  The Colonel glanced anxiously at his young guest the next morning. She had been so bright and animated for days that the good man was beginning to hope that the city girl was becoming acclimated, but again she was looking pale and disinterested. When she had finished her breakfast and had retired to her room, the Colonel called Mrs. Gray into his study and together they had a long talk about Geraldine. “Poor little girl,” the kind old lady said. “She has never known a mother’s love and I would be glad to help her, but I can’t reach her heart. She treats me courteously, but her attitude says as plainly as words: ‘Mrs. Gray, you are only an upper servant from whom I wish no familiarity.’ I have tried ever since I came to find something which would be the open sesame of this stone barrier which the little girl has raised between us, but I am beginning to think that there is none.” “Try just once more,” the Colonel said anxiously, “and then, if you do not succeed, I will comply with her father’s suggestion and send her away to a boarding school if she is unhappy here.” The little old lady went directly to Geraldine’s room and tapped on the door. There was no reply and so she softly entered. The girl had thrown herself down on the window seat and her shoulders were shaken with sobs. Strangely enough in one hand she held a stocking which she had evidently been attempting to darn. Truly touched, the kind old lady went toward her and said with infinite tenderness: “Dear, dear little girl! Won’t you tell me why you are unhappy?” She sat beside Geraldine and smoothed her hair. “Oh, why didn’t my mother live?” was the sobbing reply. “She would have taught me the things that other girls know how to do, and then no one could have called me a pretty dolled-up butterfly.” Mrs. Grey realized that someone had deeply hurt Geraldine’s pride, but perhaps this was the very cleft in the stone wall for which she had been seeking. “Little girl,” she said kindly, “you cannot know how my heart has yearned through the years, first for a daughter of my own and then for a granddaughter to whom I might teach the things that would help her to become a truly womanly woman. It would mean so much to me, Geraldine; it would give me so much happiness, if you would let me just pretend that you are that little girl.” The wondering lassie sat up, her beautiful violet eyes brimming with unshed tears. There were also tears in the eyes of the old lady, and, perhaps, for the first time in her sixteen years the girl felt a rush of sympathy in her heart for someone not herself. “You, too, are lonely, Mrs. Gray?” she asked. Then she added sorrowfully: “I guess I never really knew what I had missed until I heard the boys and girls here telling about their wonderful mothers. Father has often told me that my mother was wonderful, too. She would have taught me to sew and make my own dresses and hats and to cook, if that is what a girl should know.” The housekeeper marveled. This was not the Geraldine of yesterday. What had happened? Mrs. Gray could not know, but what she did know was that it was a moment to seize upon, and this she did. “Geraldine,” she said, “let me teach you these things.” “Oh, will you?” was the eager reply. “How long will it take me to learn, do you think? May I begin a dress today?” Mrs. Gray laughed, and, stooping, she kissed the girl’s wet cheek, then she said: “Get on your coat, dearie, and we will go into town and buy the material.” This was the beginning of happy days for these two. A week later Geraldine stood in front of the long mirror in her sun-flooded room, gazing with shining eyes at her own graceful self, clothed, for the very first time, in a garment of her own making. She had begged Mrs. Gray to permit her to put in every stitch so that she might truthfully say that she made it all herself. To whom she wished to say this, the little old lady could not surmise. “Isn’t it the prettiest color, Mrs. Gray?” Geraldine asked for the twentieth time as she looked at the clinging folds of soft blue cashmere. “It is indeed, dearie,” the housekeeper replied, “and it’s the blue that makes your eyes look like two lovely violets.” The girl’s gaze wandered to the reflection of her face and she smiled. “Daddy says that my eyes are just like Mother’s. I’m so glad.” Then she added happily: “It’s all done, isn’t it, Mrs. Gray, except a collar, and we haven’t decided how to make that yet, have we? Oh, there’s the telephone. I wonder who it is?” Skipping to the little table near her bed, she lifted the receiver and called, “Good morning.” Merry’s voice said: “Geraldine, we want you to come over this afternoon.” “I’ll be there!” the seamstress replied, and then, whirling around, she exclaimed: “It was Merry Lee. She wants me to be at her house about three. How I wish I could wear my new dress.” “Why, so you can, dearie. I’ll cut out a deep muslin collar and you can sew tiny ruffles around the edge and the dress will be complete long before that hour.” In the early afternoon, all alone, Geraldine tramped down the snowy road and her heart was singing. She could not understand why she felt so happy. The girls were gathered in the cheerful library of the Lee home when Geraldine entered. They welcomed her gladly, and when her wraps were removed Merry, in little girl fashion, exclaimed: “Oh, do look, everybody. Isn’t that the sweetest new dress Geraldine has on?” The wearer of the dress, with flushed cheeks and glowing eyes, turned around that the girls might all examine her gown, and then, unable longer to keep her wonderful secret, she exclaimed: “You’ll never believe it, but it’s honestly true. I made every stitch of this dress myself. Of course, Mrs. Gray cut it out and showed me how, but truly I made it, and I never enjoyed doing anything more in my whole life.” Then it was that Geraldine chanced to glance at the open door of the music room, and the rose in her cheeks deepened, for Jack, with book in hand, was standing there. Luckily he had completely forgotten the conversation of the week before and so he did not even dream that his theories had been the incentive for Geraldine’s experiments in dressmaking. “Jack,” his sister called, “isn’t this a pretty dress? Geraldine made it all herself.” “It surely is!” the lad replied as he entered the room. “It’s the color I like best.” Then, as Merry and Doris served hot chocolate and cookies, the lad sat on the window seat beside Geraldine and talked about his favorite subject, cattle-raising in Arizona. An hour later, when the girls were about to depart, he reappeared to announce that he would take them all home in his father’s big sleigh if they did not mind being crowded. It was with a happy heart that Geraldine noticed that one by one Jack left the town girls at their homes, and then went round the longest way to the Wainright place. |
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