“Dear Madame, is it right for me to be so glad? Is it like turning my back on mother and Cousin Margaret, and all the rest of the grown-up folks? I’m not forgetting, you know. I’m not really forgetting; only there doesn’t seem to be room in my heart for sorrow and all these good times together. This is the very first time I ever lived with girls and I think—I think they are just too delightful for words!”
Whereat Madame patted the little hand which had stolen to her shoulder and answered, emphatically:
“It is most certainly and entirely right. That is why you are here—to be happy. I can send no more pleasing message to Sobrante than that you are so ‘glad.’”
One thing alone really disturbed Jessica’s full content. That was the peculiar behavior of Ephraim Marsh. Invariably, when the day was fair enough for the “Adelphians” to take their accustomed walks, “Forty-niner” would appear on the opposite side of the same street. He would march along, head erect, “eyes front,” as if keeping step to some invisible band—his whole attitude as correctly military as he could make it. Never, by any possibility, did he recognize Jessica, nor answer to her excited hand-salutes—the only sort she was permitted on the street, or from that distance—and this hurt her sadly. More than that, he never used his visitor’s privilege of “once a week, on Thursdays, from four till six.”
“All the other girls have their friends come to see them, Ephy dear. Why don’t you?”
He gave her no explanation, simply said, each time: “I’ll see.” Not for anything would he have confessed to her that his proud old heart had been offended by Madame’s slowly pronounced reply to his question concerning these visits, for which his own soul hungered unspeakably. He only urged her to get leave to come to the flat as often as she could, even though such calls were as unsatisfactory as possible.
“Couldn’t you come without that teaching woman tagged to you, ‘Little Captain,’ not even once? I’d come for you in a hired carriage and I’d pay the taxes for it if it took my bottom dollar—which it wouldn’t. I can’t half begin to use my wages, as a teacher myself, and Sophia Badger Briggs being such an equonomical housekeeper. I take Sophy posies, but I daren’t send ’em to you. Them windows to your ‘Adelphi’ are always chock full of flowers anyway.”
“Yes. There’s a little conservatory, you know, in the garden. Besides the girls’ folks, the rich folks that have always lived in New York, send flowers. They consider it so ‘refining’; but, Ephy dear! I’d give all my year’s allowance just for one dear, yellow California poppy, instead of these ‘American Beauties’ and orchids. Never mind. We’ll be going home sometime and can gather them for ourselves, and I am, I certainly am, very, very happy. Why, Ephy! I’m learning so fast, I’ll be admitted to the lowest form very, very soon. And I’m taking fiddle lessons. I mean violin ones. I sing, too. Madame says I have a very good ‘organ’—that’s something in my throat, you know—though I’ll never equal Gabriella! That’s mother. Gabriella was the ‘star pupil.’ She stood head of everything. Sometimes, when I get pretty tired I feel as if it were dreadful to have to live up to my mother! I don’t see why they don’t have stars at both ends of the class, top and bottom; then I’d be a star, myself, without any trouble. Ephraim Marsh, did you know I was a dunce?”
“Shucks! No. Nor nobody knows it. ’Tisn’t so. If you aren’t the smartest——”
“No, Ephy, it’s sadly, desperately true. The things I don’t know would fill—would fill Madame’s ‘unabridged dictionary!’ I get almost discouraged, times; but I do love to learn things. I love it. Only I can’t learn them half fast enough. I want to get to be a ‘star’ right away quick.”