A NEW COOK
Such a pleasant half hour was spent by these two who seemed content just
to be together, Jane, with a twinge of regret, realized that the youth
was idealizing her. He constantly attributed to her qualities that she
well knew that she did not possess. He told her that he could understand
why she had not learned to cook simply because for years she had been
away at a fashionable seminary. "But now is your golden opportunity, and
I am indeed lucky to be your first teacher." That he was pleased was
quite evident. "I am sure you agree with me, Miss Abbott, that cooking is
as essential in a young woman's education as painting or singing." Then
he laughed boyishly. "I'm afraid, when I am hungry that I would far
rather have a beautiful girl cook for me than sing to me. Now, what is
the menu to be?"
Jane looked about the kitchen helplessly. She did not wish to confess to
Jean Sawyer that she had not before been in there except to pass through
it to their outdoor dining-room.
"Julie and Dan were planning the meal. I really don't know." The
situation was relieved by Jean's asking: "May I prepare anything I can
find?"
"Oh, yes, do please! It really doesn't matter which of our supplies are
used first." The girl was glad to have the problem thus easily solved.
After a few moments of ransacking, the lad looked up from a box as he
asked: "Miss Jane, will you pare the potatoes?"
She shrank away before she realized what she was doing. "Oh, wouldn't
they stain my hands terribly?" Then, with her most winning smile, she
held them both out to him. "You see, they haven't a stain on them yet,
and I did hope they never would have." The boy made a move as though to
take the hands in his. But he stooped quickly over the box of potatoes
and said earnestly: "Right you are, Miss Abbott. They are far too lovely
to mar."
Perhaps because of associated ideas it was that he recalled a poem that
went somewhat in this way: "Beautiful hands are those that do work that
is useful, kind and true." What he said was: "Suppose you set the table.
I'll make the fire and have a pot of goulash in no time. That is my
favorite camp menu, perhaps because it is the simplest."
Everything was in readiness when merry voices were heard without, and
Julie, evidently believing they were unheard, said in a stage whisper:
"Don't tell Jane that we've been up to see Meg Heger's hospital, will
you, Dan? She'd be mad as anything." The older lad was opening the
kitchen door at that moment, and the two, who had been keeping so still
in the kitchen that the surprise might be complete, could not but hear.
Vaguely Jean Sawyer wondered why Jane would be "mad" because the rest of
her family had been to call upon a neighbor. Glancing at her proud,
beautiful face, he saw a scornful curl to the mouth which he had thought
so lovely, and it was not pleasant to behold. But a moment later he had
forgotten it, in the excitement that followed his discovery. Dan advanced
with glowing eyes and outstretched hand. "Jean Sawyer! How glad we are to
have you with us. These are the youngsters, Julie and Gerald." The little
girl made a pretty curtsy and Gerry thrust out a chubby, freckled hand,
smiling his widest as he looked admiringly at the cowboy's costume.
"Gee!" he confided, "I'd like awful well to have one of those rigs. Dan,
don't you s'pose they make 'em small enough for boys?"
But it was Jean who answered. "They do, indeed, and what is more, there
is one over at the Packard ranch more typical than mine, which I am
pretty sure will fit you. A grandson of Mr. Packard's was with us last
summer, but he isn't coming this year and he'd be glad to have you wear
it." Then, smiling at the older girl, he said to Dan: "Your sister, Miss
Jane, has agreed to bring you all over to our place to spend next Sunday.
That is a week from today." Julie, upon hearing this, was about to blurt
out her disappointment by saying, "How can she, if she's going back East
on Tuesday?" But a cold glance from her sister's eyes made the small girl
turn away with quivering lips. After all Jane was going to stay and their
summer would be spoiled. Jean Sawyer had also witnessed this by-play and
he felt a sense of great disappointment.
It was quite evident that Jane Abbott's beauty was only skin deep.
When Jean Sawyer took his departure that afternoon, Dan accompanied him
part way "cross-lots," as the former lad had called it.
