CHAPTER TWELVE

CAROL’S NEW HOME

It had been a very excited little girl who had driven in between the high stone gate-posts and had realized that the imposing white mansion-like house set far back among fine old trees, and surrounded by wide velvety lawns and gardens, where a few late flowers were still blooming, was to be her future home. Since the little lass was very like her mother, it was not strange that Carol truly believed that she was receiving only that which it was her right to have.

Little Sylvia Clayburn she knew not at all, and Mrs. Clayburn she remembered vaguely as being a very richly dressed woman who had stopped her at the fair to ask whose little girl she might be, and, as usual, Carol’s reply had been that she was a Haddington-Allen of Kentucky. Later, when Mrs. Clayburn had heard the story of the four orphans from her husband, she had said that she believed this little Carol would be the right child for them to adopt, since they had decided that their precious Sylvia was being spoiled growing up alone.

Nor were they wrong, for Sylvia, pale, thin, and fretful, indeed was very much spoiled. Whenever she cried, her mother gave her candy, and then, of course, she had no desire for plain, healthful foods.

“Sylvia has such aristocratic taste,” the proud mother would say. “She scorns such plebeian food as bread, and will eat nothing but cake.”

No wonder that the child of such a mother should be spoiled and sickly.

It was late afternoon when Mr. Clayburn led Carol into the luxuriously furnished library, where Mrs. Clayburn, reclining on a divan, propped up with many silken pillows, was reading aloud to a small girl who was dressed in the pale pink silk that had so aroused Carol’s envy and admiration.

Languidly the woman lifted her eyes and closed the book when the newcomer approached. “Wife, here is little Carol who has come to pay us a good long visit, I hope,” the kind man said. Then to his own little daughter he added, “Sylvia, won’t you come and shake hands with your new sister?”

Mrs. Clayburn protested. “Samuel,” she said, “haven’t I told you time and again that hand-shaking is effete, obsolete? It is not done now in the best families.”

Carol, wishing at once to impress Mrs. Clayburn with the fact that she, at least, was of a “best family,” was making a graceful curtsy, and Sylvia, having received a prompting push from her mother, did likewise.

“As you wish, my dear,” said Mr. Clayburn, smiling as though he were much amused.

“As long as this little lady is welcomed into our hearts, I’ll not be a stickler as to what outward form is observed,” he thought. Then to Sylvia he said, “Miggins, trot along upstairs and show your new sister where to put her bonnet and things.”

“I don’t want to,” the small girl said, again seating herself by the divan. “I want Mother to read to me.”

“Of course you needn’t go if you don’t want to,” Mrs. Clayburn told her.

Then she said to her husband: “Ring for Fanchon. Poor Sylvia is thin enough as it is without wearing herself out needlessly climbing up and down that long flight of stairs. We really ought to have a lift installed. They are now putting them in the homes of the b—”

But Mr. Clayburn had gone. Good-natured as he was, he was becoming extremely tired of hearing what was done in the best families.

There was a button in each room in the house, which, when touched, rang a bell in the kitchen, and the indicator informed the maid where her presence was desired, and so it was that a moment later a buxom young woman in black and white appeared in the library door. Her rosy countenance suggested that she was Irish, and in fact, when the banker’s wife had engaged her, the maid’s name had been Norah, but since the best families were employing French maids whenever they could be procured, the name had been changed to Fanchon. However, Mrs. Clayburn had warned her not to speak within the hearing of a guest, as her delightful brogue could never be mistaken.

Carol followed the silent Fanchon up the long flight of stairs that seemed velvety soft, and into a large, beautifully furnished chamber where there were twin beds. The small girl clasped her hands in delight. This, to her thought, was the kind of home in which she belonged. How happy she was going to be there!

“Will you be after changing yer dress now, colleen?” the Irish maid said pleasantly. “This here’s the one as the mistress said ye were to be wearin’ for dinner to-night.” As she spoke she took from a closet one of Sylvia’s dresses. “That child took a dislikin’ to it,” the maid went on to inform the small listener, “and not once would she be puttin’ it on. Ye’re in luck, colleen, changing this quick from gingham to red silk.”

The “blue-blooded” little girl looked with horror at the dress. It _was_ silk, but how she had always hated bright red. She actually drew herself up as she said: “I don’t wish to wear it. I wish a blue silk dress.”

Now it happened that Mrs. Clayburn, on second thought, had decided to climb the stairs and see just how the little orphan liked her new surroundings, and so, holding the hand of Sylvia, she had just entered the room unseen as this most ungrateful remark was being uttered.

“Indeed, Miss Martin?” she said in a tone of mingled iciness and sarcasm. “What can you, a mere charity orphan, be thinking of to tell what you wish to wear? You ought to be humbly grateful that you are being taken out of that tumble-down log cabin and permitted to live in a house as handsome as any belonging to the best families.”

For one brief moment a spark of Martin pride flamed up in the heart of the small girl. Their log cabin was not tumble-down. Only that summer an artist from the East had said that it was the most picturesque home that he had seen in the whole State of Nevada. That was when the crimson rambler had been a riot of bloom.

Wisely she said nothing, but meekly permitted the maid to put on the hated red dress.

The swish of the silk was something after all.

Poor little Carol had not started out well, and she was to find that, although she was living in a rose-garden, it was not one without thorns.