The Project Gutenberg eBook, Jessica Trent's Inheritance, by Evelyn Raymond

“One silent, prolonged clasp of her daughter’s little figure, one light kiss on
the pretty lips.”

(See page [13])

JESSICA TRENT’S
INHERITANCE

BY
EVELYN RAYMOND
AUTHOR OF
“Jessica Trent,” “Jessica The Heiress,” “Breakneck Farm,” etc.

PHILADELPHIA
DAVID McKAY, PUBLISHER
610 South Washington Square

Copyright, 1907, by David McKay.

CONTENTS.

JESSICA TRENT’S INHERITANCE.

CHAPTER I.
JESSICA BEGINS A LONG JOURNEY.

“O mother! How can I bear it? How can I go?” cried Jessica Trent, clinging fast to the slender, black-robed figure standing a little apart on the platform of the railway station.

“Bravely and hopefully, my darling, as befits the daughter of Cassius Trent. Eagerly, I trust, as one who goes to finish his life work;” answered the almost heart-broken mother, the joy of whose existence would vanish with that outgoing eastern train.

“But I may come home again next year, mother dearest? Say I may come then!” pleaded the girl.

“If it seems best,” answered Gabriella Trent, tenderly stroking the fair cheek which seemed to have grown thinner and whiter during these last days before this parting.

“Next year? Why, my suz! You won’t much more than get there by that time, child alive. Three thousand miles is pretty consid’able of a step, seems if,” commented a voice which tried to be as cheerful as it was loud. But the words ended with a sob; that “three thousand miles,” which her own fancy had pictured quite breaking down the composure of Aunt Sally Benton, who had come with the rest of the Sobrante party to see Jessica Trent off for the Atlantic coast.

“Blow my stripes! If I ever knew there were so many folks all agog for travelin’! Uneasiest crowd ’t ever I see an’ noisiest. Well, captain, I hope they’ll get talked out ’fore sleeping time comes. If a body can sleep aboard a train of cars. Give me a good ship now—then you sing! Here, you fool! What you jostlin’ into me for? Think this whole platform belongs to you, just because you’re one the know-nothin’ towerists?” cried Samson, the mighty herder and one-time sailor, as an anxious “tourist” bumped an armful of luggage against him.

A big crowd it certainly was. Mainly a happy and eager one as well; its winter’s outing and sight-seeing over, and home-going at hand. A few, indeed, were sad. Those who had come to California seeking health for some beloved one and failing to find it; leaving the helpless one to take his last sleep in that sunny land, or to carry him eastward to die under native skies.

But amid all the bustle and haste the group from Sobrante was quiet and separate, only Aunt Sally and Samson now and then breaking out into exclamations to relieve their overwrought emotions, and thereby attracting more attention than Mrs. Trent quite enjoyed.

Indeed, she would have preferred to keep these last moments to herself and Jessica alone, but could not. All the “boys” who could possibly be spared from the ranch had come to Los Angeles to see their little “Captain” depart; although John Benton, the carpenter, emphatically declared:

“It’s all a downright mistake. As if our ‘Lady Jess’ didn’t know more now than any ‘finished’ boardin’ school miss could even guess at. Figures? Huh! What does she need more’n to add up a few wages now an’ again, and she’s a likely head at that already. Sent ’way off to New York after an education that she could get right here in Californy if her mother’d only think so. I don’t hold with no such unnatural separations, I don’t.”

As to the girl herself, it seemed to all these devoted henchmen that she had grown suddenly older, graver, more dignified, almost careworn. On that very last day of all, when she had made a detailed visit to, and inspection of, every part of the big ranch, she had done so with a quiet, critical interest quite contrary to her usual careless gayety.

“This paddock needs attention, ‘boy.’ You mustn’t let things go to ruin while I’m away nor expect mother to look after them,” she had warned one ranchman, in a tone he had never heard her use before. Also, she had gone over his books with the man who now “plucked” the ostriches, whose feathers were such an important factor in the family income, and finding his accounts slightly incorrect had reprimanded him sharply.

It had been altogether another Jessica during these last days; but all felt her altered manner was due wholly to the grief of her home-leaving; and John Benton was not the only one of the devoted “boys” who considered her departure a mistake.

However, mistake or not, it was now at hand. A distant whistle sounded. The southern San Diego train was coming in, the outgoing overland express stood waiting on the rails before the platform, and by one impulse the whole Sobrante party grouped about the girl for a final kiss or hand-shake. To each and all of them she represented the best of life.

“If anybody harms or tries to harm a hair of your curly yellow head, my Lady Jess, just you telegrapht me to once an’ I’ll take the trail eastward, lickety-cut!” cried George Cromarty, with a suspicious moisture in his usually merry eyes.

“I—I’ve got a brother yender, in the State o’ Maine. Like’s not I’ll be takin’ a trip that way myself, little captain, if I find Sobrante gets too lonesome,” said Joe, the smith.

“Be sure you keep that bottle of picra right side up, just the way I fixed it in your satchel, an’ take a dose if you feel a mite car sick, or homesick, or——”

“Any other kind of sick!” interrupted John Benton, coolly pushing Aunt Sally aside, that he might get hold of Jessica himself.

“There’s dried peach turnovers in that basket an’ some my hen chicken’s best hard-boiled eggs in Mr. Hale’s suit case!” almost screamed Mrs. Benton as the whole party moved forward toward the train. “There’s a jar of picked-off roast quail and—Good-by, Jessie Trent! Good-by! Don’t take no sass from nobody and do, I beg of you, do keep—your stockin’s—mended; Oh! my stars an’ garters! Oh! my! my suz!” wailed the poor woman, as the girl she so dearly loved was swept away from her without even one parting hug.

But Mrs. Trent, to whom this farewell meant more than to any of them, had now no word to say. One silent, prolonged clasp of her daughter’s little figure, one light kiss on the pretty lips, and—Jessica was gone!

The dying rumble of the overland seemed a knell of all her happiness and for a moment, as she stood with closed eyes trying to collect herself, she had a reckless impulse to board the next outgoing train and follow on her darling’s “trail.” Then somebody touched her arm and Ninian Sharp was saying in tones that tried to be cheerful and failed:

“Come, dear madam. Our girl has put you into my especial care and the first thing on the docket is dinner. It was a poor breakfast any of us made and I, for one, am hungry. Come on, boys. It’s the Westminster—for all of us. Here? Ready, every one? This car then for you and we’ll meet you there. Come, Aunt Sally. Eh? What?”

For as the one-time reporter of the Lancet, and now manager of the Sobrante, hailed a carriage to convey Mrs. Trent and Mrs. Benton hotel-ward, the latter fell into a tragic attitude and wildly waved her “reticule” eastward, whither Jessica’s train had gone, and as wildly thrust her free hand skyward, exclaiming:

“I’d ought to be kicked by cripples! I certainly had! If I ain’t the foolishest, forgettin’est woman ’twixt the two oceans! An’ it’s too late now. Oh! my suz a-me!”

Mr. Ninian laughed, and was more grateful to Aunt Sally just then than he had ever been before. Her evident, if comical, distress interrupted sadder thoughts and he promptly demanded, again:

“Well, what’s wrong now, neighbor?”

“Shouldn’t think you, nor no other sensible person’d want to go ‘neighborin’’ me, a body that can’t keep her wits about her no longer ’n what I can. Gabriella Trent, I’ve clean gone, or gone an’ clean forgot, that pink-and-white patchwork quilt I’ve been settin’ up nights to get ready for Jessie to take with her on the cars, to sleep in! Now—what do you say to that!”

The dramatic dismay on the good woman’s countenance sent Mr. Sharp into a roar of laughter which, this time, was wholly unfeigned, and even brought a smile of amusement to Mrs. Trent’s pale face. The picture her fancy evoked of pretty, fair-haired Jessica, bundled in the patchwork quilt on board a luxurious “sleeper” was so absurd that she forgot, for the moment, other and graver matters.

“No wonder, dear, with all the things you did and looked after, so that we might both leave home—no wonder you forgot. It was very kind of you to take so much trouble for the child, but she’ll not really need the quilt. The beds are well fitted on the sleepers, and Mr. Hale will care for her as if she were his own. Come. We mustn’t keep Mr. Ninian waiting and after dinner he wants me to meet one or two business men. About the mine, you know;” explained Gabriella, entering the carriage, whither Aunt Sally clumsily followed.

Fortunately, that big-hearted creature could always find a “way out” of most difficulties, and she promptly settled the quilt question, saying:

“Well, if she didn’t get it for a keepsake gift, it’s hern all the same and she shall have it a-Christmas, and you needn’t touch to tell me she shan’t. Even if I be to ‘Boston,’ come that day, an’ I have to badger the very life out of my son John to get him to send it to her then. But dinner, Gabriell’! I don’t feel as if I could eat a single bite. Do you, yourself, honey?”

This time Ninian felt as if he could shake her. He knew that it would be small appetite, indeed, Mrs. Trent would bring even to that fine menu he meant to lay before her, and here was thoughtless Aunt Sally almost intimating that dining at all would, to-day, be an indecency. So there was more real feeling than appeared in his rejoinder:

“Look here, Mrs. Benton! I wager that with all your present ‘suffering’ you’ll yet be able to make a good square meal. One, maybe, that it’ll tax my pocket-book to pay for!”

“Hoity-toity, young man! Who’s asked you to pay for my victuals? I didn’t; and more’n that it’s my intent and cal’lation to pay spot cash not only for what I eat but what Gabrielly does, too, and ’twon’t be my fault if she don’t get urged to fair stuff herself. So there.”

“Good enough, Aunt Sally! You’re a—a brick!” retorted this irreverent young man, having succeeded in his efforts at diversion and fully satisfied.

“No, I ain’t. I’m a decent human womanbody, that knows when she’s sassed at an’ when she isn’t. And you needn’t think you’re the only creatur’ livin’ can look after Gabriella Trent and them that’s dear to her. But—you can’t help bein’ what you are—a man!” The infinite scorn which Mrs. Benton threw into that one word tickled the ex-reporter into another gale of laughter, during which the carriage arrived at the hotel entrance and the group of Sobrante “boys” waiting there.

The sound of it didn’t please them. Not in the least. Their own countenances wore an expression befitting a funeral, and the mirth depicted on Ninian Sharp’s declared him what they had often felt him to be—a stranger and alien at Sobrante. It wasn’t his “little Captain” that had gone and left them desolate. It was their own, idolized “Lady Jess” in whom he had no right nor parcel, even though he had so fully won her love and confidence.

