[Illustration: LOIS AND ELLEN BRINGING HOME A GERANIUM FOR JESSIE
(_Page 8_)]
A
BORROWED SISTER
BY
ELIZA ORNE WHITE
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
KATHARINE PYLE
[Illustration]
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
COPYRIGHT 1906 BY ELIZA ORNE WHITE
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED INCLUDING THE RIGHT TO REPRODUCE
THIS BOOK OR PARTS THEREOF IN ANY FORM
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE · MASSACHUSETTS
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
TO
M. L. A.
AND HER DAUGHTER ELIZABETH THIS BOOK
IS AFFECTIONATELY
DEDICATED
CONTENTS
I. JESSIE COMES 1
II. THE WITCH KITTEN 11
III. BRIERFIELD 20
IV. BARBARA FRIETCHIE 31
V. A SUMMER EXCHANGE 43
VI. THE STORM AT HOLLISFORD 55
VII. THE VEGETABLE TEA-PARTY 65
VIII. THE TREE THAT GREW IN THE PAGES’ GARDEN 75
IX. MRS. DRAPER’S DARNING-CLASS 84
X. A RED LETTER DAY 91
XI. GRANDMOTHER LOIS 103
XII. THE HOUSE WHERE NOTHING HAPPENED 111
XIII. THE TRIO CLUB 121
XIV. A WINTER PICNIC 129
XV. THE CHRISTMAS TREE 140
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
LOIS AND ELLEN BRINGING HOME A GERANIUM FOR JESSIE
(PAGE 8) _Frontispiece_
“ANNE AND I HAVE A VEGETABLE GARDEN” 24
HER RUBBERS WERE BOATS 58
THE TRIO CLUB 128
A BORROWED SISTER
CHAPTER I
JESSIE COMES
Lois Page, who had been an only child all her life, was to have a
borrowed sister for the space of a year or more, and the prospect
filled her with keen delight. If she had searched the wide world over
she could not have found a more congenial sister than Jessie Matthews.
Lois was equally fond of Ellen Morgan, and Ellen was a more stimulating
friend, but Ellen had an uncertain temper, which would make living with
her a torment, as well as a joy, while Jessie was as serene as a summer
morning.
There was only one person who was not wholly satisfied with the
arrangement, and this was Ellen. She sat on the edge of one of the beds
in Lois’s room, and criticised her arrangements in an aggravating way,
while Lois was clearing out two drawers in her bureau.
“I should think you would rather have Jessie in the spare room,” said
Ellen finally. “It is dreadful to have so little room for one’s things.”
Lois, with a pile of petticoats in her arms, looked up in surprise.
“Why, that’s the joy of it all, Ellen. That’s the best part. Always
having somebody to talk to when you go to bed, and when you wake up in
the morning. You’ve always had a sister, and so you don’t understand
how lonely it is to be all by yourself. It is the loveliest thing that
ever happened to me,” she added, with strong emphasis.
Ellen had borne as much as she could. “I think it is perfectly horrid,”
said she.
Lois was pulling open the lower drawer in the bureau and crowding in
the petticoats. She looked up in bewildered surprise.
“I thought you loved Jessie,” she said.
“I like her well enough,” returned Ellen, who was in truth very fond of
Jessie, “but I think it is perfectly horrid for you to have her living
with you. You’ll have such a good time every single minute that you
won’t care any more about me.”
Lois came over and sat down on the edge of the bed and put her arms
around Ellen. “Why, Ellen, you dear thing!” she exclaimed. Lois loved
her friends so intensely that it never seemed possible they could care
equally for her, and this admission from the self-reliant Ellen, who
was such a favorite, filled her with an amazed joy.
“I shall care just as much for you,” Lois said. “It will be the same
as it is with you and Anne. And there will be four of us to do things
together.”
“I shall expect to play with you every single day,” said Ellen.
“Why, of course.”
“And I don’t want you to like Jessie any better than you like me; I
couldn’t stand that. I know she’s ever so much nicer, and I don’t see
how you can help it.”
“I love you both dearly,” said Lois.
After this the atmosphere was cleared, and Ellen began to take an
interest in the preparation of Lois’s closet.
“Do you think she’ll like the right-hand side or the left-hand side
best?” asked Lois, who always needed a great deal of advice from her
friends.
“The right-hand side is lots more convenient, because it is over next
the shelves.”
“But the left-hand side has that extra row of hooks across the end, and
she has so many more dresses than I have.”
Lois paused irresolutely, with a pink frock in one hand and a brown one
in the other.
“I don’t see how you ever get anything done, it takes you so long to
decide,” said Ellen impatiently.
“It does take me a good while,” Lois admitted apologetically.
Her tone softened Ellen, and she helped Lois move her dresses, deciding
that Jessie should have rather more than half of the right-hand side of
the closet.
Lois and Ellen wanted to do all they could to make Jessie’s arrival a
cheerful one.
“I am going to the greenhouse to buy some flowers for Jessie,” Ellen
said. “She loves flowers. Won’t you come with me?”
The two children went out into the world that was beginning to be made
over new by a gentle April shower. Lois reflected, as she closed the
door, that it was almost a year from the first time that she and Ellen
had met. Lois remembered how lonely she had been because Daisy, her
best friend, had gone away forever, and then almost as soon as the door
closed to shut Daisy out, it opened to let Ellen in. Lois felt very
thankful and happy, as they went along the village street. They stopped
at Ellen’s house and unlocked a battered bank that she had owned for
many years. She had refused to have Lois go shares with her in the
matter of the flowers, and so Lois quietly dropped in a ten-cent piece
through the slit in the top while Ellen was taking out two ten-cent
pieces from the door at the back.
