Sisters

“No, of course not,” her companion agreed. Then, as they started down the long narrow lane leading to the farmhouse, the girl in brown exclaimed: “Oh, Jenny, do you live in that picturesque old adobe house so near the sea? I adore the ocean and I haven’t been real close to it since I came. It’s so very warm today, don’t you think we might go down to the very edge of the water and sit on the sand?”

Jenny nodded brightly: “We’ll go out on Rocky Point,” she said. “You’ll love it, I’m sure.” Then impulsively, “Oh, Lenora Gale, you don’t know what it means to me to have a girl friend who likes the same things that I like.”

“Yes, I do know,” the other girl replied sincerely, “for it means the same to me.”

Grandma Warner was delighted with Jenny’s new friend, and, as for Lenora, she was most enthusiastic about everything around the farm. She thought the old adobe house with its heavy beams simply fascinating, and when she saw Jenny’s very own room with its windows opening out toward the point of rocks and the sea, she declared that she knew, if only she could sleep in a room like that, she would not be troubled with long hours of wakefulness as she had been since her last illness. “The ocean sings a lullabye to you all of the time, doesn’t it?” she turned to say.

Jenny, who was indeed pleased with her friend’s phrase, nodded, then she laughingly confessed that sometimes, when there was a high wind or a storm, the song of the sea was a little too wild and loud to lull one to slumber. But her listener’s eyes glowed all the more. “How I would love to hear it then. I would want to stay awake to listen to the crashing of the waves.” Then she said: “I suppose you think me foolishly enthusiastic about it, but when one has lived for years and years on an inland prairie, the sea is very strange and wonderful.”

Jenny nodded understandingly. “I don’t believe I could live far away from the coast,” she commented. “I would feel as though a very important part of my life had been taken from me. I have always lived within sound of the sea, but come, I want to take you down to the Rocky Point.” The girls went again through the kitchen, and Jenny said to the dear little old lady who was sitting on the vine-hung side porch, busy, as always, with her sewing, “Grandma Sue, please let Lenora and me get the supper. We won’t be gone more than an hour and after that will be plenty of time.”

Lenora’s face brightened. “Oh, Mrs. Warner, how I wish you would let us. It would be such a treat to me. I love to cook, but it has been perfect ages since I have been allowed in a kitchen, and yours is so homey and different.”

Susan Warner nodded a pleased consent. “I reckon you may, if it’s what you’re wantin’ to do,” she said. Then she dropped her sewing in her lap, pushed her spectacles up among the lavender ribbons of her cap and gazed after the two girls as they went hand in hand down the path that led toward the Rocky Point. “It’s a pleasant sight,” the old woman thought, “Jenny having a friend of her own kind at last, and her, being a farmer’s gal, makes our darlin’ feel right at home wi’ her. Not one of the upstandin’ sort like Gwynette Poindexter-Jones.” There was seldom a hard expression on the loving old face, but there was one at that moment. The spectacles had been replaced and Susan Warner began to stab her needle into the blue patch she was putting on a pair of overalls in a manner that suggested that her thoughts were of no gentle nature.

“What right has one of ’em to be puttin’ on airs over the other of ’em? That’s what I’d like to be told. They bein’ flesh and blood sisters even if one of ’em has been fetched up grand. But I reckon there’s a justice in this world, an’ I can trust it to take keer o’ things.”

Having reached this more satisfactory state of mind, the old woman again glanced toward the point and saw the two girls climbing out on the highest rock. Jenny was carefully holding her friend’s hand and leading her to a wide boulder against which the waves had crashed in many a storm until they had cut out a hollow resembling a canopy-covered chair wide enough for two to sit comfortably.

It was low tide at that hour, and, when they were seated, Lenora exclaimed joyfully: “Oh, isn’t this the nicest place for confidences? Let’s tell each other a secret, shall we? That will make us intimate friends.”

Jenny smiled happily. “I don’t believe I have any secrets, that is, none of my own that I could share.” Miss Dearborn’s secret was the only one she knew.

“Then let’s tell our dearest desires,” Lenora suggested, “and I will begin.”

Then she laughingly confessed: “It will not take long to tell, however. I want to grow strong and well that I may become father’s housekeeper. It is desperately lonely for him with both Mother and me away, and yet, since his interests are all bound up in our Dakota farm, he cannot leave it, and so, you see, I must get well as soon as ever I can.”

