MISS LOCHINVAR

Janet looked up and down the house which was to be her home.

(See page [19].)

MISS LOCHINVAR

A STORY FOR GIRLS

BY
MARION AMES TAGGART

Illustrated by
W. L. Jacobs and Bayard F. Jones

NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1902

Copyright, 1902
By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

Published September, 1902

TO
POLLY AND JO IN THE WEST.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

MISS LOCHINVAR

CHAPTER I
“YOUNG LOCHINVAR IS COME OUT OF THE WEST”

The big dining-room looked a trifle dreary in spite of the splendor of its appointments; in spite, too, of the fact that there were enough children’s faces around the long table to have brightened it. But though the six owners of these faces ranged between the happy ages of sixteen and three, and were all healthy young folk, they lacked the blithe look they should have worn, and so failed in illumining the stately room.

The youngest member of the house of Graham, a pretty child, had wrinkled her brow until it looked like a pan of cream set in a very breezy dairy. This was because the nurse-maid stood behind her chair, an indignity little Geraldine—known as Jerry—resented bitterly, though it recurred at each breakfast and lunch hour. She showed her resentment by deliberately putting her spoon, full of oatmeal and cream, into her mouth upside down every time the maid’s eyes strayed for a moment, and also, painful though it be to record, by stretching her kid-shoed foot around her high chair in sly and unamiable attempts to kick her humiliating attendant.

The eldest, a boy of sixteen, breakfasted in silence, with a sullen air of aloofness from his family, and a secretive expression foreign to his naturally frank and handsome face. The three girls, and one boy ranging between him and Jerry, seemed rather to regard the meal as something to be gone through with before they were free to attend to matters interesting to each, than as a happy hour spent together before separating for the day.

The mother of this numerous brood was pretty and graceful, but she looked harassed, and as though she lived in perpetual fear of missing an appointment—which was indeed the case.

Mr. Graham was a broker. Sydney, the oldest boy, said it took all his father’s time to “be a broker and not broke,” and this was strictly true. He was immersed in business too deeply to leave time or thought for much else. He had an expensive family, and though he was accounted a rich man, the uncertain ways of stocks in rising and falling always made it possible for him to become a comparatively poor one. So in the stress of laying the foundations of a handsome inheritance for his six sons and daughters he had little chance to make their acquaintance, though he was an indulgent father, and looked forward to the day, which did not dawn, when he should have leisure to know them.

It was Mr. Graham who suddenly aroused his inert family to keen interest in what was going on around them.

“What day of the month is this—the thirteenth?” he asked, as his eye fell on the date-line of his newspaper, served with his coffee.

“Yes; to-morrow is the day for us to dine with the Robesons,” said his wife.

“To-morrow is the day for our niece to arrive,” retorted Mr. Graham. “Don’t forget to have her met, in case it slips my memory to-morrow when Henry drives me down.”

“Our niece! Arrives! What can you mean?” cried Mrs. Graham, in shrill surprise, as she dropped her fork with a clatter which would have called down a reprimand on Jerry.

“I told you, didn’t I?” asked Mr. Graham, with an uneasy recollection that he had not mentioned the matter, having a cowardly doubt as to how his tidings would be received. “It’s my sister’s little girl—my sister Jennie, you know, who married and settled out west in Crescendo. Jennie’s husband has made her very happy—he’s a first-rate fellow—but he hasn’t made her, nor any one else, including himself, rich. I imagine they have to scramble along on rather slender provision for a large brood; they have a big family. I don’t hear from Jennie very often, and she never complains, but her last letter—it came nearly two months ago—had a tone of sadness, and betrayed more than she realized of anxiety. I answered it, and I told her to send her oldest girl—Joan—Jane—no, Janet—Janet on here to us to go to school with our girls this winter. She’s about Gwen and Gladys’s age. She won’t be any trouble to us, and I fancy it will be considerable help to her mother. So Jennie’s husband wrote me that the child would come, and she’ll be here to-morrow.”

Gwendoline, the oldest girl, who was fifteen; Gladys, the second one, who was thirteen; seven-year-old Genevieve, and Ivan, a boy of nearly eleven, stared at each other and at their parents in dumb amazement. Mrs. Graham flushed with annoyance; only the presence of the waitress and little Geraldine’s despised custodian restrained her from expressing that annoyance forcibly. As it was, she said: “I can not understand, Mr. Graham, how you could have added the care of another child to me, who have six of my own to look after, without so much as consulting me in the matter!”

“But you don’t look after us, mamma,” said Ivan, quite cheerfully, and with no idea of complaining. “You are too busy with all your committees and teas and clubs and things. So she won’t be any bother, and maybe she’ll be nice.” Ivan—who despised his Russian name, and had succeeded in compelling his family to call him Jack as soon as he had learned the names were equivalent to each other—was a warm-hearted, hot-tempered, honest little fellow, who did not seem to belong to the city splendors. “Jack had reverted,” his father said, “to his ancestral stock”; one could easily imagine him happily driving cows on his grandfather’s farm among the New Hampshire hills.

“I admit, my dear, that it was not quite fair to spring this little girl on you, as Jack would say, but I think the boy takes the true view of it. One girl more or less will not matter in a family like this one, and all the difference she will make will be a third bill to me for tuition at Miss Larned’s school,” said Mr. Graham, trying to speak with an assurance he did not feel.

“But to us, papa!” cried Gladys, reproachfully. “It will mean more than that to us. Gwen and I will have to introduce her to the girls; she will expect to go about with us, and just fancy a poor girl from a little Western town in our set!”

Gwendoline—Mrs. Graham had had the happy thought of naming all her daughters with the same initial, repeating that of their family name—Gwendoline laughed scornfully at her sister’s remark. “I believe I should rather enjoy livening up those girls,” she said. “I honestly don’t see how she could have worse manners than some of them if she came off an Indian reservation. You know, I just despise those silly, giggling, affected girls, with their grown-up nonsense. They’re not all like that, though. But then the nice ones would understand and make allowance for her being a girl from a little town—nice people always understand, I’ve noticed that. But what I think is she’ll be a nuisance around the house. Goodness knows, I don’t want one single person more to make a noise and get under foot when I want to do things!”

“Oh, all you care for is writing, or daubing, or singing, or spouting plays!” began Gladys, wrathfully; but little Genevieve, whom they called Viva, interrupted her: “I wish she wasn’t so big. Are you certain sure, papa, she’s as old as Gwen and Gladys? Because there doesn’t be any one to play with me in this house.”

“She is fourteen,” said Mr. Graham. “And, Gwen and Gladys, I wish you to remember that this Janet Howe is your own cousin, my sister’s child, and I want you to treat her kindly and make her happy. Many’s the scrape her mother got me out of when I was a boy at home. There never was a better sister than Jennie; no boy could have dreamed an improvement on her. I always preferred her as a companion to my brothers; she could row, fish, and bait her own hook and take off her fish when she had caught them, too!—and she was as sweet-tempered and loving as the day was long. I often wish you children were the friends Jen and I used to be! But you each go your own way, and neither cares a pin for any one else’s interests. Perhaps it is the result of living in New York instead of in the peaceful town where I was born.”

The children rarely had heard any reference to their father’s early days, and they listened to this outburst with an interest that made them forget their grievance for a moment. Then Jack spoke: “Do you suppose that this girl is as nice as her mother, papa?” he said. “Do you suppose she can bait a hook and sail a boat?”

“Those things are not always inherited,” his father answered, laughing. “There is not much chance to fish or sail in the middle of a prairie, and Crescendo is a prairie town. But I have no doubt that your cousin Janet will be as nice a little girl as you could find anywhere. I can’t conceive of Jennie having any other than a nice daughter, and I am sure you will be very grateful to me for getting her here.”

“I shan’t be,” said Gladys, decidedly. “I can’t possibly go about with a Wild West Show, papa.”

“Gladys,” said her father, in a tone his children rarely heard. “You forget to whom you are speaking, and that you are speaking of my dearest sister’s daughter. Let me hear one more syllable like that, or see one glimmer of that spirit toward your cousin Janet, and you will be sent to a boarding-school, where you will not go about with any one. I shall invite whom I please to my own house, and my daughters will treat them with courtesy. Remember what I say, and you, too, Gwendoline, Sydney, Jack, and Viva.”

Gwen laughed good-naturedly. “I won’t treat her badly, papa, though you can’t expect me to be precisely glad she is coming,” she said.

Gladys looked sullen, but Jerry saved the day by stretching her arms very wide, a piece of bread in one hand, her dripping teaspoon in the other. “I will love her,” she announced, speaking for the first time; she had been turning from one to the other during this exciting conversation. “I will div her my o’meal po’dge, out of er spoon wight side up. An’ I’ll let Tsusan ’tand ahind her tchair,” added the small hypocrite, nodding her golden curls benignly, and turning to smile beatifically at her nurse-maid.

It was impossible not to laugh at this noble exhibition of generosity, and with this laugh the breakfast party broke up.

“It is really very trying, Howard, to have a girl, of whom we know nothing, and just the age of our girls, thrust upon our poor dears for the entire winter, not to mention my part of the burden,” said Mrs. Graham, as she followed her husband into the hall. “I really can not blame poor Gwen and Gladys for feeling as they do. I should have said more myself, but that I did not care to discuss family matters before the servants, or encourage the children in their apprehensions, and their tendency to disobey you.”

“Oh, it will be all right, Tina!” said Mr. Graham, easily. “We have talked about it too long; a small girl of fourteen or so is not worth so much discussion. I’ll meet you to-night at seven, if you like, at Delmonico’s, and we’ll go to the theater after we dine. Henry can bring down my evening clothes when he meets me. I have a directors’ meeting after Exchange closes, and I can’t get home to dress before dinner.”

Mrs. Graham’s face cleared, as her husband felt sure that it would, at this proposition, but she said reproachfully, as she kissed him good-by: “You know our club has its semiannual dinner to-night, Howard, and you promised to come later and hear the speeches.”

“Merciful powers! Don’t mention such trifles as an extra girl or two in the house after that!” groaned Mr. Graham, in mock despair, as he got into his overcoat. “I really believe I did!”

