  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. |
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