Jenny nodded understandingly. “My dearest desire is to find a way by which I can help Grandpa Si buy Rocky Point farm. I have thought and thought, but, of course, just thinking doesn’t help much. There are ten acres in it, from the sea back to the highway, and then to the tall hedge you can see over there. That is where the Poindexter-Jones’ grounds begin, and in the other direction to where the canyon brook runs into the ocean.”

“It is a beautiful little farm. I wish you could buy it. How much do you suppose it will sell for?” Lenora asked, but Jenny did not know. Then she sighed as she added that she supposed they would know soon, for the daughter of Mrs. Poindexter-Jones had said that it was to be sold in the summer when her mother returned from France. But, as it was not natural for Jenny to be long depressed, she smilingly announced that she had two other desires that were very dear. One was that she did so want her wonderful teacher to remain in California another winter. “If she doesn’t, if Miss Dearborn goes back East, I will have to go to the Santa Barbara High School next year, and no one knows how I would dread that. I even dread going there for a few days next month to take the written examinations.”

Jenny had one more desire, which she did not mention, but, as she glanced across the green field and saw the turrets of the deserted Poindexter-Jones home, she thought of Harold and wondered when he would come again. He had said that he would run down some time soon and have dinner with them. Then, surely, she would have an opportunity to be alone with him long enough to ask about the farm.

Arousing herself from her thoughts, Jenny glanced at her companion and saw, on the sweet face, an expression of infinite sadness. Impulsively she reached out a strong brown hand and placed it lovingly over the frail one near her.

“Lenora, aren’t you happy, dear?”

The brown eyes that were lifted were filled with tears. “There is something sad about the ocean and Tennyson’s poem makes me think of my dear mother. No one can ever know how I miss her. We were more like two sisters, even though I was so very young. Mother died when I was twelve.”

“What poem is it, dear? Shall you mind repeating it to me? I haven’t had any of Tennyson’s poetry yet.” Then Jenny added hastily, “but don’t, if you would rather not.”

“I would like to.” In a voice that was almost tearful, Lenora began:

“Break, break, breakOn thy cold gray stones, O Sea.And I would that my tongue could utterThe thoughts that arise in me.O well for the fisherman’s boyThat he shouts with his sister at play!O well for the sailor ladThat he sings in his boat on the bay!And the stately ships go onTo their haven under the hill!But O for the touch of a vanished handAnd the sound of a voice that is still!Break, break, breakAt the foot of thy crags, O Sea!But the tender grace of a day that is deadWill never come back to me.”

Then, before Jenny could comment on the poem, Lenora said, smiling through her tears, “That is what the poets do for us: they express our emotions better than we could ourselves.” Not wishing to depress her friend, she arose, held out a hand as she entreated: “Please help me down to that shining white sand.”

Such a happy half hour as they spent and when at last they started back toward the house, Jenny, in the shelter of the rocky point, impulsively kissed her companion. “I love you,” she whispered. “I have always wished that I had a sister. I’d like to adopt you if you will let me.”

“Of course I will let you. I would rather have you for a sister than anyone I ever knew.” Then, mischievously, Lenora inquired, “Now, what relation is my brother Charles to you?” “We’ll let him decide when he comes,” was Jenny’s practical answer. “He may not want to be adopted.” Then, as the house had been reached, she added impulsively, “but Grandma Sue and Grandpa Si would love to be, so I will let you share them. Now, Sister Lenora, it’s time for us to get supper.”

CHAPTER XV.

PEERS OR PIGS

The day of the party to be given in honor of Clare Tasselwood arrived and the three most interested were in Gwyn’s room dressing for the occasion. “There is something very queer about Clare,” Beulah announced. “I just passed her room a moment ago. The door was open and I saw her sitting in front of the mirror brushing out that mass of long yellow hair of hers, and I am positive that she was laughing. She saw my reflection, I suppose, for the moment I had passed she got up and closed the door so quickly that it sounded like a slam.”

Gwynette, bemoaning the fact that they were not permitted to have maids assist them with their dressing, said impatiently: “Pat, you’ll simply have to help me with these hooks.” Then, to Beulah: “What are you driving at? Why do you think it is queer that Clare Tasselwood should be laughing? You laugh sometimes yourself, don’t you?”