“When did you say that this Miss Lochinvar was to come out of the West, father?” asked Sydney, delaying on his way through the hall. Throughout the discussion at the table the eldest born had not spoken.

“To-morrow; will you go with one of the girls in the carriage to meet her?” asked his father, looking up with a laugh for the apt nickname.

“Couldn’t possibly; I am booked for football with our team,” said Sydney, resuming his way, having stopped as his father spoke. “I wish Miss Lochinvar joy, though; if she has plenty of brothers and sisters she’s likely to be lonesome in this crowd.”

Gwendoline and Gladys sauntered along as he said these words, and stopped short with a peal of exultant laughter. “Miss Lochinvar! Well, if that isn’t the very best name for her!” they cried in a breath. “We shall always call her that. Isn’t Sydney too clever!” But in Gwen’s laugh there was only pure amusement at the fun of the thing, while in Gladys’s mirth there was a ring of spite.

CHAPTER II
“HE ALIGHTED AT NETHERBY GATE”

The question of meeting the little stranger from Crescendo was solved by sending Nurse Hummel to the station, as probably any one of the Graham family could have prophesied that it would be. Most things in that household connected with a child fell into Nurse Hummel’s hands. She had come to take charge of Sydney when he was a youth one month old, with more nebulous features than are considered desirable for perfect beauty. Consequently she had presided over the earliest moments of the life of each of the succeeding Graham babies; had nursed them with love no mere money could recompense through childish and more serious illnesses, and cherished them with all the warmth of her big German heart, early bereft of the love of her husband and her own only little child.

To Nurse Hummel the Grahams repaired with their griefs, not to their busy mother; and “Hummie” was so fond of them that while they were small they did not realize that there were children whose mothers could give them more attention than theirs did, and that mother-love is more satisfactory than any other.

Mrs. Graham found at the last moment that she could not send Henry with the horses all the way over to the West Twenty-third Street Ferry; but Nurse Hummel was despatched, with instructions to select a hansom drawn by a lively horse, and to come up-town by the way of Fifth Avenue, so “Miss Lochinvar” would certainly enjoy her drive—probably enjoy it more than if she had been shut up in the Grahams’ more elegant brougham.

The new cousin was not to arrive until afternoon, a fortunate thing, for though it never occurred to either Gwendoline or Gladys to go to meet her, they were most curious in regard to her, and very anxious to be in the house when she reached it.

They were ensconced behind the long lace curtains of the library on the second floor, perfectly hidden, yet seeing perfectly, when the hansom drove up.

Janet Howe had not talked much during that drive, though Nurse Hummel tried in her most motherly way to draw her out. She thought that the little girl was bewildered into silence by the splendor, confusion, and hubbub of the second city of the world, but though this was in a measure true, it was not the main cause of Janet’s quietness.

All the way during the last half of her two days’ journey—the first half being given up to longing for the beloved faces and little house which she had left behind—Janet had let her thoughts leap forward to the dear cousins, the aunt and uncle who were awaiting her. She was all ready to love them; she did love them, for they were her blessed mother’s kindred, who were so good to her in taking her into their hearts and home, in letting her share the wealth she knew they possessed, and in sharing one another with her. She knew the names and ages of each one of them; that Sydney was very handsome and Gwen very clever. All the Howes knew their Eastern cousins literally by heart, for they occupied in the minds of the little folk in the plain house in Crescendo a position something between an embodiment of perfect kinship and the princes and princesses of the fairy tales. And Janet knew and loved her Aunt Tina and her dearest Uncle Howard with positive worship, heightened, if possible, by their kindness to her in offering her this winter in New York. Her mother had talked to the children of her happy girlhood with her brother, until every little brook, every shaded path and meadow in the distant New Hampshire home, and every trick of voice and manner of this favorite brother Howard were as familiar to them as were their own lives and one another. Janet felt quite sure that when she descended upon the platform in the station and found all the Grahams drawn up in line to meet her, waving their hands and laughing—for that was the way the Howes always welcomed a stray guest to Crescendo—that she should be able to pick out each one with perfect accuracy. She should make no mistake as to which was Sydney, and which was Jack—she couldn’t very well, since there was nearly six years’ difference between them—nor which was Gwen and which Gladys, and quiet Viva, and dear little Geraldine, for whom she hungered most of all because she was precisely the age of her own precious youngest sister, her pet Poppet, as she called little Elizabeth. When she did descend upon the platform on the Jersey City side, a trifle sobered by the vastness of the station, the rush of the crowd, and the babel of sounds, there was no line of merry young faces anywhere in sight, no one that could be Uncle Howard or Aunt Tina, not even one who could be Sydney, Gwen, or Gladys. Janet caught her breath with a sharp pain, half fright, half bitter disappointment, and looked wildly around at the mad-appearing passengers, tearing through the chilly station with as frantic haste to catch the lumbering ferry-boat as if it had been as fast as a Bandersnatch.

Just at that dreadful moment a woman in iron gray—all round, face, body, gait, and all—came toward Janet, smiling with sufficient expansiveness to cover the lack of several other smiles. “Is this little Miss Janet Howe from Crescendo?” she asked, with just enough of the German accent familiar in the West to make this meek, girlish Lochinvar feel comforted.

“Oh, yes. Where are my aunt and uncle, and my cousins?” cried Janet. “And who are you, if you please?”

“I am Nurse Hummel, and I’ve come to take you to your friends,” said the rotund creature, with such assurance that “all was right in the world” that Janet began to suspect herself of unreason in expecting her relatives to meet her.

“None of them could get down here to-day, but that doesn’t matter. You’ll soon find out that Nurse Hummel looks after all of you. I have taken care of every Graham child of them all since Master Sydney was a month old. Give me your check.”

Nurse Hummel led the way, and Janet followed, somewhat reassured, but still with the lurking sense of disappointment. The capable woman gave the check for Janet’s battered little trunk to a transfer express, and put the child into a cab, drawn by the most frisky, high-headed horse at the New York side of the ferry. Then she got in herself, not without audible maledictions on joints that were less limber than in her youth.

When the interesting, but confusing, drive ended in the frisky horse being pulled up so short before the Graham’s door that he almost sat down on his pathetic, docked tail, Janet looked up and down the house which was to be her home for many months. She saw a high, brownstone structure, differing not at all, apparently, from a long line of such edifices stretching westward from Fifth Avenue as far as she could see, and eastward again across it. Not a sign of life could she espy; not a curtain moved; not a face smiled at her; not a hand waved, still less was there the shouting, gesticulating bevy of cousins on the front steps which she had hoped to see.

But she was not arriving unnoted. Behind the curtains on the second floor five eager faces peered out to catch the first glimpse of her. The Graham children saw a short girl, not quite as tall as Gladys, with soft, rounding curves throughout her body; a face that was decidedly pretty, but very pathetic; with big, wistful brown eyes, looking as if they might quickly be hidden by tears; brown hair, curling around a broad, white forehead; a skin with a hint of brown beneath its whiteness, and full, red lips meeting in soft curves, fashioned, unmistakably, for smiling, but now drooping at the corners in an attempt to keep them from quivering. They saw also a brown skirt and jacket, with reddish tints occasionally, showing wear, and revealing, to more experienced eyes, the fact that they had originally been made up with the other side of the goods out. A hopelessly unstylish hat surmounted the beautiful masses of red-brown hair, and woolen gloves completed a costume that made Gladys groan aloud at its confirmation of her worst fears. But Gwen, truly artistic, and with truer standards of judgment than her sister’s, unguided though they were, saw the facts which the shabbiness of her new cousin’s garments could not conceal from her more observant eyes.

“She’s awfully pretty, Gladys,” she said. “And she looks like a lady, and she looks sweet, and—and—oh, I don’t know—trusty, like a dog. And, dear me, she is really awfully pretty; ever so much prettier than either of us.”

Gladys gave a derisive sniff. “Pretty! Well, so she might be, if she looked decent, but, for goodness’ sake, what clothes! Why, our laundress’s girl looks better! Fancy taking such a guy to school! I shall die of mortiffication.”

Gwen actually laughed. “Mortif-fication, Gladys? Maybe bad pronunciation is as bad as old clothes, if you stop to think about it. And Mary Ellen Flynn does wear citified things, and frizzes and cheap lace, and so on, but I don’t know that I think she looks better than that girl down there. At any rate, I suppose there are other clothes in New York, and if it would save your life, we might make her look decent.”

“I think she looks as though she could fish and sail a boat, too,” said Jack, who, while his sisters were frivolously discussing mere externals, had been silently considering the new cousin from the more important viewpoint of her possible inheritance of her mother’s talents.

In the meantime, Norah, the waitress, had admitted Nurse Hummel and her charge, and poor Janet was heavy-heartedly climbing the long flight of stairs, without a voice to hail her coming. “We always meet people at home, Mrs. Hummel,” she said at last, in a trembling voice, as she paused at the landing to turn back to her guide, following with shortened breath. “Aren’t they glad to see me?”

“What nonsense; just nonsense!” declared Nurse Hummel, with the increase of accent always perceptible when she was moved. “There iss different customs, that’s all. Ve iss not der same as you in der Vest. My younk ladies iss vaiting you in der library, alretty. Yet it vouldn’t haf hurt if someone came out mit greetings vonce,” she added to herself, half minded to be indignant for the coldness shown the little stranger, whose sweet and charming ways had immediately won her affection.

As Nurse Hummel’s solid tread, passing Janet’s light one in the hall, fell on the ears of the group in the window, all but Jack and Viva stepped hastily forward, anxious not to appear to have been indulging in surreptitious curiosity.

Nurse Hummel opened the door. “My dears,” she said, “here iss your cousin, quite safe, und as glad to see you as you are to see her.” And she gently pushed Janet past her toward her relatives.

“How do you do?” said Gladys, in her most grown-up, and, as she fondly flattered herself, most elegant air. “I hope you are not too tired after your journey.” With which enthusiastic speech of welcome she bent gracefully forward and lightly pecked Janet’s cheek, apparently not seeing that the fresh young lips were ready to be met by hers.

