ANNETTE BOWMAN
Janice leaped out of her car and ran toward the frightened horse.
“Stop pulling on the reins! Stop it--do!” she begged of the girl
driving. “See! he’ll come down if you’ll let him.”
With slackened reins the horse dropped his fore-hoofs to the ground.
Janice seized the bridle and stopped him from backing farther. The girl
in the cart, the moment the peril was over, began to berate Janice in a
most unladylike manner.
“I declare! you ought to be punished for this!” she cried angrily.
“Suppose he had backed me into that ditch? I might have been killed.
There should be a law against letting a girl like you run motor-cars!
If that’s your mother in the car I hope she hears me say it.”
“I stopped as soon as I saw you,” answered Janice, mildly, when the
other halted for breath.
“It’s lucky you did!” snapped the strange girl. “And now I suppose this
silly horse won’t even go past your car when it’s standing still.”
For the frightened animal that Janice held by the bridle pointed
quivering ears at the car and showed other traces of excitement.
“I will lead him past for you,” said Janice, without showing the
dislike for the strange girl which she could not help feeling. “Don’t
hold the reins so tight. You frighten him.”
“Nonsense! who told you so much, Miss?” responded this very unpleasant
person, pertly enough.
“There! loosen the reins. It will calm him. A horse can feel the
nervousness or fear of its driver through the reins--it _is_ so. Whoa,
boy! be good now.”
She patted and soothed the creature. He soon began to nuzzle her hand
and rub against her shoulder--which wasn’t altogether a welcome sign
of affection, for the poor animal had champed his bit until strings of
froth were dripping from it.
“If you don’t know any more about a horse than you do about an auto,
I expect you’ll have me in the ditch after all,” said the girl in the
cart, with a hard laugh.
But she had relaxed the reins and Janice was quietly leading the horse
along the road, keeping between him and the shiny car. Aunt ’Mira could
not keep her eyes off that plume on the stranger’s hat. Indeed, the
entire outfit was like some of those the good lady expected to see in
the store windows at Middletown; only this one was displayed to much
better advantage.
[Illustration: Janice leaped out of her car and ran toward the
frightened horse--(_see page 79_)]
The girl in the cart certainly was dressed in the height of fashion.
The skirt of the dress she wore was so tight that by no possibility
could she have descended from the cart in a hurry. Had the frightened
horse really backed the cart into the ditch she would have had to go
with it!
She stared now at Aunt ’Mira quite as hard as Aunt ’Mira stared at her.
The large lady was rather a sight, it must be admitted; but as a choice
between the two exhibitions of feminine vanity, it must be said that
Aunt ’Mira was to be preferred. The strange girl’s gown was far from
modest.
“I suppose one can’t expect much from you country people,” she said to
Janice when the latter had politely led the horse past the car. “If
you chance to get a car you don’t know how to behave on the road with
it. Let me tell you, Miss, if I meet you with my horse again and you
frighten him, I shall have you arrested--I don’t care who you are.”
“I am sure I am sorry,” Janice said; “but I do not see how it could be
helped. The road is free to all sorts of traffic.”
“Well, it ought not to be,” snapped the other, and with a flirt of her
whip she sent the horse on his way.
Janice climbed back into her car with rather a grave face. Her aunt was
still filled with amazement regarding the frock and hat worn by the
strange girl.
“I never did imagine they looked like _that_ when they was on folks,”
she murmured. “My goodness, Janice! I dunno as I want you to wear one
o’ them dresses, after all. I’d feel as though you warn’t dressed at
all. But that plume!”
“Her clothes were quite in the mode, I suppose,” the girl returned;
“but her manners were very unpleasant, to say the least.”
“Them city folks is awful proud--’specially the high-flying kind,” Aunt
’Mira agreed. “But that plume!”
Janice suspected that her aunt had her heart fixed upon a similar
adornment, and when she picked her up again at one of Middletown’s
biggest stores, after driving to the seminary and seeing the principal,
Aunt ’Mira had a long pasteboard box clasped against her breast, her
round, fat face was hot and perspiring, but she was smiling broadly.
“I got one, Janice!” she whispered, hoarsely, as she wedged herself
into the car. “It cost me a sight of money. Don’t tell your Uncle
Jason; he’d have a fit.”
“What did you buy it for?” asked Janice, amused.
“To put on my new hat. It’s a beautiful purple shade----”
“Purple!” gasped Janice, with a picture before her mental vision of
Aunt ’Mira’s vast, ruddy face under such a colored plume.
“It’s a royal shade--so the girl said. Just like royalty wears,” said
Aunt ’Mira in a hushed voice. “I expect them wimmen in ‘The Baron’s
Heart Secret’ likely wore royal purple. And with that salmon-colored
poplin you wouldn’t let me make up last spring, it’ll look striking.”
