm, she passed the tennis courts, where several games were in progress. She glanced at the players, wondering if any of them might be the haughty sister of Harold P-J. But tennis was altogether too strenuous a pastime for the ever indolent Gwynette.

The back trail led along the Sycamore Canyon creek, where ferns of many varieties were growing; some were as tall as the girl who was passing them, while, among the moss-covered rocks, close to the brook, were the more feathery and delicate maiden hair ferns. It had been very warm in the sun, but there was a most welcome damp coolness in the canyon. For a moment Jenny stood still at the top of the trail gazing down, listening to the quietness, broken only by the constant gurgling rush of the water. Then she started walking slowly along the trail, picking her way carefully, as it was rough and rocky, and at places very narrow. It amused her to note the different sounds of the brook. At one spot there was a whirling little eddy, then a sudden fall over a steep rock, then a hurried rushing till a broad pool-like place was reached. There the waters were deeper and quieter, as though pausing for a moment’s rest before taking a plunge of many feet to the lower part of the canyon. Just above the Maiden-hair Falls, a rustic bridge crossed from one great boulder to another, and, as Jenny came in sight of it, she stopped, amazed, for there, sitting on one end of the bridge and leaning against the bending trunk of a great old sycamore tree, was a girl of her own age. Who could she be? Jenny had not heard of anyone new moving into the neighborhood. In fact, there were no houses in the canyon except the one occupied by the Pascoli family.

A small stone, disturbed by Jenny’s foot, rattled noisily down the trail, struck the bridge and bounded away into the lower canyon.

The stranger glanced up with an expression that was almost startled and Jenny saw that it was the girl in brown whom she had twice noticed: once in the yard of the seminary, when she had been left so alone, and again in the dining hall when she had passed a dish, almost shyly, to the grand appearing Clare Tasselwood. Jenny remembered that this girl had said “Thank you,” and had smiled pleasantly when her cup had been filled with chocolate. She was smiling again, a bright welcoming smile, which assured Jenny that the stranger wished to speak to her, nor was she wrong, for, as soon as the bridge was reached, the girl in brown exclaimed: “Isn’t this a wonderful place that I’ve found? It’s the first time since I came to this school that I haven’t been depressingly lonesome.”

Jenny’s heart rejoiced. This girl must also love nature if she could feel real companionship in an almost silent canyon. Impulsively, she said, “Shall you mind if I sit here with you for a time?”

“Mind?” The other girl’s brown eyes gladdened. “I was hoping that you would.”

Jenny seated herself on the rustic bridge directly over the rushing falls. “Oh, hadn’t you better move over near this end?” her companion asked anxiously. “Won’t the hurrying whirl of the water underneath make you dizzy?”

Jenny shook her head. “We’re old friends,” she explained. “I am acquainted with Sycamore Canyon brook from its very beginning way up in the foothills, and it flows into the sea not far from the farm where I live.”

“Oh, good!” Again the bright upward glance. “I’m so glad you live on a farm, for I do also, when I’m at home in Dakota. My father is a farmer. I haven’t told it before, fearing the seminary girls might snub me if they knew. Not that I would care much. All I ask of them is to let me alone, and they certainly do that.” Then in a burst of confidence, “I really don’t know what to say to girls, nor how to act with them. I have lived so many years on an isolated farm and, would you believe it, I never, actually never, had a flesh and blood girl friend. I’ve had steens and steens of book-character friends, and I honestly believe, on the whole, I like them best.” Then with a shy side glance, “Do you think I am queer? Tell me so truly if you do.”

Jenny moved closer to the girl in brown as she exclaimed, “Yes, I do think you are queer, if queer means different from those other girls.” Then she laughingly confessed, “The truth is I never had a girl friend either, not one, but I have lots of make-believe friends, so, you see, I also am queer.”

The girl in brown beamed, “O, I am so glad, for maybe, do you think possibly you and I might become friends, being both queer and all that?”

Jenny nodded joyfully. “Why, of course we can be friends if you wish. That is, if Miss Granger would want you to be friendly with any but the gentry. Perhaps she doesn’t allow the pupils of her school to make acquaintances on the outside.”

This thought was not at all troubling to the strange girl. “You see,” she began seriously, “I am not subject to the rules governing the other pupils.”

Then, noting the puzzled expression in the listener’s eyes, she leaned back against the tree as she laughingly continued: “Suppose I begin at the beginning and then you will understand about me once for all.”

“We don’t even know each other’s names,” Jenny put in. “Mine is Jeanette Warner. I have always lived with my grandparents on Rocky Point farm, which belongs to the estate of the Poindexter-Jones family.” A shadow passed over the speaker’s face, which, a moment before, had been so bright. “I want to be real honest before we begin a friendship. We are not farmers in our own right. We are hired to run a farm, therefore we are servants in the employ of the mother of one of your classmates. At least that is what Gwynette Poindexter-Jones calls us.”

The observant listener saw the flush mounting to her new friend’s cheeks, and, impulsively, she reached out a hand and placed it on the one near her. “What does that matter? I mean so far as our friendship is concerned,” she asked.