“Lois Page!” she protested. “I wanted it to be all my present.”
“It is,” said Lois. “But I guess I’ve a right to put my money in a
savings’ bank, if I like. It is a good safe bank.”
Ellen had so little money that Lois could not bear to have her squander
twenty cents so recklessly.
Ellen’s formidable brothers were coming in at the gate as the two
little girls were going out. In the winter, when Lois had stayed under
the Morgans’ hospitable roof, she had grown to be good friends with
these boys, but now that she had not seen them for some time her old
shyness returned.
“Hullo,” said Amyas and Reuben.
“Hullo,” said Lois in a faint voice. She dropped her eyes and did not
look at them as she and Ellen passed through the gate.
When the children reached the greenhouse they were speechless at first
in their admiration, for there was such a brilliant array of flowers.
“What are you going to get for Jessie?” Lois inquired.
“Pink roses,” said Ellen, who generally had her mind made up. She
glanced at a jar full of them as she spoke. “How much are they a
dozen?” she asked.
“Two dollars,” replied the black-haired girl behind the counter.
“Two dollars!” Ellen’s face fell. “Then six would be a dollar,” she
added after a moment’s hesitation.
“Yes.”
“And for twenty cents”--the calculation was too intricate. Ellen looked
up with a puzzled frown. “How many could I have for twenty cents?”
“One. They are twenty cents apiece.”
“Only one rose for twenty cents! And it would fade so soon!” said Ellen.
Lois had her nose buried in the roses. “Oh, Ellen, they are so lovely!”
she exclaimed. “It seems as if just one rose was lovelier than a lot of
anything else.”
But Ellen did not think so.
“You can get a whole plant for twenty cents,” said the girl, “and it
could be set out in the garden later and last all summer.”
A whole living, growing plant for the same price as a single evanescent
rose! How incredible that seemed! The children wandered around the
greenhouse, looking first at one plant and then at another; even Ellen
was for once undecided. There were fragrant hyacinths in bud and
blossom, pink ones, white ones, and others of a beautiful shade of
lilac, and lilac was Jessie’s color; but the hyacinths, while perfect
for the moment, would be out of blossom soon. Lois was attracted by a
Marguerite, with its delicate white petals and yellow centre. It looked
like Jessie, she said.
“It looks just like a common field daisy,” objected Ellen, who was in
an obstinate mood and preferred to choose her own plant. She went over
to the other end of the greenhouse, where the geraniums were. They were
stocky little plants; most of them were in blossom or in bud. There
were pink geraniums and dark red ones, besides several of a brilliant
scarlet. Lois looked at them irresolutely, but Ellen instantly set her
affections on a scarlet geranium, with two gorgeous blossoms, as a
concession to the present, as well as a bud of promise.
“I should like that one,” she said.
“That is twenty-five cents.”
“That is the one I want,” repeated Ellen firmly, “but I’ve only got
twenty cents.” It seemed to her that nothing else in life would satisfy
her but this one geranium, with its full and perfect flowers.
“You can have any of these for twenty cents,” said the girl, indicating
an inferior group.
“This is a nice one; it has three buds,” said Lois.
“It is all right for you who are going to live in the house with it,
but I want it to look beautiful when I give it to her. I want that
one,” said Ellen, “and I don’t want any other, and I only want to pay
twenty cents.”
The girl looked at Ellen, she saw determination written all over her
eager face and shining out from her dark eyes, and she remembered her
own childhood not so many years ago.
“I guess if my father was here he’d let you have that geranium for
twenty cents,” she said.
Ellen’s eyes shone, and she paid over her two ten-cent pieces and
hastily seized her property.
When they reached Lois’s room, Ellen put the red geranium on a little
table in front of the wide window. There were white muslin curtains
tied back with white cords and tassels. The walls were a soft gray, and
although the cushion on the window seat was many-hued, and so were the
rugs, the general effect was more subdued than Ellen liked, and this
blaze of scarlet pleased her.
A little later they heard the sound of horses’ hoofs and wheels in the
distance.
“She is coming! She is coming!” cried Lois, and Ellen had a bitter pang
at the rapture of that tone.
It was only the ice-cart lumbering down the street.
The children were in the parlor with their faces pressed close against
the window. A bright fire was burning on the hearth and Lois’s mother
sat before it with her sewing.
Here Jessie was at last! The carriage stopped at the gate, and a
golden-haired girl alighted, and came swiftly along the walk. Ellen and
Lois ran out to meet her. Lois flung her arms about Jessie.
“You dear, dear thing!” she said. “It is so good to have you here!”
Then she looked at Jessie, and saw that her face was wet with tears,
and she remembered that this day, which was the happiest in her own
life, was perhaps the saddest in Jessie’s, for she had just parted from
her father and mother, who were to sail for Europe on account of her
father’s ill health.
Lois felt very shy and could not say anything more. Her own joy seemed
positively wrong.
Jessie smiled bravely through her tears.
“It is so lovely to be coming to live with you, Lois,” she said, “and
it was dear of you, Ellen, to be here to meet me.”
Jessie put one arm around Lois and the other around Ellen. Ellen did
not feel any longer that Jessie was to separate them; it seemed instead
as if they would all three be drawn more closely together.
“Lois and I have bought a scarlet geranium for you, Jessie.”
It was impossible to keep back this great announcement any longer.
“It was your present,” said Lois.
Ellen no longer wanted to have the whole glory of the gift.
“It was our present,” she said; “you know you put your money in my
bank.”