JENNY
Susan Warner turned to beam a welcome at the apparition standing in the
open door of the kitchen. With the sun back of her, shining through the
folds of her yellow muslin dress and glinting through her light, wavy
brown hair, the girl did indeed look like a sprite of the springtime,
and, to add to the picture, she held a branch, sweet with apricot
blossoms.
“Greetings, Granny Sue!” she called gayly. “This is churning day, isn’t
it?”
“That’s right, ’tis, Jenny darlin’, or leastwise ’twould o’ been ’ceptin’
for a message Mr. Pickson fetched over from Granger Place Seminary.
There’s some new pupils come sudden like, I reckon, an’ they need eggs a
day sooner than ordinary. I’ve got ’em all packed in the hamper, dearie.
You’ve nothin’ to do but hitch Dobbin and start.”
“Righto, Granny Sue; but first I must put these poor blossoms into a jar.
I found the branch broken and just hanging by a shred of bark on that old
tree ’way down by the fence corner.”
Jenny took a brown jar from a cupboard as she talked and filled it with
water from the sink pump.
“They’ll be lonely for their home tree, like as not,” she chattered on,
“but perhaps they’ll be a bit glad when they find that they are to
brighten up our home for a few days. Don’t you think maybe they will,
Granny Sue? Don’t you think when we can’t do the thing we most want to
do, we still can be happy if we are just alive and doing the most
beautiful thing that is left for us to do?”
This last was called over her shoulder as she carried the jar and
blossoming branch toward the door of the living-room. Luckily she did not
pause for an answer, for the little old woman always felt confused when
her girl began such flights of fancy. Had she been obliged to reply, she
no doubt would have said:
“Why, ’taint likely, Jenny, that branch of apricot flowers even knows
it’s broken off, an’ as for that, the ones that are left will make all
the better fruit with some of ’em gone.”
While the girl was placing the jar on the living-room center table, close
to the book that she had been reading, Granddad Si entered the kitchen
for a drink, and upon hearing of the message from Miss Granger, he
hurried to the barn to hitch old Dobbin to the cart, and so, when five
minutes later the girl skipped out, laughing over her shoulder at her
grandmother’s admonition to go more slowly, lest she fall and break the
eggs, there was Granddad Si fastening the last buckles. He straightened
up, pushed his frayed straw hat to the back of his head and surveyed the
girl with pardonable pride.
“Jenny, gal,” he began, and from the expression in his eyes she knew just
how he would complete the sentence, and so, laughingly, she put her free
hand over his mouth.
“Oh, granddad, ’tisn’t so, not the least bit, and you mustn’t say it
again. A stranger might hear you some time, and what if he should think
that I really believed it.”
But the old man finished his sentence, even though the words were mumbled
behind the slim white hand of his girl:
“It’s the Gospel truth, Jenny. I’m tellin’ ye! Thar ain’t a gal over to
that hifalutin seminary that’s half as purty as yo’ be. I reckon I know,
’cause I watch the whole lot of ’em when they go down the road on them
parade walks they take, with a teacher ahead and one behind like they was
a flock of geese and had to have a gooseherd along, which more’n like
they are. A silly parcel, allays gigglin’.”
The last half of this speech had been more clearly spoken, for Jenny,
having kissed him on the top of the nose from the wagon step, had climbed
into the cart.
As she was driving away, she called back to him: “Wrong you are,
Granddad, for I am only an egg and honey vender, while they are all
aristocrats. Good-bye.”
Then, a second later, she turned again to sing out:
“Tell Granny I’d like a chocolate pudding tonight, all hidden in
Brindle’s yellowest cream.”
Long after the girl had driven away, the farmer stood gazing down the
lane. An old question had returned to trouble him:
Was it honest not to tell her that she wasn’t their own kin?
He couldn’t do it. It would break all of their hearts. She was their kin,
somehow. No own grandchild could be dearer. Then he thought of the other
girl, Jenny’s sister. He had heard something that day about her, and he
had been mighty sorry to hear it.
When his “gal” disappeared from sight, up one of the tree-shaded lanes
leading toward the foothill estates, Farmer Si turned and walked slowly
back to the kitchen. He delivered Jenny’s message about the chocolate
pudding to his wife, who, even then, was preparing the vegetables for
supper. Crossing to the sink pump, the old man began working the handle
up and down. A rush of crystal clear water rewarded his effort and, after
having quaffed a long refreshing draught of it, he wiped his mouth with
the back of his hand.
Then, after hanging his hat on its nail by the door, he sank down in his
favorite arm chair close to the stove and sighed deeply as though he were
very weary. His wife looked at him questioningly and he said in a voice
and manner which were evidently evasive:
“Powerful poor weather for gettin’ the crops started. Nothin’ but
sunshine this fortnight past.”
Susan Warner was briskly beating the eggs needed for her darling’s
favorite pudding. When the whirr had ceased she turned and smiled across
the room at the old man whose position showed that he was dejected.
“What’s worryin’ yo’, Si?” The tone of the old woman’s voice promised
sympathy if it were needed. “’Tisn’t about the farm yo’re really
cogitatin’. I can tell that easy. Thar’s suthin’ else troublin’ yo’, an’
yo’ might as well speak out furst as last.”
“Wall, yo’re close to right, Susan, as I reckon yo’ most allays are. I
was mendin’ the fence down by the highway when ol’ Pickson drove up an’
stopped to pass the time o’ day, like he generally does, an’ he says,
says he, ‘Si, have yo’ heard the news?’ I w’a’nt particular interested,
bein’ as Pickson allays starts off that a-way, but what he said next
fetched me to an upstandin’, I kin tell you.”
Susan Warner had stopped her work to listen.
“What did Mr. Pickson tell you, Si? Suthin’ that troubled you?” she
inquired anxiously.
“Wall, sort o’ that way. Mabbe it won’t be nuthin’ to worry about, and
mabbe agin it will. Pickson said as how Mrs. Poindexter-Jones had gone to
some waterin’ place over in France for her nerves, an’ not wishin’ to
leave her daughter in the big city up north alone with the servants,
she’d sent her to stay in the seminary down here for the time bein’, an’,
what’s more, a flock of her friends from San Francisco came along of her.
Them are the new pupils you was mentionin’ a spell ago, as being the
reason extra eggs was needed.”
The old woman stared at her spouse as one spellbound. When she spoke her
voice sounded strained and unnatural. “Si Warner, do yo’ mean to tell me
our Jenny has gone to fetch eggs for her very own sister an’ her friends?
They’re likely to meet up wi’ each other now, arter all these years, an’
neither will know who the other really is. Oh, the pity of it, that one
of ’em should have all that money can buy, and the other of ’em ridin’
around peddlin’ eggs and honey.”
But the old man took a different view of the matter. “Susan,” he said,
“if our gal had the pick of the two places, I reckon she’d choose stayin’
with us. I reckon she would.”
Susan Warner’s practical nature had again asserted itself. “Wall, there’s
no need for us to be figurin’ about that. Jenny shall never know that she
has a sister. Who is there to tell her? An’ what’s more, she’ll never
have a chance to choose betwixt us and the Poindexter-Joneses.” Then, as
a tender expression crept into the faded blue eyes, the old woman added,
“Jenny wouldn’t leave us, Si. No, not for anyone. I’m sartin as to that,
but I’m hopin’ she’ll never know as she isn’t our own. I’m sure hopin’
that she won’t.”