A JOYOUS INVITATION.
A month had passed and the orchard back of the school was a bower of pink
and white blooms, while oriole, robin and meadow lark made the fragrant
sunlit air joyous with song.
Gypsy Nan stood at the open window of their room gazing out over the
treetops to the highway, and how she yearned for her pony Binnie. She
longed to gallop away, away--where, she cared little. Then she thought of
the happy ride she and Robert Widdemere had taken three years before,
and, sitting down on the window seat, with her chin resting on one hand,
she fell to musing of those other days. Again she was a little girl, clad
in a cherry red dress and seated in the boughs of the far-away pepper
tree which stood on the edge of the Barrington estate in San Seritos. She
recalled the sad, pale invalid boy in the wheeled chair, and she smiled
as she remembered his surprise when a cluster of pepper berries had
dropped on his listlessly folded hands. What splendid friends those two
became the weeks that followed, and then there had been that last morning
on the mountain top when he had promised that he would always be her
friend, come what might. Little had they dreamed that years would pass,
and that neither would know what had become of the other.
How she would like to see Robert Widdemere. He would be taller and
broader, with a dignity of carriage which he surely would have acquired
after three years' training in a military academy. How good looking he
had been that long ago Thanksgiving morning when he had worn the gypsy
costume!
At this point Nan's revery was interrupted by Phyllis, who fairly danced
into the room. She held an open letter and she gaily exclaimed:
"Nan darling, you never could guess what you and I are going to do."
"It must be a happy something, by the way you are shining."
"Oh, it is the most exciting thing that ever happened in all my life,"
the other girl exclaimed joyously as she sat on the window seat facing
her friend. "It's an invitation that came in this letter, and Mrs. Dorsey
has granted us both permission to accept."
Nan's dark eyes were wide with wonder. "Am I invited to go somewhere?"
she asked. "Please don't keep me guessing about it any longer. Do tell me
where."
"Well, then, I'll have to begin at the beginning. You have often heard me
speak of my cousins the Dorchesters." Nan nodded. "They have been in
Florida all winter," she continued, "but now they have returned and have
opened up their city home and the tenth of May will be Peggy's birthday
and we are invited to her party. It will be on Saturday night, but Mrs.
Dorsey said that we need not return to Pine Crest until the following
day--and oh, I forgot to tell you! It's a masquerade and we must begin at
once to think what costumes we will wear. I have the sweetest May Queen
dress! I might wear that with a wreath of apple blossoms in my hair."
"Joy, that would just suit you, but pray what shall I wear?"
"Oh, Nan, do wear your red and gold gypsy dress. You look just beautiful
in that. Say that you will to please me," Phyllis pleaded.
"Very well; to please you and also to please myself. I would just love to
have an excuse to wear that wonderful shawl that once long ago belonged
to my beautiful mother." There was always a wistful expression in the
dark eyes when Nan spoke of the mother whom she had never known.
"Was your mother--" Phyllis hesitated.
Nan turned clear eyes toward her friend. "Was she a gypsy, do you mean?
Dearie, I don't in the least mind talking about it. Ask me anything that
you wish. The only part that I regret is that I cannot answer anything
with real knowledge. I have always supposed that my mother was the one of
my parents who was a gypsy. That is what I told Queen Luella, but
afterwards, in thinking it over, I wondered if it might not have been my
father, or perhaps they both belonged to the band of Queen Mizella, I was
not to be told until I was eighteen."
After a thoughtful moment Phyllis ventured: "Nan, would you feel very
badly if you were to discover that you are not a real gypsy at all; that
perhaps your mother for some reason had given you into the keeping of
Manna Lou and had died before she returned to claim you? You might have
been a Rumanian princess and the throne might have been threatened and it
was necessary to hide you."
Nan's merry laughter pealed out. "Phyllis, you are trying to steal my
thunder, making up exciting tales as you go along. Now you know, dearie,
that I have won fame, if not fortune, by improvising impossible fiction,
and I do not want to relinquish, even to you, the laurels I have won."
Phyllis watching the glowing dark face asked another question. "What do
the real Rumanians look like. I mean the ones that are not gypsies.
Aren't they very dark and beautiful just as you are?"
Nan sprang to her feet and made a sweeping curtsy as she exclaimed
dramatically:--"Would that everyone had eyes like yours. But truly,
dear," the gypsy girl dropped back into her deep easy chair, "I know no
more of the Rumanians than you do. Just what we have learned in our
illustrated book on 'Men and Manners of Many Lands.'"
"But you haven't answered my question," the fair girl persisted. "Would
you be dissappointed if some day it should be discovered that you are
white and--." Again Nan laughingly interrupted, making an effort to look
in the mirror without rising. "Goodness, am I black?" Then, before
Phyllis could remonstrate, Nan continued; "I thought I was just a nice
brown or--" Her friend sprang up and kissed her lovingly, then perched on
the arm of the chair, she exclaimed warmly: "You have the most velvety
smooth olive complexion. Many American girls have one similar, but not
nearly as nice, and now, since you do not want to answer my question, we
will change the subject."
Nan, nestled lovingly against her friend. "Indeed I shall answer your
question. I would be very, very sorry if I were to suddenly learn that I
am not at all a gypsy. I would feel--well as though I were a stranger to
myself or as though my past was a dream from which I had been rudely
awakened. I wouldn't know how to begin to live as somebody quite
different." Then, as a bell rang and Phyllis arose, Nan concluded: "But
we need have no fear of such a sudden transforming, for I _know_ I am a
gypsy. Manna Lou never told a lie and she said time and again that the
only part of my story that she would or could tell me was that I am one
of their own band."
Impulsively Phyllis kissed her friend. "If being a gypsy is what makes
you so adorable, I wish we had more of your band in our midst."
Then after hastily tidying and washing in their very own wee lavatory,
arm in arm the two girls went down to the dining hall again, chatting
happily about the week-end treat that was in store for them.