Brenda's Ward / A Sequel to 'Amy in Acadia'

by Helen Leah Reed

"Then we are friends again," said Martine, laughing, "though I didn't know we had ever been anything else." Secretly, she thought Priscilla had made a great ado about nothing. "It's the Puritan way, I suppose," she said to herself. Then aloud,—

"As I have forgiven you, we may call it square about those Christmas photographs. Thus far I have always been able to prevent your paying me for them. But to-day, when I found your note with this money on my bureau—really, Priscilla, I was almost offended. So here, child," and she held out an envelope, "if you will take back this money, I will forgive you for your unfair thoughts."

Under the circumstances Priscilla could not refuse Martine, and thus both girls were satisfied.

"There's one thing," said Martine, to change the subject, "I have had some lovely letters lately. Just think of little Esther's writing me. Nora must have told her where I was. She hopes I will be able to go on with the Mansion Class next year—but dear me, Priscilla, she has got far beyond me; only look at this pen and ink," and she displayed the last page of the letter, in which Esther had drawn a picture that Priscilla at once recognized as Martine herself. "Then Alexander Babet has written me about Yvonne, that she is much stronger, and so happy with her music lessons,—and would you believe it, they still have some of that hundred dollars left. It's wonderful how far some people can make a little money go."

Here Martine sighed, recalling the time when she would not have thought a hundred dollars too much to spend in gratifying a single small wish.

"Do you know," she continued, "it may be that I can really do something for Yvonne next year. If papa can't spare the money, why I can give up something of my own—riding lessons, for example,—and spend what it would cost for Yvonne. This year I have been so frightfully useless; it seems as if I hadn't done anything for anybody."

"How foolish you are," exclaimed Priscilla. "If there were nothing else, you certainly have helped Yvonne and Esther, and just think what Mrs. Brownville writes about Herbert, and your mother says you have been a wonderful housekeeper, and that you have taken so much care off her shoulders, and Angelina—"

"Well, Angelina is rather absurd," interposed Martine; "I was just coming to myself that evening after—what shall I call it—the Carlotta incident, when Angelina rushed into the room, and almost threw herself on my neck. She seemed to think that something awful had happened to me because she had undertaken to leave us, and that my salvation depended on her. She said she had had queer feelings all day, and that she just felt drawn back to Red Knoll, which she never, never, would desert again. Really it was just as well that she came back, for although mother was able to get an extra helper, Angelina knew exactly where things were. Of course she was tremendously proud of what she had accomplished in her trip to Portsmouth, for she made the house-breaker admit that he was Miguel Silva, and though she can't recover her money, she has a kind of wicked satisfaction in knowing that he will be punished for his other misdeeds."

"She doesn't seem to be quite as Spanish as she was last winter. At least she doesn't say as much about it."

"No, she gives me the credit for that. She says that I have shown her that it is wrong to pretend anything. However, on that same Portsmouth trip, she went down the harbor to look at the island where Cervera's men were prisoners, and now she likes to speak of the Spaniards in a patronizing tone as people to be spoken of as inferiors rather than kinsmen."