The Cinder Pond Part 16

Jeanne was late to breakfast that morning. She had fallen asleep after her bath. When she slipped, rather guiltily, into her place at the table, her Uncle Charles, who ordinarily paid no attention to her, raised his eyebrows, superciliously, and fixed his gaze upon her--as if she were an interesting stranger. Her grandfather, too, regarded her oddly. So did her Aunt Agatha.

"I'm sorry I'm so late," apologized Jeanne. "I slept too long."

"You are a deceitful child," accused Mrs. Huntington, frigidly. "You were _not_ asleep. For how long, may I ask, have you been bathing in the fountain?"

"About two weeks," said Jeanne, calmly. "It's _lovely_."

"Lovely!" exclaimed Mrs. Huntington. "It's _disgraceful_! And for two weeks! Are you sure that no one has seen you?"

"Only a policeman. He was on horseback. You see, I frightened a blue-jay and he squawked. The policeman stopped to see what had frightened him, but I pretended I was part of the statue in the middle of the fountain."

Uncle Charles suddenly choked over his coffee. Her grandfather, too, began suddenly to cough. Dignified James, standing un.o.bserved near the wall, actually _bolted_ from the room.

Mrs. Huntington continued to frown at the small culprit.

"You may eat your breakfast," said she, sternly. "Come to me afterwards in my room."

There was to be no more bathing in the fountain--even in a bathing suit.

Jeanne learned that she had been a _very_ wicked child and that it wouldn't have happened if her father hadn't been "a common fishman."

"I am thankful," concluded Aunt Agatha, "that your cousins are out of town. _They_ wouldn't _think_ of doing anything so unladylike."

After that, Jeanne's liveliest adventures were those that she found in books. Fortunately, she loved to read. That helped a great deal.

She was really rather glad when the dull vacation was over and, oh, so delighted to see Lizzie and Susie! All that first week she couldn't _help_ whispering to them in school, even if the new teacher did give her bad marks and move her to the very front seat.

"I'd go home with you if I _could_," said Jeanne, declining one of Susie's numerous invitations, "but I have to go straight home from school, always."

"You went into Lydia Coleman's house, yesterday," objected jealous Susie.

"Only to get a book for my cousin. Besides, that's right on my way home."

"Maybe if _you_ lived on the Avenue, Susie," sneered Lizzie, who understood Mrs. Huntington's sn.o.bbishness only too well, "she'd be allowed to go with you."

"Hurry up and move," said Jeanne. "I'd _love_ your house, Susie. I know it's a home-y house. I liked your mother when she came to the school exercises and I'm sure I'd like any house she lived in. But you see, I do so many bad things without knowing that I'm being bad, that it never would do for me to be _really_ bad. Besides I promised my father I'd mind Aunt Agatha, so of course I have to. I'd love to go home with _both_ of you."

Next to her grandfather, Jeanne's pleasantest companion out of school was the small brown maid in the big mirror set in her closet door. There were mirrors like that in all the Huntington bedrooms, so it sometimes looked as if there were two Claras and two Pearls and two Aunt Agathas, which made it worse if either of the girls were snippish, or if Aunt Agatha happened to be thinking of the fountain. Apparently, Mrs.

Huntington would _never_ forget that, Jeanne thought.

But to Jeanne's mind, the girl she saw in her own mirror had a _nice_ face, even if it was rather brown. She liked the other child's big, dark eyes; now serious, now sparkling under very neat, slender eyebrows, with some new, entertaining thought. The mirror-girl's mouth was just a bit large, perhaps, with red lips, full of queer little wiggly curves that came and went, according to her mood. Her nose, rather a small affair, at best, did it turn up or didn't it? One couldn't be quite sure.

Lizzie's turned up, Ikey Goldberg's turned down; but this nose seemed to do both. For that reason, it seemed a most interesting nose, even if there were no freckles on it.

When lips are narrow and straight, when noses are likewise absolutely straight, as Pearl's and Clara's were, they may be perfect or even beautiful, but they are not _interesting_. A wiggly mouth, as Jeanne said, keeps one guessing. So does an uncertain nose.

Then there was the mirror-child's chin. Not a _big_ chin like the one in the picture of Bridget's first husband, the prize-fighter; nor a chinless chin like Ethel's.

