“Will you do me the favor to stand in front of this long mirror with me?”
(Page 305)
SISTERS
_By_ GRACE MAY NORTH
THE SAALFIELD PUBLISHING COMPANY
Akron, Ohio New York
Copyright MCMXXVIII
THE SAALFIELD PUBLISHING COMPANY
_Made in the United States of America_
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. How It Began 3
II. Jenny 15
III. Forlorn Etta 21
IV. A Pitiful Plight 28
V. Friends in Need 39
VI. Wanted, a Waitress 45
VII. Jenny’s Teacher 59
VIII. An Adventure Filled Day 75
IX. An Old Friend Appears 88
X. Brother and Sister 94
XI. Views and Reviews 99
XII. Plots and Plays 105
XIII. Ferns and Friends 108
XIV. Dearest Desires 116
XV. Peers or Pigs 125
XVI. Good News 133
XVII. Pride Meets Pride 138
XVIII. A New Experience 145
XIX. A Welcome Guest 151
XX. Ingratitude Personified 168
XXI. A Second Meeting 178
XXII. Revelations and Regrets 186
XXIII. Mother and Son 194
XXIV. Harold and Charles 201
XXV. A Jolly Plan 207
XXVI. A Rustic Cabin 217
XXVII. Fun as Farmers 222
XXVIII. A Difficult Promise 232
XXIX. The Haughty Gwynette 238
XXX. Gwyn’s Awakening 249
XXXI. Conflicting Emotions 257
XXXII. Three Girls 266
XXXIII Gwynette’s Choice 279
XXXIV An Agreeable Surprise 289
XXXV A Birthday Cake 293
XXXVI Sisters 302
SISTERS
CHAPTER I.
HOW IT BEGAN
Gold and blue were the colors that predominated on one glorious April
day. Gold were the fields of poppies that carpeted the foothills
stretching down to the very edge of Rocky Point, against which the
jewel-blue Pacific lapped quietly. It was at that hour of the tides when
the surf is stilled.
A very old adobe house surrounded on three sides by wide verandas, the
pillars of which were eucalyptus logs, stood about two hundred feet back
from the point. Rose vines, clambering at will over the picturesque old
dwelling, were a riot of colors. There was the exquisite pink Cecil
Brunner in delicate, long-stemmed clusters; Gold of Ophir blossoms in a
mass glowing in the sunshine, while intertwined were the vines of the
star-like white Cherokee and Romona, the red.
Mingled with their fragrance was the breath of heliotrope which grew,
bushwise, at one corner so luxuriantly that often it had to be cut away
lest it cover the gravel path which led around the house to the orchard.
There, under fruit trees that were each a lovely bouquet of pearly bloom,
stood row after row of square white hives, while bees, busy at honey
gathering, buzzed everywhere.
Now and then, clear and sweet, rose the joyous song of mating birds.
A little old woman, seated in a rustic rocker on the western side porch,
dropped her sewing on her lap and smiled on the scene with blissful
content. What a wonderful world it was and how happy she and Silas had
been since Jenny came. She glanced across the near gardens, aglow with
early bloom, to a patch of ploughed brown earth where an old man was
cultivating between rows of green shoots, some of them destined to
produce field corn for the cow and chickens, and the rest sweet corn for
the sumptuous table of Mrs. Poindexter-Jones.
Then the gaze of the little old woman continued a quarter of a mile along
the rocky shore to a grove of sycamore trees, where stood the castle-like
home of the richest woman in Santa Barbara township. Only the topmost
turrets could be seen above the towering treetops. The vast grounds were
surrounded by a high cypress hedge, and, not until he reached the wrought
iron gates could a passer-by obtain a view of the magnificence that lay
within. But the little old woman knew it all in detail, as she had been
housekeeper there for many years, until, in middle-age, she had married
Silas Warner, who managed the farm for Mrs. Algernon Poindexter-Jones.
For the past fifteen years the happy couple had lived in the old adobe
house at Rocky Point, while at Poindexter Arms, as the beautiful estate
was named, there had been a succession of housekeepers and servants, for
their mistress was domineering and hard to please.
Of late years the grand dame had seldom been seen by the kindly old
farmer, Si Warner and his wife, for Mrs. Poindexter-Jones had preferred
to live in her equally palatial home in San Francisco overlooking the
Golden Gate.
She visited Santa Barabra periodically, merely to assure herself that her
orders were being carried out by the servants left in charge of
Poindexter Arms and Rocky Point farm. Often Mrs. Si Warner did not catch
a glimpse of their employer on these fleeting visits, and yet she well
knew that the imperious mistress of millions was linked more closely than
she liked to remember to the old couple at Rocky Point.
As she resumed her sewing, memory recalled to her that long ago incident
which, by the merest chance, had made the proud woman and the humble,
sharers of a secret which neither had cared to divulge.
It had been another spring day such as this, only they had all been
younger by fourteen years.
