  It was Saturday and lessons were over for the week. Of tutors and music masters there would be none all that glorious day. Miss Dahlia had awakened with a headache. Nan slipped into the darkened room and asked tenderly if there was something that she could do to help. “No, dearie,” the little lady replied, “I will just rest awhile. Go for a ride on Binnie if you wish. I will try to be down so that you need not have luncheon alone.” A few moments later the girl emerged from a vine-hung side entrance and stood looking about. She wore her cherry red dress and the yellow silk handkerchief, with its dangles, was about her head. In her hand she held a book, “Ivanhoe.” Miss Dahlia had been reading it aloud the night before, and the gypsy girl was eager to continue the story. She would find a sheltered spot, she thought, and try to read it, although, as she well knew, many of the words were long and hard. The Barrington estate contained several acres. Nan had never crossed to the high hedge that bounded it on the farther side from town. Great old trees lured her and wondering what lay beyond the hedge, she started tramping in that direction singing a warbling song without words. A great old pepper tree with its glowing red berries stood on the Barrington side, and Nan, gazing up, saw one wide branch curving in a way that would make of it a comfortable seat. Scrambling up, she was soon perched there. Then she peered through the thick foliage, trying to see what might be in the grounds beyond. It was another picturesque home of Spanish architecture similar to the Barrington’s with glowing gardens and artistic groupings of shrubbery and trees. There was no sign of life about the place, and then Nan recalled having heard Miss Ursula say that it was the home of Mrs. Warren Widdemere a beautiful young widow possessing great wealth, who was traveling in Europe trying to forget her recent bereavement. Mrs. Widdemere had a son who was in a military academy, and so, in all probability the place was unoccupied, the girl thought, as she opened her book, and began slowly and yet with increasing interest, to read. Half an hour later she became conscious that there were voices near, and on the other side of the hedge. Glancing through the sheltering green, she beheld a woman in nurse’s uniform who was pushing a wheeled chair, in which sat a boy of about 16. His face was pale and his expression listless; almost discouraged, Nan thought. As they neared the tree, a bell rang from the house, and the nurse, leaving the chair, started up the garden path. “Don’t hurry back,” the boy called languidly. “This place will do for my sunbath as well as any other.” Then he leaned back, and, closing his eyes, he sighed wearily. Nan, prompted by pity and a desire to be friendly, broke a cluster of pepper berries and tossed them toward the chair. They fell lightly on the boy’s folded hands. He opened his eyes and looked about, but he saw no one. “Poor, poor boy!” Nan thought with a rush of tenderness. The gypsy girl always had the same pity when she saw anything that was wounded, and it was this tenderness in her nature that had compelled her to remain in the caravan for so long to protect the little cripple Tirol. The sick lad, believing that a cluster of pepper berries had but fallen of its own accord once more leaned back and closed his eyes, but he opened them almost instantly and again looked about. From somewhere overhead he heard a sweet warbling bird-song. “Perhaps a mocking bird,” he was thinking when the note changed to that of a meadowlark. Gazing steadily at the tree ahead of him, he saw a gleam of red and then a laughing face peering between the branches. “I see you! Whoever you are, come down!” His querulous voice held a command. “Indeed sir. I don’t have to,” was the merry reply. “I am a bird with red and gold feathers and I shall remain in my tree.” The boy smiled. It was the first time that he had been interested in the five months since his father had died. “I can see the glimmer of your plumage through the leaves,” he called. Then changing his tone, he said pleadingly, “Lady Bird won’t you please come down?” Nan dropped lightly to the ground on the Widdemere side of the hedge. The lad looked at the beautiful dark-skinned maiden, and then, little dreaming that he was speaking the truth, he said, “Why, Lady Bird, your dress makes you look like a gypsy.” “I am one!” the girl replied. “My name is Gypsy Nan. I am staying with the Barrington’s for a time.” Then her dark eyes twinkled merrily as she confided. “Miss Ursula Barrington is trying to civilize me, but she had to go away, and oh I am so glad! It isn’t a bit nice to be civilized, is it?” The boy laughed. “I know that I wouldn’t be if I could help myself,” he said. “I’ve always wished that I had been born a wild Indian or a pirate or something interesting.” Nan seated herself on a stump that would