“Well! I’ve my opinion of a man that can laugh—to-day—after losing Sunny Face!” growled Samson under his breath.

“Light weight! Light weight, in his head. I always said so,” added John Benton, solemn as an owl or—as when he was attempting to lead the Sunday music at Sobrante.

In one glance at their stern faces Ninian Sharp comprehended what was in their minds, and set himself to undo any false impression he had given. That, despite their growls, they liked him he was perfectly sure; also, that though they did indeed sorely feel the loss of the girl they adored they were still human enough to enjoy their present outing in the “City of the Angels,” and—a good dinner!

Handing the ladies over to the care of an obsequious clerk, he proceeded to line up the ranchmen and to usher them into the big dining-room, with its long array of neatly-spread tables, and toward that corner of it which the head waiter indicated.

Inwardly he enjoyed that brief march from the door to the chairs, each “boy” assuming an air of I-do-this-sort-of-thing-every-day, don’t-you-know, and each displaying an awkwardness quite unknown at quiet Sobrante. However, once in their places, and he acting as interpreter of the menu spread before them, they forgot themselves and awaited the feast with scant thought for anything beyond it.

Till, just as Mr. Sharp was rising to rejoin Mrs. Trent and Aunt Sally in another room, he bethought himself to “count noses” and found himself one nose short. One empty chair faced him, one fine old presence was missing:

“Hello, here! Where’s ‘Forty-niner?’ Didn’t he come with you from the station?”

The ranchmen stared at him and at each other; then said John Benton, gravely:

“I remember now, he didn’t. Plaguyest proud old chap ever handled a shotgun. Wouldn’t be beholden to anybody for even one dinner. Well! He’s had experience of Los Angeles an’ ought to know his bearings. Might ha’ stepped round to that hospital he’s forever talking about, or to that old crony tavern-keeper’s o’ his’n. But he’ll turn up before train starts for Marion and home. Couldn’t keep him off Sobrante ranch though you set the dogs on him. Thinks none of us, that’s a mite younger’n him, has got sense enough to run things without his everlasting poke-nose thrust in. Lady Jess, she was pleased to tell him she’d made him ‘Superintendent’ of the whole shooting-match an’ that was one time our ‘Captain’ made a little mistake. But he’s sort of touchy like and if he gets too top-lofty we can easy set him down a peg. I’d like some butter, waiter; and I’d like enough to see, this time.”

So saying, the carpenter cast a casual glance around, as if to convey to all spectators the fact that he was perfectly familiar with hotel tables and the manner of dining thereat. The glance included the young mine manager, but this time that gentleman’s sense of humor was not touched. A vague uneasiness stirred within him, and it was his ardent hope that when the home-returning party took the train for Marion the old sharpshooter would rejoin them.

“Mrs. Trent will be grieved if he forsakes Sobrante now that Jessica is gone. The old man is ‘touchy,’ as the boys say; and he has never quite forgiven his old mates for that temporary doubt of his honesty. The ‘house’ will be lonely, indeed, if neither he nor the little ‘Captain’ goes in and out of it. Yes, I hope he’ll be on hand; and till that time I’ll not mention him to the lady of the ranch.”

However, when—dinner past and business transacted—the Sobrante household gathered at the station, en route for home, old Ephraim Marsh was still absent from his rightful place; and to Mrs. Trent’s anxious exclamation:

“Why ‘Forty-niner’ hasn’t come yet! We can’t possibly go and leave him behind! Does anybody know where he is?” there was no reply save the warning whistle of the locomotive and the conductor’s hoarse command: “All aboard!”

Till Aunt Sally fancied a solution, crying:

“My suz! I believe he’s gone an’ broke another leg!”

CHAPTER II.
IN THE TOURIST CAR.

For a time after the train pulled out from the station at Los Angeles, Jessica Trent saw nothing for the mist of tears which blurred her eyes; save that framed in that mist was the sad, beautiful face of her mother. How pale it had been! Yet how quiet the dear voice bidding her “be worthy” of that dead father, whose representative she must be. For his sake she was to be educated. For his sake, to carry out his high ideals, she had had to leave her home and “learn life.”

“That was it, more than books, my mother said. ‘Life.’ As if there were not the best sort of life at dear Sobrante!” she murmured, fancying the loud “chug-chug” of the train would cover her voice.

To her surprise it had not. For Mr. Hale answered as if she had spoken aloud to him:

“Suppose you begin to learn it right now and here, my little maid. There are dozens of people in this car and each one is very much alive. See that odd old lady in the second section beyond ours. She seems to be in trouble of some sort and is quite alone. She’s bobbed under her seat a half-dozen times already, yet comes up empty-handed every time. You might ask her if you can help.”

For Mr. Hale was wise enough to know that the best and surest way of curing one’s own discontent is by relieving that of somebody else.

For once Jessica was not inspired by the idea of helping somebody. She was far more inclined to sit still in her comfortable place and think about things it were better she should forget—just for a little time. Sobrante, little Ned and Luis, Buster her beloved mount, the glorious garden behind the “house”—Oh! to think each mile she journeyed, each turn of those ceaseless wheels, carried her further and further away!

“Now, dear! I’m really afraid the poor old soul will hurt herself and she’s rung for the porter times without end, yet he doesn’t come. Will you, or shall I?”

Indeed, Mr. Hale had already half-risen and only delayed to offer his services because he knew it better for Jessica to be roused from her brooding. Fortunately, her good breeding conquered her reluctance and, a moment later, guiding herself along the aisle of the swaying car, she reached the old lady’s side and asked:

“Beg pardon, madam, but have you lost something? Can I help you look for it?”

The traveler rose so suddenly from her stooping posture that her stiff, old-fashioned bonnet slipped to the back of her neck and imparted a wild, rakish effect to her peculiar attire. The bonnet was so big and deep, of that shape known as “poke,” and the face it framed was so wizened and small that Jessica could think of nothing but some fairy-tale witch.

“Oh! but Sissy, me dear! Sure ’tis the kind child you are! Arrah musha! But I’ve lost me fine new gum shoes, what Barney, me son, gave me this very day whatever. ‘With your rubbers and umberell, mother,’ says he, ‘sure you’ll be makin’ the trip in fine style, and be all forehanded again’ the bad sort of weather you’ll be meetin’ th’ other side this big counthry,’ says he. And now I’ve lost them entire, and the umberell—Here ’tis. Now ain’t that a fine one, Sissy dear?”

“Why, yes. I guess so. I don’t know much about umbrellas we need them so seldom in California. But the rubbers—I’ll look under the seat. I can, easier than you. I’m young—smaller, I mean.”

“Not so much smaller, me dear, though younger by some fifty-odd year I’ve no doubt. Bless your bonny face! Found them ye have. Thank you, me child, and wait—here’s a reward for your goodness, be sure. Sit by till you eat it. ’Twould do me old heart good, so being it aches like a grumblin’ tooth the now. Leavin’ Barney and the nice wife and the bairns, as I have. Crossin’ this big counthry all by my lone; and after that the ocean; an’ all that long way just to look upon old Ireland once more and them in it I hold so dear. Barney’s but one; in Ireland are three. One is a nun and cannot; one is a priest and will not; and one is a wife and must not come over to me in this purty land of Ameriky. Was ever in old Ireland, me dear?”

Almost unconsciously Jessica had obeyed the old lady’s invitation to share the wide seat with herself and had smilingly accepted the half of a mint drop which her new acquaintance offered.

“Eat it slow and it’ll last you a long time, me dear. I always carry a few sweeties in my pocket for the childher; but mayhap ’twould do no harm were you to have the other bit, seein’s you was so good as to help an old body.”

So saying, and with a smile that softened the rugged old face, Barney’s mother carefully deposited the second half of the mint on Jessica’s knee.

“Thank you. It is very nice,” said the girl, smiling herself at thought of Ned’s disgust in being offered but one piece of candy, and that with such an air of generosity.

“You’re a fair lookin’ little maid, me dear, an’ what might your name be?”

“Jessica Trent.”

“And your home, lassie? Where’s that at?” queried this stranger with friendly curiosity. “And be you, too, travelin’ by your lone in these steam cars? Why for and where to? Sure, if so be, and our roads lie together a bit we might bear one another company. ’Twould do me old heart good to keep your bonny face alongside till the pain of this partin’ from Barney eases up a trifle. A good lad, is he, and forehanded enough, Heaven prosper him! Free with the gold to pay the toll of my journey—Whisht, alanna! I’ve five hundred dollars sewed in me petticoat! Mind that, Jessica Trent, and mintion it to none!”

The last information was given in a sibilant whisper, that might have been heard by other ears than Jessica’s, and was to her so wonderful that she stared in astonishment. This plainly-dressed old lady carrying so much money? Who would have dreamed it?

“Me own name is Dalia Mary Moriarty. Me son Barney, he come to Ameriky when but a tiny bairn, along with Dennis me man. To Californy Dennis went, to a place called Riverside, an’ a gardener by trade went into oranges an’ olives. The blessin’ of Heaven was on him an’ he prospered, even as Barney himself has done. But ’twas not till Dennis stepped into another world, the world beyant this, me dear, that I left Connemara an’ follyed here. A nice town, ’tis to be sure, but not like Ireland. There’s no land that ever I see can match old Ireland for richness an’ greenness, me dear. Here in Californy ’tis all the talk of ‘irrigatin’,’ ‘irrigatin’!’ Nought grows without that costly ‘irrigatin’,’ but in me own true land the water is given with the crops by the same free Hand above. Sure, I’ll be glad to get me home to a spot where I’ll be let toss out a dipper of water without bein’ bid: ‘Don’t waste it, mother! Remember the garden!’ As if I was ever let to forget it!” The old lady paused for breath, then added: “But ’tis kind they was, each and ivery one. Now, all about your own self, me dear, if so be there’s none waitin’ you to leave me an’ tend them.”

Jessica turned her head and saw that Mr. Hale had settled himself for a nap, so replied:

“Mr. Hale has gone to sleep so he will not need me for a time. He is the lawyer gentleman who is taking me across the continent to my mother’s cousin in New York. I am to live with her till I am educated enough to go back to Sobrante ranch, my home. My father is dead. My mother is the most beautiful gentlewoman in—in the world, I guess. I have the dearest little brother Ned—Edward, his real name is. Besides him, we have a little adopted one, Luis Maria Manuel Alessandro Garcia, and his father is dead too.”

