as a social climber, had said that if she took Carol, she wished it
distinctly understood that Sylvia need have nothing to do with the
others, who were so like that impossible man whom the mountain people
had called Pine Tree Martin.
Poor Mr. Clayburn held the trembling hand in a firm clasp as he said
warmly: “There now, little girl, don’t be worrying any more than you can
help. You’ll be surprised how fine things are going to turn out.
Good-by. I’ll come after Carol when you say the word.”
As soon as the banker had driven out of the dooryard, Dixie threw
herself down in the big grandfather’s chair and sobbed as though her
heart would break, but at last she rose, washed her face, tidied her
hair, and began setting the table for supper. The other three would soon
be returning, and the little mother of them all would have to be the one
to be brave, outwardly at least. But oh, how the heart of her yearned
for the father whose strong arms had always been her haven of refuge!
But now she, Dixie, must be haven for the other three.
“Here they come,” she told herself. “Now we’ll talk it over, and Carol
may make her choice.”
CHAPTER TEN
CAROL’S CHOICE
When the three children entered the big living-room of the old log
cabin, Ken was the first to notice that Dixie had been crying.
“I knew it, I just knew it!” the boy blurted out. “You’re sick or
something, Dix. That’s why you looked so pale, and why you didn’t want
to go for a walk like you always do Sunday afternoons.”
“No, Ken, it isn’t that,” the oldest girl said. “Get your hats off and
come and sit here a while. I want to tell you all something.”
Dixie lifted little Jimmy-Boy and held him crushingly close. Then she
hid her face among his thick yellow curls, that Ken might not see the
rush of tears to her eyes, for she had suddenly thought, “The next thing
I know, somebody will offer to take my baby away from me, but, oh, they
can’t have him, not if I work my fingers to the bone to keep him!”
Luckily Ken remembered that the pig, three hens, the goat, and Pegasus
must be fed before dark, and, as it was dusk, he hastened to the
barnyard. Carol had climbed to the loft bedroom to put away her one
treasure, a hat with a pretty flower-wreath on it, and so Dixie had time
to dry the telltale tears before they returned.
“Fire ahead, Dix,” was Ken’s boyish way of announcing that he was ready
to listen. He whirled a straight-backed chair about and straddled it as
he spoke.
Dixie had not planned what she should say. She left it to the
inspiration of the moment. What she said was: “Mr. Clayburn has been
over while you-all have been away, and he said his wife would like to
have Carol go to Genoa and live with them and be a sister to their
Sylvia.”
If Dixie had hoped that Carol would say that she would far rather live
in the log cabin with them, she was doomed to disappointment, for
Carol’s pretty face glowed joyfully, and, clapping her hands, she cried:
“Oh, Dix, how wonderful that will be! Just think of the pretty clothes
I’ll have. That old ruffly dress of Jessica Archer’s will look like poor
folks by the side of the dresses I will wear. Why, Sylvia Clayburn had
on a pink-silk dress at the fair. I’d be the happiest girl on earth,
Dix, if I could have a silk dress and have Jessica Archer see me wearing
it.”
Ken had not spoken, but he was watching both of his sisters very
closely, and the slow anger of Pine Tree Martin was mounting in his
heart.
Suddenly he blurted, “Let her go, Dix, and be glad to get rid of her, if
that’s all the thanks she’s got to give, after the scrimping and
going-without you’ve done to buy her things.”
“Don’t, Ken, dear,” Dixie cried. “Carol’s not as old as we are,
and—she’s different.”
“I should hope I _am_ different,” the younger girl replied, tossing her
curls. “I am a Haddington-Allen through and through, my mother often
told me so, and you two are—are—”
“Don’t you dare say it!” Ken warned, and Carol, after a quick glance at
her brother, thought best not to complete her sentence.
The boy had whirled the chair away and was standing. Looking steadily at
the now shrinking younger girl, he declared, “Dix and I are proud,
proud, _proud_, that we are children of our father.” Then there was a
break in his voice that made even Carol ashamed of herself.
“Oh, I don’t see why we need be mad about it,” she said in a wheedling
voice, “and I should think you two would be glad to have me living where
I could have nice things and won’t have to dust and—”
Again Ken blurted out with, “Yes, you’re quite willing Dix should go on
doing all the work and bearing all the burden. We’ll be well rid of you,
I say, and the sooner the better.” At that the boy turned and left the
house, closing the door with a bang.
