Clara was obliged to admit that he hadn't.
"But then," added Clara, cruelly, "a real gentleman always hires a stenographer to write his letters. He doesn't think of doing such things himself, any more than he'd black his own boots."
"Then," said Jeanne, defiantly, "I'm glad my father's just a fishman."
CHAPTER XII
A HELPFUL GRANDFATHER
During that first winter, Jeanne was fairly contented. Her school work was new and kept her fairly busy, and in her cousins' bookshelves she discovered many delightful books for boys and girls. Heretofore, she had read no stories. She had been too busy rearing Mollie's family.
Shy and sensitive, for several months she made no real friends among her schoolmates. How could she, with a horrible past to conceal? To be sure, when she thought of the big, beautiful lake, the summer days on the old dock, the lovely reflections in the Cinder Pond, the swallows going to bed in the old furnace chimney, the red sun going down behind the distant town, the kind Old Captain, the warm affection of Mollie's children, not to mention the daily companionship of her nice little father, it seemed as if her past had been anything but horrible. But no city child, she feared, would ever be able to understand that, when even the grown-ups couldn't.
From the very first, her Uncle Charles had seemed not to like her. And sometimes it seemed to Jeannette that her Aunt Agatha eyed her coldly and resentfully. She couldn't understand it.
But James, the butler, and Maggie, the maid, sometimes gossiped about it, as the best of servants will gossip.