AT CRYSTAL SPRINGS
Gloria was much impressed with the scene she sensed, rather than viewed
from her seclusion in the closet.
“I wonder if my mother would have been like that—to me?” she asked
herself again next morning.
Strange what channels of inspiration affection can open up. Gloria was
now resolved to agree with her aunt, and not to obstruct any further her
peculiarities in humoring Hazel.
“She’s all she’s got and dad would do as much for me, just as I would do
as much for dad.” This was not exactly a choice way of expressing her
sentiments, but no critic could object to the sentiments thus expressed.
In the cozy way a girl has of chumming with her own confidence, Gloria
went on musing. She was moving her things back to the guest room. As she
had been the first guest entertained in it she felt a sort of natural
proprietorship over the rather small room, furnished with odds and ends
left from other quarters, and therefore presenting the nondescript
effect of a household orphan.
But Gloria felt at home within its confines. There was there no sense of
intrusion, and the old red and white quilt was much more sociable with
its diamonds, squares and other unique characters, than had been Hazel’s
yellow and white comfortable, with its edge covered in forbidding white
cheese cloth.
“Gloria!” called her aunt from the hall. “You will be late for school.
What ever are you doing?”
“Just moving back, auntie,” replied Gloria. “You don’t mind, do you? I
got sort of attached to the other room,” she added.
She fancied she could see the look of relief with which her aunt
replied: “Just as you like, Glory dear, but don’t be late for school.”
It was exciting to hear her name called out as “Glory dear.” No doubt
the aunt had also liked to be called aunty. The magic of accord was
started. Both talked merrily and almost excitedly as Gloria ate a better
breakfast than she had been accustomed to in her exile.
“Have a little jelly on your bread, Glory,” urged her aunt. “You are
none too plump, and jelly is fattening.”
“Thanks, aunty, but don’t tempt me to grow out of my clothes,” replied
Gloria happily, smoothing her blouse affectionately.
“I was so sorry you did not see Hazel. But she was in a dreadful hurry,”
continued the aunt. “I guess boarding schools have their drawbacks as
well as other schools. She couldn’t wait for tea—would have been put on
probation if she was a half hour late,” declared Mrs. Towers, in a
perfect race of words. She was plainly eager to be very kind to Gloria.
“Yes, I was sorry not to have seen her,” replied Gloria truthfully. She
looked hard at her coffee-cake trying to forget the dark closet corner.
“And, Glory dear, some day soon, very soon, you and I shall have to have
a long talk—about Aunt Lottie’s affairs. You know you were in such a
hurry that afternoon—”
“Yes, the day it rained and I had to get back home,” put in Gloria
mercifully. She might have said: the day I received the first shock, and
ran back home frightened about it.
The clock struck half past eight “Here’s your lunch, I put it up while I
was packing your uncle’s bag,” said Aunt Hattie, although the feat of
putting up a lunch and packing a bag at the same time was rather
unusual.
“Oh, thank you, aunty,” again the endearing term. “I am glad you did,
for I want to pick a bunch of dahlias I promised Miss Gray. She has been
very kind to me and has helped me a lot with my ‘catch up’ work
already.”
With her lunch and the bunch of season’s-end dahlias, Gloria was soon on
her way to school. Her mind was now filled with new fancies. Hazel’s
flying trip home had been the means of opening Gloria’s eyes to the real
depths of her aunt’s character.
“She would do anything for her,” came back the persistent thought, and
that was qualified with—“Just as my dad would do it for me.”
Where the winding Old Road joined the street that slashed into the
village, Gloria met a group of young children, books under their arms
and lunches in their hands. They were a rather unkempt little crowd,
their clothes all seemed too large, and their faces too small for the
rest of them.
“Hello!” Gloria greeted them kindly.
[Illustration: “You needn’t hello us,” said one of the larger girls.]
“You needn’t hello us,” snapped back one of the larger girls
unexpectedly. “We don’t speak to no robbers.”
“Robbers!” exclaimed Gloria, incredulously.
“Yes, robbers. And stealers too,” dared the girl. The little group had
come to a standstill and were glaring at Gloria in loyal support of
their leader.
“I don’t know you at all,” declared Gloria with a flash of indignation
no less sharp than their own.
“Well, we know you all right. You’re the girl that lives in the fancy
house on Maple Street. Well, that house ain’t theirs.” There was a
menacing threat in this last sentence. It sounded to Gloria as if
someone in the background was waiting to wrest the house from her
relatives. She knew it was foolish to attempt any understanding with the
irate children, so she threw up her dark head and passed on
disdainfully.
“Smarty, ain’t y’u? Well, you jest wait—wait until my father gets after
them stuck-up Towers-ers.”
Gloria was no coward but she shut her ear to the tirade. Of all dreadful
things she had always considered disgrace the worst. And this looked
like a threat of it. Coupled with what she had overheard of trouble
within her aunt’s home, there was, to say the least, too much likelihood
of truth in some part of the suspicion, for her to disregard it.
“But they would never cheat any one,” she meditated. “Of course, folks
are apt to get into money troubles, but that wouldn’t make them
robbers.”
The entire morning session was lost to Gloria because of her encounter.
Whom would she ask about it? To whom would she go for advice? Trixy had
been her friend. She was older, and therefore should be wiser.