Now Gladys’s affectations always exasperated Gwen beyond bearing, no matter what called them forth, and she was really sorry for her cousin, who looked as bewildered as hurt by this piece of nonsense. So it was a commingling of temper and kindliness which made her own manner more than usually simple and hearty as she put her arms around Janet and kissed her, saying, “You look very nice, Janet, and I hope you will like New York and us.”

Janet raised her wet eyes to the tall girl above her, returning the kiss with warmth and interest. “You’re Gwen, the clever one; I am sure I shall just love you,” she said, and Gwen smiled with sincere pleasure.

“Hallo, Jack! hallo, Viva!” cried Janet, partly restored to cheerfulness by Gwen’s welcome, and glad to display her ready knowledge of her family. “Come out here, and let me see you better. You don’t know how I miss Bob and Nannie; they’re your ages. And Geraldine! If I don’t love babies, then I don’t love anything on this whole earth! Do you think I’d scare her if I kissed her? Is she shy? Poppet is—just at first, you know.”

“Oh, I don’t think she’s at all shy!” said Gladys. “She sees so many people; mamma receives a great deal, and Jerry sees quantities of people, because they always think they have to ask for the youngest. She isn’t much to rave over; she’s a cross, spoiled little kid, I think.”

Janet stared at this remark, both because she had been taught that slang was not well-bred, and Gladys was so very fine-ladified, and because she could not imagine any one taking that attitude toward her baby sister. Jerry stamped her foot. “I’m not tross! You are tross, Tladys Traham! I love dis new one better’n you.” And she turned with an angelic smile to throw herself into Janet’s outstretched arms, which closed on her as their owner gave a quick sob, fancying they held Poppet to her breast.

“You’re a darling, pretty, little petsy-cousin,” declared Janet, with such unmistakable sincerity that Jerry melted still more.

“An’ you’re a darlin’, pretty, bid, pets’ tousin,” she retorted. And from that instant Janet had one devoted adherent in her new home.

“Why do they call you Miss Lochinvar?” asked Viva, suddenly. She had been considering Janet with her own grave thoughtfulness, and her question fell like a bomb upon the ears of her shocked sisters.

Janet looked quickly from one to the other of her two elder girl cousins.

“I hope you won’t mind, Janet; Syd called you that the morning we heard you were coming, and it was so nice we couldn’t help adopting it,” said Gwen, her color mounting high. “He didn’t mean it unkindly; neither did we. It was only because you were coming ‘out of the West,’ you know. You don’t mind, do you?”

“No, I don’t mind. Why should I?” replied Janet, with an uneasy little laugh. “Young Lochinvar carried everything before him. It is rather complimentary. And you might as well call me Jan. They always do at home; Janet seems so long. Though, of course, if you like it better, it doesn’t matter.”

“No; Jan is cozy, and it suits you somehow,” said Gwen. “Don’t you want me to take you to your room? You must be tired, and feel all over cinders; I always do after I have been traveling.”

“Thanks. Is Aunt Tina away?” asked Janet timidly.

“Oh, mamma is out; she has no end of things to attend to; she isn’t at home much,” said Gladys. “We are all dreadfully busy; I never have a moment myself! Papa dines here—no, he doesn’t either! Papa and mamma dine out to-night. Well, that’s just the way. You’ll find New York rather different from a little town.”

“You’ll find New York very nice, and full of all sorts of things; it’s too big to be all one way,” said Gwen, filled with an unsisterly desire to shake Gladys’s high-and-mighty air out of her, as she saw the blank look of loneliness that came over the pretty, sensitive face before her. “Come up-stairs with me.—Gladys, you may tell the girls I won’t be around to-day.—Viva, you go with Hummie and Jerry.—Come on, Jan.”

Janet followed the one friendly person, except the big nurse Gwen called “Hummie,” whom she had met in this strange household. Gwen put her arm around the little brown figure, and Jan returned her pressure, yet she kept her eyes down on the way up-stairs, lest Gwen should see the tears, and she could not help feeling that she had passed through a sort of mental Russian bath, plunging from the warm affection of her own humbler home, and her loving anticipations of this new one, into the actual chill of her welcome to it.

CHAPTER III
“SO BOLDLY HE ENTER’D THE NETHERBY HALL”

Janet could not repress a cry of pleasure as Gwen threw open the door of her room, despondently as she had approached it. It was one of the smallest rooms in the large house, but it was quite big enough for one small girl, and it was so pretty! The furniture was bird’s-eye maple; the paper, carpet, hangings, all a harmony of soft old-rose color; and the few pictures both good and cheerful.

“Is this really my room?” cried Jan, who had loved the big, bare, sunny room at home, which she had shared with her two sisters next in order to her, but who had always longed secretly for a lovely room, such as she read of in her favorite stories, and which should be all her own. And now, behold, here was her wish gratified beyond her wildest imaginings—at least, while she was an inmate of her uncle’s household.

“Yes. Do you really like it? It isn’t very large, but maybe you won’t mind,” said Gwen, looking around her critically. “The next room is the nursery. Hummie sleeps there, and Jerry’s crib is there; Viva does her lessons there in the morning—she has a governess; she hasn’t begun school. If you want anything, you must go in to Hummie—that’s headquarters for any Graham in distress. Gladys has the middle room on this floor, and mine is the back one; Viva has the one beside mine at the end of the hall. We won’t hear one another much, because the house is so dreadfully deep, and the dressing-rooms are between the chambers; that’s one good thing. Syd calls this floor ‘the hennery,’ because all the girls’ rooms are here. I told him that I didn’t mind; if he and Jack were roosters, it was proper they should roost above us—they are on the next floor, you know. And he didn’t like it, though I think my joke is quite as good as his—it’s the same joke, in fact.” And Gwen laughed in malicious enjoyment of these exquisite sallies of wit.

Janet had been looking out of the window, and discovered that the identity of the architecture of the houses in the street was less than she had taken it to be; there were many points of difference between her uncle’s house and his neighbors’, though the uniform brownstone made them drearily similar to eyes used to long stretches and plenty of space. But she had also caught a glimpse of trees and grass as she leaned out, and she drew her head in to inquire of Gwen what they meant, forgetting the pretty room, and not hearing what her cousin had been saying.

“That is Central Park; the entrance is just above us, at Fifty-ninth Street,” said Gwen, wondering at Jan’s brightening eyes. “It is nice to have it so near; I often go there to think out my plans—stories and poems and such things—and Glad and I are learning to ride.”

“I know you are awfully clever. Uncle sent mamma some of your poetry, cut out of a magazine,” said Janet, removing her hat and shaking out her masses of warm-tinted, curling hair.

“Oh, my, what bea-u-tiful hair!” cried Gwen involuntarily. “And what lots of it! If that doesn’t make that conceited old Daisy Hammond turn green when she sees it! She’s so vain of her hair, it fairly disgusts one! Oh, those verses were only in the back part of St. Nicholas, where the children’s things are. It was ever so long ago—certainly two years. I hope I can do better than that now.”

“Do you expect to write when you are grown up?” asked Jan, with the awe for a person who could look forward to such a career natural to a girl who dearly loved books, and who felt that they who made them belonged to an order of beings apart from common mortals.

“I can’t tell,” said Gwen, seating herself on the bed beside her cousin and taking her knee into the clasp of both her hands—it was not often that she found any one willing to listen to her hopes, much less treat them with positive veneration. “You see,” she continued, “I can paint just as well as I can write, and my teacher says I have a very good voice. I might become an artist instead of an author, or I might go on the stage and become a great opera singer, like Melba. I shouldn’t like you to mention it, Jan, because they all—except mamma—make fun of me, but I mean to make a big name for myself somehow, and as long as I do that I don’t care which way I do it. Gladys likes society, and dress, and such stuff,” continued the ambitious young person, with withering scorn, “but I want to be something that is something. It’s pretty hard, though, when you’re one of such a dreadfully big family. I would like to get off by myself on a desert island, like Robinson Crusoe, and only see them on birthdays, and Christmas, and Thanksgiving, and such times.”

“Mercy!” exclaimed Jan, rather shocked, though she realized that genius was not to be measured by ordinary standards. “That would never suit me.”

“What do you want to do? What’s your special talent?” asked Gwen.

“I haven’t any,” replied Jan. “Unless,” she added, with a twinkle, “it is a talent to wash and dress children, and dust, and wash dishes, and make cake, and those things—I can do all that.”

“How perfectly awful!” cried Gwen with conviction. “You poor little soul, have you been leading such a poky, drudge’s life as that? I am glad, then, that papa got you here, after all.”

Janet was too quick-witted to miss the implication that Gwen had not always been glad of her coming, but she said with spirit: “You needn’t pity me, Gwen, for no girl ever had more fun than I have. I like to do those things—at least, usually I do.” Jan was too honest not to leave a margin for those occasions when household tasks had been irksome. “I have the very nicest home in all the world, and it would be bad enough if I weren’t willing to do something in it! And we children have the loveliest times—you ought to see what a splendid little crowd they are! I don’t know, but I shouldn’t wonder if—” Jan stopped short, not wishing to impart to her cousin her first impression that the Grahams were less happy than the Howes.

Gwen was too preoccupied to notice the halt. “And what do you mean to do, then, when you are grown up?” she insisted.

Jan hesitated. “I believe,” she said slowly, “I don’t want to be very much of anything—not anything famous or showy, I mean. Papa says it is hardest, and greatest of all, to be a true-hearted, noble woman who makes home happy and helps everybody to be good. I believe I would rather do that—be the sort of woman mamma is—than anything.”

“What sort of woman is she?” asked Gwen respectfully; the glow in Jan’s eyes and the loving tremor in her voice impressed the girl, who had never had this side of life presented to her aspirations before.

