"I guess it didn't lose much in telling," said Gretta flushing. "I hate to have folks pitying me, and saying what hard times I have. Not but what it's true, though!" she added in a burst of self-pity and of confidence in the sympathy which she read in Happie's face. "I wouldn't care if I did work all the time, though girls that have mothers get a little time to themselves, even when they're poor. But no matter what I do, it's the wrong thing, and I get so sick of it that I 'most give up. Yes, they're my cousins that I live with, and they grudge me a living, though I earn one hard. I don't feel to owe them one thing; I guess they'd have put me on the township, only they'd have had that much bigger taxes, so they kept me. When I'm a year older I'm going off to work for strangers. I believe I'd have asked your mother to have took me, only I heard them telling you had nice things, and had lived in New York, and I thought I wouldn't do for you."
"You poor Gretta!" exclaimed Happie patting the brown hand nearer to her. "I don't see how you live! Here am I loved to death, the loveliest mother a girl ever had, the best brother in all the world—Bob's a perfect trump!—and Margery's so pretty and sweet you couldn't help loving her—she's seventeen, and just bursting into young ladyhood. And Laura, well, Laura's all right, of course, and Polly's the most dependable, good little creature, and Penny—Penelope, the baby—is the dearest little four-year-old you ever saw. To think I have all these, and you have no one! It doesn't seem fair!"
"Yes, and you can go to school yet!" cried Gretta with a bitterness that she had not shown before in speaking of her cousins. "They won't let me go much, and we don't have good schools here anyway. That's why I hate to see folks; I don't know anything, and they'll laugh at my way of talking."
"Mercy, Gretta, that's nothing!" cried Happie energetically. "My mother says if a person has brains, nothing can crush them; they'll prove themselves in spite of obstacles, and if they haven't, no amount of schooling can give them. Now that we're friends—for we are friends and that's settled—I can help you lots, so easily that neither you nor I will know it's done. You can speak just as well as any other girl, if you won't mind a hint now and then, and I have loads of books to lend you. And you must teach me practical things, milking—Aunt Keren's going to get two cows—and churning and everything I don't know. Isn't that a large order to fill? Why, I begin to see why I came here, over and above mother's health!" Happie had grown brighter-eyed and more enthusiastic as she talked. "Mother says each soul has certain tasks set for it that no other soul can do, and that we are led along to places where our work is ready for us, and that we must be careful not to miss it when it comes to us. Maybe it was for your sake as well as mama's that dear Aunt Keren brought us all up here to her farm, which she had never seen, to spend this summer! Maybe it was because you were so lonely and needed friends so much. You've such a strong, beautiful face that I'm sure you are too fine not to get some slight chance to be happy and clever."
Gretta looked keenly and quickly at Happie, suspecting mockery in these compliments, for she mistrusted praise, having been carefully trained to consider herself far below meriting it. She saw nothing but perfect truth in the brown eyes gazing into her darker ones, eyes alight with overflowing love and the joy of the thought that their owner might do good to another who lacked so much.
"'CAN'T YOU EVER COME TO SEE ME?'"
All the repressed riches of the country girl's nature leaped up to meet the good offered her, caring less for the material good than for the treasure of affection, inestimable to one to whom it had thus far been denied, and who had more than most the capacity for receiving and returning it.
Gretta struggled for adequate expression, and missed it; she could not have voiced or understood what she felt at that moment.