The next day Dixie sent word to Mr. Clayburn, and the following Sunday
noon, true to his promise, the banker reappeared.
Carol wore her best clothes and had nothing to carry. When it came to
the moment of saying good-by, Dixie, to outward appearances her own
cheerful self, kissed her little sister tenderly, and Ken said, “So
long,” not knowing whether he was glad or sorry. Then Carol stooped to
kiss little Jimmy-Boy, who suddenly threw his arms about her neck and
held her close. “Jimmy loves Carol,” he prattled, as he put his dewy
mouth up to be kissed.
For one brief moment the little girl hesitated, then, unfastening the
clinging baby arms, she ran and climbed into the waiting buggy and sat
beside Mr. Clayburn. Then she smiled and waved. Little Jimmy, not in the
least understanding what was happening, began to sob and reached out his
chubby arms.
Dixie caught him up and held him as she waved his small hand at the
disappearing wagon. Then, with a sigh, the little mother turned back
into the log cabin, feeling very much as though there had been a death
in the family.
To the very last she had hoped that Carol loved them all too much really
to leave them; but Ken was calling to her, and so, holding fast to Baby
Jim’s hand, she went out to the barnyard to see what he wanted.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
PLANNING A WAY OUT
The evening of the day when Carol had ridden away from her log-cabin
home to live in the handsome colonial residence of the banker of Genoa,
Ken and Dixie sat up later than usual. Ken had a slate on the table in
front of him.
“The taxes are twelve dollars a year,” he was saying, “so, just as soon
as the money comes each month, we must put one dollar in a safe place.”
Dixie nodded and then glanced at the tall grandfather clock. It was
nine. She wondered if Carol had remembered to say her prayers before she
went to bed, and would she miss Dixie’s good-night kiss. Perhaps not
that very first night. She’d be so excited and interested, everything
being so new and strange. Never before had the older girl spent even one
night away from any of her little brood. She supposed that she might get
used to it in time, sleeping alone in the loft.
“Dix, you’re not paying the least mite of attention to what I am
saying.” Ken’s voice was patient, but he was a little vexed, for he knew
that he, who had always been a faithful brother and friend, was being
neglected while Dixie was yearning for their vain, selfish sister,
Carol.
“I heard what you said, Ken, dear, honestly I did! You were saying it
would take two dollars to buy a sack of dry beans, and another two
dollars for potatoes that we need right now. That’s five dollars out of
this month’s interest, and there’ll be another for extra things like
salt and sugar. It doesn’t look as though there’d be enough to buy a
coat for Jimmy-Boy, does it? And the cold winter will soon be here.”
The brow of the lad was wrinkled, and unconsciously he tapped his pencil
on the slate as he thought. Then suddenly he rose with a look of
determination that was so like his father’s. “Dix,” he said, “I’m not
going to school any longer. I’m going to work, that’s what. I’m fourteen
years of age now, and the law lets you stop then.”
The girl also had risen, and, placing a hand lovingly on the arm of her
brother, she said, “Kenny, you know that your heart’s set on going away
to school some day to learn how to make roads and bridges and things
like that.”
Ken nodded. “I know,” he said. “Maybe later I can go to school again,
but just now we need money.”
The lad had been twelve years of age the year that the State road had
crossed the Sierra Nevada Mountains. He had been a frequent and
fascinated visitor at the camp where the civil engineer lived, and
Frederick Edrington, isolated from people of his own kind, had really
enjoyed the companionship of the intelligent boy, and had taught him
many things, leaving in the heart of the lad an unwavering ambition some
day to become a civil engineer.
When the camp of the road-builders had been moved farther and farther
west, Ken had managed to visit his friend until the distance became too
great, and at last he had to say good-by to Frederick Edrington, who had
been a greater influence for good in the boy’s life than either of them
at that time realized.
Now and then a letter or a picture postcard had come from the engineer,
who had been promoted to a government inspecting-position which took him
to many out-of-the-way places. One of Ken’s dearest desires was to meet
again this friend whom he so admired.
“Don’t stop going to school yet, Ken, dear,” Dixie was saying. “Let’s
wait till we get close up to trouble’s stone wall, and then, if we can’t
find an opening in it, we’ll turn back and do something else.” That had
been a favorite saying of Grandmother Piggins. “Trouble ofttimes seems
like a stone wall ahead, but when you get right close up to it you find
there’s an opening with sunshine and gardens just beyond.”