“I should say it would!” groaned Janice, foreseeing that she was
going to have a hard time to keep her aunt from appearing in another
ridiculous combination of colors.
Returning to Polktown, she was watchful all the way for the
reappearance of the girl with the high-stepping horse and the
road-cart, so she drove very slowly; and it was after five o’clock when
they reached the highroad above Mr. Cross Moore’s creek, where the
railroad bridge was to be built.
From a narrow cross road, running down to the shore, Janice and her
aunt heard voices and laughter, and as Janice slowed down Marty
appeared.
“Hello!” he shouted. “I vow if this ain’t luck. Hey! come along, Frank!
We can git a ride to town.”
The car had passed the beginning of the cross road, but Janice heard
the sound of a horse and wagon wheel out upon the main highway as it
started upon the way to Middletown at a fast pace. Frank Bowman, the
remainder of the instruments on his shoulder, appeared in a minute from
the bushes.
“Why, Mrs. Day! And Miss Janice! Delighted, I am sure,” said the civil
engineer. “Won’t we discommode you?” for Marty had already crowded in
beside his mother and was reaching for the tripod Mr. Bowman carried.
“There is room,” laughed Janice. “You may sit beside me and see how
well I have profited by your instructions.”
“Wish you had been five minutes earlier,” said the engineer, getting
quickly into the front seat. “That was my sister.”
“Oh! has she come?” cried Janice.
“She’s stopping over at Judge Slater’s. She went to school with a
couple of the Slater girls. But this afternoon she drove over to
Polktown and went to the Lake View Inn to arrange for rooms for us
both. She is determined to be with me while I am building these
bridges. And of course I’ll be glad to have her with me.” But Frank
laughed rather ruefully.
“She doesn’t begin to know what she’s up against,” the young man went
on. “She has some idea of playing the Lady Bountiful and the Chatelaine
of the Castle, rolled into one. Speaks of the natives of these parts as
‘the peasantry.’ You know,” and Frank chuckled, “that she’s going to
get in awfully bad with some of the people about Polktown if she begins
that way.”
“But why don’t you explain to her?” asked Janice, in some wonder, as
well as consternation. Frank seemed so sensible himself that it was
hard to believe he could have a sister who would not know better. Yet
come to think of it, there was an air about Frank that suggested he was
secretly laughing at the simple folk of Polktown.
“Oh, you couldn’t explain anything to Annette,” the young engineer
said, with some disgust. “No more than you could to Aunt Lettie. You
see, Annette lived with Aunt Lettie Buchanan. Auntie left her what
money she had when she died. That is what makes my sister so blessed
independent now. I’m not sure but that little wad of money has half
spoiled Annette.
“But I guess it’s only one of the things that makes her silly. You’ll
see yourself, Miss Janice, when you meet her, that going to that fancy
private school and having too much money to spend, have turned her
head. I wish she were more like you.”
“Are you sure you know me well enough to wish your sister were like
me?” asked Janice, lightly.
“Mart is always singing your praises,” said Frank Bowman, with a
clearing-up smile, “so I feel that I ought to know you pretty well. And
I expect Annette is all right, too; only Aunt Lettie’s influence, and
her association with foolish girls at school, is telling on her now.
“You see, our Aunt Lettie was on the stage. She married afterward an
old gentleman, who died very soon after the marriage and left her some
property--more than enough to keep her for the rest of her life.
“Our parents being dead, she naturally took Annette and made a pet of
her. She was all for show and loved publicity. Theatrical applause
had been the very breath in Aunt Lettie’s nostrils for so many years
that she was always attempting to attract attention and get her name
mentioned in the society columns of the papers.
“She dressed my sister, even when she was a child, in the most striking
costumes. And Annette absorbed her ideas of flaunting fashionable
clothing in the public eye. But I tell her that the public eye of
Polktown will be literally blinded if she attempts to dress so loudly
here.”
Janice’s quick mind jumped to a sudden conclusion. “Oh, Mr. Bowman,”
she asked, “did your sister drive over here to see you in a yellow
road-cart, with a bay horse with a docked tail?”
“Yes, that’s the turnout. It’s one of Judge Slater’s. Did you see her
on the road?”
“We met her as we drove to Middletown,” said Janice gravely.
“Well, I want her to know you. I know she’ll be delighted, for, when
you scrape down through the silly surface of Annette’s character, she’s
a good girl, after all.”
Janice was troubled. She was quite sure she did not wish to know
the girl who had been so rude to her on the road that afternoon. In
addition, she was positive that Annette Bowman would not care to become
acquainted with her.