The letter which Jane had so counted on, had just now shed its
delightful news, and at last she knew who had won the scholarship.
Winding herself tighter still in the big wicker chair, so that she
seemed a veritable circle of pink organdie, she snuggled the yellow
pages closer in her prettily browned hands, read a few lines over for
the n’th time and finally, with a spring and a sprint, made her way
back to the living room.
Uncle Todd was evidently well pleased with his story of the Welch
auction, for the palpitating cane was throbbing up and down in his
sinewy hand, and Aunt Mary had completely laid aside her knitting, and
sat with hands folded at attention.
“I would call it a shame,” she commented as Jane entered.
“And you’d give it the right name,” replied Uncle Todd.
At the threshold Jane hesitated. Even to her youthful eyes there was
something restful in the picture.
“Good old pals,” she said under her breath. “Aunt Mary knows how to
entertain reclining years.” Then picking up Bonnie, her ebony kitten,
she coughed respectfully.
“Good news?” asked Aunt Mary.
“The best ever. Where is dad? I hate to give it to him second handed.”
“Your father will not be back till dinner time, dear. He is over
Lincoln way.”
“Then we will have to enjoy it in trio. You know what it is about,
Uncle Todd?”
“But, Janie girl, I’ve got to be a-goin’. Some chores and some cookin’
to do, and if I don’t get at it in good time I’m apt to slip it by.
Good afternoon, ladies,” he finished quite grandly. “Can’t tell when I
had sech a fine time.”
“But you can’t go now, Uncle Todd,” objected Jane. “I am going to drive
you over.”
“No sich thing. If I don’t keep a-walkin’ my jints will gum up: I am
goin’ to walk.”
“Oh, if you must,” said Jane with the foolish social intonation. “So
awfully sorry.”
“Don’t you jibe me, girlie,” and he pinched her elbow. “You know as
well as I do what it is worth to walk a mile a day.”
“All right, Uncle Todd, but some day I am going to tell you all my good
news. There comes Pedro. If you get tired just hail him, and he’ll give
you a lift.”
Then, left alone with her aunt, Jane proceeded with the news from
Wellington.
“Just see and listen,” she commanded. “What a prospect of oodles of fun
and frolic. Dad’s scholarship has been won by a Polish artist. Think of
it! A girl who plays the violin divinely, and who is—well, let’s read
it again.”
She ran her finger over the introduction of the letter and traced out
the lines which told of the Polish girl and the scholarship.
“Mrs. Weatherbee says,” she announced, “that the girl is wonderfully
interesting, and she is sure we shall be delighted. We are. Then she
says the little artist comes from a girls’ seminary, where she had been
left uncalled for and that there is some mysterious story connected
with her presence in America, but of course, (now listen in Auntie) of
course, Mrs. Weatherbee knows I will not be carried off by any such
sensational reports, but I will take the little Polish girl on her
merits. Of course I shall, I shall even take her on trial, but you can
picture the other girls, and the Polish artist? Auntie, that Marion
Seaton will get in touch with the Bolshevik or something, to dig up
trouble for my little friend, see if she doesn’t. She will go into the
archives of the fall of Poland, and the battle of Warsaw, to find out
that my little artist’s grandfather once dropped his musket in front of
the king’s palace. Oh my, Auntie mine,” and she loosed some of her
pent-up energy in a great “grizzly hug.” “Why can’t you and dad come
along to school with me to see the fun?” For a moment her gray eyes
took on the lingering look her friends called “the dove stare,” then
recovering her mirthful mood she pranced around, played first with
Bonnie, then with Fliver the new puppy, all the while gathering and
spending the joy of young girlhood.
“Don’t bother too much about my clothes, Auntie dear,” she warned with
a new thought. “I think I shall ask dad if I may go to the city early,
and help fit up my little artist. Then I may find a lot of things I
shall like, all ready to wear.”
“I had been thinking of proposing that, Janie dear,” confessed the
aunt, to whom the clothes problem had been an increasing worry with the
addition of Jane’s years. “I have read all the catalogues and sent for
more, but I don’t find exactly what I think you would fancy.”
