Miss Lochinvar: A Story for Girls

by Marion Ames Taggart

When it came Jan’s turn she found to her horror that the story which she had so carefully learned and rehearsed with Gwen had slipped from her as completely as if she had never heard it. “What shall I do?” she whispered to Dorothy. “I have forgotten my story!”

The story-telling party.

“Make up another. Tell us something you have seen or done in the West,” said Dorothy. “It will probably be much more interesting, so don’t worry.”

“I have forgotten the story I meant to tell,” Jan began in a faint voice as she laid her fagot on the fire. “I think maybe I could remember it if only I could get hold of the beginning. But Dorothy Schuyler says I had better tell you something true that happened at home, so I am going to tell you about a cyclone we had once, and I’ve got to hurry, or my wood will be gone. There was a family living outside of Crescendo, about a couple of miles out, and they had come there from the frontier, and twenty-five years before the day of the cyclone they had lost one of their children—the oldest boy—out in the territory; he was stolen by Indians. They hunted everywhere and as hard as they could for him, but they never found him, so they thought he must be dead, and they moved into Kansas, and settled in Crescendo, and had ever so many other children, and were quite happy, though they never forgot that lost boy. They didn’t get on so very well—didn’t make much money, I mean, so mamma and papa tried to help them. They couldn’t very much, because we have such lots of children and not much money. But one day there came up a storm, and papa ran around making everything tight and getting all our children in, for he said it was going to be a windstorm, and that scares us out there—we’ve seen them!”

Jan had forgotten her shyness, and was becoming dramatic as the recollection of the fatal day came over her. She leaned forward, her elbows on her knees, her eyes fastened on her burning fagot, with the light playing over her earnest face.

“Well, it came. The sky got all over a dreadful yellow, and it was so dark we lighted up like night. Mamma was baking and I was sweeping and dusting—I know I thought it was lucky my head was tied up, for it seemed as though it might blow off. The wind roared and rushed past us, and branches of fruit-trees and heavy things came banging up against the house—oh, it was awful! But we didn’t get the worst of it inside the town. Outside, where this family lived, it was the very middle of the cloud, and it took the roof off, and it blew down the barn, and the neighbor’s house blew over and part of it struck theirs—and—oh, dear, oh, dear! I can’t bear to think of it!” Jan hid her face in her hands a moment, shuddering, and her audience sat silently waiting for her to go on.

“The wall fell in and it buried all that family under it, for they were all huddled together—they hadn’t any cyclone cellar. It was the first time a cyclone had ever struck Crescendo. And when the storm had passed—it was all over in fifteen minutes—they went out to that house and they found them dead, all dead, except the baby, and he was crying and pulling at his mother’s dress.” Jan’s voice quivered so that she had to wait another moment, and no one noticed that her fagot was burned out.

“And when they got there,” Jan went on, “there was a young man standing among the ruins whom the people who came to help had never seen before. Would you believe it? It was that oldest son whom they had lost! He had found out who he was and had traced his parents, and had come to Kansas after them, and had reached Crescendo just in time to find them dead in the ruins of their home. And there was not one left but the little crying baby and the oldest son—they were all gone! I took off my sweeping dress, and mamma left her baking, and we went out there. We brought the baby home with us—he was just Poppet’s age—until after the funeral. Then the young man took him, and they went away together, the oldest and the youngest, and we have never seen either of them in Crescendo again.”

After a complete silence of a few minutes, more flattering than applause, the applause for Jan’s tragic story burst forth from every pair of hands. It was the success of the evening, but to Gladys it was a success worse than failure. The confession that Jan and her mother had been busied with housework at the time of the tragedy added the story to the long list of disgraceful disclosures Jan was forever making.