“Saints save us! So will the bairn be soon if he has to shoulder that great name! Sounds like some them old Spaniard folkses that crop up, now an’ again, round Riverside way! But go on, me dear. ’Tis most interestin’ to hear tell of your folks, and so be as that you’re travelin’ to that same city of Ne’ York, where I take ship for home, we’ll be pleasin’ company for one another, so we will.”

Jessica was not so sure of that. By the jolting of the car the new gum shoes had again fallen to the floor and disappeared beneath the seat; and again she was bidden, rather peremptorily to:

“Seek them, child! seek them quick! If we should come to one them meal-stations, an’ they not in hand, however could I leave the car?”

Overshoes were articles the little Californian had rarely seen and never owned and, glancing out of window at the sunny landscape, she exclaimed:

“Why, what can you want of two pairs of shoes on your feet at one time? Besides, it’s past the rainy season and——”

“Tut, child! Would have me neglect the last gift of me Barney son? Out of this car I steps not at all without both me umberell an’ me gum shoes. Meal-stations, or whatever. Mind that! An’ ’tis them same what give the only bit of exercise possible on these week-long journeys, you know. ‘Get out at every stoppin’ place, mother, an’ stretch your tired legs with a tramp up an’ down them station platforms,’ says me boy, Barney.”

Jessica once more restored the overshoes and for the comfort of both suggested that they be tied fast to the old lady’s wrist by a string. Also, she began to feel that a whole week of this companion’s society would be hard to endure, despite the certain friendliness of Mrs. Moriarty. Fortunately, just then, a whistle sounded and the train began to slow up at a station. This roused Mr. Hale to come forward and, with a courteous bow to the old lady, bid Jessica:

“Come, dear. We stop here long enough to take on water; and I’ll show you some interesting things about this great overland train.”

Already the novelty of her surroundings had banished, for the time, the homesickness of Jessica’s heart. Everything was “interesting” indeed; from the great water tank with its canvas pipe for filling the engine-boiler, to the crowded baggage cars. As the stop was for several minutes, nearly everybody left the carriages, to pace swiftly up and down for the relief of seat-weary muscles, or to enter the small dining-room to snatch a hasty lunch. The place was already packed with hungry humanity and passing its window, Mr. Hale complacently remarked:

“Blessing on Aunt Sally and her fine cooking! As soon as the train moves on again we’ll sample her basket. The food will be good for a day or so but after that we, too, will have to trust to meal-stations, except on those stretches of the road where a dining-car is attached. Now, let’s look at the great engine, and make acquaintance, if we can, with the skillful engineer who holds our lives in his hands. A moment’s carelessness on his part means great danger to us, and his faithfulness is worth far greater reward than it ever attains. Another bit for your memory book: a single engine is run but a comparatively short part of our long journey. Coming to California, I learned that we had changed engines just fourteen times. Those, yonder, are the tourist-cars; less luxurious than the Pullman we travel in and cheaper. For the benefit of the many who cannot afford first-class. By the way, it would be a nice plan to enter the last end of the train and make our way forward, from car to car, till we reach our own seats in the ‘Arizona’—as our sleeper is called.”

So they did; and Jessica thought she had never seen anything so wonderful as this traveling disclosed. Especially was she interested in the “tourist” carriages; for until now she had associated that word with the wealthy, rather impertinent persons who made southern California a winter amusement ground and had none too much respect for the rights of residents whose ranches they visited. One such group, she well remembered, had driven over Sobrante as if it had been a public park, or with even greater freedom, since its temporarily absent mistress returned to find her garden despoiled of its floral treasures.

“Tourist” now began to stand for other things, in this young traveler’s mind. For weary mothers, cooking scant messes for their fretful babies upon the great stove in the corner of the car; for bare seats, sometimes heaped with all sorts of household belongings; for, indeed, a glimpse of that poverty to which the strict economies of Sobrante seemed actual luxury.

“Why, how different it is from our place in the ‘Arizona!’ I never, never, saw so many children! How they do cry! How hot and tired the mothers look! Oh! can’t I do something for somebody?” cried the girl, actually distressed by the discomfort about her.

“I wouldn’t interfere, dear. They might not like it. Besides, it’s not so bad as this all the time. We’re only beginning the long trip. After a little, things adjust themselves. People become accustomed to their cramped surroundings and acquainted with one another. By the time we reach the other side the continent, here and in our own car, we will seem like one big family—so friendly we shall grow, and so many mutually interesting things we shall find by the way;” said Mr. Hale. Then added, rather suddenly: “Why, Jessica, child! What are you doing now?”

What, indeed! This inspection of the train, begun in simple curiosity, was having a startling ending. At the extreme rear of the car they were in sat an old man, fondling a shrieking infant and vainly endeavoring to quiet it for the frail young mother who looked helplessly on. Too weak and ill she was to do more than fix her eyes upon the child and to rest her head against the uncushioned back of the seat, while the gray-haired man—Could he have been the baby’s grandfather? If so he showed little skill at nursing, for the more he petted and pitied the small creature, the more it wriggled and yelled.

Just as there sounded from outside the conductor’s order: “All aboard!” and the people came hurrying back into the car, Jessica forced her way among them to where the old man sat and catching the baby from his arms, cried in a very ecstasy of joy:

“O you blessed old ‘Forty-niner!’ That isn’t the way to hold a baby! see me!”

CHAPTER III.
THE LONG JOURNEY ENDS.

Mr. Hale never forgot that railway trip.

To rouse Jessica Trent from her sorrow at leaving home he had suggested her helping others; and so thoroughly did she follow his advice that he soon had a dozen people depending upon him for counsel and comfort. Quoth that young traveler, in the very presence of the ailing mother of the tourist car:

“We are so much better off in our ‘Arizona,’ dear Mr. Hale. Let’s take this poor little woman and this precious baby right back there with us. She can have my own soft seat with you and I can sit with Mrs. Moriarty, as she wanted me to do. Dear Mr. Marsh—Well, he must be with us in there, too. If he loved me so well he would hide away from the others and come all the way to the other ocean, just because he couldn’t live without me, course, I can’t live without him. Why he didn’t tell them was—was just because.”

“Probably a satisfactory reason to him and seems to be to you, Miss Jessica. Yet what’s to become of him in New York? Don’t for a moment imagine your future hostess, Mrs. Dalrymple, will have him at her house. From all I’ve heard of her she’s a woman of strong opinions and one of them is that it will be better for you to cut loose from your western companions for a time.”

Jessica regarded him with some surprise, but her confidence was not shaken.

“Oh! you see, she doesn’t know ‘Forty-niner.’ I suppose she’s read stories about cowboys and such things; and my father used to say that the stories were mostly exag—exaggerated, and written by people who’d never been west in their lives. Fancy! Writing a book about men one never saw! Anyway, Cousin Margaret is sure to like Ephraim Marsh. Nobody could help it.”

Meanwhile, the sharpshooter had settled himself most comfortably in the ‘Arizona,’ occupying any seat which happened to be vacant for the moment and quietly retiring to his rightful berth in the “tourist car” when bedtime came. The ailing mother had accepted Jessica’s place and berth in Mr. Hale’s section, and the little girl herself had joined forces with Mrs. Moriarty.

Jessica had had a reasonable sum of money given her, when she left Sobrante, her mother believing it would add to that womanly training she needed to have charge of it; and without consulting her present guardian the girl had given the sick woman enough of her fund to pay the different rate of fare.

It was too late for Mr. Hale to object, and he was too polite to do so. The utmost he could accomplish was to warn his charge to expend nothing more without his advice, and to pass as much of his time in the smoker as was possible. Fortunately, the baby was a happy child, when physically comfortable; and it was a good sleeper; so that the lawyer’s fear of being kept awake at night, by having it in the lower berth, proved groundless.

By the end of the second day out Jessica and the baby, which she carried everywhere, had become the life of the train; “going visiting” in one car after another, making friends in each, and feeling almost as if they were always to journey thus amid these now familiar faces. But all journeys end in time, and as they drew nearer and nearer to the eastern coast, one after another these fellow travelers departed at some stopping-place, nearest their homes.

“Why, it seems as if there was nothing in this world but just to say ‘Good-by!’” cried Jessica, tearfully, when the hour came for baby and its mother to leave the “Arizona.”

“Never mind, dearie, you’ve made it a pleasant trip for me, and it’s a little world. We may meet again; but if we don’t, just you keep on shedding sunshine and you’ll never be sad for long,” said the invalid, herself grieved to part with the little Californian yet grateful to have reached her own home alive.

Then almost before she knew it, the week-long trip had ended. The train steamed into the great station in Jersey City, those who had come “all the way across” gathered their belongings, submitted to be brushed and freshened from the stains of the long trip, hurriedly bade one another good-by and were gone. Even Mrs. Moriarty had time for but a single hug and the bestowal of a whole mint drop ere she was captured by a red-faced Irishwoman in a redder bonnet, who called her “Cousin Dalia,” and bore her away through the crowd toward that waiting steamer which should carry her onward to her beloved Ireland.

Jessica watched her go and caught her breath with a sob. It sent a sharp pain through her heart to find that she seemed the only one for whom a joyful welcome was not waiting; and she almost resented Mr. Hale’s blithe voice and manner as he laid his hand on her shoulder and demanded:

“What? Tears in your eyes, little maid? Are you so sorry to have done with those tiresome cars and to be on solid ground again? My! But it’s raining a deluge!”

“Raining? Why—how can it now, so late, in the very middle of April! But isn’t it good Grandma Moriarty did have the gum shoes, after all?”

“Humph! Good enough for her, but how about ourselves, eh? As for ‘raining in April,’ that’s just the orthodox state of the weather here in the east. Never mind. A carriage will take us safely enough to your cousin’s house. This way, please. Have you your satchel? Porter, take it and these. Now come. I’m as glad as a schoolboy to be at home again—or so near it that the first suburban train will carry me to it. Six months since I saw my wife and daughters! That’s a big slice out of a man’s life.”

He was so glad, indeed, that his usual thoughtfulness for others gave place to personal considerations; and he forgot that to his young companion this was not a joyful return but a dreaded beginning.

“This way, Jessica! Step in, please, out of the wet!”