“No, and you won’t, for I fancy a blouse and a skirt, just a little
one, and perhaps a veil for evening wear.” She held Fliver out at arm’s
length to enjoy the joke. “Of course, I would wear a so-called gown
with the veil, but I love the veil, it is so shimmery.” A scarf
snatched from the end of the mahogany table served to illustrate the
“shimmer” as Jane floated it triumphantly over her and Fliver’s heads.
The inevitable interpretative dance followed, and Fliver looked very
frightened, evidently envying Bonnie her safety aisle on the rug.
“I am going to get your trunk out to-morrow,” announced Aunt Mary, as
an interlude. “I want to put some cedar chips in it, and Squaw Watah
brought over a wonderful bunch of fragrant herbs, spice bush, savory
and rosemary. I wonder where she raised them? She must have obtained
some government seeds.”
“Watah is a real farmerette,” agreed Jane, coming to a standstill
against the oaken post. “I would recommend her for a position in the
Department of Agriculture. Ta, ta, Auntie, I’m off to get dad. I think
he will be over the Copper Turn Hill about now, and I’ll ride Firefly
to be back with him. I am just dying to tell him the news.”
“Janie, do be careful going down that steep hill. The boys who came
collecting tin cans the other day told me the rocks fall in a torrent
there now.”
“Oh, I know. I’ll be ‘keer-ful.’” The voice came from the second stair
landing. Jane Allen was on her way.
She reached her own horse and it took but a few gallops to bring her up
to Mr. Allen.
“Do you suppose she will have light wavy hair, and very big blue eyes,
Daddy? The aristocratic Poles are always light,” was among the first
questions.
“But I wouldn’t classify them by eyes and hair exactly,” replied the
man on Victor, the big gray horse. “I’ve known a really fine Pole who
was quite red headed.”
“Now Daddy, don’t tease. You know a girl must be—well, a little bit
pretty at least, to be popular, and I am bound to have my artist
wonderfully popular—after we win the battle, of course.”
“I can well imagine the battle,” and Henry Allen laughed so heartily
Victor darted forward with a prance. “If your erstwhile friends, who
made up the opposition last year, line up against your protege as
vigorously as they attacked your other little friend, I am afraid you
will take more time to train your guns on endurance, than on your
favorite basketball, daughter.”
“Indeed, Judy Stearns and I, and maybe Dorothy Martin, are very well
able to hold our own against the Marian Seaton crowd,” answered Jane,
bringing Firefly’s head up higher in punctuation. “I rather think they
will not be quite so vigorous with their campaign of hate this year. I
should think even envious girls would learn their lesson some time.”
“I have often thought the same of the boys I have to deal with out
here, but it is curious how envy sticks.”
Pencils of sunset were now etching their path through the trees, and
the well tramped road bore slight evidence of the afternoon’s shower.
“Daughter, I hate to have you go,” continued Mr. Allen, “but your
spirit makes me proud. Uncle Todd was telling the men out Lincoln way
the other day, that Henry Allen’s girl was almost as good as a boy.”
“Oh, he is a character!” Jane exclaimed. “I had him over during the
shower, and he and Aunt Mary had a great time gossiping. Dad, may I go
to New York a little early? That is, quite early,” she qualified
cautiously.
“Of course, daughter. But why the haste?”
“Well, you see, about this new girl—she will have to be fitted out.
Mrs. Weatherbee hinted she would get some friends interested in her who
might help, but it seems to me I could make my allowance do for both of
us.”
“You just get what you want, little girl. Don’t worry about the bill.
Old dad has still some credit, you know.”
Even Firefly tried to edge closer to respond gratefully. Jane tipped
her little whip under her father’s chin, thereby endangering the tilt
of his cap. “You are always so generous, Dad. Couldn’t I gather tin
cans to sieve the copper through, or do something to make up?” she
asked playfully. “Really, if I am almost as good as a boy, don’t you
think I might sometime act the part?”