“She is so cheery and kind, she makes you feel better, no matter how miserable you are, if she just walks through the room,” said Jan. “She never thinks of herself at all—it keeps us busy to stop her going without things for us all the time. She never is too tired to listen to our fusses, nor too busy to unsnarl us. She never says a word if she is sick or troubled, but puts it all out of sight so no one else will be unhappy, too. And she makes time, somehow, for her neighbors’ troubles. And she not only cooks, and sews, and nurses us children, but she reads to us, and talks to us, and we each feel as though we were all alone in the world with her. And she never breaks a promise to us, whether it is to do something pleasant for us or to punish us, and she is never the least wee bit partial or unjust. And when we’re bad, or have crooked days, she is so patient! And she just loves us straight and good. And there isn’t one of us that wouldn’t just die if we thought we had deceived or disappointed her, because she trusts us. And everybody wonders why the Howe children are so square, and honorable, and good, on the whole. As if they could help being—with such a mother! Oh, I love her, I do love her!” And Jan’s tears rolled over as she remembered how many miles now separated her from this dear woman, and how long it must be before she held her tight in her arms again.

Gwen sat motionless, looking down on the long fingers clasping her knee, as Jan stopped speaking. Her face was sweet and serious, although a trifle puzzled. Jan had given her an entirely new point of view, had filled her mind with new thoughts; and it was a fine mind, guiding a noble nature, both quite capable of appreciating the picture her cousin had painted.

“Thank you, Jan,” she said at last, to Jan’s surprise, as she rose to leave her. “I think I see what you mean. I shouldn’t wonder if your ambition was better than mine; I mean to think that over. By and by you’ll tell me more about Crescendo and Aunt Jennie; I wish I knew her; I wish—” Here Gwen stopped in her turn. “Don’t be homesick, and don’t mind Gladys. She is so silly that it doesn’t mean one thing. Come down, when you get ready, to the library—where we were when you came. Papa will want to speak to you before he goes out. And don’t miss those nice people too much; we’ll try to be decent, and I guess you’ll like New York. I’ll tell Norah to have your trunk sent up when it comes.”

Gwen left the room with a smile intended to be reassuring, but which was rather wistful, and Jan proceeded to wash away the tears, which she immediately checked, and with them the cinders from her long journey.

The little trunk was long coming, and while Janet was wondering whether she should go down without waiting for it Viva knocked softly at her door.

“O Viva, darling, I’m so glad it’s you! Come in and talk to me,” cried Jan.

“My dear little niece, you don’t know how glad I am to see you.”

“I can’t, Janet, because papa sent me up to say, won’t you please come down and talk to him for half an hour before he gets dressed to go out?” said Viva gravely.

“If you’ll just wait till I braid my hair,” said Jan, kissing the pale little face, from which dark eyes looked out seriously upon her. “Has auntie come home, too?”

“Yes; mamma’s in,” said Viva. “If I were you, I’d let my hair hang all around like that. It’s so very, very pretty. You are pretty, too; much prettier than Gwen and Gladys—Gwen said so, too.”

“‘Pretty is that pretty does,’ you know, little cousin,” laughed Janet. “Gladys is graceful and stylish, and Gwen looks clever; besides she has perfectly glorious eyes. Come, then, if you think I’m nicer with my hair crazy.” And Jan took the hand extended to her with a sinking of the heart of which she was ashamed.

“My dear little niece, you don’t know how glad I am to see you,” said a voice heartily as she entered the library, and then she felt a warm kiss on each cheek, mingled with the odor of a very good cigar. After this Janet ventured to lift her eyes. She saw a handsome man, keen-eyed, yet smiling, looking at her closely, while from across the room a pretty woman in a beautiful negligée came languidly toward her. “How do you do, child? I hope you are not too tired,” she said, in a manner recalling Gladys as much as the words did. Janet kissed this new aunt, but her eyes wandered back to her uncle, seeking a resemblance in him to her mother. He smiled upon her, and said: “You are like Jennie in expression more than in features. By Jove, I wish she were here, too! Dear little woman!” Janet’s lip quivered, and her uncle quickly drew her beside him upon the couch.

“Now tell me everything you can think of about that blessed mother of yours,” he said. “She’s the dearest woman in the world—I hope you know that?”

“Indeed I do!” cried Jan fervently, and in a few moments was rattling off to her uncle, in response to judicious questions, the simple story of her life.

The half-hour passed too quickly; in it Jan was completely happy, and it was long enough to win her heart to her uncle with an affection that subsequent days could not annul. After he and her aunt, of whom she had a resplendent glimpse in her dinner gown, had driven away there was a dull half-hour of waiting, at the end of which Gwen and Gladys appeared, and they were called to dinner in the big dining-room, which struck a chill as well as awe to Jan’s soul. Here she saw Sydney for the first time, but beyond a nod to her when Gwen introduced her he did not notice Janet throughout the meal, nor speak except once to contradict Gladys flatly, and once to ridicule Jack for a slip of the tongue. Janet’s heart sank lower and lower; it seemed to her that she was stifling, and her loving heart exaggerated the really unfortunate state of affairs in her new surroundings.

After dinner Gladys disappeared, as did Sydney, and Gwen, having been polite to the guest for a while, picked up a book and was soon lost in it. Viva had gone to bed, and Jack was up-stairs struggling with his lessons. Wondering if she was doing an unpardonably rude thing, Janet slipped out of the room and sought the nursery. Here she found Jerry sleeping in her crib; her flushed, baby face brought comfort and the sense of home to the lonely “Miss Lochinvar.” Here, too, was Hummie, darning stockings and humming the Lorelei, a most inappropriate theme to her bulk. And here was Jack, his hair tousled, his cheeks hot over refractory examples that would not come right.

“I won’t wake the baby; may I help him?” whispered Janet, and Hummie nodded hard.

“Let me help you; I love arithmetic, and I always help Bob,” Janet whispered, going over to the afflicted boy. If the sky had fallen, Jack would not have been more amazed. Not only was it inconceivable that any one should like arithmetic, but to offer to help him! He yielded at once, from sheer inability to grasp the situation.

But here was a girl that was a girl—if she wasn’t a good angel.

Jack’s admiration grew as his troubles diminished. With a word here and an illustration there, Jan threw light upon his darkened path, and she actually whispered funny things as she did so. Jack found himself positively giggling under his breath as he worked over the hated sums.

“Gee! You’re a dandy!” he remarked audibly, forgetful of Jerry, as he saw the task completed. “And you can explain as old Ramrod can’t—that’s my name for our teacher, he’s so stiff; ain’t it great? I understand just how you did that, and I don’t believe I ever saw through the stuff before. Thanks, lots, Jan.”

“Not a bit; I have had a nice time with you, Jack. I’ll come every night, if you’ll let me, and I don’t have lessons of my own to do at night,” said Jan heartily. “Even if I do, we can make time. You know I like this sort of thing, because at home we children help each other, and it makes me less lonesome.”

“Gee!” said Jack again. “What a queer house yours must be! Nice, though.” And Jan had gained one more devoted admirer among her new cousins.

This little adventure sent her to bed in a much happier mood than she had expected to go in, and Gwen, moved with compunction when she aroused from her pages to find her cousin gone, came up to make her a little visit. The trunk had come, and Gwen eyed with pitying glance its slender and shabby contents, inwardly resolving to set the matter of dress right before Jan made her appearance in the Misses Larned’s formidable halls of learning.

Jan had intended crying herself to sleep—had laid the plan during the dreary dinner—but helping Jack and talking to Gwen so cheered her—besides she was so tired—that she quite forgot it, and fell asleep almost at once after she had laid herself down for the first time in her pretty bed, for her first night in vast New York.

CHAPTER IV
“AMONG BRIDESMEN AND KINSMEN AND BROTHERS AND ALL”

For three days Janet’s life in her new surroundings was neither dull nor lonely. She saw but little of her aunt, and practically nothing of Gladys, who showed unmistakably that she did not consider “Miss Lochinvar” worth bothering about; nor was Sydney’s manner to her different from his taciturnity toward his own family. But Jack, Viva, and Jerry lost no time in learning to admire her—they all three worshiped Jan by the end of her second day among them.

With Mr. Graham Janet passed two happy evenings talking of her mother, surprising him with her knowledge of the most minor details of his own boyhood and early home, and rousing him into telling funny stories of happenings of which she did not know, to the boundless surprise of his own children. At the end of that time her uncle had grown accustomed to her presence, and, though his affection for his sister was one of the strongest ties of his life, they had been separated so long that other interests made more pressing claim upon him. Added to this was the fact that matters on Exchange were threatening; there was danger of “a bear market.” Janet heard him say this, and construed it by her Kansas experience of crop failures to mean “a bare market,” and she pictured to herself empty stalls and New York threatened with shortage in food. Mr. Graham was vitally interested in keeping prices up, and became so preoccupied that Janet received from him only the pleasant word night and morning accorded his own children. Gwen, heroically, and with more pleasure to herself than she expected, entertained her cousin for three days. Then her absorbing interest in her own pursuits asserted itself; she began her sixth novel—none of them had ever passed the fourth chapter, and but one reached it—and forgot Jan completely in the solitude of her own room when she got home from school.

It had been decided that Janet should have at least a week in which to accustom herself to exile before facing the girl world in the Misses Larned’s school. Gwen had suggested to her father that Janet be clad suitably before this ordeal, and he had promptly written a generous check for that purpose to supplement at shops where the Grahams had no account any deficiencies in what they wished to purchase where bills were charged. Nurse Hummel and Gwen had gone down once with Janet to begin this shopping, but to “Miss Lochinvar’s” bewilderment, she learned that many trips were required to fit her out as a New York schoolgirl, and after this first one she and Hummie had to go alone. Gladys flatly refused to go abroad with her cousin until these changes in her costume had been made, and was most anxious that she should not be seen by any of her schoolmates, but Gwen did not conceal the fact that they had a Western cousin consigned to them for the winter, and the three girls whom Gwen most disliked, and Gladys stood most in awe of, set out at once to call upon her, moved by curiosity rather than friendliness.

“Miss Hammond, Miss Gwen, and Miss Ida Hammond and Miss Flossie Gilsey is down-stairs to see you; they sint their cards. They do be asking for Miss Janet, though not be name,” said Norah, presenting six bits of pasteboard through the crack of Gwen’s door.

“Oh, for mercy’s sake! Has anything come home for that prairie-chicken to put on?” exclaimed Gladys, flushing with annoyance; she chanced to be at that moment in her sister’s room.