The girl obeyed and entered the carriage, and though she had checked her tears she felt she had never seen anything so dismal as that great wharf, with its dripping vehicles, nor heard anything so dreadful as the cries of the angry drivers, jostling each other in the storm.

Then they drove on to the ferry-boat and there a thunder shower burst upon that region such as had not been known there for many a day. To the little Californian, fresh from that thunderless Paraiso d’Oro, it seemed as if the end of the world might be at hand; and she cowered against Mr. Hale who slipped his arm caressingly about her. At last he had begun to understand something of her loneliness and blamed himself that he had not done so earlier.

“Well, little girl, does this frighten you? To me it is delightful. At present so fierce, this electric storm will clear the air of all impurity, and by the time we reach Washington Square, where Mrs. Dalrymple lives, we shall have almost Californian sunshine. Just think! Though you have never seen her she is your very own ‘blood relation.’ She knew your mother when she, too, was a little maid like yourself. I confess I should have liked to know that lady then myself. She must have been a model of all girlish sweetness, as she is now of womanly graces. To grow up such a gentlewoman as Mrs. Trent—that’s why you are breasting a thunder-storm here in New York to-day. Hark! That peal wasn’t quite so loud as the others. The storm is rapidly passing eastward and the clouds are lightening. Now look out of the window and get your first glimpse of our biggest American city. Not the finest part, by any means, but every part is interesting to me.”

Thus advised Jessica peered through the rain-splashed glass into that crowded west-side avenue, where it seemed as if the never-ending line of drays and wagons, the clanging street-cars, the roar of the “elevated” trains above, and the shouts and screams of all the teamsters, was pandemonium indeed. She did not find the outlook at all “interesting,” as the loyal citizen had described it, but most confusing and terrifying. If this were New York, however should she be able to endure it?

With a down sinking of her heart, and a homesickness quite too deep for tears, the “little Captain” leaned back and closed her eyes, while her fancy pictured that far-away Sobrante, lying bathed in sunshine and in a peacefulness so wholly in contrast to this dreadful city. Memories of her home recalled the fact that Ephraim, a part of her old world, was not with her now and that in the confusion of leaving the train she had quite forgotten him. This sent her upright again, startled and eager, to say:

“Why, Mr. Hale! How terrible! We’ve forgotten ‘Forty-niner!’ we must go right back and get him!”

“Impossible. He should have been on the lookout for us and kept us in sight. Besides, if we did go back we couldn’t find him. New York crowds are always changing and he’d move on with the rest. Doubtless, he thinks it easy to overtake us anywhere here.”

Jessica was hurt. She could not realize how greatly tried the lawyer had been by many of her thoughtless actions during their long journey, nor how impatient he was now to be free from his care of her and away to his own household. His irritation was perfectly natural, and, secretly, he was extremely glad that they had thus easily lost the sharpshooter. It was a most satisfactory way out of the difficulty in appearing at Mrs. Dalrymple’s house with the veteran ranchman in train. That she would decline to receive Mr. Marsh, he was quite sure; in which case he would himself have been left with the old fellow upon his hands, to care for in some way till he could be expressed back to Sobrante. Yes, he was certainly relieved; but he did not enjoy the reproachful glance which his young charge bestowed upon him as he spoke. After a moment she asked:

“Will carriages take you anywhere you want to go, here in this big place? Can you hire one for money, just as in our dear Los Angeles, when Mr. Ninian got one to take us from one station to the other? Could a little girl hire one, herself?”

“Why, of course; but Jessica, dear child, get no silly notions into your head of running about this city alone—even in a public hack. Within a very few moments I shall hand you over to the care of your future guardian and you will have to be guided by her in everything. Nor need you worry about Ephraim. He’s an old campaigner, has a tongue to ask questions with, and this is a decent community. He’ll look out for himself well enough. There! A half-dozen more blocks and we shall have arrived!”

Jessica could not answer. She turned her head aside and carefully studied the street through which they were passing. It looked hopelessly like others they had left. The houses bordering it were so tall and close together that they seemed to take up all the air, leaving none for her to breathe. It was a great relief when they came to an open square and stopped before a big house fronting upon it.

“Ah! I fancied this was the place! One of our old landmarks—and very few are left. How fine for you to come to live here, child! I almost envy you the distinction,” cried the New Yorker, with enthusiasm, as he stepped from the carriage and turned to help Jessica out.

But she was already on the pavement, staring eagerly at her new home and seeing nothing so remarkable as Mr. Hale fancied about it. It was some larger than the other houses near, almost twice as wide, indeed; and it stood somewhat back from the street, guarded by a sharp-pointed iron fence and an imposing gate. Two rather rusty iron lions couched before the entrance, on the brown stone steps, but time had softened their once fierce expression to a sort of grin which could frighten nobody—not even a stranger from Paraiso d’Oro. On both sides of the mansion was a stretch of green grass, a rare feature in a city where every foot of ground was so precious, and that spoke much for the obstinacy of its possessor who must repeatedly have refused to part with it for building purposes.

So absorbed in looking at the mansion were both the lawyer and Jessica that they scarcely heard the murmur of voices behind them, where their jehu was quietly discussing and arranging a little matter of business with a man who had ridden beside himself on his coachman’s seat; nor, till they passed through the iron gateway and ascended the steps, did they realize that the man, also, had followed.

Then Mr. Hale turned his head and uttered a cry of regret. But Jessica, likewise turning, felt nothing but joy as she flung herself upon Ephraim Marsh, standing “at attention,” as composed and at ease as if he were waiting his mistress’s commands upon the porch at Sobrante.

“Why, Marsh! you—here?” cried the lawyer. “We—Miss Jessica feared she had lost you.”

“She needn’t have. She couldn’t. She’ll never lose me till the grave covers me,” answered the sharpshooter, solemnly.

“O Ephy! don’t speak of graves, right here at the beginning of things! And oh! how glad I am to have you, how glad, how glad! You’re a real bit of dear Sobrante and give me courage!”

The great key turned in the door-lock, a bolt or two shot back and the door swung on its mighty hinges; slowly and cautiously at first, then with more confidence as the attendant saw nothing formidable in these visitors. They seemed to be a gentleman, a soldier, and a little girl, where he had anticipated beggars or burglars, or worse.

“Is Mrs. Dalrymple at home? This is Miss Jessica Trent, of California, whom the lady expects; and I am—this is my card. Mr. Marsh, also, of California—and——”

Mr. Hale paused then motioning Jessica forward followed whither the old butler led the way; “Forty-niner” bringing up the rear with his stiffest military stride and most impassive expression.

They were ushered into a great room at the back of the house. Its long windows were opened upon an iron balcony, from which a flight of steps ran down into what once had been a charming garden but was now a neglected wilderness. The room itself was oppressive from its crowding furniture, dust-covered and dark in tone, and a faded carpet strewn with much litter added to the unpleasant effect. Till suddenly Jessica discovered that the carpet had once been a “picture.” An old-time hunting scene with horses and people and dogs galore; where some of the horses had lost their heads, the dogs their tails, and the red coats of the huntsmen had suffered much-through the tread of feet during years and years of time.

Nevertheless, she was down upon her knees examining it, calling attention to this detail or that, till the silence in which they had been left was broken by the sound of a tap-tap along the hall and the old butler reappeared, announcing:

“Madam Dalrymple.”

Mr. Hale rose and advanced, “Forty-niner” made his best “salute,” but Jessica neither moved nor spoke. She could only gaze with fascination at the figure standing between the portieres and wait what next. That an “old lady”? That!

CHAPTER IV.
IN THE ANCIENT MANSION.

“My cousin Jessica! I bid you welcome. Studying my wonderful old carpet, I see. Your mother did that before you, child, and many another Waldron besides her. Mr. Hale, I am happy to meet you. Be seated, please. This other gentleman——”

“Ephraim Marsh, at your sarvice, Ma’am. I belong to Miss Trent. I’m from Sobrante with her, Ma’am.”

Mr. Hale waited with much interest for what might follow this statement, but was unprepared for the gracious suavity of Madam Dalrymple, of whose temper he had heard much. With a kindly, if patronizing, smile she waved Ephraim aside, directing her own old servitor to:

“Take Marsh below, Tipkins, and see that he has refreshments.”

Evidently, the Madam had accepted the sharpshooter as a correct feature of the situation, considering that it was the mark of a gentlewoman to be well attended; and as the two old men left the room he wondered how “Forty-niner” himself would relish being classed with the servants “below stairs.” However, Ephraim cared not one whit for that. He had attained his ambition. He had come east to share in educating his “little Captain” and he was now assigned to a home in the same house with her. “Hooray!” was his thought; and, further, that as soon as one other small matter was settled he would sit him down and write a letter to the other “boys” that would make them stare.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Dalrymple sank gracefully into a deep chair, displaying no sign of the intense pain each movement cost her and physically unable to stand for a moment longer. Thence she held out a thin white hand toward the girl who had not yet risen from the floor, nor left off staring at the lady before her—so wholly different from the picture she had formed of the “stern old woman” with whom she was to live.

Now blushing at her own rudeness, which she was sure the other had observed, she rose and came slowly forward and took the extended hand. Poor hand! So white, yet with such cruelly gnarled and swollen joints! There was no kiss proffered from either side; even impulsive Jessica feeling that she would no more dare touch that person in the arm-chair than she would a bit of the most delicate, and forbidden, porcelain.

“Thank you for welcoming me, Cousin Margaret; if I am to call you that?” said “Lady Jess,” all the wonder and admiration she felt showing in her face.

“Certainly, my dear. We are second-cousins twice removed.”

“Then, Cousin Margaret, my mother sends you her dear love and great respect; and I am to obey you in all things—all things that I can; and I am to do for you whatever you will let me.”

With that, having ended her little speech as duly instructed by her mother, Jessica folded her arms across her bosom and tossed back her yellow curls, in a characteristic gesture, now wholly familiar to Mr. Hale, but which to a stranger had a little air of defiance. So Mrs. Dalrymple interpreted it, and with some amusement asked:

“You make some reservation of your obedience, then, do you, Cousin Jessica? Like Gabriella herself. Meaning, maybe, to obey me when and only when it suits your mood to do so. Very well; we shall understand each other perfectly; and those who understand know how to avoid collision. Be assured, we shall never quarrel, little cousin.”

Jessica was troubled. She felt she had expressed herself badly and offended this wonderful lady whom she longed to have love her, and who seemed so little inclined to do so. She hastened to explain:

“I meant only if you should happen to tell me to do something that I felt wasn’t right—or that is different from what my mother likes—or, oh! dear! Please do understand what I want to say, for, truly, it was nothing naughty!”

