From the above brief conversation, you will recall the principal character whom you met in the story of “Teddy and Towser.” The lad who passed through more than one trying adventure had become a man well along in middle life. After settling in California, he made it his home. He married a lady of Spanish descent, to whom a single child was born,—Warrenia, now a miss almost out of her teens. Although Mr. Starland was younger than his partner and married later in life, his son Jack was several years the elder of the daughter of Mr. Rowland.
Since these two young people have much to do in the chapters that follow, the reader must be given a clear understanding of them and their peculiar relation to each other.
While the parents had been partners in prosperity, they were also united in affliction, for each had lost his wife by death, when the children were small. Neither married again, for they had loved their life companions too deeply and profoundly to think seriously of trying to replace them.
Another minor but curious coincidence must be noted. Years after the marriage of the partners, Mr. Starland employed a Spanish priest to trace the genealogy of his wife, who felt a strong curiosity in the matter. In doing so, he discovered that several generations earlier, during the time of the Spanish settlement of the Southwest, the ancestors of Mrs. Starland and Mrs. Rowland were related. This was surprising but peculiarly pleasing to both families. Because of this remote relationship, so triturated indeed that it had really vanished into nothingness, Jack Starland and Warrenia Rowland called themselves cousins.
It was just like the headstrong, impulsive, mischievous youth to go still further. He hinted that the priest had not told the whole truth, having been bribed to suppress it by the father of Warrenia, for mysterious reasons, which he dared not divulge. What did this young hopeful do but insist that he and Warrenia were brother and sister! The idea, grotesquely impossible on the face of it, caused no end of merriment and ridicule, but Jack stubbornly maintained his claim. He declared further that the real name of Warrenia was the same as his own,—that is Starland. He often addressed her as Miss Starland, and she, with her fun-loving disposition, pretended to agree with him. When together, they almost invariably spoke to or of each other as brother and sister, and there were not lacking those who believed they were actually thus related.
The odd whim gave the parents no little amusement and they too at times humored it. The very absurdity of the fancy gave it its comicality.
You can understand how deeply each parent loved his child. Nothing seemed more natural than that the son and daughter should become man and wife when they grew up, though neither father as yet had made any reference to such an event which would have been pleasing to both and eminently fit in every respect.
Jack and Warrenia grew to maturity as if they really were brother and sister. She was sent East to attend one of the most famous young ladies’ schools in the country. Jack was on the point of entering Harvard, when he received an appointment to West Point. There under the strict regulations he gained few opportunities of seeing his “sister.” When he did so, it was when she and some of her classmates, under proper chaperonage visited the model military institution on the banks of the Hudson.
Jack was graduated in time to take part in our war with Spain. He won a fine reputation at San Juan Hill, and would have received his well merited promotion, but when a Major by brevet, he resigned to become interested in his father’s business, which was growing to a degree that new blood and vigor were required for its full development.