“I am though.” Jenny’s rose-tinted cheeks were of a deeper hue, “But you also have grown.”
Standing very straight and tall, the boy looked down beamingly upon all three. “I’ll say I have,” he agreed, “but honestly I do hope I’m not going up any higher.” Then after a quick glance across the aisle, where the Granger Place Young Ladies were filing out, he said hastily. “Mrs. Warner, won’t you invite a stranded youth to take dinner with you today? I’ve got to see sister this afternoon, and return to the big city tonight, but I’m pining to have a real visit with you.” Then to Jenny, by way of explanation. “Perhaps you never heard about it, but your Grandma Sue took care of me the first three years of my life and so I shall always consider her a grandmother of mine.” Susan Warner’s mind had flown hastily back to the home larder. What did she have cooked that was fine enough for company. But the youth seemed to understand. “Just anything that you have ready is what I want. No fuss and feathers, remember that. I’ll be there in one hour. Will that be time enough?”
Grandpa Si spoke up heartily. “I reckon you’ll find a dinner waitin’ whenever you get there, Harry-boy.”
Gwynette received her brother with a sneering curve to her mouth that might have been pretty. “Well, didn’t you know that everyone in the church was watching you and criticizing you for making such a fuss over our mother’s servants,” was her ungracious greeting. A dull red appeared in the boy’s cheeks, but he checked the angry words before they were uttered. Instead he said: “Gwynette, may I call at the seminary this afternoon? I have had a letter from Mother and I want to talk it over with you.”
“This afternoon?” a rising inflection of inquiry. “Aren’t you going to take me to The Palms to dine? I’m just starved for a real course dinner and the minute I saw you I made up my mind that was what we would do.”
The boy hesitated. His conscience rebuked him. He knew that their mother would expect him to be chivalrous to his sister. He also knew that a vision in pink and white, a pair of appealing liquid brown eyes had, for the moment caused him to forget his duty. “All right, sis,” he said, trying not to let the reluctance in his heart show in his voice. “Ask your chaperone if you may go with me now.”
As soon as he was alone, Harold hurried around the vine-covered church to the sheds where he hoped to find the Warner family. They were just driving out of the lane, but the old man drew rein when he saw the lad hurrying toward them.
“I’m terribly sorry, Mrs. Warner,” he began with a ring of sincerity in his voice, which carried conviction to the listeners. “Gwynette wants me to take her to The Palms for dinner, and, of course, that is what our mother would wish me to do.”
“Wall, wall, that’s all right, Harry,” Grandpa Si put in consolingly. “’Taint as though you can’t come again. You’re welcome over to the farm whenever you’re down this way.”
Harold’s last glance was directed at the girl as also was his parting remark. “I’m going to run down from the city real soon. Good-bye.”