Sisters

“Grandma Sue,” he asked merrily, “have you room for a starved beggar boy at your breakfast table?”

“Room, is it?” was the pleased response. “Thar’ll allays be that, sonny, whenever you’re wantin’ a bite to eat.”

Such a merry meal followed. No one could make pancakes better than Susan Warner, and when the first edge was taken from his appetite, Harold insisted on helping Jenny turn the cakes for the other two. He wondered what Gwynette would think and say, if she could see him, but for that he cared not at all. Then, when they were seated, the boy astonished the farmer by asking if he were willing to take him on that coming summer as a helper.

“Tush! Nonsense it is yo’re talkin’ now, Harry boy. Yo’ wouldn’t want to be puttin’ on overalls, would ye, an’ be milkin’ ol’ Brindle?”

But Harold was in dead earnest, they were finally convinced, and when at last he started away along the beach it was with the understanding that he was to return the first of June to be Farmer Warner’s “helper.”

CHAPTER XVII.

PRIDE MEETS PRIDE

“Well, thanks be there are only two more weeks of incarceration in this prison.”

Gwynette Poindexter-Jones was in no pleasant mood as her two companions could easily discern. “I would simply expire of ennui if I had to remain here one day longer. When I think that Ma Mere, after having had a wonderful winter in France, is now arriving in San Francisco, where I suppose she will remain for a time, I feel as though I never can stand the stupid routine of this place even a fortnight longer. And the truth is, I don’t know as I will. I wrote Mother that I had refused to take the final tests. I cannot see why I should care for a diploma from this seminary, or any other, since I am next year to become a debutante in San Francisco’s best society. One doesn’t have to pass an examination in history, thank heavens, to make an eligible marriage. Beauty is far more requisite.”

“And I suppose you are quite satisfied with yourself on that score.” It was Beulah Hollingsworth who made this sarcastic remark. The three girls were seated in the summer-house on the lawn of the seminary waiting for the arrival of the rural postman. A box of chocolates lay open on the table before them, and, spread about it, were books and magazines. Patricia Sullivan, to the displeasure of at least one of her friends, was reading a romance of the West. She had not heard the remarks of her companions until the last sentence had been uttered and the tone in which it had been said made her look up and exclaim: “What is the matter, Beulah? Your disposition used to be quite amiable, but it certainly is changing. Are you living on vinegar?”

Gwynette tossed her head. “Her favorite pastime seems to be finding something to be sarcastic about. Of course I know that I am no rare beauty, but I do believe that I can hold my own.”

Beulah reached over and took an especially luscious looking chocolate. As she did so, the driveway for a moment was in her vision. A crunching of wheels attracted her attention and she saw an old-fashioned wagon drawn by a heavy white horse. A girl, dressed in yellow and wearing a wide-brimmed hat wreathed with buttercups, was the driver. Beulah said: “If you would like to see a girl who has real claim to beauty, cast your glance out of the summer-house.”

Patricia closed her book and, rising, sauntered to the rose-hung doorway. Turning, she said in a low voice: “Gwyn, isn’t that the girl we saw at your Rocky Point Farm?”

Indignant, because Jenny Warner’s beauty had been compared with her own, Gwynette replied with great indifference, as she purposely turned her back: “I neither know nor care. I have no interest in my mother’s servants.”

But it was quite evident by Jenny’s manner that she had some interest in the summer-house, for she drew rein, and called in her prettiest manner: “Can you tell me where I will find Miss Poindexter-Jones? I have a message for her.”

Patricia good-naturedly replied: “You won’t have far to hunt. Her highness is holding court in this very summer-house.”

Gwynette’s groundless anger against the world in general but increased when she heard the inquiry, and she snapped as Patricia turned toward her: “If that girl has a message for me, tell her to bring it to me at once, though I am sure I cannot conceive what it can be.”

Jenny, who had clearly heard every word that had been spoken, as indeed Gwynette had intended that she should, replied, not without pride in her tone: “Kindly tell Miss Poindexter-Jones that I will send the message to Miss Granger and she may receive it from her.”

But this was not all pleasing to the haughty girl. She did not wish to have a needless audience with the woman who disapproved of her conduct as she well knew. Appearing in the doorway, she said angrily: “Why don’t you bring me the message, if you have one for me? I shall report your behavior to my mother.”

