Sisters

Susan Warner turned to beam a welcome at the apparition standing in the open door of the kitchen. With the sun back of her, shining through the folds of her yellow muslin dress and glinting through her light, wavy brown hair, the girl did indeed look like a sprite of the springtime, and, to add to the picture, she held a branch, sweet with apricot blossoms.

“Greetings, Granny Sue!” she called gayly. “This is churning day, isn’t it?”

“That’s right, ’tis, Jenny darlin’, or leastwise ’twould o’ been ’ceptin’ for a message Mr. Pickson fetched over from Granger Place Seminary. There’s some new pupils come sudden like, I reckon, an’ they need eggs a day sooner than ordinary. I’ve got ’em all packed in the hamper, dearie. You’ve nothin’ to do but hitch Dobbin and start.”

“Righto, Granny Sue; but first I must put these poor blossoms into a jar. I found the branch broken and just hanging by a shred of bark on that old tree ’way down by the fence corner.”

Jenny took a brown jar from a cupboard as she talked and filled it with water from the sink pump.

“They’ll be lonely for their home tree, like as not,” she chattered on, “but perhaps they’ll be a bit glad when they find that they are to brighten up our home for a few days. Don’t you think maybe they will, Granny Sue? Don’t you think when we can’t do the thing we most want to do, we still can be happy if we are just alive and doing the most beautiful thing that is left for us to do?”

This last was called over her shoulder as she carried the jar and blossoming branch toward the door of the living-room. Luckily she did not pause for an answer, for the little old woman always felt confused when her girl began such flights of fancy. Had she been obliged to reply, she no doubt would have said:

“Why, ’taint likely, Jenny, that branch of apricot flowers even knows it’s broken off, an’ as for that, the ones that are left will make all the better fruit with some of ’em gone.”

While the girl was placing the jar on the living-room center table, close to the book that she had been reading, Granddad Si entered the kitchen for a drink, and upon hearing of the message from Miss Granger, he hurried to the barn to hitch old Dobbin to the cart, and so, when five minutes later the girl skipped out, laughing over her shoulder at her grandmother’s admonition to go more slowly, lest she fall and break the eggs, there was Granddad Si fastening the last buckles. He straightened up, pushed his frayed straw hat to the back of his head and surveyed the girl with pardonable pride.

“Jenny, gal,” he began, and from the expression in his eyes she knew just how he would complete the sentence, and so, laughingly, she put her free hand over his mouth.

“Oh, granddad, ’tisn’t so, not the least bit, and you mustn’t say it again. A stranger might hear you some time, and what if he should think that I really believed it.”

But the old man finished his sentence, even though the words were mumbled behind the slim white hand of his girl:

“It’s the Gospel truth, Jenny. I’m tellin’ ye! Thar ain’t a gal over to that hifalutin seminary that’s half as purty as yo’ be. I reckon I know, ’cause I watch the whole lot of ’em when they go down the road on them parade walks they take, with a teacher ahead and one behind like they was a flock of geese and had to have a gooseherd along, which more’n like they are. A silly parcel, allays gigglin’.”

The last half of this speech had been more clearly spoken, for Jenny, having kissed him on the top of the nose from the wagon step, had climbed into the cart.

As she was driving away, she called back to him: “Wrong you are, Granddad, for I am only an egg and honey vender, while they are all aristocrats. Good-bye.”

Then, a second later, she turned again to sing out:

“Tell Granny I’d like a chocolate pudding tonight, all hidden in Brindle’s yellowest cream.”

Long after the girl had driven away, the farmer stood gazing down the lane. An old question had returned to trouble him:

Was it honest not to tell her that she wasn’t their own kin?

He couldn’t do it. It would break all of their hearts. She was their kin, somehow. No own grandchild could be dearer. Then he thought of the other girl, Jenny’s sister. He had heard something that day about her, and he had been mighty sorry to hear it.

When his “gal” disappeared from sight, up one of the tree-shaded lanes leading toward the foothill estates, Farmer Si turned and walked slowly back to the kitchen. He delivered Jenny’s message about the chocolate pudding to his wife, who, even then, was preparing the vegetables for supper. Crossing to the sink pump, the old man began working the handle up and down. A rush of crystal clear water rewarded his effort and, after having quaffed a long refreshing draught of it, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

Then, after hanging his hat on its nail by the door, he sank down in his favorite arm chair close to the stove and sighed deeply as though he were very weary. His wife looked at him questioningly and he said in a voice and manner which were evidently evasive:

“Powerful poor weather for gettin’ the crops started. Nothin’ but sunshine this fortnight past.”

