“Gee!” said Jack again. “What a queer house yours must be! Nice, though.” And Jan had gained one more devoted admirer among her new cousins.
This little adventure sent her to bed in a much happier mood than she had expected to go in, and Gwen, moved with compunction when she aroused from her pages to find her cousin gone, came up to make her a little visit. The trunk had come, and Gwen eyed with pitying glance its slender and shabby contents, inwardly resolving to set the matter of dress right before Jan made her appearance in the Misses Larned’s formidable halls of learning.
Jan had intended crying herself to sleep—had laid the plan during the dreary dinner—but helping Jack and talking to Gwen so cheered her—besides she was so tired—that she quite forgot it, and fell asleep almost at once after she had laid herself down for the first time in her pretty bed, for her first night in vast New York.
CHAPTER IV
“AMONG BRIDESMEN AND KINSMEN AND BROTHERS AND ALL”
For three days Janet’s life in her new surroundings was neither dull nor lonely. She saw but little of her aunt, and practically nothing of Gladys, who showed unmistakably that she did not consider “Miss Lochinvar” worth bothering about; nor was Sydney’s manner to her different from his taciturnity toward his own family. But Jack, Viva, and Jerry lost no time in learning to admire her—they all three worshiped Jan by the end of her second day among them.
With Mr. Graham Janet passed two happy evenings talking of her mother, surprising him with her knowledge of the most minor details of his own boyhood and early home, and rousing him into telling funny stories of happenings of which she did not know, to the boundless surprise of his own children. At the end of that time her uncle had grown accustomed to her presence, and, though his affection for his sister was one of the strongest ties of his life, they had been separated so long that other interests made more pressing claim upon him. Added to this was the fact that matters on Exchange were threatening; there was danger of “a bear market.” Janet heard him say this, and construed it by her Kansas experience of crop failures to mean “a bare market,” and she pictured to herself empty stalls and New York threatened with shortage in food. Mr. Graham was vitally interested in keeping prices up, and became so preoccupied that Janet received from him only the pleasant word night and morning accorded his own children. Gwen, heroically, and with more pleasure to herself than she expected, entertained her cousin for three days. Then her absorbing interest in her own pursuits asserted itself; she began her sixth novel—none of them had ever passed the fourth chapter, and but one reached it—and forgot Jan completely in the solitude of her own room when she got home from school.
It had been decided that Janet should have at least a week in which to accustom herself to exile before facing the girl world in the Misses Larned’s school. Gwen had suggested to her father that Janet be clad suitably before this ordeal, and he had promptly written a generous check for that purpose to supplement at shops where the Grahams had no account any deficiencies in what they wished to purchase where bills were charged. Nurse Hummel and Gwen had gone down once with Janet to begin this shopping, but to “Miss Lochinvar’s” bewilderment, she learned that many trips were required to fit her out as a New York schoolgirl, and after this first one she and Hummie had to go alone. Gladys flatly refused to go abroad with her cousin until these changes in her costume had been made, and was most anxious that she should not be seen by any of her schoolmates, but Gwen did not conceal the fact that they had a Western cousin consigned to them for the winter, and the three girls whom Gwen most disliked, and Gladys stood most in awe of, set out at once to call upon her, moved by curiosity rather than friendliness.
“Miss Hammond, Miss Gwen, and Miss Ida Hammond and Miss Flossie Gilsey is down-stairs to see you; they sint their cards. They do be asking for Miss Janet, though not be name,” said Norah, presenting six bits of pasteboard through the crack of Gwen’s door.
“Oh, for mercy’s sake! Has anything come home for that prairie-chicken to put on?” exclaimed Gladys, flushing with annoyance; she chanced to be at that moment in her sister’s room.