Jenny said nothing, but, picking up the reins, she was about to drive on to the school when Gwynette stepped out of the summer-house saying: “Kindly give me whatever message you have for me. I do not wish it taken to Miss Granger.” Jenny took from her basket a letter, which she handed to the girl, and for one moment, and for the first time, they looked straight into each other’s eyes.

Gwynette glanced at the envelope, then, handing it back toward the girl on the high seat of the wagon, she said disdainfully: “You are mistaken, this letter is addressed to your grandmother and not to me.”

Jenny, undisturbed, nodded her agreement. “That is why it came to the farm, but Mrs. Poindexter-Jones made a mistake. The message is for you.” The girl, standing in the drive, flushed angrily when she found that this was true. “Well, I certainly hope your grandmother was not snooping enough to read it,” she flashed, desiring to hurt someone’s feelings in an endeavor to relieve her own.

It was Patricia who protested, as she saw the flaming color in the face Beulah had called beautiful. “Gwyn,” she said sharply, “I hope the time will come when you meet someone who will hurt your feelings as you so enjoy hurting other people’s.”

Jenny Warner made no response, but drove around to the kitchen door to deliver the honey and eggs. When she returned, Gwynette was not in sight, as she had at once gone to her room to be alone when she read the letter. She instinctively knew that it contained a message that would increase her already belligerent mood.

As she was passing the summer-house, Jenny saw Patricia Sullivan leap out of the doorway and beckon to her. “Miss Warner,” she called, “won’t you have a few of my chocolates? They’re guaranteed to be sweet clear through.”

Beulah appeared at her side. “That’s more than can be said of Gwynette Poindexter-Jones. No one knows how glad I am that at the expiration of a fortnight I shall have no further need to associate with her. You, Miss Warner, will be the unfortunate victim, as you are to have her for a neighbor all summer, I believe.”

Jenny, seeing that these girls evidently wished to be friendly, had again drawn rein and had taken one of the proffered candies.

Patricia looked rather longingly at the old-fashioned wagon and then at the placid old white horse. Her gaze returned to the driver and she said in her impulsive way: “Maybe you won’t believe that it can be true, but it is! I have never ridden in a conveyance of this kind, and I’d just love to try it. Should you mind if I rode down the canyon road part way with you?”

“Of course I wouldn’t mind,” Jenny replied with her brightest smile. “There is plenty of room for both of you.” She included Beulah in her invitation. Then added with a glance at the seminary, “if you are sure that Miss Granger will not mind.”

Patricia scrambled up as she merrily replied: “Why should she care?”

Beulah remarked: “It does seem to me that there is some archaic rule about not going beyond the gates without a chaperone, but we each have one. Miss Warner may chaperone me and I will chaperone Pat.”

They laughed gleefully as though something really clever had been said. “But who will chaperone Miss Warner?”

“Dobbin will,” the driver replied. “He usually does.”

“This is jolly fun,” Patricia declared a few moments later when she had requested to drive. Beulah burst into unexpected merriment. “Oh, don’t I hope her beautiful highness saw us when we drove away. Her wrath will bring down a volcano of sparks on our heads when we get back.”

Patricia retorted: “Beulah, I sometimes think that you like to stir up the embers in Gwyn’s nature, even when they are smouldering and might die if they were let alone.”

Instead of replying, the other girl exclaimed after a glance at her wrist watch: “Great moons! I must go back on a run! I have a French test at 4.”

Jenny took the reins and brought Dobbin to a stop. When they were in the road, Patricia asked: “May we come down and see you some day? I wanted to go out on that rocky point when we were there before, but when Gwyn’s along, everything has to be done her way.”

“I’d be glad to have you,” was Jenny’s sincerely given reply.

CHAPTER XVIII.

A NEW EXPERIENCE

May was a busy, happy month for Jenny. Never had she studied harder and her teacher, Miss Dearborn, rejoiced in her beloved pupil’s rapid advancement. Then, twice a week, on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons, when she drove around to the beautiful country homes of the rich delivering eggs and honey, on the high seat at her side rode her very first girl friend, Lenora Gale. Jenny was jubilantly happy on these occasions, and, as for Lenora, she spent the hours in between the rides in anticipation of the next one or in dreaming over the last one. She wrote long letters to her far-away farmer father or to her nearer brother, Charles, telling all about this new friend who seemed to the readers of those letters to be a paragon indeed.

