A small stone, disturbed by Jenny’s foot, rattled noisily down the trail, struck the bridge and bounded away into the lower canyon.
The stranger glanced up with an expression that was almost startled and Jenny saw that it was the girl in brown whom she had twice noticed: once in the yard of the seminary, when she had been left so alone, and again in the dining hall when she had passed a dish, almost shyly, to the grand appearing Clare Tasselwood. Jenny remembered that this girl had said “Thank you,” and had smiled pleasantly when her cup had been filled with chocolate. She was smiling again, a bright welcoming smile, which assured Jenny that the stranger wished to speak to her, nor was she wrong, for, as soon as the bridge was reached, the girl in brown exclaimed: “Isn’t this a wonderful place that I’ve found? It’s the first time since I came to this school that I haven’t been depressingly lonesome.”
Jenny’s heart rejoiced. This girl must also love nature if she could feel real companionship in an almost silent canyon. Impulsively, she said, “Shall you mind if I sit here with you for a time?”
“Mind?” The other girl’s brown eyes gladdened. “I was hoping that you would.”
Jenny seated herself on the rustic bridge directly over the rushing falls. “Oh, hadn’t you better move over near this end?” her companion asked anxiously. “Won’t the hurrying whirl of the water underneath make you dizzy?”
Jenny shook her head. “We’re old friends,” she explained. “I am acquainted with Sycamore Canyon brook from its very beginning way up in the foothills, and it flows into the sea not far from the farm where I live.”
“Oh, good!” Again the bright upward glance. “I’m so glad you live on a farm, for I do also, when I’m at home in Dakota. My father is a farmer. I haven’t told it before, fearing the seminary girls might snub me if they knew. Not that I would care much. All I ask of them is to let me alone, and they certainly do that.” Then in a burst of confidence, “I really don’t know what to say to girls, nor how to act with them. I have lived so many years on an isolated farm and, would you believe it, I never, actually never, had a flesh and blood girl friend. I’ve had steens and steens of book-character friends, and I honestly believe, on the whole, I like them best.” Then with a shy side glance, “Do you think I am queer? Tell me so truly if you do.”
Jenny moved closer to the girl in brown as she exclaimed, “Yes, I do think you are queer, if queer means different from those other girls.” Then she laughingly confessed, “The truth is I never had a girl friend either, not one, but I have lots of make-believe friends, so, you see, I also am queer.”
The girl in brown beamed, “O, I am so glad, for maybe, do you think possibly you and I might become friends, being both queer and all that?”
Jenny nodded joyfully. “Why, of course we can be friends if you wish. That is, if Miss Granger would want you to be friendly with any but the gentry. Perhaps she doesn’t allow the pupils of her school to make acquaintances on the outside.”