A NEW EXPERIENCE
May was a busy, happy month for Jenny. Never had she studied harder and
her teacher, Miss Dearborn, rejoiced in her beloved pupil’s rapid
advancement. Then, twice a week, on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons,
when she drove around to the beautiful country homes of the rich
delivering eggs and honey, on the high seat at her side rode her very
first girl friend, Lenora Gale. Jenny was jubilantly happy on these
occasions, and, as for Lenora, she spent the hours in between the rides
in anticipation of the next one or in dreaming over the last one. She
wrote long letters to her far-away farmer father or to her nearer
brother, Charles, telling all about this new friend who seemed to the
readers of those letters to be a paragon indeed.
“I just know that you will love my dear Jenny when you see her,” she
wrote indiscriminately in either letter, and Charles smiled to himself.
He might like this Jenny Warner in a general way, but he was not at all
afraid that he would “love” any girl in particular, soon or ever. He was
convinced of that. He had met many girls, but he had never felt strongly
appealed to by any of them, and since he would be twenty-one on his next
birthday he decided that he was immune, but of this he said nothing in
his letters to his beloved little sister, for he well knew that she did
not refer to romantic love when she so often prophesied that her brother
would love Jenny Warner.
But, as the weeks passed, Charles found that he was looking forward with
a new interest to the middle of June, when he was to go to Santa Barbara
to get his sister and take her, if she were well enough to travel, back
to their Dakota farm for the summer.
As for Harold P-J. he had returned to the military academy jubilantly
eager for the beginning of his duties as Farmer Warner’s “helper.” He
wrote a long, dutiful letter to his mother each week, and, after that
visit to Rocky Point, he told his plan for the summer not without
trepidation and ended with a description of the flower-like qualities of
the granddaughter: “Mother mine, there’s a girl after your own heart.
You’ll just love Jenny Warner.”
Perhaps it was because of this letter that Mrs. Poindexter-Jones changed
her plans and decided to leave for Santa Barbara at an earlier date.
At last there came a day when Jenny did not look about her at the gnarled
old oaks or at the carpet of wild flowers in the uplands as she walked
along the familiar trail which led to Miss Dearborn’s pepper-tree guarded
gate, for she was conning over and over a lesson. Nor was her teacher in
the garden where she so often busied herself as she awaited her pupil.
Instead she stood in the drive with her hat and jacket on.
When at last the girl lifted her eyes from her book, she stopped—an
expression of dread and consternation in her eyes. “Miss Dearborn,” she
exclaimed, “you aren’t going back East, are you?”
The pleasant-faced woman laughed. “Not yet,” she replied. “How you do
dread that event, which I can assure you is not even a remote
possibility. Why should I go East, dear?”
Jenny Warner could not explain why she seemed so often to be oppressed by
that dread. “Do you believe that coming events cast their shadows
before?” she asked, putting her hand to her throat. “Honestly, Miss
Dearborn, I feel as if something terribly awful is about to happen. And
seeing you just now with your hat and jacket on made me think that you
might have had a telegram and that you were just leaving.”
Miss Dearborn merrily put in: “I _am_ just leaving, and for that matter
so are _you_. I received a telephone message half an hour ago that the
date of the first examination had been changed and is to take place at 10
o’clock _this morning_.”
Jenny’s books fell to the path and her look of consternation would have
been comical if it had not been tragic. “Miss Dearborn, I knew it! I have
felt just perfectly miserable as though I had lost my last friend with
fifty other calamities added. Now I know coming events cast their shadows
before. I thought we were going to have all this day for review.”
Miss Dearborn’s reply was cheerfully optimistic. “I’m glad that we are
not. I object to the system of cramming. You would tire your brain and be
less able to answer questions tomorrow than you are today. Now take your
books into the house, dear, and leave them on the library table, then
hurry back. We are to catch the nine o’clock stage.”
Poor Jenny’s heart felt heavily oppressed. Together they went down to the
Coast Highway, and, as they had a few moments to wait for the bus in the
rustic little roadside station, Jenny ventured, “Don’t you think, Miss
Dearborn, it would be a good plan for you to ask me questions or explain
to me something that you think I do not understand very clearly?”
“No, I do not.” Miss Dearborn was emphatic in her reply. Then she
inquired: “How is your little friend Lenora Gale? You promised to bring
her up to have a tea-party with me soon. You haven’t forgotten, have
you?”
A shade of sorrow passed over the girl’s pretty face. “Miss Dearborn,”
she said earnestly, “Lenora isn’t as well as she was. I am ever so
troubled about her. She seemed so much better after we met, and then,
last week, she caught another cold. Now she is worse again, and has to
stay in bed. I was up to the seminary Saturday to take the eggs and
honey, and I asked if I might see her. Miss O’Hara went to inquire of
Miss Granger, but she came back without the permission I wanted. The
doctor had requested that Lenora be kept perfectly quiet. Oh, I just know
that she is fretting her heart out to see me, and she doesn’t like it at
the seminary. It’s such a cold, unfriendly sort of a place. The girls
never did take to Lenora, partly because she is retiring, almost timid, I
suppose, and, besides, they may have heard that her father is only a
farmer.”
Their conversation was interrupted by the arrival of the bus. Then, when
they were seated within, Jenny continued, almost with bitterness: “Rich
girls are haughty and horrid, that is, if they are all like Gwynette
Poindexter-Jones.”
“But they aren’t, dear. Don’t judge the many by the few. I had many
wealthy classmates and they were as simple and sweetly sincere as any
poor girl could be.”
Miss Dearborn purposely kept Jenny’s thoughts occupied with her friend
Lenora. Then she asked if Etta Heldt had been heard from. Jenny shook her
head. “We should have heard, at least two weeks ago. Grandpa Si thinks we
never will hear. He said the best way to lose a friend is to loan him
money, but I have faith in Etta Heldt. I just know she will write some
day soon if she reached Belgium alive.” Miss Dearborn had visited Belgium
and she described that interesting little country, and at last the bus
reached the high school in Santa Barbara. Jenny, with a glance of terror
at her teacher, took one of her hands and held it hard.
Throngs of bright-eyed girls, many of them in short sport skirts and
prettily colored sweater coats, trooped past the two who were strange.
Some few glanced at Jenny casually as though wondering who she might be,
but no one spoke.
Fragments of conversation drifted to her. “Gee-whiliker!” a
boyish-looking girl exclaimed. “I’d rather have the world come to an end
than take the geom exam from Seer Simp.”
Professor Simpson, as Jenny knew, was the instructor in charge of that
morning’s exams.
“Say! Wouldn’t I, though?” her companion replied with a mock shudder.
Then these two passed and another group hurried by. The leader turned to
fling over her shoulder: “O-o-h!! My hands are so cold now I won’t be
able to hold a pen, but if Monsieur Simpson so much as looks at me with
his steely blue eyes, I’ll change to an icicle.”
A moment later Jenny found herself confronted by that same dreaded
professor. Miss Dearborn was introducing her and a kindly voice was
saying: “Miss Warner, we are expecting much of you since you have had the
advantage of so much personal instruction.”
The eyes of the small elderly gentleman were, it is true, a keen
grey-blue, but there was friendliness in their expression.
Then it was that Jenny realized that since her tutor had done so much for
her, she, in turn, must do her best, and be, if only she could, a credit
to her beloved friend.
A gong was ringing somewhere in the corridor. As one in a dream, Jenny
bade good-bye to Miss Dearborn, who promised to return at noon. Then the
girl followed her new acquaintance into a room thronged with boys and
girls and sat at the desk indicated.