“I just know that you will love my dear Jenny when you see her,” she wrote indiscriminately in either letter, and Charles smiled to himself. He might like this Jenny Warner in a general way, but he was not at all afraid that he would “love” any girl in particular, soon or ever. He was convinced of that. He had met many girls, but he had never felt strongly appealed to by any of them, and since he would be twenty-one on his next birthday he decided that he was immune, but of this he said nothing in his letters to his beloved little sister, for he well knew that she did not refer to romantic love when she so often prophesied that her brother would love Jenny Warner.

But, as the weeks passed, Charles found that he was looking forward with a new interest to the middle of June, when he was to go to Santa Barbara to get his sister and take her, if she were well enough to travel, back to their Dakota farm for the summer.

As for Harold P-J. he had returned to the military academy jubilantly eager for the beginning of his duties as Farmer Warner’s “helper.” He wrote a long, dutiful letter to his mother each week, and, after that visit to Rocky Point, he told his plan for the summer not without trepidation and ended with a description of the flower-like qualities of the granddaughter: “Mother mine, there’s a girl after your own heart. You’ll just love Jenny Warner.”

Perhaps it was because of this letter that Mrs. Poindexter-Jones changed her plans and decided to leave for Santa Barbara at an earlier date.

At last there came a day when Jenny did not look about her at the gnarled old oaks or at the carpet of wild flowers in the uplands as she walked along the familiar trail which led to Miss Dearborn’s pepper-tree guarded gate, for she was conning over and over a lesson. Nor was her teacher in the garden where she so often busied herself as she awaited her pupil. Instead she stood in the drive with her hat and jacket on.

When at last the girl lifted her eyes from her book, she stopped – an expression of dread and consternation in her eyes. “Miss Dearborn,” she exclaimed, “you aren’t going back East, are you?”

The pleasant-faced woman laughed. “Not yet,” she replied. “How you do dread that event, which I can assure you is not even a remote possibility. Why should I go East, dear?”

Jenny Warner could not explain why she seemed so often to be oppressed by that dread. “Do you believe that coming events cast their shadows before?” she asked, putting her hand to her throat. “Honestly, Miss Dearborn, I feel as if something terribly awful is about to happen. And seeing you just now with your hat and jacket on made me think that you might have had a telegram and that you were just leaving.”

Miss Dearborn merrily put in: “I am just leaving, and for that matter so are you. I received a telephone message half an hour ago that the date of the first examination had been changed and is to take place at 10 o’clock this morning.”

Jenny’s books fell to the path and her look of consternation would have been comical if it had not been tragic. “Miss Dearborn, I knew it! I have felt just perfectly miserable as though I had lost my last friend with fifty other calamities added. Now I know coming events cast their shadows before. I thought we were going to have all this day for review.”

Miss Dearborn’s reply was cheerfully optimistic. “I’m glad that we are not. I object to the system of cramming. You would tire your brain and be less able to answer questions tomorrow than you are today. Now take your books into the house, dear, and leave them on the library table, then hurry back. We are to catch the nine o’clock stage.”

Poor Jenny’s heart felt heavily oppressed. Together they went down to the Coast Highway, and, as they had a few moments to wait for the bus in the rustic little roadside station, Jenny ventured, “Don’t you think, Miss Dearborn, it would be a good plan for you to ask me questions or explain to me something that you think I do not understand very clearly?”

“No, I do not.” Miss Dearborn was emphatic in her reply. Then she inquired: “How is your little friend Lenora Gale? You promised to bring her up to have a tea-party with me soon. You haven’t forgotten, have you?”

A shade of sorrow passed over the girl’s pretty face. “Miss Dearborn,” she said earnestly, “Lenora isn’t as well as she was. I am ever so troubled about her. She seemed so much better after we met, and then, last week, she caught another cold. Now she is worse again, and has to stay in bed. I was up to the seminary Saturday to take the eggs and honey, and I asked if I might see her. Miss O’Hara went to inquire of Miss Granger, but she came back without the permission I wanted. The doctor had requested that Lenora be kept perfectly quiet. Oh, I just know that she is fretting her heart out to see me, and she doesn’t like it at the seminary. It’s such a cold, unfriendly sort of a place. The girls never did take to Lenora, partly because she is retiring, almost timid, I suppose, and, besides, they may have heard that her father is only a farmer.”

Their conversation was interrupted by the arrival of the bus. Then, when they were seated within, Jenny continued, almost with bitterness: “Rich girls are haughty and horrid, that is, if they are all like Gwynette Poindexter-Jones.”