“I don’t believe so,” said Gwen composedly. “They had to alter the house dress we got ready-made. Still, it doesn’t matter for those girls.”

“Gwendoline Graham, you are enough to provoke a saint! Of all the girls in school, they are the ones who would notice most, and they have the most money,” cried Gladys.

“And are the most vulgar and the stupidest about their lessons,” finished Gwen. “I don’t see why you mind what such people think. However, I’ll go up and see what I can do for Jan.” And she arose, putting aside her lap tablet with the air of a martyr.

“She can’t wear anything of yours; she isn’t tall enough, and they would know our things, anyway,” said Gladys. “I suppose we’ve just got to let her come in that shabby best dress of hers. But do tell her not to say or do anything queer, or tell any of those stories she tells the children about riding broncos and playing Indian in the fields—no, prairies! Make her understand she has to be like other people, and these are swell girls.”

“If she’s used to wearing feathers and war-paint we can’t make her take to civilization right off—no Indian does that,” said Gwen wickedly, for Gladys never could grasp satire. “But, you know, I think she has nice manners, simple and not as if she thought of herself. And the Hammonds and Floss Gilsey are more swollen than swell.” And with this parting witticism, Gwen ran up the hall.

“Jan, Jan, here are three girls come to call on you,” she said, putting her lips to her cousin’s door. “Hurry up, and come down to see them.”

Jan opened her door at once. She was writing a long letter home, and her cheeks were too red to indicate perfect peace of mind.

“I’ll just pumice-stone this ink stain off my finger,” she said, “and then I’m ready. If ever I sympathized with any one, it was with Mr. Boffin when he told John Rokesmith he didn’t see what he did with the ink to keep so neat when he wrote. I’m ashamed of myself, and mamma says I ought to be, but I can not keep my fingers—this middle one, anyway—free from ink when I write. I guess I get so interested I dive down to the bottom of the ink-well without knowing it. Who are these girls?” As she had talked, Janet had scrubbed energetically, and now turned to go down with Gwendoline, without any additional prinking beyond a hasty smooth of her rebellious hair. Her dress was a blue-serge skirt and a cotton shirt-waist, although it was October; it never occurred to her, used as she was to seeing her girl friends in a girlish manner, that anything more was required of her in the matter of toilet.

Gwen eyed her quizzically, thinking with amusement and annoyance of what these would-be fine ladies down-stairs, who could not have understood Jan’s reference to Dickens, would say if she let her go down thus. It was dawning upon Gwen’s inquiring mind that many things in the world were not quite as they should be, and that the scales in which lots of people weighed other people and things were badly weighted on one side.

“I am afraid you will have to put on your bestest gown, Jan,” she said. “They would probably drop dead if they saw you no more fixed up than that, and it would be a nuisance to have to prove they weren’t murdered here. Get out your finest things, and I’ll help you.”

“My finest things aren’t fine enough to make much difference,” said Jan, who had not had her own eyes shut to facts since she came. “However, I’ll do my best not to disgrace you, Gwen.”

Together they fastened Jan into the light-blue cashmere which her mother had made for her to wear to possible children’s parties with her cousins. Jan could not help smiling at herself in the glass, while Gwen was buttoning up the waist in the back, remembering this, and what was Gladys’s idea of a party, and how little she considered herself a child at thirteen.

“You really look like peaches and cream with that light blue against your skin,” said Gwen admiringly when the task was completed. “They can’t say you’re not awfully pretty.”

“Don’t flatter, Gwen. And imagine a brown maid peaches and cream! Come on, then. Have you any instructions to give as to manners?” asked Jan.

“No,” said Gwen wisely. “Yours are always nice, because you’re so real and unaffected—not that there’s the least hope of their knowing that simplicity is nice, though.”

“My cousin, Miss Howe; Miss Hammond, Miss Ida Hammond, Miss Gilsey,” said Gladys, doing the honors with unusual dignity because she felt sure it would be needed to cover Jan’s deficiencies in worldly knowledge.

Janet murmured her salutations confusedly, badly handicapped at the start by the formality of so many “misses” when she expected to be introduced all round by first names.

“How do you like New York, Miss Howe?” asked Daisy Hammond, estimating Jan’s gown rapidly but accurately. “It must be very different from the West?”

“Yes, but I like it,” said Jan warily.

“New York is so much bigger,” added Ida Hammond, with a trying air of superiority.

“Than the West? Oh, no; the West is very large,” said Jan demurely, to Gwen’s delight.

“Are you fond of the theater, Miss Howe?” asked Flossie Gilsey, throwing herself in the breach.

“I never have been; we are going, Gwen says, sometime this winter. But I love to act; we do plays in the barn chamber, my brothers and sisters and I. It’s loads of fun. I’d love to see a real play, but it costs too much to go to the city, and then buy tickets to the theatre,” said honest Jan, quite unconscious of disgrace in the fact of poverty. Gladys turned crimson as her ill-bred guests cleared their throats emphatically and giggled a little. Gwen flushed wrathfully, but not at Jan.

“That is like Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy; do you remember what fun they had acting in Little Women?” she asked tactfully.

“It is so long since we read Little Women—not since we were children; I don’t remember it very well,” said Daisy. “What do you like best, Miss Howe? Dancing? Sport? What is your special line?”

“The clothes-line, I guess,” said Jan, laughing outright, for it struck her as ridiculous to be asked what was her specialty, “as if it was a menagerie, and she wanted to know whether I was a long-necked giraffe or a short-horned gnu,” she said afterward. “I help take in clothes quite often. But I like all kinds of fun—dancing in the house in winter; and games, and racing, and riding out of doors. I guess any sort of fun—just having fun—is my special line.”

Gladys only barely succeeded in checking the groan this horrible speech called forth, but Gwen laughed openly. She did not think it quite wise in Jan to have said that about taking in clothes, but she was so indignant at the thinly veiled rudeness of the girls to her cousin and the guest in her house that she did not care, as long as Jan had the best of it.

The callers rose to go, not being in the least certain whether they were being made game of or not, but thoroughly satisfied that they detested as much as they despised this Western girl, who looked at them with smiling candor in her undeniably pretty eyes, and seemed unconscious of offense.

“You poor dear thing!” said Daisy Hammond in the hall to Gladys, having bade Gwen and “Miss Howe” good-by in the parlor. “It is really awful for you to have to civilize her! She is a perfect savage. Whatever will you do with her when she comes to school? Do you suppose she has any education at all? She certainly has no manners.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Isn’t it awful?” said Gladys, tears of wrath and self-pity in her eyes. “She hasn’t had any chance; that’s the only excuse. For goodness’ sake, don’t tell the other girls!”

“Tell them! My dear, not for worlds!” said Flossie, as they started down the steps on their way to find the others of their set and impart to them how “perfectly awful the Grahams’ cousin was.”

Jan had wandered into the rear parlor when her first visitors had left her, and so had not heard the remarks to Gladys, which had been perfectly audible to Gwen.

When she got her sister up-stairs that young lady freed her mind.

“Gladys Graham,” she said, “you ought to be ashamed of yourself not to stand up for your own cousin, and not to have any more self-respect than to let those geese be impertinent to her and to us in our own house! Jan didn’t do anything dreadful. She needn’t have said that about the clothes, I’ll admit, but I suppose she was disgusted, and well she might be. Besides, she’s the kind of girl that can’t help seeing the funny side, but she isn’t one bit mean. Those girls acted as if she were as far below them—as far as the sea-level from Mont Blanc. And I only wish I could have boxed their ears. If you don’t stop letting those Hammonds and Floss and that crowd impose on you, you’ll be a goose all your days. Just you wait and see if you don’t find out I’m right. I am just ashamed of you—helping them sit on papa’s sister’s daughter!”

Gladys flared up. “She’s perfectly disgraceful, that’s what Janet Howe is! Saying she was too poor to go to the theater, and took in clothes! I wonder she didn’t say she took in washing! Maybe they do, and the ladies give her their old clothes,” she cried.

“Gladys, stop this instant! I won’t let you talk that way. Jan’s a trump, and I can see it if I do neglect her. I only wish we were as nice as they all must be,” cried Gwen.

“Well, if you like that sort of girl, you may have her. I won’t take her out, and I won’t go anywhere with her, and I think papa is downright mean to impair her on us,” Gladys sobbed.

“If you mean impose, why don’t you say so? I honestly think we are the ones whom Jan impairs,” said Gwen, restored to good-nature by the chance to correct one of Gladys’s many slips of tongue. And thus ended Jan’s introduction to New York society.

CHAPTER V
“AND, SAVE HIS GOOD BROADSWORD, HE WEAPONS HAD NONE”

“Fine feathers” may not make “fine birds”; it is generally conceded that true fineness lies somewhat deeper than the plumage, but fine feathers have a marked effect on the minds of ordinary little birds regarding the wearer of them; they have to be birds of considerable experience or native refinement not to judge their fellow bipeds by their plumage.

When the results of Nurse Hummel’s many shopping expeditions with Janet came home, and “Miss Lochinvar” appeared in the tasteful and well-made apparel they had chosen, Gladys treated her cousin with new, if not lasting, respect, and even Sydney showed by several surreptitious glances at her, which keen-eyed Gwen intercepted, that he was realizing for the first time that his quiet Western cousin was worth looking at.

Gwen felt something of the pride of an architect in the building he has created as she wheeled Jan around to view her from every point, and as she saw that the others were newly inclined to admire the girl of whom she was beginning to grow fond, and whom she would have loved dearly if she had not been too self-centered just then to give any one very much affection.

Janet was ashamed to discover that she shrank with no little terror from the ordeal of her first day at school. She felt quite sure that the accomplished young ladies, of whom she had seen examples and who were to be substituted for the girlish girls who had been her classmates in Crescendo, would know so much more than she that they would shame her in learning, as they outstripped her in worldly knowledge. She saw from the first instant that she entered the door that this school was to differ from her previous experiences in more than its pupils.