Ken whirled about and caught his sister’s hands. “I’ll make a bargain,
Dix,” he said. “If you’ll promise not to grieve about Carol, I’ll
promise to keep on going to school until we come to the stone wall and
find there isn’t an opening.”
Dixie smiled. “I ought to be glad,” she said, “because Carol is to have
so nice a home.” Then she added wistfully, “I’m going to be glad, honest
I am, just as soon as I get over being lonesome.”
Ken turned away and shook the stove. “Girls are queer,” was what he was
thinking, but it was with unusual tenderness that he kissed his sister
good-night.
CHAPTER TWELVE
CAROL’S NEW HOME
It had been a very excited little girl who had driven in between the
high stone gate-posts and had realized that the imposing white
mansion-like house set far back among fine old trees, and surrounded by
wide velvety lawns and gardens, where a few late flowers were still
blooming, was to be her future home. Since the little lass was very like
her mother, it was not strange that Carol truly believed that she was
receiving only that which it was her right to have.
Little Sylvia Clayburn she knew not at all, and Mrs. Clayburn she
remembered vaguely as being a very richly dressed woman who had stopped
her at the fair to ask whose little girl she might be, and, as usual,
Carol’s reply had been that she was a Haddington-Allen of Kentucky.
Later, when Mrs. Clayburn had heard the story of the four orphans from
her husband, she had said that she believed this little Carol would be
the right child for them to adopt, since they had decided that their
precious Sylvia was being spoiled growing up alone.
Nor were they wrong, for Sylvia, pale, thin, and fretful, indeed was
very much spoiled. Whenever she cried, her mother gave her candy, and
then, of course, she had no desire for plain, healthful foods.
“Sylvia has such aristocratic taste,” the proud mother would say. “She
scorns such plebeian food as bread, and will eat nothing but cake.”
No wonder that the child of such a mother should be spoiled and sickly.
It was late afternoon when Mr. Clayburn led Carol into the luxuriously
furnished library, where Mrs. Clayburn, reclining on a divan, propped up
with many silken pillows, was reading aloud to a small girl who was
dressed in the pale pink silk that had so aroused Carol’s envy and
admiration.
Languidly the woman lifted her eyes and closed the book when the
newcomer approached. “Wife, here is little Carol who has come to pay us
a good long visit, I hope,” the kind man said. Then to his own little
daughter he added, “Sylvia, won’t you come and shake hands with your new
sister?”
Mrs. Clayburn protested. “Samuel,” she said, “haven’t I told you time
and again that hand-shaking is effete, obsolete? It is not done now in
the best families.”
Carol, wishing at once to impress Mrs. Clayburn with the fact that she,
at least, was of a “best family,” was making a graceful curtsy, and
Sylvia, having received a prompting push from her mother, did likewise.
“As you wish, my dear,” said Mr. Clayburn, smiling as though he were
much amused.
“As long as this little lady is welcomed into our hearts, I’ll not be a
stickler as to what outward form is observed,” he thought. Then to
Sylvia he said, “Miggins, trot along upstairs and show your new sister
where to put her bonnet and things.”
“I don’t want to,” the small girl said, again seating herself by the
divan. “I want Mother to read to me.”
“Of course you needn’t go if you don’t want to,” Mrs. Clayburn told her.
Then she said to her husband: “Ring for Fanchon. Poor Sylvia is thin
enough as it is without wearing herself out needlessly climbing up and
down that long flight of stairs. We really ought to have a lift
installed. They are now putting them in the homes of the b—”
But Mr. Clayburn had gone. Good-natured as he was, he was becoming
extremely tired of hearing what was done in the best families.
There was a button in each room in the house, which, when touched, rang
a bell in the kitchen, and the indicator informed the maid where her
presence was desired, and so it was that a moment later a buxom young
woman in black and white appeared in the library door. Her rosy
countenance suggested that she was Irish, and in fact, when the banker’s
wife had engaged her, the maid’s name had been Norah, but since the best
families were employing French maids whenever they could be procured,
the name had been changed to Fanchon. However, Mrs. Clayburn had warned
her not to speak within the hearing of a guest, as her delightful brogue
could never be mistaken.
Carol followed the silent Fanchon up the long flight of stairs that
seemed velvety soft, and into a large, beautifully furnished chamber
where there were twin beds. The small girl clasped her hands in delight.
This, to her thought, was the kind of home in which she belonged. How
happy she was going to be there!