“But they aren’t, dear. Don’t judge the many by the few. I had many wealthy classmates and they were as simple and sweetly sincere as any poor girl could be.”

Miss Dearborn purposely kept Jenny’s thoughts occupied with her friend Lenora. Then she asked if Etta Heldt had been heard from. Jenny shook her head. “We should have heard, at least two weeks ago. Grandpa Si thinks we never will hear. He said the best way to lose a friend is to loan him money, but I have faith in Etta Heldt. I just know she will write some day soon if she reached Belgium alive.” Miss Dearborn had visited Belgium and she described that interesting little country, and at last the bus reached the high school in Santa Barbara. Jenny, with a glance of terror at her teacher, took one of her hands and held it hard.

Throngs of bright-eyed girls, many of them in short sport skirts and prettily colored sweater coats, trooped past the two who were strange. Some few glanced at Jenny casually as though wondering who she might be, but no one spoke.

Fragments of conversation drifted to her. “Gee-whiliker!” a boyish-looking girl exclaimed. “I’d rather have the world come to an end than take the geom exam from Seer Simp.”

Professor Simpson, as Jenny knew, was the instructor in charge of that morning’s exams.

“Say! Wouldn’t I, though?” her companion replied with a mock shudder. Then these two passed and another group hurried by. The leader turned to fling over her shoulder: “O-o-h!! My hands are so cold now I won’t be able to hold a pen, but if Monsieur Simpson so much as looks at me with his steely blue eyes, I’ll change to an icicle.”

A moment later Jenny found herself confronted by that same dreaded professor. Miss Dearborn was introducing her and a kindly voice was saying: “Miss Warner, we are expecting much of you since you have had the advantage of so much personal instruction.”

The eyes of the small elderly gentleman were, it is true, a keen grey-blue, but there was friendliness in their expression.

Then it was that Jenny realized that since her tutor had done so much for her, she, in turn, must do her best, and be, if only she could, a credit to her beloved friend.

A gong was ringing somewhere in the corridor. As one in a dream, Jenny bade good-bye to Miss Dearborn, who promised to return at noon. Then the girl followed her new acquaintance into a room thronged with boys and girls and sat at the desk indicated.

CHAPTER XIX.

A WELCOME GUEST

Three days later, when Jenny entered the farmhouse kitchen, Grandpa Si, who was washing at the small sink pump, looked up twinkling-eyed to inquire: “Wall, Jenny-gal, them examinations are over now, ain’t they? I reckon they wasn’t nigh so terribul as yo’d figgered, when you got plumb up to ’em, was they now?”

Jenny, looking very pale and weary, dropped into the big armed chair opposite her grandmother, who was shelling peas for supper.

Then, unexpectedly, she burst into tears. Instantly the pan of peas was placed on the table and her grandmother had comforting arms about the girl. “Dearie, what is ailin’ yo’? Warn’t yo’ able to get the right answers for them examination questions?”

The distressed grandfather also hovered about, saying huskily: “Now look a-here, little un, we don’t keer, not a farthing’s worth, whether you knowed them answers or didn’t know ’em. I reckon you’re smarter’n most, how-so-ever, ’twas.” Jenny, who had been clinging to her grandmother, astonished them by saying between sobs: “’Tisn’t the examinations I’m crying about. It’s Lenora. They let me see her for a moment this afternoon and she is so weak and oh so unhappy. She thinks she will never get well, not if she has to stay in that cold, dreary old seminary, and Oh, Grandma Sue, how I do want her to get well. I have always longed to have a sister, and when I found Lenora Gale, I made believe she was the sister I had so wanted. No one knows how I love her.”

The old couple were greatly distressed. All these years their “gal” had so longed to have a sister of her very own, and all that time she had had one, whom she didn’t know. Grandma Sue smoothed the rumpled hair and kissed Jenny on the forehead. “Go to your room, dearie, and rest till supper time,” she said soothingly. “You’re all tired out with them examinations. You’ll feel better after you’ve had suthin’ warm to eat.”

Jenny permitted her grandfather to help her out of the chair and to lead her toward her room. There she flung herself down on her bed, and the loving old man drew a cover over her. Then he tiptoed back to the kitchen. “Ma,” he said, “I reckon us and Mis’ Poindexter-Jones have got suthin’ to answer for, makin’ it so them two gals grew up not knowin’ as they was sisters.”

