“Well, I for one shall cultivate her. An invitation to visit the castle home of Lord Tasselwood would be most welcome to me. You girls may do as you please about it.” Gwynette was again in a sitting posture and she glanced inquiringly at her companions. They both declared that they wished to be included. “Then, firstly, we must obtain permission to give a spread worthy of her presence, at The Palms, no less, even if it costs our combined allowances for a month.”
Then they planned together what they would wear and whom they would invite. “We’ll ask my brother to bring down as many cadets as we have girls,” was Gwyn’s final decision.
When Clare Tasselwood received the gilt-edged invitation, there was a little twist to one corner of her month which was her way of smiling when she was amused, and cynical. She had overheard a conversation the day they had met in the garden. “The Lady Clara of Tasselwood Manor accepts with pleasure,” she told her reflection in the mirror.
CHAPTER XIII.
FERNS AND FRIENDS
True to her promise, Jenny Warner went to the seminary on Monday, after her lessons were over, to see if she could be of assistance to Miss O’Hara.
The kindly Irish woman saw the girl coming and met her at the open kitchen door with so beaming a face that the newcomer was convinced that something of a pleasant nature had occurred, nor was she wrong.
“Colleen, it’s true blue you are, keepin’ your word so handsome, but there’s no need for you to be stayin’. Another of them orphans blew in along about noon-time, and it did me heart good to set eyes on the bright face of her. She went to work with a will, not wishin’ to rest even. Her name’s Nora O’Flynn, and her forebears came from the same part of old Ireland which gave birth to mesilf. ’Twon’t be hard to be makin’ the kitchen homelike for this orphan,” she concluded.
Jenny went away joyfully. Things had turned out wonderfully for them all. Miss O’Hara could never have been happy with Etta Heldt, who was of a race she could not understand, but now that she was to have with her one of her own people, her long days of drudgery would be lightened and brightened.
As Jenny tripped down the box-bordered path leading from the seminary to a canyon trail that would be a short-cut to the farm, she passed the tennis courts, where several games were in progress. She glanced at the players, wondering if any of them might be the haughty sister of Harold P-J. But tennis was altogether too strenuous a pastime for the ever indolent Gwynette.
The back trail led along the Sycamore Canyon creek, where ferns of many varieties were growing; some were as tall as the girl who was passing them, while, among the moss-covered rocks, close to the brook, were the more feathery and delicate maiden hair ferns. It had been very warm in the sun, but there was a most welcome damp coolness in the canyon. For a moment Jenny stood still at the top of the trail gazing down, listening to the quietness, broken only by the constant gurgling rush of the water. Then she started walking slowly along the trail, picking her way carefully, as it was rough and rocky, and at places very narrow. It amused her to note the different sounds of the brook. At one spot there was a whirling little eddy, then a sudden fall over a steep rock, then a hurried rushing till a broad pool-like place was reached. There the waters were deeper and quieter, as though pausing for a moment’s rest before taking a plunge of many feet to the lower part of the canyon. Just above the Maiden-hair Falls, a rustic bridge crossed from one great boulder to another, and, as Jenny came in sight of it, she stopped, amazed, for there, sitting on one end of the bridge and leaning against the bending trunk of a great old sycamore tree, was a girl of her own age. Who could she be? Jenny had not heard of anyone new moving into the neighborhood. In fact, there were no houses in the canyon except the one occupied by the Pascoli family.