“Why, of course I do, if I think of something funny,” Beulah agreed, “but what I can’t understand is why Clare Tasselwood should laugh all alone by herself when she is dressing to go to our party. Of course she can’t have any idea that we are giving it because we believe her to be the daughter of a younger son of the English nobility, can she?”

“Of course not!” Gwyn declared. “We three are the only ones who know that and we have not told. I am more than ever convinced that it is true, for yesterday, when Madame Vandeheuton asked me to take Clare’s mail to her room there was a letter with what appeared to be a crest on it.”

Patricia, having finished hooking up the blue satin gown of her friend, remarked with energy: “Well, I’m certainly glad to hear that. I’ve had ‘ma doots’ lately about the whole thing, and now and then a faint idea penetrates my brain that we’re idiots whichever way it is. Here we are squandering not only this month’s spending money but next month’s as well, and what is to come of it?”

Beulah sat on a low stool to put on her gilt slippers. “Oh, we’ll have to take a gambler’s chance. Pat, be a sport. We know for a fact that there is a pupil at this seminary who is the daughter of a younger son of a noble English family. Miss Granger was only too glad to let that much be known. I’ve no doubt it brought her several pupils whose vain mothers wished them to be associated with such a girl even if they could not know which one she was.”

Pat agreed. “And didn’t we study the qualities of every girl in this establishment, beginning with Clare and ending with that timid, sickly-looking creature who always wears brown?”

“And who associates, by choice, with the granddaughter of my mother’s servants,” Gwyn scoffed as she surveyed her beautiful party gown in the long gilt-framed mirror. “Wasn’t it adorable of Ma Mere to send me this creation from Paris? She knows how hurt I am because she put me in this detestable prison instead of permitting me to accompany her to France, and so she sends me presents to sooth my wounded spirits, I suppose.”

“Your mother is mighty good to you,” Pat remarked in rather a critical tone, “better than I think you deserve. I have never yet heard you say that you wish you could do something to add to her pleasure.”

Gwynette crossed the room, watching the swing of the soft satin folds in the mirror over one shoulder. Her lips were pressed together as though she were trying to keep from retorting to her friend’s speech, but her mounting anger caused her to stop in front of Pat’s chair and flare at her. “I can’t understand why you continue to associate with me at all, since you disapprove of me so entirely. If you feel that it is an idiotic thing for us to try to do homage to the daughter of nobility, why didn’t you say so at first? It is too late now to make any changes in our plans, but after tonight I shall no longer expect you to be one of my intimate friends.”

Beulah said conciliatingly: “Gwyn, we aren’t any of us perfect, and we certainly don’t want our friends to pretend they think we are, do we?” Then, in an entirely different tone, she continued: “For myself, Gwyn, since your brother and fifteen other cadets are coming to our party, I shall consider my money well spent. I’m pining for a dance. And, as for the Lady Clare Tasselwood, I don’t care a fig whether she is or isn’t. Hark, what’s the commotion without?”

The palatial bus from The Palms was arriving and on the high seat with the driver, resplendent in his gold-trimmed blue uniform, sat Cadet Harold.

Beulah, who had skipped to the front window, hurried back to don her cloak and tie a becoming cherry colored scarf over her short light brown curls. “Gwyn, I wish you would be the one to tell Lady Clare that the hour of departure has arrived. Pat and I will round up the other twelve.” Gwynette lifted her eyebrows as she adjusted her swansdown-trimmed cloak about her slim shoulders. “Sometimes, Beulah, from your choice of English, I might think you a cowgirl.”

The rebuked maiden chuckled mischievously. “I ain’t, though,” she said inelegantly, “but if ever there was a romance of the Wild West written that I haven’t read, I hope I’ll hear of it soon. I’m daffy about the life. Truth is, I’d heaps rather meet a cowgirl than I would a younger daughter of – ”

But Gwynette, with a proud toss of her handsome head, had swept from the room, leaving Beulah to mirthfully follow, accompanied by Pat, whose dark looks boded no good. Beulah drew her friend back and closed the door. “Child,” she remonstrated, “don’t take Gwyn’s loftiness so much to heart. I think she is just as superlatively selfish as you do, and I also think she treats her invalid mother shamefully, but you know we can’t go around this world telling everyone just what we think of them. It isn’t done in the best society. Gwyn has her good points, too, otherwise we wouldn’t have been chumming with her, would we?”

