The girl left at once, as she wished to hurry home to help with the ironing. She followed the hedge, as the walking was easier, but suddenly she paused and her hand went to her heart. She had heard the voices of girls talking on the other side of the evergreens and what one of them was saying greatly startled the listener.
“Oh, yes, indeed,” a proud voice was saying, “we own about one hundred acres, Ma Mere, brother Harold and I. Our property extends along the seacoast to the highwater mark, then back across the highway up into Laurel Canon, and includes the farm just beyond the hedge.”
Another voice commented, “If your mother should die, you and your brother would be very rich.”
“Oh, yes, fairly,” this with a fine show of indifference. “But if I had my way, all of our country property would be turned into money, then we could live abroad ever after. Mother promised that when she comes in July she will consider selling the farm and the canon property at least. She would have sold the farm two years ago had it not been for my brother Harold. For some reason, which Ma Mere and I cannot in the least understand, he pleaded to have the farm kept. He even offered to take it as part of his share, that and the canon acreage, and let me have the home and estate.”
“What did your mother say to that?” a third voice inquired.
“Too utterly ridiculous to consider, and that, since she wishes to turn something into cash, if we are to live abroad, she will sell one or the other, and, of course, there will be a more ready market for the farm. It’s a most picturesque old place. That is, from a distance. I have never really been there. You see, we have practically lived away from our country home ever since I was born. I have always supposed that, because of our father’s long lingering illness here, Ma Mere has dreaded returning to stay, so imagine my surprise when she wrote that we were all three to spend this summer at the old place.”
Jenny, who had stood transfixed, listening, though against her will, for she scorned eavesdropping, started to run across the ploughed field, stumbling and almost falling in her haste. Oh, what should she do? Should she tell Grandma and Grandpa the terrible possibility that, after all, Rocky Point Farm might be sold, and that very summer? No! No! She couldn’t do that. Oh, if only she had not loaned Etta Heldt part of the honey and egg money, and yet, with a crushing sense of depression, Jenny realized that it did not in the least matter about that paltry sum. If Mrs. Poindexter-Jones wished to sell part of her land, all that her grandfather had saved or could procure would be no inducement to her.
When the orchard was reached, she stood very still for a moment, her hand again on her heart, as though to quiet its anxious beating that was almost a pain. “Jenny Warner,” she said to herself, “you must not let Grandma suspect that anything is wrong because, perhaps, nothing really is. If Harold does not want the farm sold, his mother may heed his wishes.”
Two moments later a smiling girl entered the kitchen, hung her hat on its nail by the door as she said, “Well, Granny Sue, I was longer than I expected to be and you have started on the shirt. Let me have the iron. I’ll promise not to scorch it, the way I did that towel you let me iron when I was just head above the ironing board. Do you remember it? You were so sweet about it when I cried. I recall, even now, how you comforted me by saying that the two ends of the towel would make such nice wash cloths, hemmed up, and that it was lucky the scorch was in the middle of the towel because that would make the wash cloths just the right size.” The old woman had relinquished the iron, and, sitting near in Grandpa’s armed chair, she smiled lovingly at the girl, who continued: “That’s just the way you’ve overlooked all the mistakes I ever made. I do wish that every girl in all the world had a grandmother like you.” Jenny was purposely chattering to keep from telling what was uppermost in her mind.
“What a proud, vain girl that Gwynette Poindexter-Jones must be!” Jenny’s thoughts were very different from her spoken words. “How cold and superior the tone of her voice when she informed her friends that she had never visited the farm, but that it looked very picturesque from a distance.” Jenny’s cheeks flushed as she indignantly told herself that she certainly hoped that the farm never would be visited by——. Her thought was interrupted by her exclamation of dismay. “Grandmother Sue. Here they come!”