Madam Dalrymple laughed, and answered:

“Your words, little cousin, are but another instance of the fact that explanations are the most hopeless things in this world. When Gabriella left me she, too, tried to ‘explain’ and failed to make a bit of change in the bare truth. She left me because she wished. You’ll disobey me, if you do, because you wish. That’s the matter in a nutshell. One thing I’ll make clear at the beginning: I shall lay no unnecessary commands upon you, and I shall insist that you remember everywhere and always that you are a—Waldron. You belong to a race that has high ideals and lives up to them. Ah! yes! One other thing. I don’t care for demonstrations of affection. We have not come together because we are, or ever will be, fond of one another; but because we are both Waldrons and the time is fitting.

“Ah! must you leave us, Mr. Hale? Beg pardon for not—not having attended more to you than to the child there; and thank you for your safe escort of her. I shall write my cousin Gabriella at once and inform her that Jessica has arrived. Good morning.”

Mr. Hale bowed himself out, feeling almost as if he were deserting his traveling companion to a most unhappy fate. For a girl like “Lady Jess” to be housed with Madam Dalrymple seemed a bitter thing. The child had lived in the sunshine, materially and spiritually, and the gloom of that old mansion in Washington Square had been oppressive even to him and during such a brief stay. And for the first time since he had discovered “Forty-niner” a runaway on the train he was thankful for his presence.

“There’s a trio of stubborn wills shut up in that dark house, this minute, for even Miss Jessie has a will of her own; as for those of the Madam and Ephraim, should they happen to clash, I wonder which would conquer! However, I’ve done with them, for the present, and now for home and my own dear girls!” thought the lawyer, as he reentered the waiting carriage and was driven toward the station which led to his own home, a few miles north of town.

Madam Dalrymple made a slight motion to rise and dropped the slender cane which had rested against her chair, and the “tap-tapping” of which had announced her coming through the hall. Instantly, Jessica had picked it up and restored it, and was as promptly thanked. Moreover the lady’s eyes, still marvelously dark and bright for one so old, rested with an interested expression on the young face before them.

“That was well thought, Cousin Jessica. Your mother must have trained you better than I feared, living so in the wilderness.”

“Oh! it isn’t a wilderness, not in the least. It is the most beautiful spot in all the world! New York can’t compare with our lovely Sobrante—not compare! And I hope she didn’t have to ‘train’ me to do a thing like that, which nobody could help doing, could they?”

“Came naturally, eh? Better still. Sit down. It tires me to see you standing. Luncheon will be served at one and it is almost that time now. Sit down and tell me about your journey—or anything you choose. Only speak low. I observe that by nature, if you are not excited, your voice is fairly good. Gentlewomen are never noisy nor obtrusive. Remember that.”

Jessica would rather have remained standing, or, better still, have stepped through the long open window out into that rain-drenched old garden, a-glitter now in the sunshine that was almost as bright as Sobrante’s. But she reflected that here was her first chance to “obey” and placed herself on a low stool near her hostess, fixing her gaze upon the lady’s face with a curiosity that failed to offend, it was so full of admiration. Yet finding that serene scrutiny somewhat trying, Mrs. Dalrymple herself opened the conversation by asking:

“Does Gabriella, your mother, keep her good looks? Or is she faded from that rude life she leads and the sorrow she has met?”

“Faded? My—mother—faded? Why, how queer! Cousin Margaret Dalrymple, she is almost the most beautiful woman in all southern California. Truly! Mr. Ninian says so, and Mr. Hale did, and—and I think so! She is just like the Madonna picture in Fra Sebastian’s house, she is so lovely. Her hair—her hair isn’t quite as white as yours, it is a beautiful dark gold color—but she has almost as much as you. She doesn’t wear it in that puffed up, frizzly kind of way, but just turns it back in one big coil that is—is lovely.”

Mrs. Dalrymple slightly winced. She did wear a profusion of snow-white locks, as became a venerable woman of fashion, and Jessica was not wise enough, as yet, to know that such headgear may be bought in a shop and put on or off at will. The next question followed rather soon and sharply:

“Does she still sing? She once had a charming voice.”

“Oh! it is like the birds in the trees along the arroyo to hear my mother sing! She doesn’t often now, it makes her think so much of my father. Why, all the ‘boys’ say that it was something wonderful when they two sang together of a Sunday morning, or sometimes at night. John Benton said it was as near like the music of Heaven as anything on the earth could be. John is very religious, John is; only, sometimes, when Aunt Sally tries his patience very much he says—he says things that don’t sound nice. But Samson is religiouser even than John. They’re both of them just perfectly splendid ‘boys.’ Oh! all our ‘boys’ are fine, just fine! You’d love them every one!” answered Jessica with enthusiasm.

“Humph! I was never any too fond of ‘boys,’ and Gabriella must be crazy to try and run a ranch by the aid of a few ‘boys.’ Why doesn’t she employ men, if so be she will persist in living in such an outlandish place?”

“Little Captain” smiled.

“Well, I suppose they’re not exactly real boys, like Ned or Luis. They’re quite grown up and gray-headed, most of them. They all worked for my father, who found them scattered about the world, sort of ‘down on their luck,’ as Marty says, and brought them all to dear Sobrante to give them a home and ‘another chance.’ They just about worshipped my father, I guess, and I know they do my darling mother. Oh! I wish you could see her!”

“It is wholly her own fault that I cannot. Here comes Tipkins to announce luncheon, and I have quite forgotten that you should have been taken to your room to freshen yourself after your journey. Odd! that Gabriella should have sent a man and not a maid with you. But I suppose she knew I would prefer one of my own selection, here in the east.”

“Oh! She didn’t send Ephraim. He—he just came because he loved me so and wouldn’t stay behind. He— Why dear old ‘Forty-niner’ actually ran away! Fancy! Just as the little boys so love to do.”

“Humph! A strange life, a strange bringing up you seem to have had. Tipkins, send Barnes to attend Miss Jessica.”

“Yes, Madam, I’ll—try,” replied the old servant, bowing and withdrawing upon the errand. Both he and his mistress well knew that Barnes, my lady’s-maid, was rarely “sent” upon any errand her own will did not dictate, and that she had more than once declared, since the coming of Jessica had been decided upon, that “the Madam needn’t go for to expect me to ’tend upon no brats at my time of life, nor she needn’t ask it. If she does I’ll give notice and that’ll settle her.”

However, curiosity often accomplishes what authority cannot; and because Tipkins had reported below stairs that “our Miss Gabriella’s little daughter looks like a hangel out of Heaven,” and the sharpshooter had treated her maidship with such profound reverence, upon being presented as “Miss Jessica’s man”—the arbitrary Barnes condescended to obey the present summons.

Mrs. Dalrymple had made a slight effort to rise from her chair and Jessica had already sprung forward to help her, when the white-capped and white-haired maid appeared; but the lady now sank back again, directing:

“Show Miss Jessica to her room, Barnes, please, and help her to make what slight change is necessary now. Her luggage can be unpacked before dinner. I will wait here for her.”

“Luncheon is served, Madam,” remonstrated the maid, rather sharply.

“It can be put back. I will wait for you here,” returned the mistress with equal sharpness.

With a sniff and a bridling of her head Barnes departed, bidding Jessica: “This way, please, and mind the stairs. All this twaddle about old things being better’n new and risking mortals’ legs on rags, beats me. Hmm. Some folks grow queerer as they grow older, some does.”

Jessica followed in wondering silence and, although warned to “mind the stairs,” caught her toe in the frayed covering of one and fell. But she was up again as soon as down and without quite understanding why was indignant with her guide for the slighting tone in which she spoke. Certainly, the carpet had once been a very fine one. Even now, where an unbroken spot appeared, the foot sank deep into a mossy greenness that was delightful, and fully bore out the vivid description of this old home which her mother had sometimes given her.

But even in Mrs. Trent’s own girlhood days the furnishings of this ancient mansion had become worn almost to uselessness, and the years which had elapsed since then had finished the work of destruction. In truth, all the floor coverings were now but what Barnes called “man traps,” where unwary feet would be caught and falls result.

“’Twas one of them same holes the Madam caught her own high heel in and got an injury was the beginning of her lameness. The doctor calls it ‘gout,’ he does; but I, well, I calls it ‘pride,’ just plain, senseless, family pride. Whatever was, my lady thinks, is far and away better nor what is. But as for me and the rest of the servants, give us even the cheapest sort of ‘ingrain,’ providing it was new and we’d feel safer for our old bones. Well, here is your room, Miss, and if you’ll let me slip off your frock I’ll soon make you tidy.”

“Thence she held out a thin white hand toward the girl who had not yet risen
from the floor.”

(See page [41])

Had Jessica known it this was a fine concession on the part of ever-weary Barnes, who acknowledged to her advancing age with a frankness which her mistress denied, but she looked so tired from her climb up the long stairs that the girl promptly exclaimed:

“Oh! Don’t you trouble, please, Mrs. Barnes. I can wait upon myself quite well. Indeed, I never have anybody to wait upon me, except now and then my darling mother—just for love’s sake.” Then with a swift recollection of the tenderness those motherly fingers had shown, even in the matter of buttoning or unbuttoning a frock, her blue eyes grew moist and for a moment that dreadful homesickness made her turn half-faint.

Now old Barnes was neither dense nor unkind. She was merely spoiled. She had domineered over her fractious mistress since both of them were young and she really felt that she was of more authority in the house than its owner. She and Tipkins had entered service together, at the time of Mrs. Dalrymple’s early marriage, and like the storied “brook” they “had gone on forever.” Dozens, maybe hundreds, of other servants had “flowed” through the mansion and few had tarried long. None save these two original servitors willingly put up with the peculiarities of the Madam, and the old-time inconveniences of the establishment. She was quick to notice the down dropping of the girlish face and the gleam of tears beneath the long lashes, and said, consolingly:

“Of course, Miss, it’ll seem lonesome like and different at first. But you’ll get used to it, you know. A body can get used to anything in time. I suppose Californy’s a terrible hot place, now ain’t it? So it’s a good job you’ve come away from it before the summer. That old man of yours, he’s a queer stick, I judge. But polite, why he’s real polite. And old. That’s a fine thing, too. If he’d been young, Madam would have sent him about his business so fast ’twould have made him dizzy. But she likes everything old. Having old folks about her makes her forget her own age and fancy herself still a mere girl. Never remind my lady that she’s not as young as she used to be and you’ll get on—get on, fairly well, that is. Now, ready? Is that the kind of frock you generally wear?”

