There was to be no more bathing in the fountain—even in a bathing suit. Jeanne learned that she had been a very wicked child and that it wouldn't have happened if her father hadn't been "a common fishman."
"I am thankful," concluded Aunt Agatha, "that your cousins are out of town. They wouldn't think of doing anything so unladylike."
After that, Jeanne's liveliest adventures were those that she found in books. Fortunately, she loved to read. That helped a great deal.
She was really rather glad when the dull vacation was over and, oh, so delighted to see Lizzie and Susie! All that first week she couldn't help whispering to them in school, even if the new teacher did give her bad marks and move her to the very front seat.
"I'd go home with you if I could," said Jeanne, declining one of Susie's numerous invitations, "but I have to go straight home from school, always."
"You went into Lydia Coleman's house, yesterday," objected jealous Susie.
"Only to get a book for my cousin. Besides, that's right on my way home."
"Maybe if you lived on the Avenue, Susie," sneered Lizzie, who understood Mrs. Huntington's snobbishness only too well, "she'd be allowed to go with you."
"Hurry up and move," said Jeanne. "I'd love your house, Susie. I know it's a home-y house. I liked your mother when she came to the school exercises and I'm sure I'd like any house she lived in. But you see, I do so many bad things without knowing that I'm being bad, that it never would do for me to be really bad. Besides I promised my father I'd mind Aunt Agatha, so of course I have to. I'd love to go home with both of you."
Next to her grandfather, Jeanne's pleasantest companion out of school was the small brown maid in the big mirror set in her closet door. There were mirrors like that in all the Huntington bedrooms, so it sometimes looked as if there were two Claras and two Pearls and two Aunt Agathas, which made it worse if either of the girls were snippish, or if Aunt Agatha happened to be thinking of the fountain. Apparently, Mrs. Huntington would never forget that, Jeanne thought.