soon be covered with vines. “I don’t wonder you are sick,” she said with renewed sympathy. “I would be smothered, I know, if I had to live all of the time in houses with so much velvet, and portieres shutting out the wind and the sun. Tell me what is your name?” “I am Robert Widdemere,” he replied, and then a shadow crept into the eyes that for a moment had been gleaming with amusement as he added: “I’m never going to be well again. The doctor does not know what is the matter with me; no one does, but I can’t eat, and so I might as well hurry up and die.” The girl looked steadily at the lad for a moment and then she said, “Robert Widdermere, you ought to have more courage than that. Of course you’ll die if you’re just going to weakly give up. I don’t believe that you’re sick at all. I think you have been too much civilized. Now I’ll tell you what you do. Eat all you can, and get strong fast, and then we will ride horseback over the mountains and I’ll run you a race on the coast highway.” “That would be great!” the boy exclaimed and again his eyes glowed with a new eagerness. The girl sprang up. “Hark!” she said, “the old mission bells are telling that it is noon. I must go or Miss Dahlia will be waiting lunch. “Good-bye, Robert Widdemere, I’ll come again.” The lad watched the gleam of red disappearing through a gate in the hedge which he had pointed out. Then a new determination awakened in his heart. Perhaps it was cowardly to give up and die, just because he was so lonesome, so lonesome for the dad who had been the dearest pal a boy could ever have. Robert’s father had died five months before and his mother, a rather frivolous young widow, who had always cared more for society than for her home, had placed her sixteen-year-old son in a military academy and had departed for Paris to try to forget her loss in the gay life of that city, but Robert had been unable to forget, and day after day he had grieved for that father who had been his pal ever since he could first remember. These two had been often alone as the wife and mother had spent much time at week-end house-parties in the country places of her wealthy friends. No wonder was it that the boy felt that he had lost his all. At last, worn with the grief which he kept hidden in his heart, his health had broken and a cablegram from his mother had bidden him go with a nurse to their California home at San Seritos, adding, that if he did not recover in one month, she would return to the States, but since it was only the beginning of the gay season in Paris, she did hope that he would endeavor to get well as soon as possible. The lad had read the message with a lack of interest and to the attending physician he had said: “Kindly cable my mother to remain in France as I am much better, but that I shall stay in California for the winter.” The kindly doctor wondered at the message. He had but recently come to San Seritos and he did not understand the cause, as the old physician whose place he had taken, would have understood it. Robert Widdemere, without the loving tenderness of a mother to help him bear his great loneliness, did not care to live until he met Gypsy Nan. When she had looked at him so reprovingly with those dark eyes that could be so serious or dancingly merry, and had said that it was cowardly for him to give up so weakly he had decided that she was right. He ought to want to live to carry out some of the splendid things that his father had begun if for nothing else, but now there was something else! He wanted to get strong soon that he might ride horseback with Nan over the mountains. When Miss Squeers returned to push the wheeled chair and its usually listless occupant back to the house she was surprised to note that he looked up with a welcoming smile. “Nurse,” he said, “do you know, I am actually hungry. Don’t give me broth tonight. I want some regular things to eat, beefsteak and mashed potatoes.” A query over the wire brought a speedy reply from the physician: “Give the lad whatever he asks for and note the result.” The next day Doctor Wainridge called and the lad asked: “Doctor, is there any real reason why I cannot walk?” “None whatever, son, that I know of,” the gentleman replied, “except that you have been too weak to stand, but if you continue with the menu that you ordered last night, you will soon be able to enter the Marathon races. There is nothing physically wrong with you, lad. I decided that you had made up your mind that you did not care to get well.” The boy looked around and finding that they were alone, he confided, “I did feel that way, doctor, but now I wish to get well soon, and be a pirate or a gypsy or something uncivilized.” “Great!” the doctor said, as he arose to go. On his way home he wondered what had aroused Robert’s interest in life, but neither he nor the nurse could guess. |
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