They crossed the brook and after climbing many a jagged boulder, began
the descent on the side of the mountain nearest the wide valley in which
was located the fertile Packard ranch.
These two lads, so near of an age, found that they were most congenial.
When Dan confessed that his dearest desire was to become a writer of
purpose fiction, Jean heartily applauded. "Great! I'd give anything if I
had the ability to do something fine for this old world of ours, but,
just at present, I believe I will continue being Mr. Packard's foreman.
Really, Dan, reading and studying with that man is as good as having a
post-graduate course at college."
Then apropos of nothing (or so it seemed), Jean said: "What a beautiful
girl your sister is. What a pity that she has not had the love and
direction of a mother. I had such a wonderful mother myself, Dan, I well
know what girls and boys have missed when they lost their mothers while
they were very young."
Dan grew serious at once. Then he confessed:
"Jean, I feel as though I had known you for a long time, and so I am
going to tell you my greatest problem. My sister Jane is beautiful, and
before she went away to that fashionable Highacres Seminary she was as
sweet and lovable a girl as any you could find, but for some reason she
learned there much that was not in the curriculum. Pride of family,
snobbishness, and because of our father's position, many of her
companions were so deferential to her that she has come to expect it
from everyone. How I wish I knew how to save Jane from herself."
It was just as Jean had feared. He surprised himself by saying: "If she
would chum with Meg Heger a while, I believe it would help her to
overcome those artificially acquired qualities, for Meg is sincerely
natural. But your sister would have to make the advances. Meg never will.
She keeps apart by herself, and will probably continue doing so until it
is proven that she is not that Ute Indian's daughter. I know that you
have met Meg, for I overheard your little sister saying that you had been
there this morning."
"Yes, we were. The children pleaded so hard that I go and see their baby
lions."
Then he told the story of the death of the mother lion to an interested
listener. "I wondered why Meg Heger disappeared directly after having
saved my life. Nor would she come to her home while she know that I was
there. It is too bad that she shuts herself away from people who would
gladly be her friends."
Jean nodded. "That is just what she does. Last year, as I was telling
Gerald, Mr. Packard's daughter, Mrs. Delbert, and her young son were with
us. When Mrs. Delbert heard the story of Meg's devotion to her
foster-parents and how she is trying to become a teacher that she might
make life easier and pleasanter for them, she at once wished to make
Meg's acquaintance. We hiked up to the Heger cabin one Saturday morning,
and although Meg willingly showed Mrs. Delbert her botany gardens, and
her hurt animal hospital, she was so reserved and shut away from us, that
we realized at once that she did not wish our friendship. Mrs. Delbert
invited Meg to spend a day with her at the ranch, but the girl never
came, nor have I seen her since."
The other lad understood.
"With me she is also distant and reserved," he said, "but when she talks
to Julie and Gerald she is very different."
Then, returning to a remark made earlier, he concluded: "My sister Jane
would be greatly helped if she could see how much more naturalness is
admired than cultivated poses, but she will never learn from Meg Heger,
whom she considers greatly beneath her." Then, stopping, he held out his
hand. "Jean," he said seriously, "I hope I have not given you a wrong
opinion of my beautiful sister. I honestly believe that the girl she used
to be still lives beneath all this artificial veneer that she has
acquired at the fashionable seminary and my most earnest wish is to find
a way by which that other girl, who was my dearly loved sister-pal, can
be returned to me. I would not have spoken of this were it not that I am
as greatly troubled for Jane's sake as my own."
"I am glad you told me, Dan. I, too, have faith in her. Goodbye till next
Sunday."
Dan walked slowly back to the cabin, pleased, indeed, with his new
friend.
Dan found his sister Jane alone with her book on the front porch of their
cabin. She looked up with a smile of welcome. "I was agreeably surprised
in our guest," she began at once, "and so, before you tease me for having
described him as raw-boned and illiterate, I will make the confession
that I never met a better looking or nicer mannered youth."