Jenny was relieved. “Doesn’t it really? Well, then I’m glad. Now please tell me all about yourself from the very beginning.”

Jenny noticed that her companion looked frail and so she was not surprised to hear her say that she had been very ill. “Lenora Gale is my name,” she began, “and my family consists of an unequalled father, and of a brother who is just as nice only younger. My dearest mother died of lung trouble years ago, and every time since then when I have caught cold, it has taken my vitality to an alarming extent, and last fall, when the bitter winter weather set in, and oh, how cold our northern winters are, father wanted me sent to California, but he could not come himself. Brother Charles wished to attend an agricultural college near Berkeley and so I was put in a boarding school up there, just as a place to stay and be well cared for. I was not to attend classes unless I desired. But the rainy season continued for so long that Brother thought best to bring me farther south, and that is why I am now in the Granger Place Seminary.”

Jenny rose and held out a hand. “Lenora Gale,” she said seriously, “the damp coolness of this canyon will not do at all for you. I’m going to walk back with you to the top of the trail. I can see quite plainly that you need a friend to look after you.” And evidently Jenny was right, for the rough upward climb was hard for the girl who had not been well, and she scarcely spoke until they said good-bye at the side door of the seminary. Then she turned and clung to the hand of her new friend as she said imploringly, “You won’t just disappear and forget me, will you? I do so want to see you again.”

“Indeed not,” Jenny assured her. “I’ll come up and get you tomorrow, if I may have Dobbin, and take you home to supper. I want you to meet Grandma Sue and Grandpa Si.”

Lenora’s pale face brightened. “Oh, how wonderful that will be. I wish today were tomorrow.”

Again Jenny descended the Sycamore Canyon brook trail, but this time she skipped along that she need not be late to help get supper. At the bridge, though, she stopped for one moment as at a shrine. “Here,” she said aloud, “is where I met my first girl friend.” A lizard on a stone near lifted its gray head and looked at her with bright black eyes, but Jenny, with a song of gladness, passed on down the trail, for once without noticing the wild life about her.

CHAPTER XIV.

DEAREST DESIRES

On the day following the meeting of the two girls on the rustic bridge over Maiden Hair Falls, Jenny, true to her promise, drove to the seminary ostensibly to deliver an order of honey and eggs, but a girl in brown rode with her on the high front seat when Dobbin turned out of the school gates. Another girl was watching them from her wide, upper window. Turning back into the room, she remarked to two others who were trying to study: “That Lenora Gale must belong to the bourgeoise. She is actually going for a ride with the granddaughter of my mother’s servants.”

Patricia Sullivan turned a page in the book she was conning and remarked without looking up: “Gwyn, how can you expect to win honors if you never open your books?”

The girl addressed sank languidly into a comfortable chair, picked up her novel and replied, as she found her place: “Me, win honors? Why should I, pray? Does it make one a more winsome debutante? You must know that this is to be my last year of confinement within the walls of a seminary. Ma Mere has promised to give me a coming-out party when I am eighteen which will dazzle even blasé San Francisco.”

Beulah arose, as she said rather impatiently: “Well, Gwyn, just because you do not wish to learn is no reason why Pat and I should follow in your footsteps. I’m going to our own room where I can study uninterrupted.”

“I’ll go with you.” Patricia arose to accompany her friend. “Au revoir!”

Gwynette, having found her place, was too absorbed in her story to reply.

Meanwhile Jenny and Lenora were having the happiest kind of time riding down the gently sloping hill, now in the sunlight and again in the shadow of great overhanging trees.

“Has anything pleasant happened since yesterday?” Lenora asked with a side glance at the beaming face of the driver.

“Yes, indeed,” the other girl nodded gleefully. “I passed 100 per cent in two subjects and over 90 per cent in all the others.”

The brown eyes of her companion were questioning. “Why, I didn’t know you were going to have examination. In fact, I didn’t know anything about your school. Is there one near or do you have to go to Santa Barbara?”

Jenny told the story of her schooling from its beginning to a most interested listener. “Oh, how I do envy you.” Lenora exclaimed. “If I had had a teacher like your Miss Dearborn, I would be wiser than I am. We always lived too far away from a school for me to attend one. Dad has tutored me when he had time and so has Brother during his vacations.” Then the girl’s face brightened. “But my best teachers have been books themselves. How I have enjoyed them! Dad ordered all of the books in a graded reading course for me, and I have shelf after shelf filled with them around the walls of my room. I especially like nature poetry.”

Jenny flashed a bright smile at her companion. “Oh, I am so glad!” she cried. “Miss Dearborn is teaching me to love it. She wants me to be able to quote some poem that will describe every beautiful thing in nature that I see. Of course, I can’t always think of one, but then I store the scene away in my memory and ask Miss Dearborn what poem it would suggest to her.”

“I would love to know your teacher,” Lenora said. “I believe I could learn rapidly if I had her to teach me.”

“It’s almost the end of the school year,” Jenny commented, as she looked up and down the Coast Highway before crossing it, “and, anyway, I suppose it would hardly do for a pupil of the seminary to be taught by someone outside when they have special teachers there for all subjects.”