MISS LOCHINVAR
[Illustration: Janet looked up and down the house which was to be her
home. (See page 19.)]
MISS LOCHINVAR
_A STORY FOR GIRLS_
BY
MARION AMES TAGGART
_Illustrated by
W. L. Jacobs and Bayard F. Jones_
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1902
COPYRIGHT, 1902
BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
_Published September, 1902_
TO
POLLY AND JO
IN THE WEST.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I.--“YOUNG LOCHINVAR IS COME OUT OF THE WEST” 1
II.--“HE ALIGHTED AT NETHERBY GATE” 13
III.--“SO BOLDLY HE ENTER’D THE NETHERBY HALL” 28
IV.--“AMONG BRIDESMEN AND KINSMEN AND BROTHERS AND ALL” 43
V.--“AND, SAVE HIS GOOD BROADSWORD, HE WEAPONS HAD NONE” 56
VI.--“HE RODE ALL UNARM’D, AND HE RODE ALL ALONE” 71
VII.--“OH, COME YE IN PEACE HERE, OR COME YE IN WAR?” 88
VIII.--“HE STAYED NOT FOR BRAKE AND HE STOPPED NOT
FOR STONE” 102
IX.--“‘THEY’LL HAVE FLEET STEEDS THAT FOLLOW,’ QUOTH
YOUNG LOCHINVAR” 115
X.--“FOR A LAGGARD IN LOVE AND A DASTARD IN WAR” 133
XI.--“THERE NEVER WAS KNIGHT LIKE THE YOUNG LOCHINVAR” 146
XII.--“’TWERE BETTER BY FAR TO HAVE MATCHED OUR FAIR
COUSIN WITH YOUNG LOCHINVAR” 159
XIII.--“‘NOW TREAD WE A MEASURE,’ SAID YOUNG LOCHINVAR” 172
XIV.--“SO FAITHFUL IN LOVE, AND SO DAUNTLESS IN WAR” 188
XV.--“ONE TOUCH TO HER HAND, AND ONE WORD IN HER EAR” 202
XVI.--“HAVE YE E’ER HEARD OF GALLANT LIKE YOUNG
LOCHINVAR?” 216
XVII.--“THERE WAS MOUNTING ’MONG GRAEMES OF THE
NETHERBY CLAN” 233
XVIII.--“WITH A SMILE ON HER LIPS AND A TEAR IN HER EYE” 247
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING PAGE
Janet looked up and down the house which was to
be her home _Frontispiece_
“My dear little niece, you don’t know how glad I am
to see you” 37
The story-telling party 81
“You brutes! To treat a little dog like that!” 106
A ringing cheer announced Jan the victor 124
The impromptu ball began without the loss of a moment 181
“You’re not going to be blind, not one bit!” said Jack 219
The last glimpse of Jan 259
MISS LOCHINVAR
CHAPTER I
“YOUNG LOCHINVAR IS COME OUT OF THE WEST”
The big dining-room looked a trifle dreary in spite of the splendor of
its appointments; in spite, too, of the fact that there were enough
children’s faces around the long table to have brightened it. But
though the six owners of these faces ranged between the happy ages of
sixteen and three, and were all healthy young folk, they lacked the
blithe look they should have worn, and so failed in illumining the
stately room.
The youngest member of the house of Graham, a pretty child, had
wrinkled her brow until it looked like a pan of cream set in a very
breezy dairy. This was because the nurse-maid stood behind her chair,
an indignity little Geraldine--known as Jerry--resented bitterly,
though it recurred at each breakfast and lunch hour. She showed her
resentment by deliberately putting her spoon, full of oatmeal and
cream, into her mouth upside down every time the maid’s eyes strayed
for a moment, and also, painful though it be to record, by stretching
her kid-shoed foot around her high chair in sly and unamiable attempts
to kick her humiliating attendant.
The eldest, a boy of sixteen, breakfasted in silence, with a sullen
air of aloofness from his family, and a secretive expression foreign
to his naturally frank and handsome face. The three girls, and one boy
ranging between him and Jerry, seemed rather to regard the meal as
something to be gone through with before they were free to attend to
matters interesting to each, than as a happy hour spent together before
separating for the day.
The mother of this numerous brood was pretty and graceful, but she
looked harassed, and as though she lived in perpetual fear of missing
an appointment--which was indeed the case.
Mr. Graham was a broker. Sydney, the oldest boy, said it took all his
father’s time to “be a broker and not broke,” and this was strictly
true. He was immersed in business too deeply to leave time or thought
for much else. He had an expensive family, and though he was accounted
a rich man, the uncertain ways of stocks in rising and falling always
made it possible for him to become a comparatively poor one. So in the
stress of laying the foundations of a handsome inheritance for his six
sons and daughters he had little chance to make their acquaintance,
though he was an indulgent father, and looked forward to the day, which
did not dawn, when he should have leisure to know them.