"Tut! Tut!" her brother, sinking to the doorstep where earlier in the day
Jean had sat, merrily shook a finger at his sister, "That is extreme
praise, and I may take offense, since I consider myself good looking and
nice mannered."
The girl laughed happily. Her brother reflected that, not in many a day,
had he seen her brow unclouded with frown or fretfulness.
Suddenly he said: "Jane, have you changed your mind about going East next
Tuesday?" He looked up inquiringly, eagerly.
The girl flushed, then said with an effort at indifference: "I thought
perhaps it is hardly fair to decide that I do not like the mountain life,
after having been here for such a few days. Shall you mind if I postpone
my departure until a week from Tuesday?" The lad caught the hand that
hung near him and pressed it with sudden warmth to his cheek. "Jane," he
said, "I'm desperately lonesome for the comrade that my sister used to
be. Won't you give up all thought of going away and try once again to be
that other girl?"
Jane looked puzzled, then she drew her hand away, saying coldly: "You are
evidently not satisfied with me. I suppose that you also admire a girl
who prefers to pare potatoes and stain her hands, than you do one who
keeps herself attractive."
Dan was astonished at the outburst, but wisely made no comment, though
his thoughts were busy. Evidently Jean Sawyer had told his sister that he
admired a girl who could be useful as well as ornamental. What would the
result be, he wondered. But on the following day Jane permitted the other
three to do all of the work of the cabin while she idled hours away at
letter writing to her many girl friends in the East; finished her book,
and started a bit of lace making which had been the popular pastime at
the seminary.
At nine o'clock on Monday the stage drew up in front of their stone
stairway and the discordant sound from a horn seemed to be calling them,
and so Gerald hopped down to receive from Mr. "Sourface" Wallace a packet
of newspapers and letters. "Oh, thanks a lot, Mr. Wallace!" the boy
shouted, knowing that the stage driver was deaf, and then up the stairway
he scrambled to distribute the mail. There was a letter for each of the
Abbotts from their father and a tiny note inclosed from grandmother with
good advice for each, not excluding Jane, whose lips took their favorite
scornful curve when it was read.
But a glance at her other two letters sent her to her own room, where she
could read them undisturbed. One was from Merry Starr and, instead of
containing enthusiastic descriptions of the gay life at Newport, which it
was her good fortune to be living, the epistle was crammed full of
longing to see the wonderful West.
"Tastes are surely different!" Jane thought as she opened the second
epistle, which was from Esther Ballard. In it she read a news item which
pleased her exceedingly. "Jane, old dear"--was the very informal
beginning.
"Put on your remembering cap and you will recall that you told me, if
ever I could find another string of those semi-precious cardinal gems
that you so greatly admired, to buy them at once, notify you and you
would send me the money. Well, the deed is done. I have found the
necklace, and, honestly, Jane, it holds all of the glory of the sunset
and sunrise melted into one. They will set off your dark beauty to
perfection. But I'll have to confess that I haven't a penny. Always
broke, as you know, and so, if you want them, you'll have to mail me
twenty-five perfectly good dollars by return post.
"Yours in great haste,
E. B."
Jane sat looking thoughtfully out of the window. In about two weeks she
would have a birthday, and on that occasion her aunt, after whom she was
named, always sent her the amount needed for the gems, but in a
postscript Esther had said that she had asked to have the chain held one
week, feeling sure that by that time Jane would have sent the money.
Taking from her purse two bills, she put them in an envelope addressed to
Esther, added a hurried little letter, stamped it and was just wondering
how she would get it to the post when she saw Meg Heger coming down the
road on her pony. Although she herself would not ask a favor of the
mountain girl, she called Julie and requested that she hail Meg and ask
her to mail the letter. Not until it was done did Jane face her
conscience. Had she any right to use the tax money for a necklace? She
shrugged her shoulders. What would two weeks more or less matter?