Barnes had comfortably rested in a rocker while Jessica washed and brushed at the great washstand, furnished with such expensive and badly nicked china, in one corner of the great chamber. The rocker had been overlooked, in the preparation of this room for a young girl’s use, and would have been removed had Madam remembered it. She herself disdained the use of such a chair and considered it totally unfit for well-bred people. Easy chairs of ancient and ample proportions—these were quite different; but until of late, since that accident which Barnes had mentioned, she had herself never occupied aught but the straight-backed ones, such as had been the correct thing in her childhood.

“Yes, most of my clothes are made like this. My mother does them. Isn’t it pretty? I’ve two more;” finished Jessica proudly, sweeping out the rather scant skirt to show its beauty.

“Two more! Is that all? And you one of the greatest heiresses in the land, my lady says!” cried Barnes, looking with infinite scorn upon the simple blue flannel dress which its wearer thought so fine. “Well! If that ain’t odd! Come. We’ll go down now, and I warn you again—mind the stairs!”

CHAPTER V.
BUSTER TAKES A CITY TRAIL.

No life could have been in greater contrast to that of Sobrante than this upon which the young Californian now entered. Her own first letter home may best describe it, written soon after her arrival in Washington Square, and while her impressions were still vivid.

“My Darlingest, Dearest Mother:

“We got here all safe and sound, after a nice journey. I was so homesick at first I thought I should die. Then Mr. Hale sent me to do something for a dear old Irish lady in the two sections ahead of ours. It was my section, too, afterwards when the sick mother and the Baby came. I found them in the tourist car—tourists can be real nice sometimes, mother dear—we’d made mistakes thinking they couldn’t be, there at home. But Mr. Hale says the world is full of all sorts of people and rude tourists and polite tourists are two of those sorts. Besides, our Cousin Margaret Dalrymple thinks it’s not being a tourist makes the difference. It’s ‘born in folks to be refined or coarse, and one can’t help nature.’ She thinks it’s ‘born in me,’ to be quite nice, but that’s no credit to me; she says I had the advantage to be a Waldron. Being a Waldron is, I guess, being everything ‘correct.’ I’m very glad we’re all Waldrons together, you and Cousin Margaret, and darling Ned, and I. It seems to be a great help in doing just what one ought to do.

“Wasn’t it dear and sweet and just perfectly lovely of ‘Forty-niner’ to steal away and come to take care of me? Mr. Hale said he was afraid you Sobrante people would be worried about him, so he telegraphed right back to tell you where he was. I hope you got that message sooner than we used to those which came by way of Marion; but, of course, you did—since now we have a little station of our very own right at ‘the Sobrante.’ Queer. My Cousin Margaret and some people who have come to this house seem to think it’s a wonderful thing, that having a copper mine in the family. I don’t! I think it’s horrid. If it hadn’t been for that old stuff being dug out of the earth I’d never have had to come away here to be educated. Am I not getting educated fast? Yet I’ve learned to write thus much better just from you and Mr. Ninian teaching me at home. I am taking the greatest pains to do all you want me to.

“This is the queerest, quaintest old house in the city, some of the visitors say. That our Cousin Margaret has been offered an enormous price for it but won’t sell it, even though she would get all that money and ‘the neighborhood isn’t what it used to be.’ Even she says that, and complains most bitterly about the ‘parvenusers’ that have crept into it. There are stores and artists’ studios and apartment places and—all sorts of things that a Waldron doesn’t like in the Square, nowadays. But Cousin Margaret says that once only the ‘inner circle of society’ dwelt in these old houses.

“Speaking of old: that is one word you must never apply to our Cousin Margaret. I thought I’d best tell you in case you didn’t know. I shouldn’t have known, not right at first, if Barnes hadn’t told me. Barnes says that the older and more worn-out the things are the better pleased Mrs. Dalrymple is. She is so proud of everything in the ‘mansion’ being just the same as it was in her own grandfather’s time, that she won’t even buy new chairs for the kitchen nor have new plumbing put in, even though the health officers have been trying to make her do that. That’s why she can never keep cooks and people like that, of the ‘lower classes,’ you know. Barnes says there have been four new cooks this very last week that ever was, and I guess each one is stupider than the other. I know Wun Lung would have been ashamed to put such stuff on our table at home as we had here that first luncheon. (We spell lunch with an ‘eon’ at our Cousin Margaret’s.) As for dear Aunt Sally, I believe she would have got up and tossed the whole mess out into the garden for the chickens to eat. Only there aren’t any chickens and Aunt Sally wasn’t here.

“Dear Ephraim was; and that is the best thing has happened this dozen years, Tipkins says. You used to know Tipkins, so, of course, you know too that he ‘wouldn’t demean himself to cook anything’ unless his Madam was really starving, and then he’d make Barnes do it. He is the only one can make Barnes do things she doesn’t like. My Cousin Margaret can’t. It’s Barnes makes Cousin Margaret. But Barnes said she was a lady’s-maid and she wouldn’t demean, either. Ephraim thinks there’s a ‘touch of sentiment in Barnes’s heart for Tipkins’ and that’s why she minds him—sometimes! Ephraim wishes she would get the same sort of ‘touch’ for him, then she wouldn’t order him to do things he really doesn’t like. Mr. Hale thought Cousin Margaret would be angry with ‘Forty-niner’ for coming and send him away, but she wasn’t at all. She thinks it is perfectly ‘correct and Waldron-y’ to have a man belonging to you. She was a little vexed that you didn’t send a ‘maid’ with me, too, till I told her you hadn’t any maid to send. Our maids were both Chinese ‘boys’ and had never combed a girl’s hair in their lives nor buttoned a frock.

“But the best part about Ephraim is that now he is the cook. Seems that when he was offered that first luncheon he looked it over and turned up his nose about it. Said he reckoned he was in a city where they could buy victuals ready cooked if a body was such a fool he couldn’t cook them himself. And would he go out and get something fit to eat? And Tipkins asked, had he any money? Then Ephraim had to own that he hadn’t. It had taken his very last cent to pay his own fare here from home and to pay Buster’s fare, too. Think of that? The darling old ‘boy’ had hired Buster brought on by express, in a car all by himself, because there weren’t any cattle cars on our train, and it had cost—Oh! dear! I don’t yet know how much. Ephy won’t tell. Anyway, he’d struck his bottom dollar when he reached Washington Square—had just enough to hire the hackman to bring Buster to the house for him. So he’s here, in the stable behind, with our Cousin Margaret’s black span, who are as old, seems if, as everything else.

“Asking him if he had money for the food made Ephraim mad. So he said that if he hadn’t he had sense enough to cook it, if there was any to cook. Then Tipkins hurried off and bought a great basket full of everything nice, and that night we had such a dinner as would have done even Aunt Sally credit. There was quite a tilt between those two funny old men! Tipkins, he said he was the butler, and as long as there was a woman under the roof it wasn’t a man’s place to handle a gridiron, and so he wouldn’t demean to cook. Ephraim said he’d been everything under the sun a man could be—except a nasty, high-flown English butler! He’d worn the United States’ military uniform, and he’d dug gold out of California mountains, and taught the nicest girl in the universe to sharpshoot to beat the militia—That was me! Wasn’t it nice of him to say that?—and he guessed rather than let that girl what had done him so proud go and starve for want of decent food he’d tackle the first frying-pan came his way.

“So there he is, installed in the great, dreary kitchen downstairs, where it’s so dark I wonder he can see at all, and just as proud now of the fine things he fixes as he used to be of me when I hit the bull’s-eye. And our Cousin Margaret is perfectly delighted with him. She isn’t a bit ashamed to say that her stomach has a good deal to do with her temper, and that if the first is satisfied the last is sure to be. That’s a good thing about Cousin Margaret. She isn’t a bit afraid to say anything she thinks about—about all that is, except her own age. I don’t mean, course, that she would tell a wrong story about that, even, if anybody would dare to ask, but I can’t fancy anybody daring. She is such a beautiful old lady—gentlewoman, I should say. She’s like you in that, she thinks that is the correctest word. She wears clothes that even I, who don’t know much about such matters, know are perfectly beautiful. Shining, shimmery silks—like the sunlight on the arroyo when there’s water in it; made long and draggy like our peacocks’ own tails and her hair—Why, mother dearest! Even your beautiful hair isn’t half so much as hers. It’s piled on top of her head in what she calls a ‘pompydoor,’ and dips down behind all in little crinkles, like mine after it’s been washed; and her skin is so white, I don’t believe she ever went out into the sunshine without her veil to keep it off. Her eyes are black and snappy and she never wears glasses, like the ‘boys’ do, except in what Barnes calls the ‘privacy of her bedchamber.’ I’ve never seen that privacy and I should be afraid to sleep in her bedchamber. It’s the front room upstairs, with three great windows and an ‘alcove.’ In the ‘alcove’ is a big, big bed, all stuffy curtains and things around it and so high there’s a little ladder to climb up. There are looking-glasses all about and so many chairs and wardrobes and things I shouldn’t think she could hardly move about. I have seen it all from the hall, going to my own room at the back, but I’ve never been invited in and I wouldn’t dare to go without being asked. That’s the one thing about our Cousin Margaret. I guess it’s what you call ‘stately.’ She keeps people from daring, all except Barnes. Even the persons who call and stay in the drawing-room act afraid of Madam. Her reception days are like a queen’s, Tipkins says. There is to be one, to-morrow; the ‘last of the season.’ She sent Barnes down somewhere to buy me a white frock, with blue ribbons and white shoes and stockings. I am to wear it at the reception and be presented, for a few minutes, because I am ‘Gabriella’s child.’ Then I am to be sent away again. That seems silly to me: to spend money for a frock to wear only a few minutes, but I wouldn’t dare say so to Madame Dalrymple.