It was Mr. Graham who suddenly aroused his inert family to keen
interest in what was going on around them.
“What day of the month is this--the thirteenth?” he asked, as his eye
fell on the date-line of his newspaper, served with his coffee.
“Yes; to-morrow is the day for us to dine with the Robesons,” said his
wife.
“To-morrow is the day for our niece to arrive,” retorted Mr. Graham.
“Don’t forget to have her met, in case it slips my memory to-morrow
when Henry drives me down.”
“Our niece! Arrives! What can you mean?” cried Mrs. Graham, in shrill
surprise, as she dropped her fork with a clatter which would have
called down a reprimand on Jerry.
“I told you, didn’t I?” asked Mr. Graham, with an uneasy recollection
that he had not mentioned the matter, having a cowardly doubt as to
how his tidings would be received. “It’s my sister’s little girl--my
sister Jennie, you know, who married and settled out west in Crescendo.
Jennie’s husband has made her very happy--he’s a first-rate fellow--but
he hasn’t made her, nor any one else, including himself, rich. I
imagine they have to scramble along on rather slender provision for
a large brood; they have a big family. I don’t hear from Jennie very
often, and she never complains, but her last letter--it came nearly
two months ago--had a tone of sadness, and betrayed more than she
realized of anxiety. I answered it, and I told her to send her oldest
girl--Joan--Jane--no, Janet--Janet on here to us to go to school with
our girls this winter. She’s about Gwen and Gladys’s age. She won’t
be any trouble to us, and I fancy it will be considerable help to her
mother. So Jennie’s husband wrote me that the child would come, and
she’ll be here to-morrow.”
Gwendoline, the oldest girl, who was fifteen; Gladys, the second
one, who was thirteen; seven-year-old Genevieve, and Ivan, a boy of
nearly eleven, stared at each other and at their parents in dumb
amazement. Mrs. Graham flushed with annoyance; only the presence of the
waitress and little Geraldine’s despised custodian restrained her from
expressing that annoyance forcibly. As it was, she said: “I can not
understand, Mr. Graham, how you could have added the care of another
child to me, who have six of my own to look after, without so much as
consulting me in the matter!”
“But you don’t look after us, mamma,” said Ivan, quite cheerfully,
and with no idea of complaining. “You are too busy with all your
committees and teas and clubs and things. So she won’t be any bother,
and maybe she’ll be nice.” Ivan--who despised his Russian name, and had
succeeded in compelling his family to call him Jack as soon as he had
learned the names were equivalent to each other--was a warm-hearted,
hot-tempered, honest little fellow, who did not seem to belong to the
city splendors. “Jack had reverted,” his father said, “to his ancestral
stock”; one could easily imagine him happily driving cows on his
grandfather’s farm among the New Hampshire hills.
“I admit, my dear, that it was not quite fair to spring this little
girl on you, as Jack would say, but I think the boy takes the true view
of it. One girl more or less will not matter in a family like this one,
and all the difference she will make will be a third bill to me for
tuition at Miss Larned’s school,” said Mr. Graham, trying to speak with
an assurance he did not feel.
“But to us, papa!” cried Gladys, reproachfully. “It will mean more
than that to us. Gwen and I will have to introduce her to the girls;
she will expect to go about with us, and just fancy a poor girl from a
little Western town in our set!”
Gwendoline--Mrs. Graham had had the happy thought of naming all her
daughters with the same initial, repeating that of their family
name--Gwendoline laughed scornfully at her sister’s remark. “I believe
I should rather enjoy livening up those girls,” she said. “I honestly
don’t see how she could have worse manners than some of them if she
came off an Indian reservation. You know, I just despise those silly,
giggling, affected girls, with their grown-up nonsense. They’re not all
like that, though. But then the nice ones would understand and make
allowance for her being a girl from a little town--nice people always
understand, I’ve noticed that. But what I think is she’ll be a nuisance
around the house. Goodness knows, I don’t want one single person more
to make a noise and get under foot when I want to do things!”
“Oh, all you care for is writing, or daubing, or singing, or spouting
plays!” began Gladys, wrathfully; but little Genevieve, whom they
called Viva, interrupted her: “I wish she wasn’t so big. Are you
certain sure, papa, she’s as old as Gwen and Gladys? Because there
doesn’t be any one to play with me in this house.”