The Misses Larned, who were its principals—Gwen said that this did not necessarily make them the girls’ princibles—did not teach; they were at the head of the school by virtue of proprietorship, and they were the final, awful tribunal before which transgressors were haled, though, it must be confessed, without any more awful consequences, usually, than a severe lecture. But the girls said “they would rather die” than go up before the dignified sisters, “who were so solemn they took the starch out of a body before they opened their lips.” The same irreverent pupils called the school “the Hydra,” because it had two of that monster’s many heads. No one would ever know—none but the boldest dared speculate—what was the extent of the Misses Larned’s own learning. They walked into the class-rooms at intervals, and inquired of the presiding teachers as to the progress of the day’s work with such Minerva-like air that one felt convinced that the wisdom of the ancients and moderns sat enthroned behind their sapient eyeglasses.

They were wise in the selection of their teachers. “The Hydra” was really a very good school in that respect, and the girl who desired knowledge could obtain it there, and an excellent preparation for college beyond. But she who had not this desire could slip through with marvelously little instruction sticking to her brain, for it was a school frequented chiefly by the children of wealthy and fashionable people, and vigorous discipline would have been resented by the majority of the parents.

The school occupied an entire house on a cross-street, near the Park, and Janet passed under its portals with trepidation on her first morning. Gwen sustained her; Gladys had preceded them, and bore herself with a little air of aloofness, in spite of Jan’s better appearance, as if to provide herself against deeper disgrace than was absolutely necessary, in case “Miss Lochinvar” fulfilled her apprehensions.

It was not an easy matter to grade the new pupil. In arithmetic, history, geography, spelling, and in general information her teachers soon discovered that she far surpassed their old pupils, but she was guiltless of French, though, on the other hand, she could speak German—a point no girl in school ever aspired to reach. The extent of the universal ambition in regard to that tongue was to avoid so many mistakes in the gender and cases of nouns as should lead to a serious lowering of averages in marking percentage at the end of the year. On the whole, Janet passed her entrance examination with honor, and was placed in the class with Gwen for everything but French, which she “had to begin with the babies,” as Gladys disdainfully remarked. She was uncertain whether to be relieved or annoyed that “Miss Lochinvar” had been ranked with the best scholars, though Gladys’s ambition did not lead studyward.

A sudden rain prevented the customary brief walk in the Park at recess, and the girls gathered in the large room on the upper floor, formed by joining two rooms together, which was their refuge under such circumstances.

Gwen honestly meant to do her duty by Jan during this first recess, when she was to meet her future mates, but she began to talk to Azucena North, and quite forgot her cousin. Cena North was the daughter of a lady who had been steeped in admiration for Verdi and Trovatore when Cena was born; consequently she had named her baby after the gipsy in that opera, and Cena pathetically said that “if she must be named out of Trovatore she didn’t see why she couldn’t have been called Leonora.” Gwen didn’t see either; she privately pitied her friend deeply for being burdened with such a name as Azucena. But there were compensations, as there are in most misfortunes. Cena was one of the best scholars at the Misses Larned’s, and her father was Mr. North, the head of the great publishing house of North & Co., which Gwen felt accounted for Cena’s thoroughness, as well as partly made up for her name. Cena and Gwen were deep in a plan to lay before Mr. North Gwen’s novel—when it should be finished, of course—without telling him that it was the work of Cena’s classmate, a girl of fifteen. After he had accepted it, and he and his house had exhausted themselves in praise of its many brilliant qualities, Cena was to say demurely that she knew the author, and would bring her to her father’s office. And Gwen was to go with her—wearing her most simple and girlish gown, to increase the dramatic effect—down to the great establishment of North & Co., and Cena was to say, “Behold the new Charlotte Brontë!” or something to that effect. It is no wonder with such a project in hand that Jan slipped from Gwen’s mind when she and Cena collided in the “campus,” as they classically called the playroom. They straightway became oblivious to all but the discussion of ways and means for fulfilling the great plan, which really lacked but the novel to be successful.

Janet wandered on alone, feeling very shy and strange, among the chattering crowd eating cake and candy instead of better luncheons, and all eying her curiously as she passed.

She was bearing down toward the younger children—her refuge here, as at her uncle’s—when the Hammonds and Flossie Gilsey stopped her.

“Have you forgotten us already, Miss Howe?” called Daisy Hammond.

“No, indeed,” responded Janet, trying to speak easily and cordially. “But please don’t say Miss Howe. It seems so funny among girls like us; my name is Janet.”

“Thanks; it is awfully good of you to let us be intimate right away, and waive all ceremony. Generally we have to wait to use first names,” said Daisy, with an inflection that told Jan, unused as she was to polite disagreeables, that the speech was not meant at its face value. “I heard that your cousin Syd—isn’t he too handsome?—had given you such a nice, funny nickname.”

“Yes; Miss Lochinvar. That’s because I ‘came out of the West,’ you see,” said Janet, instinctively seizing her foe by the horns, so to speak. “It was bright of him, but only too flattering. I don’t expect to make a clean sweep of everything, like Young Lochinvar.” But as she laughed Jan’s heart sank. She was not used to this sort of bad temper, and she hated herself for meeting it while she felt forced to do so; she understood “getting mad,” but not petty spite. And all the while she was saying to herself, “Gladys told them; Gladys has been making game of me.”

But she had crippled her adversary; Daisy did not know how to meet this view of the case, and she glanced slyly at Gladys, who shrugged her shoulders.

“How well you speak German, Miss—Janet!” said Flossie Gilsey. “Isn’t it queer you know it so well, and don’t know French?”

“Not at all queer,” said Janet simply. “I hadn’t much chance to learn French, but there are lots of Germans in Crescendo. Besides, I like it better than French, I’m certain. But the real reason why I know it is because I worked hard to learn it. I meant to be able to speak it; I wanted to be fit to help papa in his office.”

A short silence fell on the little group at this shocking remark, during which Gladys turned a succession of alarming colors, and longed to go into hysterics or choke her cousin—probably both in rapid sequence. Janet Howe, her father’s sister’s child, staying at her house that winter, and brought by her and Gwen to this exclusive school, to announce—shamelessly, brazenly, to announce—that her ambition was to be a clerk in her father’s office, and that for this purpose she had learned German!

Poor Gladys really was to be pitied at that moment, for though she was a little goose to feel so, she really did feel that a disgrace had fallen upon her which death could hardly wipe out. And then the silence was broken by a little titter from the three girls, and Ida Hammond said sarcastically, “How nice!”

Janet looked from Gladys’s party-colored countenance to the amusement gleaming in the eyes of her friends, and saw that something was wrong, but what it could be she had not the faintest idea. And before anything worse could happen a voice behind her said: “Yes, isn’t that nice? Isn’t it lovely? Please introduce me to your cousin, Gladys.”

Janet turned and saw a girl who was in the class with her and Gwen. She was tall, not pretty, but distinguished looking, with that air of good breeding which is so definite, yet so indefinable—the look of one who for many generations had inherited good principles and right standards of living and taste.

“My cousin, Janet Howe, Miss Dorothy Schuyler,” murmured Gladys.

Dorothy put out her hand. “I am so glad to have you here, Janet,” she said. “I was so much interested in what you were saying. There aren’t many girls with enough affection for their fathers to study that they may help them, and few clever enough to do it, even if they do want to. Won’t you tell me about it?”

There was a determined look in the brown eyes that smiled kindly, in spite of it, on Jan, and she knew, though she did not know why, that she was being championed.

“There isn’t very much to tell,” she said slowly, responding in a puzzled way to the other’s cordiality. “My father is in the real-estate business out in the little place I came from—Crescendo. He has to deal a good deal with Germans, and he hasn’t as big a business as he would have in such a growing town if he weren’t working on a patent he wants to bring out. So he needs me—or I liked to think he did—to help him, and he needs some one to speak German, so I tried to combine the two. Like the man in Pickwick who wrote about Chinese metaphysics,” added Jan, with a sudden laugh, and the dimples that made her so irresistibly pretty coming in her cheeks.

Dorothy had a sense of humor, too, and she liked Dickens. She laughed, and put an arm affectionately over the stranger’s shoulder. “I think it is beautiful to find a girl of our age trying to do something loving and sensible like that,” she said heartily. “I hope you can teach me to be brave and unselfish. Wouldn’t you like to come over to that deep window-seat and see the view—it is fine from there—and tell me more about Crescendo? If Gladys can lend you to me a while?” she added interrogatively.

Gladys seemed to think that she could, and the two walked away, followed by glances by no means pleasant from the group they had left. In that first encounter were sown the seeds of future enmity, for the Hammonds and Flossie disliked Janet as much as they would naturally dislike one to whom they had been unkind, and who had thus been the means of making them appear badly in the eyes of Dorothy Schuyler.

When Gwen awakened from her day-dream to a consciousness of her neglect of Janet, she stared in amazement at the sight of her cousin chattering volubly to Dorothy, whose cheeks were red from laughing. Gwen drew a sigh of relief; she saw that Jan was happy, and she knew Dorothy was so innately well-bred that she would never misunderstand any confidences Jan chose to make, as would the other sort of girls.

Walking home at two o’clock, Janet told Gwen the story of her adventures at recess—“recreation hour,” she found that she must learn to call it.

Gwen listened with frowns and smiles. “You will have to learn not to tell that gang”—it is a melancholy fact that the budding author did say “gang”—“anything about home, and being poor. They only draw you out for pure meanness, and they don’t know anything but just money. But wasn’t it fine of Dorothy Schuyler to squelch them like that? Dolly Schuyler is the most a real lady of any girl in that school. She doesn’t put on airs—of course not, if she is a lady—but she makes all the girls feel that what she says and does is the very last, best thing to be said or done. And she leads us all; not because she wants to, but because she is what she is—all the girls look up to her. She wouldn’t stoop to do an underhanded, sneaky, nor a mean thing—not if she got a crown by doing it. She never says nasty things, but when she looks at you—if you’ve been contemptible in any way—you can’t help curling up. I’ve always been very proud that Dorothy seems to like me; she doesn’t like every one. The Hammonds, and that crowd, pretend not to care for what she thinks, because they’re richer than she is, but she is the very concentrated extract of blue blood, and they do care a lot. If there is any aristocracy in America, it’s people like Dorothy’s family.”

“But there isn’t; papa says it is sheer nonsense to talk about aristocracy in a republic,” said Jan, her independence touched.