“My room is the one you used to have. I wonder how you could sleep in it without being afraid. I can’t. So Ephy comes upstairs and sleeps on a cot outside the door. I was never afraid in all my life before, but I am here. Everything is so big and dark and heavy. I feel as if I were carrying mountains on my chest, and I’d give—Oh! what wouldn’t I give to jump on Buster’s bare back and scamper up the canyon as fast as he could go! Cousin Margaret was nice about Buster, too. She says it is quite a distinction to have a real Californian with her caballero and broncho to ride alongside her carriage when she goes out driving in the Park. We are going this afternoon. But I don’t feel as glad as I ought, because I must wear the funniest kind of a habit, with a long flapping skirt, and Ephraim must put on some stiff-looking things she calls suitable for a groom. Cousin Margaret has bought these clothes for us, too, all ready-made, and Ephraim says he is plumb disgusted, and that he will feel like a fool. I hope he won’t. I can’t imagine darling ‘Forty-niner’ feeling like anybody except his own sensible self.

“Now, dearest mother, I must stop. I promised Cousin Margaret I would have my new riding things on at precisely four o’clock. When she says four o’clock she doesn’t mean a minute before that time nor a minute after. The first lesson she is trying to teach me is—is ‘punctuerality’ or something like that. She says that to be exact is another mark of a gentlewoman, and dear me! It seems that being a gentlewoman here in New York, with Madam to watch me, is lots harder than being one at dear Sobrante, with only your sweet smile to guide me.

“P.S. I have written you a long, long letter. I have felt as if I were talking to you and I have talked right out. The reason it is done so well is that Cousin Margaret has read it all over and corrected it and made me copy it. She said she would have liked to strike out some of my sentences; that they ‘suggested a coarseness which must have come from the Trent side of my nature,’ and that no girl, purely Waldron, would have put them in. However, it was her own dignity as a Waldron which kept her from the striking out. She was willing to correct the spelling and writing, though she left some mistakes for you to see, so that you might know how much I need that education I have got to take. Oh! dear! It sounds like a dose of castor oil, or Aunt Sally’s picra! Or even like a great big club I must be cudgelled with. Never mind. I’ll ‘tackle’ that old education with everything that is in me, so that I can get it over and done with and travel home to you again. The last part of this letter I have not had to have corrected; and the next one I write I’ll try to make so perfect she’ll not wish to read any more. If our Cousin Margaret would only love me a little tiny bit! or let me love her. I so long to hear somebody say ‘darling’ or ‘precious,’ or anything else that would make me know they cared. Only Ephraim does now and then, but has to say it on ‘the sly’ as he calls it. When Cousin Margaret doesn’t hear. It would be beneath a Waldron’s dignity to be familiar with a servant—and she considers darling ‘Forty-niner’ such. He only laughs about it; though, all the same, I believe he’s met what Marty calls his ‘come-uppance’ in our Cousin Margaret. She likes him, treats him well enough, but keeps him at arms’ length as if he were some sort of a ‘creature’ and he is more afraid of her than even Tipkins. He says that’s because if he offended she would send him away and he won’t be sent.

“Good-by, good-by, good-by! O my mother! If I had your arms about me just this minute! After all I have left a blank page. That is for you to fill up with kisses and love, love, love—to you, and Ned, and every single body on that dear Sobrante ranch. Oh! why did old Pedro ever show us that copper mine? If he hadn’t I wouldn’t have been one of ‘the richest girls’ nor have had an education! I should have just stayed happily at home and been only a loving

Daughter Jessica.”

There was a tap at the door and the girl carefully folded and sealed the envelope, while a small colored girl, one of the various “emergencies” as Ephraim called the shifting “extra help” summoned almost daily, announced:

“The Madam she done want you-all to come right along downstairs and go a-ridin’ with her. She says you-all must ha’ heerd the big clock strike an’ should ha’ paid your own attention, miss.”

Jessica sprang up, tripped in the skirt of her riding habit, and fell on the floor, while the messenger first stared then burst into a loud guffaw. That was a sort of noise not permitted in that old mansion and both she and Jessica were frightened as if they had committed some misdemeanor, as the latter got upon her feet again and held the offending skirt high out of the way.

She looked curiously upon the little maid, with whom she would far rather have stayed and played than to have ridden in solemn state beside the great carriage of her cousin. Girls were the greatest novelty of all these many new things which had come into her life; and the one redeeming feature about that forthcoming “education” was that it would be prosecuted in company with many other “girls.” However, she dared not tarry, and in a few moments was in her saddle, with Ephraim riding a hired hack at the prescribed distance behind her, and Buster vainly trying to accommodate his paces to her will and those of the sedate blacks drawing the old barouche.

For a little time all went well. Jessica was an experienced mistress of this exercise and felt her spirits rise as they had not before since reaching the great city. Mrs. Dalrymple watched her with pride, which had at first been anxiety, but soon saw that she had no need to fear for any awkwardness on her young cousin’s part.

“Why, my dear, you do well. You might have been trained in our best riding academy,” commended the Madam, with satisfaction. “It is the characteristic of a gentlewoman to be an accomplished equestrienne.”

Jessica smiled and cast a meaning glance backward into Ephraim’s face, which he was trying to compose into that impassive stolidity of Mrs. Dalrymple’s own coachman and footman. But he failed and the most he could accomplish was an ignominious wink. Tipkins had duly instructed him as to the “correct” behavior on this his appearance as “groom,” but that teacher would have been shocked through all his English soul had he seen that contorted wink.

Then they found their way into Fifth Avenue, and this seemed to Jessica the prettiest part of the town that she had seen, with its aristocratic, comparative quiet; and here Mrs. Dalrymple explained:

“That brown-stone house on the corner, the right side of the street, is Madam Mearsom’s school, where I shall place you at the beginning of the fall term. It is the most fashionable and exclusive of all our private schools and it is where your mother was trained. I shall take you to call upon her soon, and have already entered your name upon her list. Commonly, a pupil has to be enrolled at least two years before there is a vacancy in her limited classes; but Madam has made an exception in your favor because, as she admitted, she has always had the honor of educating the Waldrons. I hope you will appreciate the concession and never forget the high ideals you must maintain.”

“I will try, Cousin Margaret,” dutifully replied “little Captain,” though feeling that the “Waldrons and their ideals” were a burden too heavy for her to bear.

“Now we must turn aside, into a cross street, to see my dressmaker. I don’t know why such persons always will live on cross streets! It’s most annoying, they are so much narrower and confusing. Notice, child, how our New York is laid out. As simple as a checker-board—from First Street up, all the cross streets go by count, and all the Avenues in the same order, until you come to that far-away East Side where they are lettered. But neither you nor I will ever have more to do with Avenues A, B, or C, than to know they do exist and are marked on the city map.”

The coachman drew up before a house which seemed to be familiar both to him and the blacks, which settled down into a sleepy attitude, quite unfitting such aristocratic beasts but that indicated their prescience of a long wait. The Madam was helped from the carriage and had to pause a moment, as always when she made any physical exertion, before ascending the steps. Then she passed up them with the ease of a much younger woman and was promptly admitted.

It was there that disaster fell. Buster had been growing more and more restive. Jessica’s unfamiliar skirt fretted his delicate skin; the saddle was not his old one fitting comfortably to his back; this enforced pacing, pacing, was intolerable to a broncho of spirit; this standing quiet was more annoying even than the pacing had been; and when a honking automobile came dashing around the corner of the block, almost into his very face, he cast one terrified, reproachful glance into his rider’s eyes and took the bit in his teeth.

Oh! but he traveled then! Ephraim pursuing and using most objectionable language to the hack he bestrode.

“Oh! you vile beast! Call yourself a horse, do you? well, you don’t know what a horse is, I tell you! Get up! Get on! Vamos! Speed! Even old Stiffleg, that deserted me on the streets of Los Angeles, had more fire in him than you, poor old worn-out New Yorker! Vamos! V-A-M-O-S!”

In vain. Jessica had vanished. The broncho, unused to city sights and sounds, would not be checked nor swerved from the mad course he had elected to follow. The most she could do was to keep her seat upon his back and this she managed, even though hampered by that detestable skirt and that slippery new saddle. Barebacked, without this handicap, how she would have reveled in that mad ride! even now, knowing that her Cousin Margaret’s dire displeasure awaited her return, she did revel in it. Almost she could fancy herself tearing across the plain, where no obstruction offered and the soft sod was a cushioned pathway for Buster’s hoofs, and for a moment closing her eyes, she let her fancy carry her back to Paraiso d’Oro; and Buster—whither he would.

But she opened them again in terror, as a wild scream came from beneath those hoofs and the broncho was so suddenly checked that he almost threw her off backward.

The inevitable had happened on that crowded thoroughfare into which he had now turned. She and he had been ignorantly reckless of consequences and most untoward consequences had resulted.

CHAPTER VI.
JESSICA’S FIRST GIRL FRIEND.

The screams came from a girl of Jessica’s own age, whom Buster had ridden down and thrown to the pavement. But they were instantly taken up and repeated by a score of throats, while a crowd assembled on the spot, as if it had risen from the ground itself.

“Oh! have I killed her?” cried “Little Captain,” as swiftly realizing the accident, and almost as swiftly, leaping from her saddle to bend above the girl who now lay with closed eyes and white face, apparently unconscious.

“Now, that’s awful!” cried somebody. “It’s against the law for folks to ride that gait!”

“Arrest her, officer! Don’t let her get away!” advised another on-looker, as a policeman laid his hand on the broncho’s bridle and held the creature still, save for an exciting trembling through all its frame.

“I’m not going to ‘get away’! I want to take care of this poor girl!” retorted Jessica, lifting her head and discovering the officer. “O sir! I am so sorry. We didn’t see her, Buster nor I, and what can I do? Is there a hospital near? Is she—Do you think—she can’t be dead, all in a little minute like that! Tell me, help me—help her—Please, please!”

At the mention of hospital the girl still lying on the pavement opened her eyes and tried to rise, and willing hands helped her to do so. She did gain her feet, quivering and terrified still, yet managing to protest with vigor:

“No, no, no! I won’t go! Not to a hospital—I won’t, I won’t! See? I ain’t hurted. I can walk—I shan’t—I shan’t!”

In truth she was not really injured save by the shock of falling, which had rendered her senseless for a little; until that word “hospital”—so dreaded by the very poor—pierced her consciousness. Buster had run against and knocked her down, but it was the blow upon the stones which had done the most mischief.

With tears of pity and regret dimming her own blue eyes, Jessica slipped a sustaining arm around the other’s waist and eagerly assured her:

“Nor shall you go if you’re not really hurt. You shall go home, right home, if you’ll tell me where and this policeman will get a carriage for us.”