“You are a heap better, little girl, and I have no wish to see you act
otherwise than just as my Janie,” replied the smiling father. “But
those boys you have just noticed gathering the tins are wasting their
time. No more copper comes this way in the mine water. All their rusty
tins will be wasted, for Montana copper is being too well worked these
days,” declared Mr. Allen, referring to the tin-can trick of collecting
copper through the cyanide method.
“Oh, how disappointed they will be! Should we tell them?” suggested
Jane, observing at that moment the group of boys trudging along with
their cart of old tins.
“Well, they may get some farther on, but not around here,” amended Mr.
Allen. “By the way, Janie, when do you want to start with this new plan
of shopping and college trip?”
Jane looked under her long lashes to discover, if possible, how her
father felt about her leaving earlier than they had planned. But he was
flicking Victor with the willow whip, and she obtained no clue to his
feelings from his expression.
Jane hated to be so abrupt—of course he would be lonely.
“Oh, I thought I might leave about ten days earlier,” she ventured.
“That will give me time to locate the Polish girl, get acquainted, and
help with her outfit. Besides, Aunt Mary suggested that I buy some of
my things ready-to-wear, as it is so difficult here to shop by mail
from St. Paul.”
“That would be about when?” persisted the father.
“About next Wednesday.”
“Very well, girlie. Just so long as I know how many signed checks to
get ready, and how many men to assign to the baggage.”
Jane looked relieved. Her father plainly had come to the same
conclusion she had managed to confine her reasoning to, namely: since
she couldn’t bring the Eastern college to El Capitan, she would have to
go to the college, and that protesting against the details of
separation from her beloved ranch home, simply threw a shadow over the
prospect of a joyful year at school.
“We are getting educated, Janie,” Mr. Allen said, as they pulled up to
the waiting groom. “Old dad takes the school term as a matter of course
now. Not that I don’t miss my little girl as much as ever, but because
I have taken the home course in economics—the grade that gives us all
the discipline and the self control,” he laughed at this attempt to
qualify his change of mental attitude. He was a wonderful father, a
perfectly adorable pal, and withal a business man whose name spelled
power and prosperity.
“Dad, all the same I’m a weakling,” admitted Jane. “Because I just hate
to leave you—and——”
“There’s a special messenger boy all the way from Copper Hill Turn,”
interrupted the father. “Now what do you suppose he is bringing us in
the way of good news?”
The Mexican boy slipped off his burro and with an indescribable salute
(something between a military motion and an acrobatic finish to some
remarkable star act) he handed the message to Mr. Allen.
“Yours, daughter. Whoever is writing you from over the hills and what
can be so very important as to fetch Santos?” asked Mr. Allen.
“All our wonders seem to come by post,” commented Jane. She was
scanning the few words on the telegram sent in from the nearest railway
station. Suddenly she gave a jump, and seemed too overcome with emotion
to express herself in words.
“Daddy!” she exclaimed, finally. “Judy is on her way back from the
coast and is looking for us. She is at the Hill Turn. Oh, can you
imagine Judy Stearns getting way out here, and being with me on the
trip to college!”
“Rare luck indeed, daughter. At the station did you say? Well, let us
get to her at once. Can’t take a chance on her getting into that famous
stage coach of Curly Bill’s. You run in and tell Aunt Mary the glad
news, and I’ll get the tandem hitched. Don’t you think it will be nice
to show her our best style?”
“Oh, lovely, Daddy. But I am so excited. I never could have dreamed of
such luck. To have dear old Judy visit me here until I go back, and
then to have her travel with me! Yes, get the tandem. Pedro!” she
called to the man just losing himself in the trees towards the big
stable. “Come over here! Daddy, don’t you slick up a single bit. I want
Judy to see you as a ranch chief. And I think I’ll get into my Bronco
Billie outfit just to show off. No, that wouldn’t go with tandem, would
it? Yes, it would too,” she changed her mind and decided again, too
excited to act rationally.
“Now, I’ll dress and be ready in five minutes,” announced the girl.
“Oh, I forgot I haven’t told you the message,” she had it crumbled in
her brown hand. “‘Am at the Hill Turn Station. Tell me how to reach
you.’ There, we will show her how we reach her,” and she skipped off
leaving her father to arrange about the tandem and the high red-wheel
cart.