“But tell me,” pleaded Henrietta, “did they really open the girls’ letters, as Cora thought they did, to see if they’d written home about that secret.”
“Mercy, no!” replied Sallie. “They have to look over the addresses on those letters. They do it every day. Your folks wouldn’t get half of your letters if they didn’t—the girls are always leaving off towns or states or stamps. But only one of them ever writes ‘Dear Clarence’ on the outside of her envelope.”
[CHAPTER XXIII—PIG OR PORK?]
The spring did perfectly wonderful things to the land adjacent to Highland Hall. It was really time that something was happening to improve that rather cheerless prospect. During the fall and winter months, the landscape had been mostly brown and gray and black, often more or less disfigured with patches of dingy snow; and a general misty bleakness surrounded the big, rather ugly building. But, with the coming of spring all this was changed. One could now see why the school prospectus had stated that Highland Hall was “beautifully located.”
The building stood at the top of a broad knoll. The level portion of this was covered by a well kept lawn—tall, lanky Charles, with his sandy hair on end and his angular elbows greatly in evidence, might be seen galloping over it with his lawn roller, getting certain bare spots ready for seed. The sloping banks were grassed also but this grass grew at its own sweet will; and then, quite suddenly it wasn’t grass but long stemmed violets. You could gather tremendous bunches of them and still there were millions left—popular Miss Blossom was fairly besieged with bouquets. Then, farther down the hillside were great patches of snowy bloodroot and miniature groves of mandrake with their hidden, creamy, heavily perfumed cups. There were wild crab-apple trees wreathed with wonderful pink and white buds and blossoms. The edges of the unsightly ditches along the road suddenly became brilliantly green and pink with oxalis and there were sheltered nooks along the margin of the grove that were blue with mertensia or purple with the spider lily. Even the dry prairie was bursting forth with bloom; the lovely lavender of the bird’s foot violet and later the showy blossoms of the shooting star. There were gorgeous blue jays and orioles in the trees and meek gray doves in the hedges.
All the girls except Henrietta seemed bubbling over with happiness these days. Even Sallie, dreadfully shabby as to clothes and growing shabbier, was more cheerful, because she loved the spring season at Highland Park; and because she had never before possessed so many warm friends among the pupils. But Henrietta was visibly drooping. Her eyes wore a strained, anxious look and every day at mail time, her brilliant color deserted her, leaving her pale and trembling and quite unlike her usual vivacious self. At sight of a telegram arriving for Doctor Rhodes—and he often received as many as four a week—Henrietta’s lips would turn absolutely white. And several times, on the days when her grandmother’s letters came with no news of her still missing father, the girls had found her weeping. It was decidedly unlike Henrietta to weep.
But even Henrietta loved the wild flowers. Sallie knew where to find the choicest blossoms and Doctor Rhodes, glad to have the girls spend their leisure hours outdoors, even if it did increase their appetites alarmingly, extended their bounds a good half mile toward the south so the girls could roam at will.
One beautiful day, when school was dismissed earlier than usual, Mabel asked permission to take her friends as far as the cottage that contained Charles’s interesting family.
“I’m awfully fond of children,” explained Mabel. “I get lonesome for them when I don’t have any. Several times I’ve given candy and little presents to Charles to take home to those cunning babies; but I’m just dying to see them again and some of the girls want to go, too.”
“I’ve no objection to your seeing them,” said Doctor Rhodes, with a friendly chuckle, “but you are strictly forbidden to accept any invitations to stay with that family and you are not to bring any of them home with you.”