“Well, take it from me. I’ve chummed my last. After tonight I’ll choose my friends, not have them chosen for me.”

“Meaning what?”

“You know as well as I do that because our three mothers were in the same set at home, we were all packed off here together, but come, I’ll try to get some pleasure out of this idiotic party.”

When they reached the lower hall, they found all of the girls who had been invited waiting for Madame Vandeheuton, who was to be the evening’s chaperone. She was a timid little French woman who felt that the girls were always making fun of her efforts at speaking English, and so she usually kept quiet, except when she was teaching her dearly loved native tongue. Gwynette had especially asked that Madame Vandeheuton be permitted to accompany them, since they could not go without one of the teachers.

Clare Tasselwood was gorgeously arrayed in a brocaded gold velvet gown with a crownlike arrangement of pearls bound about her mass of soft yellow hair. She looked more than ever regal. Gwynette sat beside her in the bus and was her constant companion throughout the evening. The ballroom of The Palms had been reserved for this party and the fifteen cadets were charmed with the pretty girls from the select seminary, but handsome Clare was undeniably the belle.

Each time that a dance was concluded, Gwyn asked her partner to take her to that part of the salon to which Clare’s partner had taken her.

Harold Poindexter-Jones noticed this after a time and asked slangily: “What’s the big idea, Sis? Is the tall blonde a new crush?”

Gwyn’s haughty reply was: “Harold, I consider your language exceedingly vulgar. If you wish to know, this party is being given in honor of Clare Tasselwood, whose father is a younger son of English nobility.”

Her brother looked at her in wide-eyed amazement, then burst into a laugh. Indignantly Gwyn drew him through an open door, out upon a deserted porch.

“What do you mean by such an ill-mannered explosion?” she inquired wrath fully.

Harold became very sober. “Sis,” he said, “are you in dead earnest? Has that girl been telling any such yarn about her family?”

“Why no,” Gwyn had to confess, “she didn’t tell it, but – ”

Again the boy laughed: “That’s too good to keep. I’ll have to tell the fellows. Old Hank Peters, the chap who has danced with her so much, comes from her part of the globe – Chicago, to be accurate, and he said that her father made his pile raising pigs – and they aren’t English at all. They are Swedes.”

Gwynette was angry with herself and everyone else. “Don’t you dare to tell; not a single soul!” she flared. “If you do, I’ll get even with you some time, some way.”

The boy, suddenly serious, took his sister’s hand. “Gwyn,” he said, “I have no desire to make this a joking matter with the fellows. Of course I’ll keep it dark, but I do hope it will teach you a lesson.”

Beulah and Pat wondered at Gwynette’s altered manner toward the guest of honor, but, not even to them did she confide the humiliating information she had received.

On the ride back to the seminary in the bus Gwyn had very little to say and the others attributed it to weariness.

Gwynette noticed a merry twinkle in the blue eyes of Clare Tasselwood when she effusively bade the three hostesses good-night, assuring them that she had spent a most delightful evening. Gwyn went sulkily to her room almost sure that the daughter of that pig-raising Westerner had known all along why the party had been given. She had indeed learned a lesson she decided as she closed her room door far less gently than she should have done at that hour of night. Before retiring she assured herself that even if she found out who really was the daughter of a younger son of English nobility, she wouldn’t put herself out to as much as speak to her.

CHAPTER XVI.

GOOD NEWS

Sunday morning dawned gloriously, and although the sun rose at an early hour, Jenny was out on the Rocky Point to watch the crimson and gold shafts of light flaming up back of the mountain peaks; then she looked out at the sea with its opalescent colors. Turning, she saw someone walking along the beach from the house beyond the high hedge.

It was not hard to recognize the military bearing of the youth. As the girl had not known of the party given on the previous evening at The Palms, she had no knowledge of the near presence of the lad whom she had so longed to see, that she might ask about the farm. Harold had said nothing to his sister Gwynette of his determination to remain over night, but when his comrades had departed for the big city far to the north, he had climbed into his little gray speeder and had gone to the deserted mansion-like home belonging to his mother.

