“Is Jean at camp, too? How many of you are there?”
“We are four Corners,” laughing to see the puzzled look. “My name is Jacqueline Corner, then there are my sister Jean, Mary Lee and Nan. You ought to see Nan. She talks just that nice, funny way you do, and she is a darling. Most people think Mary Lee prettier because she has light hair and nice little features, but Nan has such eyes, like stars, and she has a face like April, so changeable; everything she feels she shows in her face, it is so expressive. She is seventeen, nearly eighteen, and Mary Lee is just sixteen. Is that your violin, and can you play? Nan plays, oh, beautifully, on the piano.”
“It’s my violin, yes. Shall I give you a tune? I nearly always play after dinner, but I seldom care for an audience.”
“I should love to hear you. Won’t you please play for me?”
“Very well. Suppose we make believe that you are really the Lady Diana Piccola. I’ll dress you for the part. Wait half a minute.” He disappeared behind the curtain and came out with a long green cloak, a white veil, a scarf and some dull red draperies. “Found these in an old garret hereabouts. Great find. Gave a picture for them and think I got the best of the bargain,” he announced as he wound the red stuff around Jack’s waist, made a train of the cloak, draped the scarf across her shoulders and pinned the veil on her head with a queer ornament. “There,” he exclaimed, “you look stunning. I’d like to paint you just so. Sit there by the fireplace and I’ll play you a measure, fair Lady Diana.”
Jack took the place assigned her, and presently the young man was watching her with half-closed eyes as he drew his bow softly across the strings of his violin.
It was a pretty picture, the little room, whose walls were of chinked logs, the stone fireplace, the wooden settle, the high-backed chair in which sat the little lady with the sun streaming through the open door upon the dull red brocade of her petticoat, and touching the gleaming ornament above her forehead.
“By jinks, I’d like to paint it,” said the artist, all his soul stirred by the subject as he played a quaint old gavotte to the child whose innocent little face looked saintly under her veil.
The music was going on, rising and falling in tender cadence when some one approached the little cabin attracted by the strains. “Who could be living in this queer little place?” thought Nan who, finding that no one had seen Jack since breakfast, started out in search of her. She had paddled up the lake almost to the point where the Indian’s tent was pitched. This was as far as she and Jack had ever gone. She had keenly scrutinized each little inlet and cove as she went past, but, seeing no sign of her sister, had concluded to go ashore and walk a little way through the woods. Here she came upon the Indian who gave her news of Jack whom, he said, he had seen taking the path northward along the lake. And so it was that Jack, listening to the music and dreamily gazing out the open door on the sunlit patches between the trees, suddenly sprang to her feet.
“There’s Nan,” she cried, and sprang out the door, her garments trailing after her all unheeded.