CHAPTER II—TELLTALE TIDINGS

The letter which Jane had so counted on, had just now shed its delightful news, and at last she knew who had won the scholarship. Winding herself tighter still in the big wicker chair, so that she seemed a veritable circle of pink organdie, she snuggled the yellow pages closer in her prettily browned hands, read a few lines over for the n’th time and finally, with a spring and a sprint, made her way back to the living room.

Uncle Todd was evidently well pleased with his story of the Welch auction, for the palpitating cane was throbbing up and down in his sinewy hand, and Aunt Mary had completely laid aside her knitting, and sat with hands folded at attention.

“I would call it a shame,” she commented as Jane entered.

“And you’d give it the right name,” replied Uncle Todd.

At the threshold Jane hesitated. Even to her youthful eyes there was something restful in the picture.

“Good old pals,” she said under her breath. “Aunt Mary knows how to entertain reclining years.” Then picking up Bonnie, her ebony kitten, she coughed respectfully.

“Good news?” asked Aunt Mary.

“The best ever. Where is dad? I hate to give it to him second handed.”

“Your father will not be back till dinner time, dear. He is over Lincoln way.”

“Then we will have to enjoy it in trio. You know what it is about, Uncle Todd?”

“But, Janie girl, I’ve got to be a-goin’. Some chores and some cookin’ to do, and if I don’t get at it in good time I’m apt to slip it by. Good afternoon, ladies,” he finished quite grandly. “Can’t tell when I had sech a fine time.”

“But you can’t go now, Uncle Todd,” objected Jane. “I am going to drive you over.”

“No sich thing. If I don’t keep a-walkin’ my jints will gum up: I am goin’ to walk.”

“Oh, if you must,” said Jane with the foolish social intonation. “So awfully sorry.”

“Don’t you jibe me, girlie,” and he pinched her elbow. “You know as well as I do what it is worth to walk a mile a day.”

“All right, Uncle Todd, but some day I am going to tell you all my good news. There comes Pedro. If you get tired just hail him, and he’ll give you a lift.”

Then, left alone with her aunt, Jane proceeded with the news from Wellington.

“Just see and listen,” she commanded. “What a prospect of oodles of fun and frolic. Dad’s scholarship has been won by a Polish artist. Think of it! A girl who plays the violin divinely, and who is—well, let’s read it again.”

She ran her finger over the introduction of the letter and traced out the lines which told of the Polish girl and the scholarship.

“Mrs. Weatherbee says,” she announced, “that the girl is wonderfully interesting, and she is sure we shall be delighted. We are. Then she says the little artist comes from a girls’ seminary, where she had been left uncalled for and that there is some mysterious story connected with her presence in America, but of course, (now listen in Auntie) of course, Mrs. Weatherbee knows I will not be carried off by any such sensational reports, but I will take the little Polish girl on her merits. Of course I shall, I shall even take her on trial, but you can picture the other girls, and the Polish artist? Auntie, that Marion Seaton will get in touch with the Bolshevik or something, to dig up trouble for my little friend, see if she doesn’t. She will go into the archives of the fall of Poland, and the battle of Warsaw, to find out that my little artist’s grandfather once dropped his musket in front of the king’s palace. Oh my, Auntie mine,” and she loosed some of her pent-up energy in a great “grizzly hug.” “Why can’t you and dad come along to school with me to see the fun?” For a moment her gray eyes took on the lingering look her friends called “the dove stare,” then recovering her mirthful mood she pranced around, played first with Bonnie, then with Fliver the new puppy, all the while gathering and spending the joy of young girlhood.

“Don’t bother too much about my clothes, Auntie dear,” she warned with a new thought. “I think I shall ask dad if I may go to the city early, and help fit up my little artist. Then I may find a lot of things I shall like, all ready to wear.”

“I had been thinking of proposing that, Janie dear,” confessed the aunt, to whom the clothes problem had been an increasing worry with the addition of Jane’s years. “I have read all the catalogues and sent for more, but I don’t find exactly what I think you would fancy.”

“No, and you won’t, for I fancy a blouse and a skirt, just a little one, and perhaps a veil for evening wear.” She held Fliver out at arm’s length to enjoy the joke. “Of course, I would wear a so-called gown with the veil, but I love the veil, it is so shimmery.” A scarf snatched from the end of the mahogany table served to illustrate the “shimmer” as Jane floated it triumphantly over her and Fliver’s heads. The inevitable interpretative dance followed, and Fliver looked very frightened, evidently envying Bonnie her safety aisle on the rug.

“I am going to get your trunk out to-morrow,” announced Aunt Mary, as an interlude. “I want to put some cedar chips in it, and Squaw Watah brought over a wonderful bunch of fragrant herbs, spice bush, savory and rosemary. I wonder where she raised them? She must have obtained some government seeds.”

“Watah is a real farmerette,” agreed Jane, coming to a standstill against the oaken post. “I would recommend her for a position in the Department of Agriculture. Ta, ta, Auntie, I’m off to get dad. I think he will be over the Copper Turn Hill about now, and I’ll ride Firefly to be back with him. I am just dying to tell him the news.”

“Janie, do be careful going down that steep hill. The boys who came collecting tin cans the other day told me the rocks fall in a torrent there now.”

“Oh, I know. I’ll be ‘keer-ful.’” The voice came from the second stair landing. Jane Allen was on her way.

She reached her own horse and it took but a few gallops to bring her up to Mr. Allen.

“Do you suppose she will have light wavy hair, and very big blue eyes, Daddy? The aristocratic Poles are always light,” was among the first questions.

“But I wouldn’t classify them by eyes and hair exactly,” replied the man on Victor, the big gray horse. “I’ve known a really fine Pole who was quite red headed.”

“Now Daddy, don’t tease. You know a girl must be—well, a little bit pretty at least, to be popular, and I am bound to have my artist wonderfully popular—after we win the battle, of course.”

“I can well imagine the battle,” and Henry Allen laughed so heartily Victor darted forward with a prance. “If your erstwhile friends, who made up the opposition last year, line up against your protege as vigorously as they attacked your other little friend, I am afraid you will take more time to train your guns on endurance, than on your favorite basketball, daughter.”

“Indeed, Judy Stearns and I, and maybe Dorothy Martin, are very well able to hold our own against the Marian Seaton crowd,” answered Jane, bringing Firefly’s head up higher in punctuation. “I rather think they will not be quite so vigorous with their campaign of hate this year. I should think even envious girls would learn their lesson some time.”

“I have often thought the same of the boys I have to deal with out here, but it is curious how envy sticks.”

Pencils of sunset were now etching their path through the trees, and the well tramped road bore slight evidence of the afternoon’s shower. “Daughter, I hate to have you go,” continued Mr. Allen, “but your spirit makes me proud. Uncle Todd was telling the men out Lincoln way the other day, that Henry Allen’s girl was almost as good as a boy.”

“Oh, he is a character!” Jane exclaimed. “I had him over during the shower, and he and Aunt Mary had a great time gossiping. Dad, may I go to New York a little early? That is, quite early,” she qualified cautiously.

“Of course, daughter. But why the haste?”

“Well, you see, about this new girl—she will have to be fitted out. Mrs. Weatherbee hinted she would get some friends interested in her who might help, but it seems to me I could make my allowance do for both of us.”

“You just get what you want, little girl. Don’t worry about the bill. Old dad has still some credit, you know.”

Even Firefly tried to edge closer to respond gratefully. Jane tipped her little whip under her father’s chin, thereby endangering the tilt of his cap. “You are always so generous, Dad. Couldn’t I gather tin cans to sieve the copper through, or do something to make up?” she asked playfully. “Really, if I am almost as good as a boy, don’t you think I might sometime act the part?”

“You are a heap better, little girl, and I have no wish to see you act otherwise than just as my Janie,” replied the smiling father. “But those boys you have just noticed gathering the tins are wasting their time. No more copper comes this way in the mine water. All their rusty tins will be wasted, for Montana copper is being too well worked these days,” declared Mr. Allen, referring to the tin-can trick of collecting copper through the cyanide method.

“Oh, how disappointed they will be! Should we tell them?” suggested Jane, observing at that moment the group of boys trudging along with their cart of old tins.

“Well, they may get some farther on, but not around here,” amended Mr. Allen. “By the way, Janie, when do you want to start with this new plan of shopping and college trip?”

Jane looked under her long lashes to discover, if possible, how her father felt about her leaving earlier than they had planned. But he was flicking Victor with the willow whip, and she obtained no clue to his feelings from his expression.

Jane hated to be so abrupt—of course he would be lonely.

“Oh, I thought I might leave about ten days earlier,” she ventured. “That will give me time to locate the Polish girl, get acquainted, and help with her outfit. Besides, Aunt Mary suggested that I buy some of my things ready-to-wear, as it is so difficult here to shop by mail from St. Paul.”

“That would be about when?” persisted the father.

“About next Wednesday.”

“Very well, girlie. Just so long as I know how many signed checks to get ready, and how many men to assign to the baggage.”

Jane looked relieved. Her father plainly had come to the same conclusion she had managed to confine her reasoning to, namely: since she couldn’t bring the Eastern college to El Capitan, she would have to go to the college, and that protesting against the details of separation from her beloved ranch home, simply threw a shadow over the prospect of a joyful year at school.

“We are getting educated, Janie,” Mr. Allen said, as they pulled up to the waiting groom. “Old dad takes the school term as a matter of course now. Not that I don’t miss my little girl as much as ever, but because I have taken the home course in economics—the grade that gives us all the discipline and the self control,” he laughed at this attempt to qualify his change of mental attitude. He was a wonderful father, a perfectly adorable pal, and withal a business man whose name spelled power and prosperity.

“Dad, all the same I’m a weakling,” admitted Jane. “Because I just hate to leave you—and——”

“There’s a special messenger boy all the way from Copper Hill Turn,” interrupted the father. “Now what do you suppose he is bringing us in the way of good news?”

The Mexican boy slipped off his burro and with an indescribable salute (something between a military motion and an acrobatic finish to some remarkable star act) he handed the message to Mr. Allen.

“Yours, daughter. Whoever is writing you from over the hills and what can be so very important as to fetch Santos?” asked Mr. Allen.

“All our wonders seem to come by post,” commented Jane. She was scanning the few words on the telegram sent in from the nearest railway station. Suddenly she gave a jump, and seemed too overcome with emotion to express herself in words.

“Daddy!” she exclaimed, finally. “Judy is on her way back from the coast and is looking for us. She is at the Hill Turn. Oh, can you imagine Judy Stearns getting way out here, and being with me on the trip to college!”

“Rare luck indeed, daughter. At the station did you say? Well, let us get to her at once. Can’t take a chance on her getting into that famous stage coach of Curly Bill’s. You run in and tell Aunt Mary the glad news, and I’ll get the tandem hitched. Don’t you think it will be nice to show her our best style?”

“Oh, lovely, Daddy. But I am so excited. I never could have dreamed of such luck. To have dear old Judy visit me here until I go back, and then to have her travel with me! Yes, get the tandem. Pedro!” she called to the man just losing himself in the trees towards the big stable. “Come over here! Daddy, don’t you slick up a single bit. I want Judy to see you as a ranch chief. And I think I’ll get into my Bronco Billie outfit just to show off. No, that wouldn’t go with tandem, would it? Yes, it would too,” she changed her mind and decided again, too excited to act rationally.

“Now, I’ll dress and be ready in five minutes,” announced the girl. “Oh, I forgot I haven’t told you the message,” she had it crumbled in her brown hand. “‘Am at the Hill Turn Station. Tell me how to reach you.’ There, we will show her how we reach her,” and she skipped off leaving her father to arrange about the tandem and the high red-wheel cart.