While ploughing in the lot nearest the highway, Farmer Si had noticed a
strange equipage drawn to one side of the road. He thought little of it
at first, believing it to be a traveling tinsmith, as the canopied wagon
was evidently furnished with household utensils, but, when an hour later,
he again reached that side of the field and saw the patient horse still
standing there with drooping head and no one in sight, his curiosity was
aroused, and, leaping over the rail fence, he went to investigate.
Under that weather-stained canopy a sad tragedy had been enacted. On the
driver’s seat a young man, clothed in a garb of a clergyman, seemed to be
sleeping, but a closer scrutiny revealed to the farmer that the Angel of
Death had visited the little home on wheels. For a home it evidently had
been. In the roomier part of the wagon a beautiful little girl of three
sat on a stack of folded bedding, while in a crude box-like crib a sickly
looking infant lay sleeping.
Whenever Mrs. Silas Warner recalled that long ago day, she again
experienced the varying emotions which had come to her following each
other in rapid succession. She had been ironing when she had seen a queer
canopied equipage coming up the lane which led from the highway.
Believing it to be a peddlar, who now and then visited their farm, she
had gone to the side porch, there to have her curiosity greatly aroused
by the fact that it was her husband Si who was on the seat of the driver.
Then her surprise had been changed to alarm when she learned of the three
who were under the canopy. Awe, because she was in the presence of death,
and tender sympathy for the little ones, who had evidently been orphaned,
mingled in the heart of the woman as she held the scrawny, crying infant
that her husband had given to her. Even with all these crowding emotions
there had yet been room for admiration, when the little three-year-old
girl was lifted down. The child stood apart, quiet and aloof. She had
heard them say that her father was dead. She was too young to understand
and so she just waited. A rarely beautiful child, with a tangled mass of
light brown, sun-glinted hair hanging far below her shoulders, and wide,
wondering brown eyes that were shaded with long curling lashes.
But still another emotion had been stirred in the heart of Susan Warner,
for a most unexpected and unusual visitor had at that moment arrived. A
coach, bearing the Poindexter Arms, turned into the lane, and when the
liveried footman threw open the door, there sat no less a personage than
the grand dame, Mrs. Algernon Poindexter-Jones, on one of her very
infrequent visits to the farm which belonged to her estate. She had been
charmed with the little girl, and after having heard the story, she
announced that she would keep the child until relatives were found. Then
she was driven away, without having stated her errand, and accompanying
her, still quietly aloof, rode the three-year-old girl. A doctor and
coroner soon arrived, having been summoned by Mrs. Poindexter-Jones. The
latter had searched the effects of the dead man and had found an
unfinished letter addressed to a bishop in the Middle West. In it the man
had told of his wife’s death, and that he was endeavoring to keep on with
his traveling missionary work in outlying mountain districts, but that
his heart attacks were becoming threateningly more frequent. “There is no
relative in all the world with whom to leave Gwynette, who is now three,
and little Jeanette, who is completing her first year.” No more had been
written.
After the funeral Mrs. Poindexter-Jones had announced that she would
adopt the older child and that, if they wished, the farmer and his wife
might keep the scrawny baby on one condition, and that was that the girls
should never be told that they were sisters. To this the childless couple
had rejoicingly agreed. The doctor and coroner had also been sworn to
secrecy. The dead man’s effects were stored in the garret above the old
adobe and the incident was closed.
Mrs. Poindexter-Jones left almost at once for Europe, where she had
remained for several years.
Tenderly loved, and nourished with the best that the farm could produce,
the scrawny, ill-looking infant had gradually changed to a veritable
fairy of sunshine. “Jenny,” as they called her, feeling that Jeanette was
a bit too grand, walked with a little skipping step from the time that
she was first sure that she would not tumble, and looked up, with
laughter in her lovely eyes, that were the same liquid brown as were her
sister’s, and tossed back her long curls that were also light brown with
threads of sunlight in them. And ever after, there were little skipping
steps to her walk, and, when she talked, it seemed as though at any
moment she might break into song.
Jenny had never questioned her origin. She had always been with Granny
Sue and Granddad Si, and so, of course, that proved that she belonged to
them. She was too happy, just being alive, to create problems for herself
to solve, and too busy.
There had been too few children on the neighboring ranches to maintain a
country school, and Jenny had been too young to send on a bus to Santa
Barbara each day, but her education had not been neglected, for a
charming and cultured young woman living not far away had taught her
through the years, and she had learned much that other girls of her age
did not know.
When the weather was pleasant Jenny, her school books under her arm,
walked to the hill-top home of her teacher, Miss Dearborn, but during the
rainy season her grandfather hitched their faithful Dobbin to the
old-fashioned, topped buggy and drove her to her destination in the
morning, calling for her in the late afternoon.
But on one wild March day when Jenny had been thirteen, an unexpected
storm had overtaken her as she was walking home along the coast highway.
Luckily she had worn her mackintosh, but as she was passing between wide,
treeless meadows that reached to the sea on one side and a briary hill on
the other, there had been no shelter in sight.
However, a low gray car had soon appeared around a bend and the driver, a
youth whose face was hidden by cap, collar and goggles, had offered her a
ride. Gladly she had accepted and had been taken to her home, where, to
her surprise, Grandmother Sue had welcomed the lad with sincerest
pleasure. That had been the first time Jenny Warner had met Harold, the
only son of their employer, Mrs. Poindexter-Jones.
