“A farmer’s daughter, is she? Well, I’m glad there is one pupil at that school who is honest about her family.”
Then noting that his companion was looking at him as though wondering what he meant, he explained in an offhand way, not wishing to break his promise to his sister: “Oh, I just heard that some one of the girls in that school is supposed to be the daughter of a younger son of the English nobility.” Adding quickly: “You say that you are acquainted with only one girl. Hasn’t my sister Gwyn been over to call on the Warners yet, and haven’t you met her?”
A color that rivaled the rose in the sky flamed into Jenny’s face. Harold saw it and correctly concluded that the girls had met, and that Jenny had been rudely treated.
“Gwyn is a snob,” was his mental comment. Aloud he said: “Do you suppose that your grandmother will invite me to stay to breakfast? I’ll have to start for the big town by ten, at the latest, and so I cannot be here for dinner.”
“Of course she will.” Jenny glanced back at the farmhouse as she spoke and saw that the smoke was beginning to wreath out of the chimney above the kitchen stove. “They’re up now, and so I’ll go in and set the table.”
But still she did not move, and the lad watching her expressive face intently, exclaimed impulsively: “Jenny, is something troubling you? Can’t I help if there is?”
That Harold’s surmise had been correct the lad knew before the girl spoke, for her sweet brown eyes brimmed with tears, and she said in a low, eager voice:
“Oh, how I have wanted to see you to ask about the farm. I heard, I overheard your sister telling her two friends from San Francisco that when your mother comes from France the farm is to be sold, and if it is, dear old Grandpa and Grandma will have no place to go.”
An angry color had slowly mounted the tanned face of the boy, and he said coldly: “My sister presumes to have more knowledge of our mother’s affairs than she has. The farm is not to be sold without my consent. Mother has agreed to that. I have asked for Rocky Point and the Maiden Hair Falls Canyon for my share of the estate.”
He looked out over the water thoughtfully before he continued: “Mother, I will confess, thinks my request a strange one, since the home and the fifteen acres about it are far more valuable, and she will not consent to the making of so unequal a division of her property, but she did promise that she would not sell the farm until I wished it sold. I believe she suspects that when I finish my schooling I may plan to become a gentleman farmer myself.”