Circumstances favored her talk with Trixy. Just as the dismissal gong
sounded Trixy called from the corridor. “Take a ride with me, Glo?”
“I have my lunch today—but—”
“Let’s eat it out in the woods. I have mine also. Come along. We can get
that trolley and be back in plenty of time—” insisted Trixy.
Presently the two were pushing their way through the lines and making
for the trolley without further explanation.
“It’s wonderful out at the Springs, now,” said Trixy as quickly as she
could say anything. “I hate the winter to come, but I do love the fall
that introduces it.”
“I’ve never been to the Springs,” returned Gloria, expectantly.
“That’s so. I keep forgetting you are not a native. Well, I’ll have to
hurry and make up for lost time and get to trotting you around,”
declared Trixy. “We have some pretty places but not really as rusticly
pretty as your wonderful Barbend. How are all the folks out that way?”
“Really, I haven’t heard much—”
“Not from your Tommy boy? Why, a little bird told me he was your devoted
slave.” Trixy could say a thing like that with grace and without the
least hint of intrusion.
“Oh, Tommy is a dear,” said Gloria, in quite a grown-up voice. “But
really, I haven’t been writing home—”
“And I’ve heard about that fine young fellow who has your house, too,”
declared Trixy, craftily. “You see, I go out to the bay often, and I
know a lot of people out there.”
At the mention of the “fine young man” Gloria was afraid she might
betray herself. She really had been getting letters from him—purely
business letters, of course, but then Trixy might make a joke of that.
So she said:
“The Hardys are splendid. Since they have have had our house they have
done all the necessary repairing, not letting our agent spend a cent on
the place. You see, Mr. Hardy is a big city contractor.”
“Yeppy, I know that also,” confessed the shameless Trixy. “And his son
is a science bug, isn’t he? Millie Graham is having a wonderful time
showing him all the high bug-spots around Barbend.”
“I haven’t heard from Millie,” admitted Gloria. A sense of impending
disaster was almost chilling her. She had been for more than a month
without an intimate companion, and she knew now she could go without one
no longer. True, Trixy was a “cut-up” and older, but she had shown that
initiative and generosity that always begets friendship. She had from
the very beginning “taken on” Gloria. And Trixy was one of the popular
girls. She had her own car, she had a wonderful home, and only because
she was so fond of her father’s interests as an important manufacturer
did she go to school in Sandford, rather than to a fashionable boarding
school. She wanted to be home with her parents until she would have to
go to college.
These particulars were forcing themselves upon Gloria as the trolley was
nearing the Big Tree, the stopping point for Crystal Springs, and
passengers were gathering up belongings preparing to leave the car.
“What a happy thought to come here,” remarked Gloria as they too
prepared to alight. “I should have been eating in solitude out in the
farthest corner of the grounds if you had not taken pity upon me.”
An energetic squeeze upon the arm nearest Trixy made mute reply. It took
but a few moments to reach the Springs and here the two girls quickly
betook themselves to their lunches.
“It took eight minutes to come out, and allowing that with a margin for
the return trip, we may frolic twenty minutes,” said the practical
Trixy.
“Let’s eat quickly then,” suggested her companion. “I am dying to run
over this lovely little woodland. It looks like the stamping ground of
elves and fanes.”
“Lot’s of ’em,” declared Trixy, gulping down more than one bite of
sandwich. “Here, try my cake. Our cook, Biffy, is famous for her
chocolate.”
“Lovely,” agreed Gloria. “Here is my cup. Let’s try the spring water.”
“It will fetch you a fairy prince if you wish with the first drop that
touches your lips,” assured Trixy. “But don’t wish for him to happen
along just now. I’d like to make a favorable impression, even if he is
your prince, and my hair must be rather skew-gee. I can feel it tickle
my very ear drums. But say, Glo, you mustn’t use a cup at the Spring.
The fairies loathe cups. Just put your pretty red lips—”
Gloria was down over the little boxed-in spring, her face buried in the
basin. On the other side of the stone wall that surrounded the bubbling
spring were groups of willows that hid the open spaces wending into a
pine grove. It was indeed an elfin wood, but as Gloria started to chant
something about fairy princes, meanwhile swaying up and down like
Egyptians at prayer, something splashed into the tiny pool. She started
up and was on her feet instantly.
“A stone!” she exclaimed. “Where can it have come from?”
“Look out!” warned Trixy, just in time, for another stone whizzed
through the branches and dropped almost at Gloria’s feet.
“Robbers! Thieves! Stealers!” came the shout from somewhere not very far
away, and while Gloria recognized the voices of her tormentors of the
morning, she felt a sickening sensation, as if she were being persecuted
by a secret foe.
“Trixy,” she gasped, “let’s hurry back to the car. I—can’t stand the
taunts—of those children.”
“After they have answered to me,” declared Trixy, hotly. “Then we will
go back. But first I am going to shake them into human beings,” she
cried, already running through the brush in the direction the stones had
come from. “They act like savages,” she called as she ran. “Hey, there!
You young Gormans,” she shouted. “I know you. You needn’t run! I can
catch you!” and as she sped on after the fleeing youngsters, Gloria
dropped to a little knoll of grass and sat there disconsolately.
“Thieves and robbers!” she repeated mechanically. “What ever can they
mean?”