Being without a thought of fear, the lad had not in the least minded the ghastliness of the spacious rooms where the furniture wore coverings of white and where his footsteps awakened echoes long silent. He had slept in his own bed, but had aroused early, meaning to breakfast with his old nurse and her family.

When he saw the girl standing on the highest rock of the points with the shining morning sky back of her, he snatched off his cap and waved it, then broke into a run, which soon took him scrambling up the rocks to her side.

Holding out a strong brown hand, he exclaimed, real pleasure glowing in his eyes: “Why, little Jenny Warner, how tall you are, and graceful, like a flower on a slender stem.”

The girl laughed merrily. “Do boys always feel that they must say pretty things to their girl acquaintances?” she asked.

As he gazed into her liquid brown eyes with their tender depths, the lad suddenly found himself wishing that he were a poet, that he might say something truly fitting, but as words failed him, he confessed that most girls seemed to like to receive compliments. How innocent was the expression of the sweet face that was lifted toward his.

“Really, do they?” Then she confessed: “I don’t know many girls, only one – a farmer’s daughter who is over at Granger Place Seminary.”

The lad raised his eyebrows questioningly. Then he began to laugh.

“A farmer’s daughter, is she? Well, I’m glad there is one pupil at that school who is honest about her family.”

Then noting that his companion was looking at him as though wondering what he meant, he explained in an offhand way, not wishing to break his promise to his sister: “Oh, I just heard that some one of the girls in that school is supposed to be the daughter of a younger son of the English nobility.” Adding quickly: “You say that you are acquainted with only one girl. Hasn’t my sister Gwyn been over to call on the Warners yet, and haven’t you met her?”

A color that rivaled the rose in the sky flamed into Jenny’s face. Harold saw it and correctly concluded that the girls had met, and that Jenny had been rudely treated.

“Gwyn is a snob,” was his mental comment. Aloud he said: “Do you suppose that your grandmother will invite me to stay to breakfast? I’ll have to start for the big town by ten, at the latest, and so I cannot be here for dinner.”

“Of course she will.” Jenny glanced back at the farmhouse as she spoke and saw that the smoke was beginning to wreath out of the chimney above the kitchen stove. “They’re up now, and so I’ll go in and set the table.”

But still she did not move, and the lad watching her expressive face intently, exclaimed impulsively: “Jenny, is something troubling you? Can’t I help if there is?”

That Harold’s surmise had been correct the lad knew before the girl spoke, for her sweet brown eyes brimmed with tears, and she said in a low, eager voice:

“Oh, how I have wanted to see you to ask about the farm. I heard, I overheard your sister telling her two friends from San Francisco that when your mother comes from France the farm is to be sold, and if it is, dear old Grandpa and Grandma will have no place to go.”

An angry color had slowly mounted the tanned face of the boy, and he said coldly: “My sister presumes to have more knowledge of our mother’s affairs than she has. The farm is not to be sold without my consent. Mother has agreed to that. I have asked for Rocky Point and the Maiden Hair Falls Canyon for my share of the estate.”

He looked out over the water thoughtfully before he continued: “Mother, I will confess, thinks my request a strange one, since the home and the fifteen acres about it are far more valuable, and she will not consent to the making of so unequal a division of her property, but she did promise that she would not sell the farm until I wished it sold. I believe she suspects that when I finish my schooling I may plan to become a gentleman farmer myself.”

The lad laughed as though amused, but as he looked intently at the lovely girl before him, he became serious and exclaimed as though for the first time he had thought of considering it:

“Perhaps, after all, I might do worse. I simply will not go into the army. I should hate that life.”

Then, catching the girl’s hand, he led her down the rocks as he called gayly: “Come on, little Jenny Warner, let’s ask your grandfather if he will begin this very summer to teach me how to be a farmer.”

And so it was a few moments later, when Grandpa Si came from the barn with a pail brimming with foamy milk, that he was almost bumped into by a girl and boy who, hand in hand, were running joyfully from the other direction.

“Wall, I’ll be dod-blasted!” the old man exclaimed, “if it ain’t little Harry!”

Then he called: “Grandma Sue, come an’ see who’s here!”

The bright-eyed old woman appeared in the open door, fork in hand. The lad leaped up the porch steps and kissed her on a flushed, wrinkled cheek.