His visit had brought consternation to the little family at Rocky Point,
for, inadvertently, he had told the old man that his mother planned
selling the farm when she could find a suitable buyer.
The old woman sitting on the side porch dropped her sewing to her lap as
she recalled that long-ago scene in the kitchen.
The farmer had been for the moment almost stunned by the news, then
looking up at the boy with a pitiful attempt at a smile, he had said
waveringly:
“I reckon you see how ’tis, Harry-boy. We’ve been livin’ here at Rocky
Point so long, it’s sort o’ got to feelin’ like home to us, but you tell
your ma that the Warners’ll be ready to move when she says the word.”
The boy had been much affected, and, after assuring them that perhaps a
buyer would not be found, he had taken his departure.
When he had gone, Jenny had cuddled in her grandfather’s arms and he had
held her close. Susan Warner remembered that the expression on his face
had been as though he were thanking God that they had their “gal”. With
her irrepressible enthusiasm the girl had exclaimed:
“I have the most wonderful plan! Let’s buy Rocky Point Farm, and then it
will be all our very own.”
“Lawsy, child,” Susan Warner had remonstrated, “it’d cost a power o’
money, and it’s but a few hundred that we’ve laid by.”
But Jenny had a notion that she wanted to try out. “Granny, granddad,”
she turned from first one to the other and her voice was eager, earnest,
pleading: “Every Christmas since I can remember you’ve given me a
five-dollar gold piece to be saving for the time when I might be all
alone in the world. I want to spend them now.” Then she unfolded her
plan. She wanted to buy hens and bees. “You were a wonderful beekeeper
when you were a boy, granddad,” she insisted. “You have told me so time
and again, and I just know that I can sell eggs and honey to the rich
people over on the foothill estates, and then, when we have saved money
enough, we can buy the farm and have it for our very own home forever and
ever.”
The old couple knew that this would be impossible, but, since they had
not the heart to disappoint their darling, the scheme had been tried.
Every Saturday morning during the summer that she had been thirteen,
Jenny, high on the buckboard seat, had driven old Dobbin up and down the
long winding tree-hung lanes in the aristocratic foothill suburb of Santa
Barbara. At first her wares were only eggs from her flocks of white
Minorka hens, but, when she was fourteen, jars of golden strained honey
were added, and gradually, among her customers, she came to be known as
“The Honey Girl” from Rocky Point Farm. And now Jenny was fifteen.
Susan Warner was startled from her day-dreams by the shrill whistle of
the rural mail carrier. Neatly folding her sewing (and Granny Sue would
neatly fold her sewing if she were running away from a fire), the old
woman went to the side porch nearest the lane where the elderly Mr.
Pickson was then stopping to leave the Rural Weekly for Mr. Silas Warner
and a note from Miss Isophene Granger for “The Honey Girl.”
“I reckon it’s a fresh order for honey or eggs or such,” the smiling old
woman told him. The mail carrier agreed with her.
“I reckon ’tis! There’s a parcel o’ new girls over to the seminary,” was
his comment as he turned his horse’s head toward the gate, then with a
short nod he drove away.
Susan Warner went back into the kitchen, and, feeling sure that the note
was not of a private nature, she unfolded the paper and read the message,
which was couched in the formal language habitually used by the principal
of the fashionable seminary.
“Miss Isophene Granger desires six dozen eggs to be delivered this
afternoon not later than five.”
The old woman glanced at the clock. “Tut! Tut! And here it’s close to
three. I reckon I’d better be gatherin’ the eggs this once. Jenny says
it’s her work, but it’ll be all she can do to get there, with Dobbin to
hitch and what not.”
Taking her sunbonnet from its hook by the kitchen door, the old woman
went out to the barnyard where, in neat, wired-in spaces, there were
several flocks of white Minorka hens. After filling the large basket that
she carried with eggs, Susan Warner returned through the blossoming
orchard, and although she was unconscious of it, she smiled and nodded at
the bees that were so busily gathering honey; then she thought of her
girl.
“Dear lovin’ child that she is!” The faded blue eyes of the old woman
were tender. “Si and me never lets on that her plan can’t come to
nothin’. ’Twould nigh break her heart. All told there’s not more’n seven
hundred now in the bank, an’ the farm, when they come to sell it, is like
to bring most that an acre, or leastwise so Pa reckons.”
But later, as Susan Warner was sorting the eggs and placing them in boxes
holding a dozen each, she took a more optimistic view of the matter.
“It’s well to be workin’ and savin’, how-some-ever,” she concluded. “Our
darlin’ll need it all an’ more when her granddad an me are took.” Then,
before the old woman could wipe away the tears that always came when she
thought of leaving Jenny, her eyes brightened, and, peering out of a
window near she exclaimed aloud (although there was only a canary to
hear), “Wall now, here comes Jenny this minute, singin’ and skippin’ up
the lane, like the world couldn’t hold a trouble. Bless the happy heart
of her!”