Janet could not repress a cry of pleasure as Gwen threw open the door of her room, despondently as she had approached it. It was one of the smallest rooms in the large house, but it was quite big enough for one small girl, and it was so pretty! The furniture was bird’s-eye maple; the paper, carpet, hangings, all a harmony of soft old-rose color; and the few pictures both good and cheerful.
“Is this really my room?” cried Jan, who had loved the big, bare, sunny room at home, which she had shared with her two sisters next in order to her, but who had always longed secretly for a lovely room, such as she read of in her favorite stories, and which should be all her own. And now, behold, here was her wish gratified beyond her wildest imaginings—at least, while she was an inmate of her uncle’s household.
“Yes. Do you really like it? It isn’t very large, but maybe you won’t mind,” said Gwen, looking around her critically. “The next room is the nursery. Hummie sleeps there, and Jerry’s crib is there; Viva does her lessons there in the morning—she has a governess; she hasn’t begun school. If you want anything, you must go in to Hummie—that’s headquarters for any Graham in distress. Gladys has the middle room on this floor, and mine is the back one; Viva has the one beside mine at the end of the hall. We won’t hear one another much, because the house is so dreadfully deep, and the dressing-rooms are between the chambers; that’s one good thing. Syd calls this floor ‘the hennery,’ because all the girls’ rooms are here. I told him that I didn’t mind; if he and Jack were roosters, it was proper they should roost above us—they are on the next floor, you know. And he didn’t like it, though I think my joke is quite as good as his—it’s the same joke, in fact.” And Gwen laughed in malicious enjoyment of these exquisite sallies of wit.
Janet had been looking out of the window, and discovered that the identity of the architecture of the houses in the street was less than she had taken it to be; there were many points of difference between her uncle’s house and his neighbors’, though the uniform brownstone made them drearily similar to eyes used to long stretches and plenty of space. But she had also caught a glimpse of trees and grass as she leaned out, and she drew her head in to inquire of Gwen what they meant, forgetting the pretty room, and not hearing what her cousin had been saying.
“That is Central Park; the entrance is just above us, at Fifty-ninth Street,” said Gwen, wondering at Jan’s brightening eyes. “It is nice to have it so near; I often go there to think out my plans—stories and poems and such things—and Glad and I are learning to ride.”
“I know you are awfully clever. Uncle sent mamma some of your poetry, cut out of a magazine,” said Janet, removing her hat and shaking out her masses of warm-tinted, curling hair.
“Oh, my, what bea-u-tiful hair!” cried Gwen involuntarily. “And what lots of it! If that doesn’t make that conceited old Daisy Hammond turn green when she sees it! She’s so vain of her hair, it fairly disgusts one! Oh, those verses were only in the back part of St. Nicholas, where the children’s things are. It was ever so long ago—certainly two years. I hope I can do better than that now.”
“Do you expect to write when you are grown up?” asked Jan, with the awe for a person who could look forward to such a career natural to a girl who dearly loved books, and who felt that they who made them belonged to an order of beings apart from common mortals.
“I can’t tell,” said Gwen, seating herself on the bed beside her cousin and taking her knee into the clasp of both her hands—it was not often that she found any one willing to listen to her hopes, much less treat them with positive veneration. “You see,” she continued, “I can paint just as well as I can write, and my teacher says I have a very good voice. I might become an artist instead of an author, or I might go on the stage and become a great opera singer, like Melba. I shouldn’t like you to mention it, Jan, because they all—except mamma—make fun of me, but I mean to make a big name for myself somehow, and as long as I do that I don’t care which way I do it. Gladys likes society, and dress, and such stuff,” continued the ambitious young person, with withering scorn, “but I want to be something that is something. It’s pretty hard, though, when you’re one of such a dreadfully big family. I would like to get off by myself on a desert island, like Robinson Crusoe, and only see them on birthdays, and Christmas, and Thanksgiving, and such times.”
“Mercy!” exclaimed Jan, rather shocked, though she realized that genius was not to be measured by ordinary standards. “That would never suit me.”