At last there came a day when Jenny did not look about her at the gnarled old oaks or at the carpet of wild flowers in the uplands as she walked along the familiar trail which led to Miss Dearborn’s pepper-tree guarded gate, for she was conning over and over a lesson. Nor was her teacher in the garden where she so often busied herself as she awaited her pupil. Instead she stood in the drive with her hat and jacket on.
When at last the girl lifted her eyes from her book, she stopped—an expression of dread and consternation in her eyes. “Miss Dearborn,” she exclaimed, “you aren’t going back East, are you?”
The pleasant-faced woman laughed. “Not yet,” she replied. “How you do dread that event, which I can assure you is not even a remote possibility. Why should I go East, dear?”
Jenny Warner could not explain why she seemed so often to be oppressed by that dread. “Do you believe that coming events cast their shadows before?” she asked, putting her hand to her throat. “Honestly, Miss Dearborn, I feel as if something terribly awful is about to happen. And seeing you just now with your hat and jacket on made me think that you might have had a telegram and that you were just leaving.”
Miss Dearborn merrily put in: “I am just leaving, and for that matter so are you. I received a telephone message half an hour ago that the date of the first examination had been changed and is to take place at 10 o’clock this morning.”
Jenny’s books fell to the path and her look of consternation would have been comical if it had not been tragic. “Miss Dearborn, I knew it! I have felt just perfectly miserable as though I had lost my last friend with fifty other calamities added. Now I know coming events cast their shadows before. I thought we were going to have all this day for review.”
Miss Dearborn’s reply was cheerfully optimistic. “I’m glad that we are not. I object to the system of cramming. You would tire your brain and be less able to answer questions tomorrow than you are today. Now take your books into the house, dear, and leave them on the library table, then hurry back. We are to catch the nine o’clock stage.”
Poor Jenny’s heart felt heavily oppressed. Together they went down to the Coast Highway, and, as they had a few moments to wait for the bus in the rustic little roadside station, Jenny ventured, “Don’t you think, Miss Dearborn, it would be a good plan for you to ask me questions or explain to me something that you think I do not understand very clearly?”
“No, I do not.” Miss Dearborn was emphatic in her reply. Then she inquired: “How is your little friend Lenora Gale? You promised to bring her up to have a tea-party with me soon. You haven’t forgotten, have you?”
A shade of sorrow passed over the girl’s pretty face. “Miss Dearborn,” she said earnestly, “Lenora isn’t as well as she was. I am ever so troubled about her. She seemed so much better after we met, and then, last week, she caught another cold. Now she is worse again, and has to stay in bed. I was up to the seminary Saturday to take the eggs and honey, and I asked if I might see her. Miss O’Hara went to inquire of Miss Granger, but she came back without the permission I wanted. The doctor had requested that Lenora be kept perfectly quiet. Oh, I just know that she is fretting her heart out to see me, and she doesn’t like it at the seminary. It’s such a cold, unfriendly sort of a place. The girls never did take to Lenora, partly because she is retiring, almost timid, I suppose, and, besides, they may have heard that her father is only a farmer.”