“Oh, no. Especially after Molly told us what she wants to tell you,—and we did not mention it to the rest. But we’ll forget that now and have a jolly good breakfast if we can. I’m not sure but ice-cold lemonade would be better than hot cocoa in this kind of weather,—funny to have a hot night on our lake.”
If the cocoa was hot, it was bracing to Greta. She sat at the yellow and brown and white table, on a yellow, brown and white chair and had her bacon and eggs served on the yellow dishes decorated with daisies. “We are sibyls in our club,” Molly explained, “and our colors are yellow and white, but we aren’t what the boys call ‘yellow,’ for our motto is ‘sans peur,’ that means ‘without fear,’ and we’ve already discovered that to have courage is one of the most necessary things anywhere. Mine was at a low ebb last night, I can tell you, but this morning I’m all braced up.”
Jean looked at Molly with amused affection. She understood how Molly dreaded to tell Greta what she must.
Greta was bright enough to have an inkling of what Molly meant. Her own courage was sinking, and had been all night. What had Molly heard? What new and dreadful thing might she have to meet at home? Jacob Klein had not come home the night before. Perhaps it was something about him.
But the breakfast was good and the girls were kind and interesting. She did not seem to feel awkward with managing to eat before them. Her mother had always made fun of her “fussy ways,” as her German expressions meant. A good breeze was blowing through the big room and making them all more comfortable. After the meal the girls left the table as it was and took Greta outdoors to a nook among the trees where they had fixed a rope swing and some seats out of logs. On one of these they sat down, though Nan presently jumped up, saying that she’d better clear the table, for the whole lot of girls would be back soon, she thought. They all looked at the gathering clouds. The storm seemed to be a long time coming. Perhaps it would pass around them. In any event, Molly was thinking how she would tell Greta and Greta was more interested in what she was to hear than in the storm.
“Greta,” began Molly, “does Mrs. Klein treat you kindly?”
Greta’s dark eyes looked soberly into Molly’s. “I’d rather not say,” she replied. “Yes, I will, too. It is a chance to tell some one. My mother was good to me for a long time after I had a bad sickness, and forgot things, they said. Then she changed and although she would never let Jacob Klein abuse me, she can’t care much for me or she would never put the heaviest work on me, even when she is well enough to help more. I want to go away from home to work, and I thought that perhaps you girls could help me find a way, to help some one with any kind of work; and then I could send the money home to my mother and the children. I heard her say when they were quarreling, after Jacob Klein threw me against the tubs and hurt my head, that he must leave me alone and that I was not his child.”
All this came tumbling out rapidly, as if Greta had planned it, which was not the case. It was only that she was so full of her unhappiness and puzzles.
“Did you ever think that perhaps you were not her child either?”
Greta looked startled. Then she said, slowly, “I thought that she might have been married before and that my father might have had dark eyes like mine. All the rest have blue eyes and light hair, if you noticed, and the horse-doctor that came to look after me as well as the horse asked my mother where she found a little girl with brown eyes. He was joking, but my mother didn’t like it and said that families were not always of one complexion, or something like that. She talks mostly German.”