"Quite a good deal of a chin, I should say," was Jeanne's verdict.

Then the rest of the mirror-child. A little smaller, perhaps, than many girls of the same age; but very nicely made. Arms the right size and length, hands not too big, shoulders straight and not too high like Bridget's, nor too sloping like Maggie's. A slight waist that didn't need to be pinched in like Aunt Agatha's. Legs that looked like _girls'_ legs, not like piano legs--as Hannah Schmidt's did, for instance, when Hannah wore white stockings. The feet were small. The hair grew prettily about the bright, sociable face.

"You're just about the best _young_ friend I have," declared Jeanne, kissing the mirror-child. "I'm glad you live in my closet--I'd be awfully lonesome if you didn't."

Jeanne, however, was not a vain little girl, nor a conceited one. She simply didn't think of the mirror-child as _herself_. The girl in the mirror was merely another girl of her own age, and she loved her quite unselfishly. Perhaps Jeanne's most personal thought came when she washed her face.

"I'm so glad I don't have beginning-whiskers like the milkman," said she, "or a wart on my nose like Bridget's. It's much pleasanter, I'm sure, to wash a smooth face like this."

CHAPTER XV

ALLEN ROSSITER

In November there came a day when n.o.body in the Huntington house spoke above a whisper. There was a trained nurse in the house, three very solemn doctors coming and going, and an air of everybody _waiting_ for something.

James told Maggie, and Maggie told Jeanne, that old Mr. Huntington had had a stroke.

"Is my grandfather going to die?" asked Jeannette, when Maggie had patiently explained the serious nature of Mr. Huntington's sudden illness.

"I don't know," returned Maggie. "n.o.body knows, not even the doctors."

For a great many dreary days, her grandfather remained "Just the same,"

until Jeanne considered those three words the most hateful ones in the English tongue. Then, one memorable morning--_years_ later, it seemed--she heard Dr. Duncan say, on his way out: "A decided change for the better, Mrs. Huntington."

Jeanne was so glad that she danced a little jig with her friend in the mirror. Often, after that, she waylaid the pleasant white-capped nurse to ask about the invalid; but Miss Raymond's one response was "Nicely, my dear, nicely." For weeks and weeks, Jeanne saw nothing of her grandfather; consequently, her mathematics became very bad indeed. But at last, one Sunday morning, the nurse summoned her to her grandfather's room.

"Your grandfather wants to see you," said Miss Raymond. "You must be very quiet and not stay too long--just five minutes."

Five minutes were enough! There was a strange, wrinkled old man, who looked small and shriveled in that big white bed. Her grandfather's eyes had been keen and bright. The eyes of this stranger were dull, sunken, and oh, so tired.

"How do you do?" said Jeanne, primly. "I'm--I'm sorry you've been sick."

"Better now--I'm better now," quavered a strange voice. "How is the arithmetic?"

"Very bad," said Jeanne. "Miss Turner says I plastered a room with two bushels of oats, and measured a barn for an acre of carpet, instead of getting the right number of apples from an orchard. You have to do so _many_ kinds of work in examples, that it's hard to remember whether you're a farmer or a paperhanger. I suppose wet things _would_ run out of a bushel basket, but wet measure and dry measure get all mixed up--"

"I think your grandfather is asleep," said the nurse, gently. "You may come again tomorrow."

As Mr. Huntington improved, Jeanne's visits grew longer. After a time, he was able to help her again with her lessons. But all that winter, the old man sat in his own room. In February the nurse departed and James took her place. James, who had lived with the family for many years, was fond of Mr. Huntington and served him devotedly. As before, Jeannette spent much time with her grandfather. Also, in obedience to their mother's wishes, the young Huntingtons entered the old man's room, decorously, once a day to say good morning. Neither the children nor Mr.

Huntington appeared to enjoy these brief, daily visits. Jeanne was certainly a more considerate visitor. She was ever ready to move his foot-stool a little closer, to peel an orange for him, to find him a book, or to sit quietly beside him while he dozed.

One day, in March, he told her where to find some keys and how to fit one of them to a small safe in the corner of his room.

"Bring me all the papers in the first pigeon-hole to the left," said he.

"It's time I was doing some spring housecleaning."

"I love to help," said Jeanne, swiftly obedient.