“Mabbe so,” the old woman had resumed her pea-shelling. “Mabbe so, Silas, but it’s too late now. That proud, haughty gal wouldn’t thank no one to tell her she’s our Jenny’s sister, and she wouldn’t be no comfort to our gal, bein’ as she’s been fetched up so different. But that sweet Lenora Gale, her as is a farmer’s daughter, she’s a friend more suitin’ to our Jenny.” For a few moments the old woman’s fingers were busy, but she was silent and thoughtful. When the peas were ready for the pot, she poured them into the boiling water, then turned and said: “Silas Warner, you and me keer more to have Jenny happy than anything else, don’t we?”

“I reckon we do, Ma. What be yo’ aimin’ at? I kin see easy thar’s suthin’ yo’ want to say. I’m agreeable to it, whatever ’tis.”

The old woman seemed relieved. “I was thinkin’ as how it would please our Jenny if we was to let her invite her friend Lenora to visit her here a spell. Jenny could sleep on the couch in the livin’ room, and let the sick gal have her bed. I think more’n half what’s the matter with Lenora Gale is that she’s pinin’ for a place that’s home wi’ folks in it to keer for her. Jenny says she’s allays speakin’ of her ma, lonesome-like, because she’s dead.”

The old man blew his nose hard, then said blinkingly: “Pore little gal! I was jest a thinkin’ how it might o’ been our Jenny that was sick up to that school prison wi’ no one as really keered.”

Jenny’s joy knew no bounds when she learned that she might invite her dear friend Lenora Gale to come to her home and make her a real visit. So sure was she that the sick girl would accept, Jenny was up the next day with the sun. Tying a towel about her curly light brown hair and donning an all-over apron, she swept and scoured and dusted her very own room until it fairly shone. Then she brought in a basket of flowers and put a tumbler full of them in every place where it would stand, with a big bowl of roses on the marble-topped center table. When Grandma Sue called her to breakfast, she skipped to the kitchen and, taking the old couple each by an arm, she led them to the door of her room, singing out: “What do you think of that as a bower for the Princess Lenora?”

“Wall, now,” said the old man admiringly, “if our gal ain’t got it fixed up handsome. I reckon your little friend’ll get well in no time wi’ you waitin’ on her, and so much cheeriness to look at.”

It was not until they were seated about the table eating their breakfast that Jenny suddenly thought of the possibility that something might happen to prevent Lenora from coming that day. “Maybe she’ll have to write and ask her daddy or her brother and wait for an answer.” For a moment this fear shadowed the shining face, but it did not last long. As soon as the breakfast was over she sprang up and began to clear things away, but her grandmother gently took a dish from her hand. “Thar now, dearie, you have no need to help. I reckon you’re eager to be drivin’ over to the seminary. You’d better start right off.”

Impulsively the girl kissed a wrinkled cheek of the old woman. “Oh, Granny Sue, was there ever any other person quite so understanding as you are? I’ll go, if you’ll promise not to do a single thing but the dishes while I am away. Please leave the churning for me to do when I come back with Lenora.”

“Tut! tut!” said her grandfather. “Don’t get your heart set on fetchin’ that Lenora gal back with you right to onct. Like as not she won’t be strong enough to ride along of Dobbin today.”

But Jenny would not allow herself to be discouraged. “Time enough for that when I find Lenora can’t come,” she confided to Dobbin while she was harnessing that faithful animal. He looked around at her, not without curiosity, as though he wondered why it was his little mistress was so often elated. Impulsively, Jenny hugged him as she said: “Oh, Dob, you old dear, you have no idea how happy I am, nor who it is you are going to bring back to Rocky Point Farm. Have you, now?” She peered around his blinder, but seeing only a rather sleepily blinking eye, she climbed upon the high seat of the wagon, backed from the barn and, turning to wave toward the house, she drove out of the lane singing at the top of her sweet voice.

No vehicle was in sight as she carefully crossed the wide Coast Highway. Her granddad had told her always to come to a full stop before driving across, as there were often processions of high-powered cars passing their lane. It was, however, too early for pleasure-seekers to be abroad and so Dobbin started climbing the canyon road leading to the seminary, and even there they met no one. Jenny’s heart was so brimming over with joy that she could not be quiet. When she was not confiding her hopes to Dobbin, she was singing.