The poor girl needed a cheering greeting. She stepped out of the carriage, her face swollen out of all semblance to its pretty self, and broke into sobbing afresh as Miss Bradbury took her in her arms, with a tenderness none who did not know her well would have looked for in that brisk lady. Mrs. Scollard kissed the girl with her own motherliness, which was so beautiful to Gretta, who had never known a mother. Happie seized her next in one of the warmest of hugs, her bright bronze hair getting mixed up with her kisses in a way it had, and which always made Gretta laugh. She smiled now, a watery smile, and received Margery's loving welcome as cordially as it was given; Gretta looked up to gentle Margery as to a superior being.
"If you knew how glad we all are to get you here, Gretta, my duck, you'd suspect us of bribing Eunice to treat you as she has. But really and truly we're not guilty of setting her up to this meanness, though it is such a lucky thing for us," said Happie, folding her arm around Gretta, and conducting her into the house. Gretta actually leaned on Happie for support; she was so spent with tempestuous crying that there was little of her own fine vigor left upon which to lean.
Happie led her into the dining-room, and set her in the rocking-chair by the window. Then she took off Gretta's hat, while Margery went to get the coffee which was waiting, ready and hot, on the stove. They were all shocked by the tragic expression of Gretta's face, and the mark of suffering which the past forty-eight hours had set upon it.
"Suppose I hadn't you?" whispered Gretta, leaning back upon Happie as if utterly weary.
"I can't suppose anything of the sort; you belong to us. I knew you were mine the moment I saw you painting that fence last spring," said Happie, stroking the dark hair with a warm, clinging hand.
Gretta drank her coffee and felt better for it, the first food that she had tasted that day. Then Happie took her up to her own and Margery's room and got her to lie down beside her on the bed. There the view of the mountains which she loved would assure the girl so suddenly deprived of the only home which she had known, that not only her new friends, but the dearest of her old ones were left to guard her. For in her short life there had been nothing so dear to Gretta as the beautiful country in which she was born.
Wise Happie did not let Gretta talk. She lay beside her, still stroking her hair and crooning low a song that Gretta loved. And Gretta was too spent to try to talk, too hurt to have any desire to repeat the unkind things which had been said to her during that cruel day, and its preceding night. She held Happie's other hand tight in both of hers and laid her burning cheek upon it. And before long sleep came to begin the blessed work of Gretta's comforting and her establishment in a happier life.
The good friends who had taken Gretta into their hearts and home skilfully let her slip into the changed order of things as easily as possible. They learned from Bob what sort of an interview he had had with Eunice Neumann when he came to carry off Gretta. Bob said that "Rosie's account of things was not a patch on the reality, because no white man could imagine a woman cutting up as Gretta's cousin had." So Gretta was not encouraged to give details of her expulsion; instead "the Archaics" cheerfully set their wits to work to devise means to help her forget what was, after all, unforgettable. The furnishing of her little room proved to be the best distraction for Gretta. Bob drove her down, with Margery, Happie and Laura, to buy silkaline for her curtains, and they came back with "as pretty a pattern as they could have found in New York," Margery triumphantly announced on their return.
The girls made this silkaline into short curtains and ruffled chair cushions for Gretta's room, and flounced a packing-case with it for her dresser, it having been discovered that the dresser which they had selected for Gretta's use was Miss Bradbury's reserve storehouse, for special supplies.
Bob plastered the walls roughly, in which Gretta rendered so efficient help that once more Bob's opinion of her rose a notch. She could plaster better than he could! "And no wonder," Gretta declared, "after the plastering and kalsomining I've had to help with at Eunice's!"