“She is fourteen,” said Mr. Graham. “And, Gwen and Gladys, I wish
you to remember that this Janet Howe is your own cousin, my sister’s
child, and I want you to treat her kindly and make her happy. Many’s
the scrape her mother got me out of when I was a boy at home. There
never was a better sister than Jennie; no boy could have dreamed
an improvement on her. I always preferred her as a companion to my
brothers; she could row, fish, and bait her own hook and take off her
fish when she had caught them, too!--and she was as sweet-tempered and
loving as the day was long. I often wish you children were the friends
Jen and I used to be! But you each go your own way, and neither cares a
pin for any one else’s interests. Perhaps it is the result of living in
New York instead of in the peaceful town where I was born.”
The children rarely had heard any reference to their father’s early
days, and they listened to this outburst with an interest that made
them forget their grievance for a moment. Then Jack spoke: “Do you
suppose that this girl is as nice as her mother, papa?” he said. “Do
you suppose she can bait a hook and sail a boat?”
“Those things are not always inherited,” his father answered, laughing.
“There is not much chance to fish or sail in the middle of a prairie,
and Crescendo is a prairie town. But I have no doubt that your cousin
Janet will be as nice a little girl as you could find anywhere. I can’t
conceive of Jennie having any other than a nice daughter, and I am sure
you will be very grateful to me for getting her here.”
“I shan’t be,” said Gladys, decidedly. “I can’t possibly go about with
a Wild West Show, papa.”
“Gladys,” said her father, in a tone his children rarely heard. “You
forget to whom you are speaking, and that you are speaking of my
dearest sister’s daughter. Let me hear one more syllable like that, or
see one glimmer of that spirit toward your cousin Janet, and you will
be sent to a boarding-school, where you will not go about with any
one. I shall invite whom I please to my own house, and my daughters
will treat them with courtesy. Remember what I say, and you, too,
Gwendoline, Sydney, Jack, and Viva.”
Gwen laughed good-naturedly. “I won’t treat her badly, papa, though you
can’t expect me to be precisely glad she is coming,” she said.
Gladys looked sullen, but Jerry saved the day by stretching her arms
very wide, a piece of bread in one hand, her dripping teaspoon in
the other. “I will love her,” she announced, speaking for the first
time; she had been turning from one to the other during this exciting
conversation. “I will div her my o’meal po’dge, out of er spoon wight
side up. An’ I’ll let Tsusan ’tand ahind her tchair,” added the small
hypocrite, nodding her golden curls benignly, and turning to smile
beatifically at her nurse-maid.
It was impossible not to laugh at this noble exhibition of generosity,
and with this laugh the breakfast party broke up.
“It is really very trying, Howard, to have a girl, of whom we know
nothing, and just the age of our girls, thrust upon our poor dears for
the entire winter, not to mention my part of the burden,” said Mrs.
Graham, as she followed her husband into the hall. “I really can not
blame poor Gwen and Gladys for feeling as they do. I should have said
more myself, but that I did not care to discuss family matters before
the servants, or encourage the children in their apprehensions, and
their tendency to disobey you.”
“Oh, it will be all right, Tina!” said Mr. Graham, easily. “We have
talked about it too long; a small girl of fourteen or so is not worth
so much discussion. I’ll meet you to-night at seven, if you like, at
Delmonico’s, and we’ll go to the theater after we dine. Henry can bring
down my evening clothes when he meets me. I have a directors’ meeting
after Exchange closes, and I can’t get home to dress before dinner.”
Mrs. Graham’s face cleared, as her husband felt sure that it would,
at this proposition, but she said reproachfully, as she kissed him
good-by: “You know our club has its semiannual dinner to-night, Howard,
and you promised to come later and hear the speeches.”
“Merciful powers! Don’t mention such trifles as an extra girl or two in
the house after that!” groaned Mr. Graham, in mock despair, as he got
into his overcoat. “I really believe I did!”
“When did you say that this Miss Lochinvar was to come out of the West,
father?” asked Sydney, delaying on his way through the hall. Throughout
the discussion at the table the eldest born had not spoken.
“To-morrow; will you go with one of the girls in the carriage to meet
her?” asked his father, looking up with a laugh for the apt nickname.
“Couldn’t possibly; I am booked for football with our team,” said
Sydney, resuming his way, having stopped as his father spoke. “I wish
Miss Lochinvar joy, though; if she has plenty of brothers and sisters
she’s likely to be lonesome in this crowd.”
Gwendoline and Gladys sauntered along as he said these words, and
stopped short with a peal of exultant laughter. “Miss Lochinvar! Well,
if that isn’t the very best name for her!” they cried in a breath. “We
shall always call her that. Isn’t Sydney too clever!” But in Gwen’s
laugh there was only pure amusement at the fun of the thing, while in
Gladys’s mirth there was a ring of spite.