Susan Warner was briskly beating the eggs needed for her darling’s favorite pudding. When the whirr had ceased she turned and smiled across the room at the old man whose position showed that he was dejected. “What’s worryin’ yo’, Si?” The tone of the old woman’s voice promised sympathy if it were needed. “’Tisn’t about the farm yo’re really cogitatin’. I can tell that easy. Thar’s suthin’ else troublin’ yo’, an’ yo’ might as well speak out furst as last.”

“Wall, yo’re close to right, Susan, as I reckon yo’ most allays are. I was mendin’ the fence down by the highway when ol’ Pickson drove up an’ stopped to pass the time o’ day, like he generally does, an’ he says, says he, ‘Si, have yo’ heard the news?’ I w’a’nt particular interested, bein’ as Pickson allays starts off that a-way, but what he said next fetched me to an upstandin’, I kin tell you.”

Susan Warner had stopped her work to listen.

“What did Mr. Pickson tell you, Si? Suthin’ that troubled you?” she inquired anxiously.

“Wall, sort o’ that way. Mabbe it won’t be nuthin’ to worry about, and mabbe agin it will. Pickson said as how Mrs. Poindexter-Jones had gone to some waterin’ place over in France for her nerves, an’ not wishin’ to leave her daughter in the big city up north alone with the servants, she’d sent her to stay in the seminary down here for the time bein’, an’, what’s more, a flock of her friends from San Francisco came along of her. Them are the new pupils you was mentionin’ a spell ago, as being the reason extra eggs was needed.”

The old woman stared at her spouse as one spellbound. When she spoke her voice sounded strained and unnatural. “Si Warner, do yo’ mean to tell me our Jenny has gone to fetch eggs for her very own sister an’ her friends? They’re likely to meet up wi’ each other now, arter all these years, an’ neither will know who the other really is. Oh, the pity of it, that one of ’em should have all that money can buy, and the other of ’em ridin’ around peddlin’ eggs and honey.”

But the old man took a different view of the matter. “Susan,” he said, “if our gal had the pick of the two places, I reckon she’d choose stayin’ with us. I reckon she would.”

Susan Warner’s practical nature had again asserted itself. “Wall, there’s no need for us to be figurin’ about that. Jenny shall never know that she has a sister. Who is there to tell her? An’ what’s more, she’ll never have a chance to choose betwixt us and the Poindexter-Joneses.” Then, as a tender expression crept into the faded blue eyes, the old woman added, “Jenny wouldn’t leave us, Si. No, not for anyone. I’m sartin as to that, but I’m hopin’ she’ll never know as she isn’t our own. I’m sure hopin’ that she won’t.”

CHAPTER III.

FORLORN ETTA

Dobbin never could be induced to go faster than a gentle trot and this pace was especially pleasing to his driver on a day when the world, all the world that she knew, was at its loveliest. Having left the coast highway, she turned up the Live-Oak Canon road and slowly began the ascent toward the foothills.

There was no one in sight for, indeed, one seldom met pedestrians along the winding lanes in the aristocratic suburb of Santa Barbara. Now and then a handsome limousine would pass and Dobbin, drawing to the far side of the road, would put up his ears and stare at the usurper. He seemed to consider all vehicles not horse-drawn with something of disdain. Then, when it had passed, he again took the middle of the road, which he deemed his rightful place.

“Dobbin,” the girl sang out to him, “what would you think, some day, if you saw me riding in one of those fine cars?” Then, as memory recalled a certain stormy day two years previous, Jenny continued, “I never told you, Dobbin, but I did ride in one once. It was a little low gray car and the boy who drove it called it a ‘speeder.’”

Then, as Dobbin seemed to consider this conversation not worth listening to, the girl fell to musing.

