Olive laughingly footed it round the library, burlesquing her own limitations. “And I don’t know whether I could even ‘foot it’ very far if it came to a tramp,” she said over her shoulder. “Goodness! since Sybil and I have used the automobile so much, as Father drives himself in the smaller car, I don’t even ‘sing the song of feet’ except when I play tennis or go round the golf course with Dad.... Perhaps, if I joined the Camp Fire Girls, I might grow a few new wing-feathers, as Captain Andy wants his little niece to do—the niece that moons in an orchard and goes round with a pet pig and a duck for followers—she must be awfully ‘witchetty,’ eh?”
“I should think so!” came from a now smiling Morning-Glory in the leather chair.
“Gracious! there’s the luncheon bell and we must get through with the meal as quickly as we can if we’re to carry out your plan, Jess, of getting to the playground and dressing up little ’Becca before the teachers get back and the folk-dancing begins.”
“Oh! I must run and bathe my face.” Jessica made for the library-door in a flurry. “First—first, I want to hug you, Olive. And you won’t think, will you, that I’m not just too awfully grateful to you all for making me so—so happy here?
“It was meddling with Papa’s old paint-box this morning that broke me all up,” added the seventeen-year-old girl to herself, dashing up the broad staircase which she had descended a little while ago, to her own room. “That, and thinking of how I used sometimes to sit by him when he was painting a saint’s head on glass for some beautiful window!” (A vigorous splash with a cold sponge.) “Mother said he ran to Saints’ Heads!” (Splash and choke!) “And he used to say that I inherited his talent and love of color and that girls were taking up stained-glass work—window-painting—now, making a success of it, too. I only wish I could!” (Splash, splash, splash, and a girl forcing a dripping sponge into her mouth, to drown a returning sob, because she felt that it would not be “game” to depress with tears or the semblance of them the midday meal of those who had generously given her a home!) “And, whatever comes, I’ve got to be as brave as my great-gran’daddy!” she gasped the next minute, through her set teeth, glancing at a small table, on which, beside the disturbing paint-box, lay an old-fashioned, oval leather case, with a tarnished gold stripe round its edge.
Towel in hand, Jessica impulsively sprang toward the table, touched a spring and disclosed a small miniature, older still than the case, painted on ivory, set in gold, showing a face which, if the artist of ninety-odd years ago painted truly, was very like the Morning-Glory one now hanging over it: the same crest of light brown hair over the forehead, the same naturally laughing grey-blue eyes. “My mother’s grandfather, Captain Josiah Dee, you were a very handsome young man when that miniature was painted, let me tell you!” she gurgled, biting upon a corner of the damask towel in a fighting attempt to regain composure by forcing her thoughts to dwell lightly for a minute upon the manly shoulders in the blue coat with brass buttons and the high stock-collar under a dimpled chin—her own had a dimple like it! “You have such a living smile; you always seem to be alive and laughing at me when I feel blue! Well! You saved lots of lives when you commanded a big ship, but were drowned, yourself, at last. I must be as brave as you were! And, great-gran’daddy dear, let me tell you, too, I’m not altogether alone, because I’ve got Cousin Anne and I’m a Camp Fire Girl—and Olive’s a dear; wouldn’t she be a dream—just a Camp Fire Girl’s dream—in a ceremonial dress and beaded head-band, with her black hair in two long plaits and her dark eyes?”
The oval case shut with a click.
Olive’s hair and eyes looked as dreamily beautiful in a simple white dress as they would have done in gold-brown khaki when, three-quarters of an hour later, she wended her way, together with four other girls, toward that poor and crowded quarter of the city of Clevedon whose tall factory chimneys enshrined the public playground—largely a garden of foreign buds—whither their steps were bent.
Yet not one of her companions envied that hair its raven lustre or the grace of the small head it crowned, for if they were not all four beauties, at least they were true daughters of Columbia who, fair herself, seldom or never hatches an ugly duckling.
There was one point of envy among them, so far as Sally, Betty, and Arline were concerned—the glass buttons on Jessica’s blouse!