“Oh, I am,” said Patience.
XI
Thereafter, Patience roamed the woods munching chestnuts and dreaming of Beverly Peele. Hugo and Balzac and Goethe were neglected. Her brain wove thrilling romances of its own, especially in the night to the sound of rain. She never emerged from the woods without a shortening of the breath; but even Hal did not pay the promised call; nor did Beverly dash through the streets in a pink coat, a charger clasped between his knees.
“Well, it’s fun to be in love, anyhow,” she thought. “I’ll meet him some time, I know.”
Much to her regret she was not permitted to go to New York to see Rosita off. Miss Tremont had a morbid horror of the stage, and after Patience’s exhibition of vanity was convinced that “actress creatures” would exert a pernicious influence.
And, shortly after, Patience received news which made her forget Rosita and even Beverly Peele for a while. Mr. Foord was dead. Patience had hoarded his twenty dollar gold piece because he had given it to her. She bought a black hat and frock with it, and felt as sad as she could at that age of shifting impressions. A later mail brought word that he had left her John Sparhawk’s library, which could stay in the Custom House until she was able to send for it, and a few hundred dollars which would remain in a savings bank until she was eighteen. He had nothing else to leave except his books, which went to found a town library. All but those few hundreds had been sunken in an annuity. Miss Tremont was quite content to be overlooked in the girl’s favour.
By the time Patience was ready to return to Beverly Peele the new term opened, and the uncompromising methods of the High School left no time for romance. Once more her ambition to excel became paramount, and she studied night and day. She had no temptation to dissipate, for she was not popular with the young people of Mariaville. The Y’s disapproved of her because she would not don the white ribbon; and the church girls, generally, felt that except when perfunctorily assisting Miss Tremont she held herself aloof, even at the frequent sociables. And they were scandalised because she did not join the church, nor the King’s Daughters, nor the Christian Endeavor.
The High School scholars liked her because she was “square,” and cordially admired her cleverness; but there were no recesses in the ordinary sense, and after school Miss Tremont claimed her. Even the boys “had no show,” as they phrased it. Occasionally they lent her a hand on the ice; but like all Californians, she bitterly felt the cold of her second winter, and in her few leisure hours preferred the fire.
Sometimes she looked at Beverly Peele’s picture with a sigh and some resentment. “But never mind,” she would think philosophically, “I can fall in love with him over again next summer.” When vacation came she did in a measure take up the broken threads of her romance, but they had somewhat rotted from disuse.
Rosita wrote every few weeks, reporting hard work and unbounded hope. “The dueña,” as she called her companion, “was an old devil,” and never let her go out alone, nor receive a man; but she “didn’t care,” she had no time for nonsense, anyhow. She was learning her part in the Spanish opera, which had been written for her, and it was “lovely.”