“Will you be after changing yer dress now, colleen?” the Irish maid said
pleasantly. “This here’s the one as the mistress said ye were to be
wearin’ for dinner to-night.” As she spoke she took from a closet one of
Sylvia’s dresses. “That child took a dislikin’ to it,” the maid went on
to inform the small listener, “and not once would she be puttin’ it on.
Ye’re in luck, colleen, changing this quick from gingham to red silk.”
The “blue-blooded” little girl looked with horror at the dress. It _was_
silk, but how she had always hated bright red. She actually drew herself
up as she said: “I don’t wish to wear it. I wish a blue silk dress.”
Now it happened that Mrs. Clayburn, on second thought, had decided to
climb the stairs and see just how the little orphan liked her new
surroundings, and so, holding the hand of Sylvia, she had just entered
the room unseen as this most ungrateful remark was being uttered.
“Indeed, Miss Martin?” she said in a tone of mingled iciness and
sarcasm. “What can you, a mere charity orphan, be thinking of to tell
what you wish to wear? You ought to be humbly grateful that you are
being taken out of that tumble-down log cabin and permitted to live in a
house as handsome as any belonging to the best families.”
For one brief moment a spark of Martin pride flamed up in the heart of
the small girl. Their log cabin was not tumble-down. Only that summer an
artist from the East had said that it was the most picturesque home that
he had seen in the whole State of Nevada. That was when the crimson
rambler had been a riot of bloom.
Wisely she said nothing, but meekly permitted the maid to put on the
hated red dress.
The swish of the silk was something after all.
Poor little Carol had not started out well, and she was to find that,
although she was living in a rose-garden, it was not one without thorns.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CAROL IN DISGRACE
The dinner was one of many courses, and there were two very formal
guests, and, to Mr. Clayburn’s mortification, as well as Carol’s, the
hostess, wishing to impress the fashionable Mr. and Mrs. Jarvis Burrell,
from Reno, with her philanthropic generosity, told in detail the story
of Carol’s life, beginning when her mother was a stranded actress in the
year of the big strike over at Silver City.
The kind man glanced often at the small girl whose face was becoming as
scarlet as a peony. He well knew that he would be publicly rebuked by
his wife if he remonstrated or attempted to change the conversation, and
yet were it not better that he should bear the brunt of it than this
mere child who had been invited to come to their home? But, before he
had time to decide just how best to intervene, Mrs. Clayburn had reached
a point in her narrative which necessitated a description of the father,
who, she informed them, had been a no-account rancher, called by the
mountaineers “Pine Tree Martin.” She said no more, for the small girl,
with flaming eyes, had risen so suddenly that her chair fell back with a
crash. “’Tisn’t so!” she cried, her small hands clenched. “’Tisn’t so,
at all!” She had whirled to face the visitors. “He was the kindest, best
father there ever was to Dixie, Ken, Baby Jim, and me.” Then, bursting
into tears, she ran from the room and groped her way blindly up-stairs
and into the room to which Fanchon had first taken her.
She was pulling at the buttons in the back of her red-silk dress when
she heard a step outside the door. It was Mr. Clayburn who entered.
“Carol,” he said, placing a kindly hand on the curly head, “don’t be
hurt, little girl. Mrs. Clayburn is thoughtless, but she can’t be really
as cruel as she seems. You sit here in this comfortable chair by the
fire and I’ll have the rest of your dinner sent up to you.”
He started away, but he turned back to say, “You were right, though,
little Carol. I knew your father well, and he was the finest and most
upright of men. Any girl might be proud to be his daughter.”
Then he left the child alone in the room that was but dimly lighted, and
as she sat there waiting the coming of Fanchon, for the very first time
in her life she felt a real love and loyalty for that man whom the
banker had just praised. How kind he had always been, and how gentle.
If—if this cruel, wicked, Mrs. Clayburn was “best families,” she’d
rather, oh, a hundred times rather, have her own dear, good father,
whatever he was.
Fanchon entered, bearing a tray, and placed it on a low table. “Poor
little colleen,” she said with understanding sympathy. “I’m not after
envyin’ you much, and that’s the truth. I can be leavin’ any hour I
choose, as I’d like to, after next pay-day; but I’m supposin’ you’ll
have to stay here to the end of time.”
Then she went away, and Carol sat staring into the fire, thinking of
what she had just heard. Did she have to stay there for ever and ever?
Ken wouldn’t want her back, and, after all, did she want to go back?
