AN OLD FRIEND APPEARS
The next morning, while Jenny was standing in front of her mirror in her
sun-flooded bedroom nearest the sea, she reviewed in memory the events of
the day previous. She found it hard to understand her own anger or why it
had flared so uncontrollably. After all Grandpa Si _was_ the farmer in
Mrs. Poindexter-Jones’ employ and, what was more, Grandma Sue _had_ been
housekeeper over at the big house for years before Jenny had been born,
and there was no disgrace in that. The girl challenged the thought that
had recalled this almost forgotten fact. Didn’t Miss Dearborn say that it
is not your occupation but what you are that really counts?
Determinedly she put from her the troubling memory and centered her
attention for the first time on the reflection before her. She did indeed
look pretty in the ruffled white muslin with the pink sprig embroidery,
and tender brown eyes looked out from under a wide white hat, pink
wreathed. There was no complaining thought in her heart because both
dress and hat were many summers old.
Opening a drawer in her old-fashioned bureau, Jenny took out her prized
pink silk parasol and removed its soft paper wrappings.
A mocking bird just outside her open window poured one joyous song after
another into the peaceful sunlit air. For a thoughtful moment the girl
gazed out at the shimmering blue sea. “I’m sorry I flared up at Harold’s
sister,” she said aloud. Then hearing her grandmother calling from the
side porch, she sang out: “Coming, Granny Sue.”
Jenny could not have told why everything and everyone revolved around
Harold P-J. She thought of the proud woman, whom she had once seen in the
long ago, as “Harold’s mother,” and of the girl whom she had defied as
“Harold’s sister,” yet she had not seen the boy since that stormy day two
years before.
Skipping to the side porch, she found Grandma Sue looking very sweet in
her lavender muslin, and tiny black bonnet with lavender ribbons, already
up on the wide seat of the buggy. Breaking a few blossoms from the
heliotrope at the corner of the house, Jenny handed them up to her. “Put
them on, somewhere,” she called merrily, “and I shall have a cluster of
pink Cecile Brunner roses for my belt. Granddad, how dressed up you look
in the shirt that I ironed. Do you want a buttonhole bouquet?”
“Me?” the old man’s horrified expression amused the girl. Standing on
tiptoe, she kissed his brown, wrinkled cheek, then clambered up beside
her grandmother.
Silas Warner climbed over the wheel and took up the loose rein. Dobbin
was indeed a remarkable horse. He seemed to know that on Sunday he was to
turn toward the village, and yet he stopped after having cantered about
two miles and turned down a pine-edged lane that led to St.
Martin’s-by-the-Sea. It was the only church in all that part of the
country, and so was attended by rich and poor alike. The seminary girls
attended the service all together and filled one side of the small
church. Jenny, near the aisle, close to the back, was kneeling in prayer
when a late arrival entered and knelt in front of her. It was a young man
dressed in a military school uniform.
Grandpa Si was the first to recognize the stranger and he whispered to
his companion: “Ma ain’t that little Harry?”
Discreetly the good woman nodded, her eyes never leaving the face of the
preacher who was beginning his sermon. Jenny’s heart was in a flutter of
excitement. Surely it was her friend Harold P-J, and yet, two years
before he had been just a boy. Now he was much taller with such broad
shoulders and how straight he stood when they rose to sing a hymn. She
had not seen his face as she was directly behind him. Perhaps, after all,
she was mistaken, she thought, for she had plainly heard his sister tell
her friends that Harold was not expected until the mother returned from
France in July and it was only the first week in May. But she had not
been wrong, as she discovered as soon as the benediction had been said,
for the young man turned with such a pleased expression on his good
looking face, and, holding out his hand to the older woman, he said with
ringing sincerity in his voice. “It’s great, Mrs. Warner, to see you
looking so well.” Then, after giving a hearty handshake, and receiving
two from the farmer, the boy turned smilingly toward Jenny. “You aren’t,
you _can’t_ be that little, rubber-hooded girl whom I picked up two years
ago in the storm!”
“I am though.” Jenny’s rose-tinted cheeks were of a deeper hue, “But you
also have grown.”
Standing very straight and tall, the boy looked down beamingly upon all
three. “I’ll say I have,” he agreed, “but honestly I do hope I’m not
going up any higher.” Then after a quick glance across the aisle, where
the Granger Place Young Ladies were filing out, he said hastily. “Mrs.
Warner, won’t you invite a stranded youth to take dinner with you today?
I’ve got to see sister this afternoon, and return to the big city
tonight, but I’m pining to have a real visit with you.” Then to Jenny, by
way of explanation. “Perhaps you never heard about it, but your Grandma
Sue took care of me the first three years of my life and so I shall
always consider her a grandmother of mine.” Susan Warner’s mind had flown
hastily back to the home larder. What did she have cooked that was fine
enough for company. But the youth seemed to understand. “Just anything
that you have ready is what I want. No fuss and feathers, remember that.
I’ll be there in one hour. Will that be time enough?”
Grandpa Si spoke up heartily. “I reckon you’ll find a dinner waitin’
whenever you get there, Harry-boy.”
Gwynette received her brother with a sneering curve to her mouth that
might have been pretty. “Well, didn’t you know that everyone in the
church was watching you and criticizing you for making such a fuss over
our mother’s servants,” was her ungracious greeting. A dull red appeared
in the boy’s cheeks, but he checked the angry words before they were
uttered. Instead he said: “Gwynette, may I call at the seminary this
afternoon? I have had a letter from Mother and I want to talk it over
with you.”
“This afternoon?” a rising inflection of inquiry. “Aren’t you going to
take me to The Palms to dine? I’m just starved for a real course dinner
and the minute I saw you I made up my mind that was what we would do.”
The boy hesitated. His conscience rebuked him. He knew that their mother
would expect him to be chivalrous to his sister. He also knew that a
vision in pink and white, a pair of appealing liquid brown eyes had, for
the moment caused him to forget his duty. “All right, sis,” he said,
trying not to let the reluctance in his heart show in his voice. “Ask
your chaperone if you may go with me now.”
As soon as he was alone, Harold hurried around the vine-covered church to
the sheds where he hoped to find the Warner family. They were just
driving out of the lane, but the old man drew rein when he saw the lad
hurrying toward them.
“I’m terribly sorry, Mrs. Warner,” he began with a ring of sincerity in
his voice, which carried conviction to the listeners. “Gwynette wants me
to take her to The Palms for dinner, and, of course, _that_ is what our
mother would wish me to do.”
“Wall, wall, that’s all right, Harry,” Grandpa Si put in consolingly.
“’Taint as though you can’t come again. You’re welcome over to the farm
whenever you’re down this way.”
Harold’s last glance was directed at the girl as also was his parting
remark. “I’m going to run down from the city real soon. Good-bye.”
Jenny was truly disappointed as she had hoped to have an opportunity to
ask the lad if it were true that his mother planned selling the farm
during the summer.
She consoled herself by recalling his promise to come back soon. And then
as Dobbin trotted briskly homeward, the girl fell to dreaming of the
various things that might happen during the summer.