“I wonder what became of that boy. Harold P-J, he called himself, and he said I mustn’t forget the hyphen. He laughed when he said it. There must have been something amusing about it. He was a nice boy with such brotherly gray eyes. He hasn’t been back since, I am sure, for he told granddad he would come to the farm the very next time his mother permitted him to visit Santa Barbara.” Then Jenny recalled the one and only time that she had seen Harold’s mother. It was when she had been ten. She had been out in the garden gathering Shasta daisies to give to Miss Dearborn, her teacher. She had on a yellow dress that day, she recalled; yellow had always been her favorite color and she had been standing knee deep among the flowers with her arms almost full when the grand coach turned into the lane. Jenny had often heard Granny Sue tell about the coach, on the door of which was emblazoned the Poindexter-Arms, and the small girl, filled with a natural curiosity, had glanced up as the equipage was about to pass. But it had not passed, for the only occupant, a haughty-mannered, handsomely-gowned woman had pulled on a silken cord which evidently communicated with the driver’s seat, for, almost at once, the coach had stopped and the woman had beckoned to the child.

“Are you Jeanette Warner?” she had asked abruptly. The child, making a curtsy, as Miss Dearborn had said all well-mannered little girls should, had replied that her name was Jenny. Never would the girl forget the expression on the handsome face as the eyebrows were lifted. The grand dame’s next remark, which was quite unintelligible to the child, had been uttered in a cold voice as though the speaker were much vexed about something. “I am indeed sorry to find that you are so alike.”

The haughty woman had then jerked on the silken cord in a most imperious manner and the coach had moved toward the farmhouse.

Jenny had never told anyone of this meeting, but her sensitive nature had been deeply hurt by the cold, disdainful expression in the woman’s eyes. She had sincerely hoped she never again would encounter the owner of Rocky Point, nor had she done so. Time, even, had erased from her memory just what Mrs. Poindexter-Jones had said, since, at the time, the words had conveyed no real meaning to the child. All that was left in her heart was a dread of the woman, and she had been glad, glad that she lived far away to the north instead of next door.

Suddenly the impulsive girl drew rein. “Dobbin,” she exclaimed joyfully, “stand still a moment. I want you to look at that wonderful stone wall around the Bixby estate. Isn’t it the most beautiful thing that you ever saw with the pink and white cherokee roses, star-like, all over it?” Then she waved her hand toward an acacia tree beyond the wall that was golden with bloom, and called out to an invisible mocking bird that was imitating one lilting song after another, “I don’t wonder that you shout hosannas of praise. It’s such a wonderful world to live in. Trot along, Dobbin! We must get the eggs to the seminary before five.”

The tree-shaded, lane-like road they were following had many a bend in it as it ascended higher and higher into the foothills, and, as they turned at one of them, Jenny again addressed her four-footed companion.

“Dobbin, do hurry! There’s that poor forlorn Etta Somebody who pares potatoes at the seminary. I see her all crouched down over a pan of vegetables every time I go into that kitchen to deliver eggs and honey, but not once has she looked up at me. I know she’s terribly unhappy about something. I don’t believe she even knows that she’s living in a wonderful world where everything is so beautiful that a person just has to sing. Please do hurry, Dobbin. I may never get another chance to speak to her and I want to ask her if she wouldn’t like to ride.”

Jenny slapped the reins on the back of the old dusty-white horse, and, although he at first cast a glance of indignation over his right shoulder, he decided to humor his young mistress, and did increase his speed sufficiently to overtake the tall angular girl who shuffled as she walked and drooped her shoulders as though the burden upon them was more than she could bear. She wore an almost threadbare brown woolen dress, though the day was warm, and a queer little hat which suggested to Jenny pictures she had seen of children in foreign lands. She had one day heard the cook address the girl as Etta in a voice that had expressed impatience, and so, pulling on the rein, Jenny called cheerily, “Etta, are you going up to the seminary? Won’t you ride with me? I’m taking the eggs a day early.”

The girl, whose plain, colorless face was dully expressionless, climbed up on the seat at Jenny’s side. “You look awfully fagged and dusty. Have you been walking far?” the young driver ventured.

The strange girl’s tone was complaining – “Far? Well, I should say I have. All the way to Santa Barbara railway station and back. Folks enough passed me goin’ and comin’, but you’re the first that offered me a lift.”

“Eight miles is a long walk,” the young driver put in, “on a day as warm as this” Etta’s china blue eyes stared dully ahead. She made no response and so Jenny again started Dobbin on the upward way.

From time to time she glanced furtively at her companion, wondering why she was so evidently miserable.

At last she said, “I suppose everyone was in a hurry. I mean the folks who passed you.”