The Californian was making prompt use of the knowledge she had already gained concerning this strange city. Policemen were the proper persons to direct, in time of trouble, and carriages might be had at any and all times and everywhere. Street-cars were confusingly abundant but of these she knew nothing and was afraid.

It was the officer who recalled her to the fact that hiring carriages costs money, and:

“Can you pay for it, miss? Your name and address, please. Whoa, there, you brute! Was there nobody with you? Don’t you know better than to ride like that, right here in the city?”

“No, I didn’t. My name is Jessica Trent. I’m just from California and I don’t know much about New York. My cousin, Mrs. Dalrymple, lives at Number —— Washington Square, and I live with her. She has money, and will pay the carriage man. I haven’t any—not here. But I wasn’t alone, only that old hired horse wouldn’t travel and—Ah! here he comes! Ephraim, Ephraim!”

Though he had failed to keep her in sight, the despised hack-horse had had intelligence enough to follow the course his late companion, Buster, had taken, and now brought “Forty-niner” to his “Captain’s” side.

“Why, Lady Jess! Whatever’s this?” demanded the astonished ranchman, beholding his beloved child standing in the middle of the street, with her arm about the waist of a ragged, hunchbacked girl, and a tray full of flowers lying on the stones before them. The flowers were sadly trampled and bruised, and Buster had planted one restless hoof plump through the wicker tray.

“I—We run over, or knocked her down, this dear, poor little flower-girl, I guess she is. I want to get a carriage and take her home. Have you got any money? This policeman says I must have it first.”

Ephraim slowly dismounted and slipping his own horse’s bridle over one arm, coolly relieved the officer of Buster’s, much to the delight of that person in uniform. Then he demanded:

“What’s the taxes?”

“The—what?” asked the policeman, in turn.

“The taxes, the cost, the price of that there carriage?”

“Probably a dollar or two. Depends on where the girl lives and how long it takes. Say, Sis, I’ve seen you around here before. You’ve been careless more’n once and a cripple like you’d better take no chances.”

For reply the flower-seller made a saucy face and stooped to gather up her scattered posies, critically calculating the damage done to them and the consequent loss to her. She had recovered from her brief unconsciousness and as Jessica also began to collect the daffodils and tulips, exclaiming with delight over their beauty, her business instinct came to the fore.

“Five cents a bunch, miss. Only five cents!”

Yet it was almost mechanically she spoke, for all her hearing was strained to learn the outcome of that carriage-discussion; and regardless of further injury to her blossoms, she clapped her thin hands in delight, as Ephraim settled it by saying:

“Call it up, officer! I reckon we can stand that much. No, you needn’t worry about the broncho. I’ll lead him and follow the carriage. But you’ll have to give the orders—This old New York of yours sets a plainsman plumb crazy!”

The officer found no cause for delay. He had made a few entries in his note book. The hunchback was not injured, she didn’t need a carriage, but if these wild Westerners fancied that she did and were able to pay for it, that was their business.

When the summoned hack drew up to the curbstone, whither the two girls had retreated when the crowd dispersed, the flower-seller’s pale face really glowed almost as pink as Jessica’s own, and her ill-shod feet danced on the stones, as she cried:

“Oh! it’s true, it’s true! What’ll they say when they see me? Oh! my soul and body! Oh! my!”

“You’ll have to tell where you live,” said Jessica, following the other into the vehicle and smiling at her eagerness.

“Course. I know how. This is the way they do it, I’ve seen ’em, lots of times, waiting outside the theaters and such. The ladies they steps in, just like I did, and they speaks up at the coachy and they says: ‘Home’! Or maybe, ‘Waldorf ’Storia,’ or ‘Fifth Avenoo,’ or wherever ’tis. ‘Hark. Hear me! Driver, 221 Avenoo A. Back tenement, top floor.’”

It might have been that palatial Waldorf Astoria, to which she had referred, rather than one of the dingiest abodes on that street which was named by a letter, and that Madam Dalrymple had said was too humble for any Waldron to know about. Yet here was Jessica going to it, must go, or be guilty of a rudeness less “Waldrony” than even that knowledge of poor Avenue A; and it never entered her mind that she could send the hunchback home, unattended. Though, indeed, it is doubtful if she could, for the hackman would not, in that case, have felt at all sure of his fare.

Fortunately, Ephraim knew little and cared less for any street distinctions. He was simply and wholly disgusted by this whole outing. The horse he bestrode was never meant for a saddle; his groom’s livery was uncomfortable in the matter of fit—as well as pride; the restless Buster was extremely difficult to lead, where peril of the streets was constantly menacing, and only love for “Little Captain” prevented his turning about and making straight for Washington Square, even though he had to ask directions thither at every block.

“My name’s Sophy Nestor. What’s yours? Ain’t this jolly? I’m the gladdest ever was ’t that horse of yours knocked me down. My! But didn’t the cop want to hurry me off to the hospital! No, ’twasn’t him, though, ’twas your own plaguy self! Do you know what a hospital is? It’s a place where they take folks to cut off their legs and things. We poor folks is what keeps the hospitals goin’. Them doctors they catch us and cut us just to learn how the rich folkses’ insides are made. ’Cause that way, Granny says, we’re just as good as the rich ones, our insides are. But, maybe, you didn’t know. Else, you’d never ha’ said it. What’d you say it was? Oh! I’m so happy! I never, never was so happy in my life! Won’t the children in our court and all along the block just stare their eyes out when they see me come ridin’ home in a reg’lar carriage! I never thought I’d be inside one, never in all my life. What’d you say it was?”

“I hadn’t said, but it’s Jessica Trent. And is it possible that right here in this city full of all sorts of wagons that you’ve never ridden before?”

The carriage had now passed eastward through the city and even to the Westerner’s untrained sight the streets looked more crowded, the buildings poorer and dingier, and the passing throngs altogether different from those upon Fifth Avenue. But she observed less of the surroundings than of this chattering girl beside her. So misshapen, so wretchedly clothed, and so radiantly happy! She had longed for a playmate of her own age but she had not dreamed of one like this.

In a few moments they had exchanged the fullest confidences. Sophy had listened wide-eyed and, at first, unbelieving, to Jessica’s story of a home where one couldn’t even see another house, because it was so far away; but she had gradually accepted the fact and was lost in admiration of a girl who could live such a wonderful life yet be so friendly and nice to a mere flower-girl from “Avenoo A.”

When they reached that dilapidated block where Sophy lived, and with a great air that young person had ordered the driver to stop, she turned to Jessica and said:

“Now we’ll get out. Oh! my soul and body! It’s all clean over and done with! It didn’t last. Seems if it didn’t last a minute. Say, Jessica, if I should go back to that place some other day would you ride round and let your horse knock me down again, so’s I could come home in another carriage? Would you?”

“No, I would not! But—but if you care so much about it and will put on a whole frock and come to Washington Square I’ll ask my Cousin Margaret Dalrymple to take you with us in hers. But I guess I won’t get out. I—I’d rather not. She might not like it;” answered Jessie, more in answer to a warning nod from Ephraim who had now come up to them than from any reluctance of her own. It was, truly, a strange and most unlovely place. Lines of ragged clothing fluttered from every floor, children rolled in the gutters and fought each other savagely at the least provocation, street vendors yelled till the air was full of discord, and the whole surroundings told of that abject poverty which Jessica now beheld for the first time. Yet it interested her wonderfully, more because it was new than because she understood it. So, when Sophy insisted, she disregarded Ephraim’s warning and sprang to the sidewalk, smiling in spite of herself at the hunchback’s uptossed head and the remarkable strut she assumed for the benefit of onlookers.

“Yes, you must, Jessica Trent. Else Granny won’t believe it’s true and’ll nag me ’cause the basket’s broke. I’ll come to Washington Square all right, but I can’t—I can’t put on a whole frock. I haven’t got one. This way, right this.”

Seizing Jessica’s hand so forcibly she could not withdraw it, Sophy hurriedly led the way through a sort of dark, damp alley, running between two houses, to another tall tenement facing a court in the rear. Here there were more clothes-lines, more fluttering garments, more crying babies, and more outrageous odors. Instinctively, the stranger pinched her nose to protect it against the stench, while Sophy consolingly remarked:

“The smell ain’t nothing when you get used to it. Granny used to mind it awful, when we first moved here from over Brooklyn way. That was ’fore I can remember an’ my father was killed. She don’t now. She don’t mind anything only having to live. She’s dreadful tired of that, Granny is, ’cause she don’t much like the folks in the houses. I like ’em all right. Mind the steps! That third one isn’t there, and there’s a hole in all of ’em. I’ve got so used I know just where to step, even in the dark. Now, one more and we’ll be to Granny’s door. How funny you breathe!”

“I can’t—I can’t hardly breathe at all! It’s so—so awful high—and—smelly.”

“Pinch it again. ’Tisn’t so bad in Granny’s room. She keeps the winder open all the time. Say, Granny, Granny Briggs! Here’s Jessica Trent, away from California, wherever that is, and her horse she was a-ridin’ on Thirty-fourth Street knocked me silly and broke the basket, and she brung me home in a carriage, in a carriage, Granny Briggs! And you needn’t say she didn’t, ’cause you can go right down into the Aveny and see it standin’ on the stones a-waitin’ to take her back again to where she come from. True’s I live. You can see her for yourself!”

Jessica made her best, most “Waldron-y” courtesy, and with a grace hardly to have been looked for in such a place, the aged mistress of the one room returned it. She was a comely old body, rather ragged than untidy, and she wore a broad frilled cap on her head, and a piece of a frayed shawl pinned about her shoulders. She had a great pile of men’s overalls before her, to which she was putting the finishing stitches, “by hand,” the only sort of sewing she could get to do, and for which she was paid a miserable price. But it, and Sophy’s flower-selling, was their only source of income, and she could afford to waste no time, even to talk with this astonishing young visitor who had come.

So she rose once, bobbed a returning courtesy to Jessica’s profound one, and settled back in her chair, having scarcely paused at all in her work. Then, still sewing as if her life depended on her speed—as indeed it did—she listened in silence to the story Sophy told, only opening her lips once to remark:

“Pity the pony didn’t finish you up while it was about it, my poor child. Life isn’t worth living for such as you. Or me either,” she added gloomily, and wondering why the Californian didn’t depart. She wished she would. Sophy would have to carry home part of these garments before the shop closed for the night and poor folks had no time for idling. She expressed her desire rather promptly: