CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CAROL IN DISGRACE

The dinner was one of many courses, and there were two very formal guests, and, to Mr. Clayburn’s mortification, as well as Carol’s, the hostess, wishing to impress the fashionable Mr. and Mrs. Jarvis Burrell, from Reno, with her philanthropic generosity, told in detail the story of Carol’s life, beginning when her mother was a stranded actress in the year of the big strike over at Silver City.

The kind man glanced often at the small girl whose face was becoming as scarlet as a peony. He well knew that he would be publicly rebuked by his wife if he remonstrated or attempted to change the conversation, and yet were it not better that he should bear the brunt of it than this mere child who had been invited to come to their home? But, before he had time to decide just how best to intervene, Mrs. Clayburn had reached a point in her narrative which necessitated a description of the father, who, she informed them, had been a no-account rancher, called by the mountaineers “Pine Tree Martin.” She said no more, for the small girl, with flaming eyes, had risen so suddenly that her chair fell back with a crash. “’Tisn’t so!” she cried, her small hands clenched. “’Tisn’t so, at all!” She had whirled to face the visitors. “He was the kindest, best father there ever was to Dixie, Ken, Baby Jim, and me.” Then, bursting into tears, she ran from the room and groped her way blindly up-stairs and into the room to which Fanchon had first taken her.

She was pulling at the buttons in the back of her red-silk dress when she heard a step outside the door. It was Mr. Clayburn who entered.

“Carol,” he said, placing a kindly hand on the curly head, “don’t be hurt, little girl. Mrs. Clayburn is thoughtless, but she can’t be really as cruel as she seems. You sit here in this comfortable chair by the fire and I’ll have the rest of your dinner sent up to you.”

He started away, but he turned back to say, “You were right, though, little Carol. I knew your father well, and he was the finest and most upright of men. Any girl might be proud to be his daughter.”

Then he left the child alone in the room that was but dimly lighted, and as she sat there waiting the coming of Fanchon, for the very first time in her life she felt a real love and loyalty for that man whom the banker had just praised. How kind he had always been, and how gentle. If—if this cruel, wicked, Mrs. Clayburn was “best families,” she’d rather, oh, a hundred times rather, have her own dear, good father, whatever he was.

Fanchon entered, bearing a tray, and placed it on a low table. “Poor little colleen,” she said with understanding sympathy. “I’m not after envyin’ you much, and that’s the truth. I can be leavin’ any hour I choose, as I’d like to, after next pay-day; but I’m supposin’ you’ll have to stay here to the end of time.”

Then she went away, and Carol sat staring into the fire, thinking of what she had just heard. Did she have to stay there for ever and ever? Ken wouldn’t want her back, and, after all, did she want to go back? Maybe things would be better after that night, and it was something to be able to wear silk; even red silk was better than gingham. The dessert was a delicious concoction, and Carol, as she ate it, decided that perhaps she had been partly to blame that things had started out so all wrong. Just then Fanchon reappeared and she was leading Sylvia by the hand. That little maid looked with big-eyed wonder at the newcomer.

“You’re a very bad, bold girl; that’s what my mother says you are; and I’m not going to speak to you again till you say you’re sorry; and I shall hate you always.” Then she closed her thin lips tight and did not speak again while the buxom Irish maid was undressing her. Later Fanchon unfastened the buttons of the red-silk dress, helped Carol to prepare for bed, and then turned out the light.

There had been nothing said about prayers. Carol had never in all her short life gone to bed until after prayers had been said. When Pine Tree Martin lived, he had gathered his children about him in the warm kitchen and had led in the evening prayer, and had read to them from the big Bible. Ken did the reading now, in memory of his father.

When Carol was sure that Sylvia was asleep, she crept from bed, and, kneeling in the moonlight, she said the little bedtime prayer that Dixie had taught her, and then asked a blessing for each of the three who were in the log-cabin home over in the mountains.

Then she crawled back into bed, feeling somewhat comforted, but she never, just never, could forgive Mrs. Clayburn; she was sure of that. Suddenly she sat up, thinking. What was it that Dixie had taught her? Never to let the sun go down on her wrath. But the sun had gone down, and the moon was up. Oh, what ought she to do? After all, maybe she had seemed ungrateful. Dixie wouldn’t want her to go to sleep without asking to be forgiven.

Creeping out of bed, she stole down the wide, velvet-soft stairway, holding her long white nightgown in one hand, while she grasped the banister with the other. The guests were just departing when they looked up and saw the small girl descending. Mrs. Clayburn was horrified.

“Go back to bed this instant, you bad, bold child!” she commanded, and so, too frightened to speak, Carol did turn and go back, to sob softly into her pillow until, at last, just from weariness, she fell asleep.

So ended the first day of Carol’s life in the home of one of the “very best families.”