“All right; I don’t say it isn’t, so don’t wave the Stars and Stripes at me,” said Gwen. “But if there is aristocracy, it must be those people descended from the signers of the Declaration, and the Revolutionary fighters, and the colonists, and all those. Why, you’re descended from them yourself, so you needn’t fire up, Janet Howe.”

“I don’t care; in the West we don’t fuss about trifles. Tell me about Dorothy,” said Janet.

“There isn’t much more to tell, and what there is you’ll find out for yourself. But it was a big thing for Dorothy to champion you. You’ll see that it will make a difference. Both ways,” added Gwen honestly, “for it will make the Hammonds and Floss Gilsey hate you. I wish we could put our heads together to get Gladys away from those girls. I should think she’d know better than to like them, and they’re certain sure to spoil her, if it keeps up.”

“I’m afraid if I put my head into it she would go with them all the more,” said Jan, with a hurt little laugh. “Gladys can’t bear me, Gwen.”

“Gladys is a perfect goose; if she likes such girls as the Hammonds she couldn’t be expected to like you. But just you wait. She’ll come round. Those girls are sure to do something mean to her some day—they’re so jealous of everybody, and I’m proud to say they just hate me. And as to you, nobody could help liking you sooner or later, Jan. You’re a regular dear!” and Gwen kissed her cousin on the front steps, moved with compunction for the neglect which had exposed her to her unpleasant experience at noon, admiration of the generosity which did not resent it, and pride in the little Lochinvar out of the West whom Dorothy Schuyler had sealed with her approval.

CHAPTER VI
“HE RODE ALL UNARM’D, AND HE RODE ALL ALONE”

One day was very like another in the first two weeks of Janet’s new school life. The teachers soon liked the sunny girl with the ready dimples and readier wit, joined with honest industry and determination to learn. The girls—the best girls—liked Jan at once, but the little knot of companions whom Gwen had disrespectfully called “that gang” disliked her every day a little more than the previous one, and chiefly because of the liking of the better faction. Gladys—and this was what made the attitude of these girls hard to bear—Gladys arrayed herself with them, and showed positive dislike to “Miss Lochinvar,” who certainly did not deserve it at her hands.

At home, after school, during the five hours between its dismissal and dinner time, life was a trifle dreary, or would have been but for Jack, Viva, and Jerry. Gwen thoughtlessly, in spite of her liking for Jan, betook herself to her own pursuits. Sydney did not seem like part of the family at all, but rather like some one who was fortunate enough to have secured an unusually well-appointed lodging-house and restaurant. He came and went unnoted, to Jan’s amazed distress. She had heard so much said by her father and mother of the necessity of keeping close to their boys and making home pleasant to them that motherly little Jan quite yearned over the handsome lad who had no one to see that he kept straight. She longed to make friends with him; a longing intensified by her intimacy with her own elder brother, Fred, whom she missed more than any of the children she had left behind her, unless it was the baby, Poppet. But though Sydney was perfectly polite to Jan, he made no recognition of her overtures of friendship, and, it seemed to his cousin, grew more indifferent to his surroundings, and more heavy-browed at each succeeding dinner.

Mrs. Graham soon got over her annoyance at Janet’s coming, and was always pleasant, pretty, and kindly, but not less busy than at first. As the autumn advanced into winter she was more deeply engulfed in engagements than ever, and Jan shared her children’s lack of their mother’s society. Unfortunately, with her aunt’s displeasure at her coming had disappeared her uncle’s pleasure in receiving his favorite sister’s child, and Jan quite longed for another of the evenings with him, such as she had tasted on her arrival a month ago.

Every afternoon when she came home from school—except on the afternoon of the dancing-class—Jan went into the nursery and sat down with Hummie, Jack, Viva, and the baby—who would have resented the title. Jack found the steep hill of learning which—to speak metaphorically—had so winded him turned into “the primrose path of dalliance” by this pretty cousin, who was so honest that she would not do his tasks for him, yet so clear-headed that she turned them into positive joys. Then she told the jolliest stories of the doings of her brothers and sisters, whom Jack burned to know, considering them more attractive than any youngsters he had had the luck to meet with, either in or out of a book, and whose feats filled him with envious admiration. Peals of laughter floated down the hall frequently during these hours—laughter which reached Gwen in her shrine of genius, and sometimes brought her out to share the fun. Gwen was surprised to find herself half jealous of the children’s love which Jan had won in a short month, and which she had missed because she had never thought about them at all. She sometimes felt quite shut out and hurt when she saw how the faces of the three youngest brightened at the sight of Jan and heard the whoop of delight with which they welcomed her.

Quiet little Viva found that Jan knew ways of playing housekeeping which her own naturally domestic little brain could not have devised, and that she could dress dolls, and play with them, too, as no one—not only her own sisters, but her friends—could begin to hope to do. And she could tell stories, not only the funny stories of life in Crescendo and the Howes’ frolics, but the fairy-tales which Viva preferred, in a way that would make the lady who told stories in the Arabian Nights’ green with envy. Viva loved Jan with a sort of dumb adoration. She was a sensitive little creature, and Jan had come into her solitude like sunshine. As to Jerry, she adopted Jan—whom she called “Yan” with a pure Norwegian pronunciation—as her own property, and loved her with tumultuous affection. Jerry had grown so well-behaved in the dining-room—never tipping over her oatmeal spoon, still less kicking “Tsusan”—that her father and mother wondered at the reform. They did not know that if “Yan” lifted her eyebrows in shocked surprise at the dawn of naughtiness in the wilful tot, Miss Geraldine immediately resumed the behavior which should make “Yan” show her dimples in smiling at her, for “Yan’s” dimples had become Jerry’s barometer, and she could not exist if their absence indicated disapproval.

It was fortunate for Janet that she was so sincerely fond of younger children and that her little cousins did cling to her with such devotion, for without their love she would have had many lonely hours and would have found the atmosphere of the splendid home she had come to too frigid for happiness.

Helen Watterson was to give a party, and the school was stirred by the announcement. Not only did Helen live in a house so large that her party was sure to be an event, but she had announced it as a “fagot party,” and all the girls invited protested that they could never, never fulfil its requirements. These requirements were for each guest to bring a fagot of wood—and “fagot” could be interpreted very liberally to mean anything from a few toothpicks bound together to a large bundle of real sticks. These fagots were to be laid in turn on the open fire, and while his fagot was burning each guest must tell a story.

The Grahams, Gwen, Gladys, and Janet Howe, were invited, as well as most of the girls of their age at “the Hydra.” Gwen felt no uneasiness as to her powers in the story-telling line, nor did Jan, though she was rather frightened at the thought of lifting up her voice in such an august assembly, but Gladys was dismayed, and declared, without meaning it, that she would not go if she had to tell a story, but would plead some excuse at the last moment. As it happened, it was Gwen, who longed to go, that pleaded the excuse at the last moment, a painfully real excuse, for she had a bad sore throat, and could not leave her room. Jan begged to be allowed to stay at home with her, partly through kindness to the cousin whom she really loved, and partly from a strong preference for doing so, for the prospect of going to a party without Gwen and with Gladys was worse than going alone. But Gwen would not hear of Jan’s staying behind.

“It will be the nicest party, I’m sure, Jan,” she said, “and I wouldn’t have you miss it. Besides, it is really the first affair we’ve been asked to since you came, so it will be your introduction to New York society. And another ‘besides’ is that I shall want to hear all about it, every story repeated, and everything, and Gladys never would tell me one thing.”

“I don’t feel as though I could go with Gladys, Gwen,” Jan said involuntarily. “She does dislike me so, and it makes me more awkward and scared than ever.”

“Don’t pay the slightest attention to her,” said Gwen, looking wrathfully at Jan over the red-flannel swathings of her throat—Hummie always insisted on the efficacy of that color for such purposes. “After you leave the dressing-room you keep with Dorothy Schuyler and Cena North. They’ve got sense enough to appreciate you! And they’re my friends. You’ll have a good time, because there’ll be plenty of good times there to have, and when there are, you don’t miss them.”

Gwen, with mistaken zeal, made a few vigorous remarks to Gladys before they set forth, telling her what she thought of her slighting Jan, and bidding her be nice to her at the party, under threat of wrath to come. The result of this well-meant interference was that Gladys sulked, settling herself in her corner of the carriage without speaking to Jan during the drive. After they arrived she compelled Susan to arrange her hair and dress first, and she then left the dressing-room without waiting for Jan, who had to find her way, frightened and hurt, to the parlors alone.

“Isn’t Gwen coming?” asked Dorothy Schuyler, standing near their hostess, when Gladys entered.

“Gwen has a sore throat. She’s dreadfully disappointed. She cared more about coming than I did,” said Gladys.

“And Jan wouldn’t leave her, I suppose?” suggested Dorothy.

“Oh, Jan is here. She is coming right down,” said Gladys, trying to speak easily.

Dorothy gave her one of the glances which Gwen had said “made you curl up,” and went swiftly into the hall. Here she found Jan coming hesitatingly down-stairs through the group of boys lounging part way up, waiting for “the party to begin.” They all stared at Jan, glad of something prettier to look at than one another, for, though some of them were already young dandies, most of them despised the stiff costume to which even the younger lord of creation is condemned at festivities, and were wondering, each individually, if he “looked as big a fool in his stiff collar as the other fellows did.”

Jan gave a sigh of relief as she caught sight of Dorothy. It seemed to her that she could not enter that crowded room alone. Dorothy noticed with pleasure that Jan looked very charming in soft, delicate green, which gave her, with her brown eyes and hair, the effect of some sylvan creature.

It was not so very bad after all to get to her hostess and make her salutations now that kind Dorothy was at her elbow, and when the ordeal was over Jan turned to enjoying herself with her tendency to make the best of things.

There was to be dancing after supper, but first the young guests grouped themselves around the open fire for the fagot burning and story-telling. Dorothy began, and told a pretty legend of Brittany, not long, but much longer than Daisy Hammond’s, who had brought a tiny bundle of three lightest twigs, and related a tragic tale in two stanzas of “nonsense rhymes.”

