  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 Si was the farmer in Mrs. Poindexter-Jones’ employ and, what was more, Grandma Sue had been 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, you can’t be 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, that is 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. |
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