"Don't you jibe me, girlie," and he pinched her elbow. "You know as well as I do what it is worth to walk a mile a day."
"All right, Uncle Todd, but some day I am going to tell you all my good news. There comes Pedro. If you get tired just hail him, and he'll give you a lift."
Then, left alone with her aunt, Jane proceeded with the news from Wellington.
"Just see and listen," she commanded. "What a prospect of oodles of fun and frolic. Dad's scholarship has been won by a Polish artist. Think of it! A girl who plays the violin divinely, and who is--well, let's read it again."
She ran her finger over the introduction of the letter and traced out the lines which told of the Polish girl and the scholarship.
"Mrs. Weatherbee says," she announced, "that the girl is wonderfully interesting, and she is sure we shall be delighted. We are. Then she says the little artist comes from a girls' seminary, where she had been left uncalled for and that there is some mysterious story connected with her presence in America, but of course, (now listen in Auntie) of course, Mrs. Weatherbee knows I will not be carried off by any such sensational reports, but I will take the little Polish girl on her merits. Of course I shall, I shall even take her on trial, but you can picture the other girls, and the Polish artist? Auntie, that Marion Seaton will get in touch with the Bolshevik or something, to dig up trouble for my little friend, see if she doesn't. She will go into the archives of the fall of Poland, and the battle of Warsaw, to find out that my little artist's grandfather once dropped his musket in front of the king's palace. Oh my, Auntie mine," and she loosed some of her pent-up energy in a great "grizzly hug." "Why can't you and dad come along to school with me to see the fun?" For a moment her gray eyes took on the lingering look her friends called "the dove stare," then recovering her mirthful mood she pranced around, played first with Bonnie, then with Fliver the new puppy, all the while gathering and spending the joy of young girlhood.
"Don't bother too much about my clothes, Auntie dear," she warned with a new thought. "I think I shall ask dad if I may go to the city early, and help fit up my little artist. Then I may find a lot of things I shall like, all ready to wear."
"I had been thinking of proposing that, Janie dear," confessed the aunt, to whom the clothes problem had been an increasing worry with the addition of Jane's years. "I have read all the catalogues and sent for more, but I don't find exactly what I think you would fancy."
"No, and you won't, for I fancy a blouse and a skirt, just a little one, and perhaps a veil for evening wear." She held Fliver out at arm's length to enjoy the joke. "Of course, I would wear a so-called gown with the veil, but I love the veil, it is so shimmery." A scarf snatched from the end of the mahogany table served to illustrate the "shimmer" as Jane floated it triumphantly over her and Fliver's heads. The inevitable interpretative dance followed, and Fliver looked very frightened, evidently envying Bonnie her safety aisle on the rug.
"I am going to get your trunk out to-morrow," announced Aunt Mary, as an interlude. "I want to put some cedar chips in it, and Squaw Watah brought over a wonderful bunch of fragrant herbs, spice bush, savory and rosemary. I wonder where she raised them? She must have obtained some government seeds."