“Go get your rubber boots and rain coat,” said Eleanor resignedly. “You’re half duck, I firmly believe, and never so happy as when you’re splashing through puddles. Thank goodness your skirts are still short, and you can’t very well get them sloppy; and your boots will keep your legs dry unless you try wading up to your hips. But where are you going?”
“I’m going down to Amy Fletcher’s to see how Bunny is. He got hurt yesterday and it’s made him dreadfully sick,” answered Jean, as she struggled with her rubber boots, growing red in the face as she tugged at them. In five minutes she was equipped to do battle with almost any storm, and with a “Good bye! I’ll be back pretty soon, and then I’ll have enough fresh air to keep me in fine shape for the night,” out she flew, banging the front door behind her.
Eleanor watched the lively little figure as it went skipping down the street, a street which was always called a beautiful one, although now wet and sodden with the rain, for Mr. Carruth had built his home in a most attractive part of the delightful town of Riveredge. Maybe you won’t find it on the map by that name, but it’s there just the same, and quite as attractive to-day as it was several years ago.
Bernard Carruth had been a man of refined taste and possessed a keen appreciation of all that was beautiful, so it was not surprising that he should have chosen Riveredge when deciding upon a place for his home. Situated as it was on the banks of the splendid stream which had suggested its name, the town boasted unusual attractions, and drew to it an element which soon assured its development in the most satisfactory manner. It became noted for its beautiful homes, its cultured people and its delightful social life.
Among the prettiest of its homes was Bernard Carruth’s. It stood but a short way from the river’s bank, was built almost entirely of cobble-stones, oiled shingles being used where the stones were not practicable.
It was made up of quaint turns and unexpected corners, although not a single inch of space, or the shape of a room was sacrificed to the oddity of the architecture. It was not a very large house nor yet a very small one, but as Mr. Carruth said when all was completed, the house sensibly and artistically furnished, and his family comfortably installed therein:
“It is big enough for the big girl, our three little girls and their old daddy, and so what more can be asked? Only that the good Lord will spare us to each other to enjoy it.”
This was when Jean was but a little more than two years of age, and for five years they did enjoy it as only a closely united family can enjoy a charming home. Then one of Mr. Carruth’s college chums got into serious financial difficulties and Bernard Carruth indorsed heavily for him.
The sequel was the same wretched old story repeated: Ruin overtook the friend, and Bernard Carruth’s substance was swept into the maelstrom which swallowed up everything. He never recovered from the blow, or false representations which led to it, learning unhappily, when the mischief was done, how sorely he had been betrayed, and within eighteen months from the date of indorsing his friend’s paper he was laid away in pretty Brookside Cemetery, leaving his wife and three daughters to face the world upon a very limited income. This was a little more than two years before the opening of this story. Little Jean was now ten and a half, Constance fifteen and Eleanor, the eldest, nearly seventeen, although many judged her to be older, owing to her quiet, reserved manner and studious habits, for Eleanor was, undoubtedly, “the brainy member of the family,” as Constance put it.
She was a pupil in the Riveredge Seminary, and would graduate the following June; a privilege made possible by an aunt’s generosity, since Mrs. Carruth had been left with little more than her home, which Mr. Carruth had given her as soon as it was completed, and the interest upon his life insurance which amounted to less than fifteen hundred a year; a small sum upon which to keep up the home, provide for and educate three daughters.