  “Wall, wall,” it was Silas Warner who entered the parlor five moments later, rubbing his hands and smiling his widest, “this here looks like a celebration or some sech. ’Tain’t anybody’s birthday, is it, Jenny-gal, that yer givin’ a party for?” “Oh, don’t I wish it were, though,” Harold exclaimed, “then Grandma Sue would make one of her famous mountain chocolate cakes.” He looked around the group beseechingly. “Say, can’t one of you raise a birthday within the next fortnight. It will be worth the effort.” Lenora flashed a smile across the room at her brother. “Charles can,” she announced. “He will be twenty-one on the twenty-fifth of June.” “Great!” Then turning to the smiling old woman who sat near Jenny in the most comfortable rocker the room afforded, “Grandma Sue, I implore that your heart be touched! Will you make us a cake twenty-one layers high, with chocolate in between an inch thick? I’ll bring the candles and the ice cream.” Jenny, who for the first time was surrounded by young people, caught Harold’s holiday spirit and clapping her hands impulsively, she cried, “Won’t that be fun! Grandma Sue, you’ll let us have a real party for Charles’ birthday, won’t you?” Of course the old woman was only too happy to agree to their plans. While she and Jenny were talking, Harold sat back and looked at the two girls, the “unlike sisters” as he found himself calling them. Gwynette sat on the edge of a slipper haircloth chair, the stiffest in the room. There was an unmistakable sneer in the curve of her mouth, which was quite as sensitive as Jenny’s but lacking the sweet cheerful upturn at the corners. Nor was Harold the only one who was thinking about this very evident likeness, or unlikeness. Farmer Si, chewing a toothpick (of all plebeian things!), stood warming his back at the nickel-plated parlor stove, hands back of him, teetering now and then from heel to toe and ruminating. “Wall,” was his self-satisfied conclusion, “who wants her can have ’tother one. Ma and me got the best of that little drawin’ deal.” “But that birthday is a whole week away,” Harold was saying, “and here is a perfectly good evening to spend. The question before the house is, how shall we spend it?” “O, I know,” Lenora leaned forward eagerly. “Let’s make popcorn balls. Brother and I used to call that the greatest kind of treat when we were children.” Gwynette’s cold voice cut in with: “But we are not children.” Harold leaped up exclaiming, “Maybe you are not, Gwyn, but the rest of us are. Grandma Sue, may we borrow your kitchen if we leave it as spotless as we find it?” Gwynette rose, saying coldly, “I am very tired. I think I will go home now.” Harold was filled with consternation. He, of course, would have to accompany his sister, but, before he could speak, Charles was saying: “I will walk over with you, Miss Gwynette, if you will permit me to do so. I haven’t had nearly my usual amount of outdoor exercise today, and I’d be glad to do it.” Gwynette flashed a grateful glance at him, and, wishing to appear well in his eyes, she actually crossed the room and held out her hand to the old woman, who, with the others, had risen. “Goodnight, Mrs. Warner,” she began, then surprised herself by ending with—“I hope you will invite me to the birthday party.” She bit her lip with vexation as soon as she was outdoors. She had not meant to say it. Why had she? It was the same as acknowledging that she considered herself an equal socially with the Warners and the Gales, who also were farmers. She knew the answer, even though she would not admit it. “What a warm, pleasant evening it is,” Charles said when the door of the farmhouse had closed behind them. “Would it bore you terribly, Miss Gwynette, to go out on the point of rocks with me for a moment? I’d like to see the surf closer in the moonlight.” “Oh, I’d love to.” Gwynette was honest, at least, when she made this reply. She liked to be with this good-looking young giant who carried himself as a Grecian god might have done. Taking her arm, the young man assisted the slender, graceful girl from rock to rock until they had reached the highest point. There Charles noted the canopied rock where Lenora and Jenny sat on the first day of their visit to the point together. “Is it too cool, do you think, to sit here a moment?” Gwynette asked somewhat shyly. For answer, the lad drew off his outer coat, folded it and placed it on the stone. “Oh, I don’t need it,” he said, when she protested. “This slipover sweater of mine is all that I usually wear, but I put on the coat tonight in honor of the ladies.” Then, folding his arms, he stood silently near, watching the truly inspiring scene. One great breaker after another rolled quietly in, lifting a foaming crest as it neared the shore, glistening like fairy snow in the silver of the moonlight. “The surf doesn’t roar tonight, the way it does sometimes,” the lad said, dropping at last to the rock at the girl’s side. “Watch now when the next wave breaks, how all of the spray glistens.” For a few moments neither spoke and, in Gwynette’s starved soul something stirred again, this time more distinctly. It was an intense love of nature that she had inherited, with Jenny, from a wandering poet-missionary father. She caught her breath when spray and mist dashed almost up to them. “O, it is lovely, lovely!” she said, for once being perfectly sincere and forgetting herself. “I never saw anything so exquisite.” Charles was more than pleased. Perhaps he was to find the soul of the girl at his side. Harold did not believe that she had one. As he glanced down at her now and then her real joy in the beauty of the scene before them, he concluded that she was fully as beautiful as her sister. “I wonder where the silver path leads,” she said whimsically. “I wish I had a sailboat here,” the lad exclaimed, “and if you would be my passenger, we’d sail over that silver stream and find where it leads.” The girl looked up at him. Her new emotion had changed the expression of her face. It was no longer cynical and cold. “Our father had a sailboat, but for years it has been hanging to the rafters of the boathouse. Perhaps Harold would like to take it down, now that he is to be here all summer.” “Good. I’ll ask him!” the lad was enthusiastic. “I suppose you wonder how I, a farmer from the inland, learned to sail. It was the year before mother died that we all went to Lake Tahoe, hoping that the change of air would benefit her. A splendid sailboat was one of the accessories of the cabin we rented, and how I reveled in it. I do hope Harold will loan me his boat. It seems calm enough beyond the surf. In fact I saw several boats today evidently racing around a buoy over toward the town.” “Yes, there is a yacht club at Santa Barbara and they have a wonderful harbor. Harold has been invited to join the club. I would like to attend one of their dances.” The girl hesitated to ask her companion if he could dance. Probably not, having been brought up on an isolated ranch. To her relief the question was answered without having been asked. “I believe I like skating better than dancing, but, when the music pleases me and my partner, I do enjoy dancing.” Gwyn found that she must reconstruct her preconvinced ideas about Dakota farmers. Then, after silently watching the waves for a thoughtful moment, he turned toward her as he smilingly said: “Miss Gwynette, do you suppose that you and I could go to the next Yacht Club dance?” “Oh, yes, of course.” The girl’s eyes were glowing. Now indeed the resemblance to Jenny was marked. “We have the entree everywhere.” As they walked side by side toward the big house. Gwyn was conscious of being happier than she had ever been in all her seventeen years. Then she realized, with a pang of regret, that in two weeks this companion who seemed to understand her better than did anyone else, would be gone. At the foot of the steps she turned and held out her hand. “Goodnight, Mr. Gale,” she said simply. “Thank you for escorting me home.” |
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