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

The story-telling party.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But the other guests at the party did not seem to consider Jan’s little tale a blot upon her credit—they could afford to admire it, Gladys thought bitterly; she was not their cousin! Girls and boys crowded around Jan to congratulate her, till poor Jan hardly knew where to look. She was already the heroine of the evening, but one thing more raised her into a heroine indeed, though it ended the party for her and Gladys.

The last fagot was on the fire, and Helen Watterson leaned forward with the tongs to adjust it as it burned. She wore floating tarlatan over her pink-silk skirt, and as she reached for the falling fagot the draft from the chimney sucked her dress into the fireplace, and instantly the gauzy stuff blazed up.

Her guests fell back screaming, but Jan sprang forward, gathered up the overdress in her hands, crumpling it together, and extinguishing the flames before there was the slightest danger of injury to Helen. Probably there had not been very great danger, for the flimsy stuff would very likely have been consumed before it could ignite the rest of her garments, but none the less, Jan had done a brave deed, and at the cost of painful burns on her own hands.

Mrs. Watterson took her away to be coddled and bandaged, amid a murmur of admiration from the guests she left behind her. When the poor little brown hands were thoroughly wrapped in oil and cotton a carriage was called, and Susan put Jan into it, while Gladys followed, angry at being obliged to miss the dancing, angry with herself for her bad temper, angriest of all with Jan for proving her so wrong, yet swelling with pride that her cousin had saved Helen’s life—for Gladys would not regard the event as less than life-saving. The drive back was as silent as had been the drive to the party. Jan was in too much pain, Gladys in too perturbed a state of mind for speech.

As Susan helped Jan from the carriage, a forlorn, hungry, sick-looking little tiger cat ran mewing toward her, and then scuttled away, as one who had no reason to count on the human kindness it implored.

“Oh, that poor, poor, dear little cat!” cried Jan, who loved dumb beasts tenderly. “Can’t I take it in, Gladys?”

“Oh, Miss Janet, it’s that forlorn and miserable, you don’t want it!” protested Susan.

“Yes, I do; that’s why I want it!” cried Jan. “Do you think your mother would care? I’ve missed my animals so dreadfully, Gladys!” she pleaded.

“You know mamma never cares what we do as long as we are satisfied,” said Gladys ungraciously.

Jan waited for no further permission. With her bandaged hands, and with the blandishments of a voice used to conversing with our little kindred who can not reply—not in the same tongue at least—Jan contrived to catch the frightened little waif who stood in such sore need of kindness.

Clasping him to her breast, in spite of bandages, and disregarding possible mud on the white paws, Jan returned, damaged, excited, but, on the whole, happy, from her first party.

CHAPTER VII
“OH, COME YE IN PEACE HERE, OR COME YE IN WAR?”

After the party and Jan’s accident there were seven days of uneventful, shut-in life, which were both pleasant and unpleasant. Jan could not go to school, for her hands were very painful, and holding a book would be quite out of the question.

Gwen was well and out again in a day, but she devoted her afternoons to Jan, going over their lessons with her, that she might keep up with the class, and entertaining her the rest of the time. The girls in school showed a tendency to make a heroine of Jan, who refused to be lionized; Dorothy, Cena, and Helen Watterson came, separately or together, nearly every afternoon to see her, and the teachers sent messages of sympathy and pride in her courage to her, whom they called “their brave little Janet.”

Sydney hailed her on the day after her adventure with a cordial smile and a tone which she had never heard him use to any one. He liked pluck, and it struck him suddenly that the girl whom he had dubbed “Miss Lochinvar” had been showing it, in one form or another, ever since her arrival.

“I hear you have been making a burnt offering of yourself, Miss Jan,” he said. “Don’t do too much of that sort of thing, because it would be a pity to have you burned up altogether.”

Jan was so pleased at this advance from Sydney that she built upon it great hopes of real friendship between them, but though Sydney never relapsed into his perfect indifference of manner toward her, they did not get beyond this slight break in the ice. Gladys alone stood completely aloof. She was a very unhappy Gladys in these days, and heartily wished that she had not taken the attitude toward her cousin which she now felt called upon to maintain. Pride kept her from admitting that she was in the wrong, and stubbornness toward Gwen, and a deep-seated objection to seeming to admit her authority, made her ten times worse than she might have been without these inducements to bad behavior. Gwen found out from Jan how Gladys had treated her at the party. Jan did not mean to tell, but in saying how good Dorothy Schuyler had been to her, she found that she had blundered into betrayal of Gladys’s neglect.

Gwen was very angry. Not only was her sense of justice and liking for Jan in arms, but had not she, Gwendoline, Gladys’s elder and talented sister, warned Gladys that night before setting forth that she must not treat their cousin badly?

“I don’t want to be a tell-tale, Gladys, and I’m not the sort to run to papa with things, any more than he is one to bother with them, but you know what he said about sending you to boarding-school if you dared be rude to Janet when he had invited her here! Now, you just keep it up as you’ve been doing, and I’ll have to go to him, and tell him how perfectly horrid you are to her—and she so sweet and dear, and everybody that is anybody admiring her like everything!” said Gwen sternly.

“You can tell him anything you please,” said Gladys furiously, “but I won’t have anything to do with Janet, and nobody can make me! You can’t say I treat her badly if I let her entirely alone!”

So Gladys withdrew herself from her sister’s society, since it involved Jan’s, and was more than ever with her objectionable friends, by way of defying Gwen and proving her independence; though the only thing she succeeded in proving thoroughly was proved to herself, and that was that she was very miserable and ashamed of herself.

“I am driving Gladys away,” said Jan forlornly to Gwen one day. “You are never together, and it’s all my fault. I sometimes wish I had never come to New York.”

“Don’t worry, Jan. Gladys and I were never friends,” said Gwen lightly. Then seeing Jan’s shocked expression, she added: “Not that we were enemies, you know. What I mean is we never were chums. We always liked different things and people. It might as well be you we differ about as anything else. It isn’t you who have done it.”

“But she is with the Hammonds all the time—more than when I first came, and you never liked that,” objected Jan.

“Probably it is all for the best. I should think that would be the best way to cure her of liking them,” laughed Gwen. “Don’t worry, Jan. You can’t make everybody alike.”

With which bit of philosophy Jan had to try to satisfy herself.

The kitten she had rescued on her return from the party was showing gratifying results of her care. After he had had the mud sponged from his fur—a task performed by Gwen, since Jan was unable to do it—he had displayed a pretty coat of black stripes on a brownish ground, with snowy breast and paws, and a nice face, which Jan convulsed Gwen and Jack by pronouncing “grave and sweet in expression,” though there was no denying that this was true when she had pointed out the fact.

He had been some one’s pet, for his manners were quite elegant, and he had been taught to jump through hands, and to eat like a Turveydrop of deportment. But Jan did not call him Turveydrop, as Gwen wanted her to. She named him Tommy Traddles, after the cheerful youth of whom she was very fond, and he became the greatest addition to the little exile’s comfort. Tommy Traddles required convincing that each other member of the family individually meant well by him, for he had been so frightened during his days of wandering and hardship that he distrusted every one, but Jan he loved from the first. He had a shocking cough and bad indigestion from exposure and lack of food, but Jan cured the one with cod-liver oil and the other by careful feeding, and Tommy Traddles came out as good as new. It seemed to Jan, when he sat purring in her sunny chamber window, with the broad middle stripe of his back getting more glossy before her eyes, that she had not had a moment of home feeling until her dear cat came.

One day when it had been raining heavily, and a cold had kept Jack at home from school, Jan sat in Gwen’s room listening to the first chapters—three were now written—of the novel which she, quite as implicitly as Gwen, believed that North & Co would jump at the chance to publish as soon as Cena North laid it before her father.

Jack was restless. His cold was just bad enough not to risk going out with it, but not bad enough to subdue his spirits. Gwen lost patience at last with his constant popping in and out of her room and snapped him up.

“Ivan Graham,” she cried, “if you don’t keep out of here, I’ll make you! You ought to be ashamed of yourself, taking advantage of me, like a sneak, just because my lock is broken! Aren’t boys a nuisance, Jan?”

“No, but their noise is sometimes,” smiled Jan, with a warning shake of the head at Jack.

The warning came too late. Jan had never seen an exhibition of her little cousin’s temper, though she had been informed more than once that “Jack was a terror when he broke loose.” He “broke loose” now, and Jan saw the suitability of the expression, for he was like a young wildcat.

“I’m not a sneak! I’ll teach you to call me a sneak!” he shrieked, throwing himself on Gwen with such violence that she staggered halfway across the room. “I’ll show you! I’ll show you!” Apparently Jack meant that he would show his sister how he could use his fists, for he was pummeling her black and blue, and Jan’s bandaged hands prevented her going to Gwen’s rescue.

But Gwen had had sorry experience with ungoverned temper from her earliest days. She caught Jack deftly at last, pinioned his arms, and bore him—for she was a tall, strong girl—half dragging him, half carrying him, to Hummie for punishment, though he kicked and fought all the way.

“Isn’t he a cherub?” asked Gwen, returning triumphant, but short of breath.

“It’s awful!” cried Jan, who had been quite frightened during the tussle. “If some one doesn’t teach him to control that temper he may do something he’ll be sorry for all his life. And he really is a dear little fellow—so warm-hearted and generous!”

“Oh, those tornadoes are always warm-hearted and generous, if they feel pleasant,” said Gwen. “I think I like less generosity and fewer kicks. I shall be black and blue for a week. Don’t your brothers have tantrums?”

“Yes, but we always try not to stir up the quick ones, and when they get into a fit of temper we try to cool them down—we have what we call the Rescue League, you know—mamma founded it—and we pledge ourselves to rescue one another from our foes—inside ourselves, of course. It really is fun, and more like a play than anything goody-goody. Then if mamma is around when one of us gets mad, she takes that one by the hand and leads him off—sometimes it’s a her, you know—it has been me—been I—and soothes him all down and talks quietly, and we come back feeling as if we had had a bath—a bath for our minds.” Janet’s eyes had grown dim as she talked. The little plain home looked so lovely and peaceful as she recalled it!