Within the next two or three days Ellen made at least two or three friends. It was from over the fence on one side that Jeremy Todd first spoke to her, and over the fence on the other side that she made the acquaintance of Billy Dove-Hale.
She was gathering the last of the tomatoes which grew near the side toward the Todds; Miss Rindy had said they must be in before the frost nipped them. Ellen was singing softly a little song of Schumann’s, which had been a favorite of her mother’s, when suddenly a head appeared over the fence.
“Who is that singing ‘Moonlight’?” said a man’s voice.
Ellen looked up from where she was kneeling by a big basket into which she was emptying her last gleanings.
“What do you know about Schumann?” asked the man.
“My mother loved Schumann’s songs, so did my father, and so do I.”
“Who are your mother and father, and who are you, my child?”
“My father was Gerald North, the artist. He, and my mother, too, have left me alone on this earth. I am Ellen North, and I am making my home with Miss Rindy Crump. She is my cousin.”
“Yes, yes, I forgot; Bessie did tell me. It is a sort of revelation to find any one from Miss Crump’s singing Schumann. How do you like it here?”
“I—I—can’t tell exactly, not yet. It is a pretty little town and I love the mountains.” She waved her hand toward a distant line of purple. “Cousin Rindy was very, very good to let me come when I had nowhere to go, but—but it’s hard to get used to things that are so different from where I have lived, always in a studio, you know.”