Maybe things would be better after that night, and it was something to
be able to wear silk; even red silk was better than gingham. The dessert
was a delicious concoction, and Carol, as she ate it, decided that
perhaps she had been partly to blame that things had started out so all
wrong. Just then Fanchon reappeared and she was leading Sylvia by the
hand. That little maid looked with big-eyed wonder at the newcomer.
“You’re a very bad, bold girl; that’s what my mother says you are; and
I’m not going to speak to you again till you say you’re sorry; and I
shall hate you always.” Then she closed her thin lips tight and did not
speak again while the buxom Irish maid was undressing her. Later Fanchon
unfastened the buttons of the red-silk dress, helped Carol to prepare
for bed, and then turned out the light.
There had been nothing said about prayers. Carol had never in all her
short life gone to bed until after prayers had been said. When Pine Tree
Martin lived, he had gathered his children about him in the warm kitchen
and had led in the evening prayer, and had read to them from the big
Bible. Ken did the reading now, in memory of his father.
When Carol was sure that Sylvia was asleep, she crept from bed, and,
kneeling in the moonlight, she said the little bedtime prayer that Dixie
had taught her, and then asked a blessing for each of the three who were
in the log-cabin home over in the mountains.
Then she crawled back into bed, feeling somewhat comforted, but she
never, just never, could forgive Mrs. Clayburn; she was sure of that.
Suddenly she sat up, thinking. What was it that Dixie had taught her?
Never to let the sun go down on her wrath. But the sun had gone down,
and the moon was up. Oh, what ought she to do? After all, maybe she had
seemed ungrateful. Dixie wouldn’t want her to go to sleep without asking
to be forgiven.
Creeping out of bed, she stole down the wide, velvet-soft stairway,
holding her long white nightgown in one hand, while she grasped the
banister with the other. The guests were just departing when they looked
up and saw the small girl descending. Mrs. Clayburn was horrified.
“Go back to bed this instant, you bad, bold child!” she commanded, and
so, too frightened to speak, Carol did turn and go back, to sob softly
into her pillow until, at last, just from weariness, she fell asleep.
So ended the first day of Carol’s life in the home of one of the “very
best families.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE LITTLE RUNAWAY
The next morning Sylvia was unusually fretful, and little wonder, for
she had had two helpings of the rich, creamy dessert the night before,
and would not eat the wholesome breakfast which was served to her in
bed.
Carol was told to remain in her room that morning as a punishment for
the manner in which she had misbehaved the night before. This message
was brought with her breakfast by Fanchon. To the surprise of the maid,
the small girl was up and had on her own old dress that buttoned down
the front.
“Oh, I just wanted to put it on,” the child said, when the kindly maid
expressed her surprise.
“Poor little colleen, I guess ye’re homesick, and I wouldn’t wonder at
it if you are,” was what Fanchon was thinking, but aloud she made no
comment, as the pale-blue eyes of her little mistress were watching her
from the bed where she sat propped among downy pillows.
All the time that Carol sat at the low table eating her mush and milk,
she, too, was wondering if she could be homesick. Almost unconsciously
her eyes roamed over the creamy net curtains and rose-silk draperies, at
the bird’s-eye maple furniture, and at the wide window-seat heaped with
rosy cushions.
Then her thoughts wandered to the little loft bedroom which she and
Dixie always shared together. There was one small window, with a
turkey-red curtain, a very old-fashioned chest of drawers, and in one
corner sat her doll, Peggotty Ann. Of course she was too old now to play
with dolls, for would she not be nine the very next month?
She glanced at the little brass bed in which she had slept. It was
covered with creamy net, lined with rose-colored silk. Spread over the
four-posted bed at home there was a many-colored piece-quilt that her
grandmother had made when she was a bride.
Somehow that loft-room seemed more homey after all. Fanchon had come to
take the trays. She asked Carol if she wished to put on one of Sylvia’s
pretty morning-dresses.
“No thank you, not yet,” the child replied. She walked over to the
window and looked out. It was a gray, gloomy day. If she were looking
out of a window at home, she would probably see Ken digging around
somewhere in the garden and whistling. What a jolly whistler Ken was!
Just then Sylvia, unable to longer remain unnoticed, said fretfully,
“Carol Martin, I was just falling asleep, and you made so much noise you
woke me right up, and my mother said I was to sleep all of this morning
because I am sickly.”
Carol felt that this was very unjust, for a little mouse could not have
been more quiet. She sat down in a chair by the window, trying hard not
to cry. Sylvia spoke again, “Well, as long as I can’t sleep, you may
bring me my best doll, and be sure you don’t drop her.”