At the conclusion of Jeanne's first uncomfortable meal with her new relatives, Mrs. Huntington detained the children, for a moment, in the dining-room.
"Next week," said she, "Jeannette will be going to school. You are not to tell the other pupils nor any of your friends, nor the maids in this house, anything of her former life. And you, too, Jeannette, will please be silent concerning your poverty and the fact that your father was a common fishman."
"Gee!" scoffed Harold, holding his nose. "A fishman!"
"He was a gentleman," replied Jeanne, loyally. "He was not common. Mollie was common, but my father wasn't."
"No gentleman could be a fishman," returned Mrs. Huntington, who really supposed she was telling the truth. "You will remember, I hope, not to mention his business!"
"Yes'm," promised Jeanne, meekly.
"Yes, Aunt Agatha," prompted Mrs. Huntington.
"Yes, Aunt Agatha," said Jeanne, thoroughly awed by the large, cold lady.
"Now we will see what you need in the way of clothes. Of course you have nothing at all suitable."
Jeanne followed her aunt upstairs. Mrs. Huntington noted with surprise that the garments in the drawers were neatly folded. Also that they were of astonishing fineness.
"Did your stepmother buy these!" asked the lady.
"No. My father."
"These handkerchiefs, too!"
"Yes, he bought everything."
"But you have only six. And not enough of anything else. And only this one dress!"
"That's all. Father didn't put any of my old things in. They weren't much good—I suppose Annie will have my pink dress."
Mrs. Huntington wrote many words on a slip of paper.
"I shall shop for these things at once," said she. "You need a jacket and rubbers before you can go to school. Of course you haven't any gloves."
"Yes, ma'am—yes, Aunt Agatha. Here, in this drawer."
"They're really very good," admitted Mrs. Huntington. "But you will need a heavier pair for everyday."
"And something for my stockings," pleaded Jeanne. "I guess father didn't know what to get. You see, most of the time I went barefoot—"
"Mercy, child!" gasped Mrs. Huntington, looking fearfully over her shoulder. "You mustn't tell things of that sort. They're disgraceful. Maggie might have heard you."
"I'll try not to," promised Jeanne. "But my stockings won't stay up."
Mrs. Huntington wrote another word or two on her list.
"Anything else?" she asked.
"Things to write a letter with—oh, please, ma'am—Aunt Agatha, could I have those? I want to write to my father—he taught me how, you know."
"Maggie will put writing materials in the drawer of that table," promised Mrs. Huntington. "I'll ring for them now. I'm glad that you can at least read and write; but you must not say 'Ma'am.' That word is for servants."
"I'll try to remember," promised Jeanne.
Jeannette's first letter to her father would probably have surprised Mrs. Huntington had she read it. Perhaps it is just as well that she didn't.
DEAR DADDY [wrote Jeanne]:
The picture is safe. The handkerchief is safe. The purse is safe. And so am I. I am too safe. I should like to be running on the edge of the dock on the dangerous side, almost falling in. See the nice tail on the comma. I like to make commas, but I use more periods. The periods are like frog's eggs in the Cinder Pond but the commas are like pollywogs with tails. That's how I remember.
Mrs. Huntington is not like Mollie. Mollie looks soft all over. Some day I shall put my finger very softly on Mrs. Huntington to see if she feels as hard as she looks. Her back would be safest I think. She is very kind about giving me things but I do not know her very well yet. She does not cuddle her children like Mollie cuddles hers. She is too hard and smooth to cuddle.
There are little knives for bread and butter and they eat green leaves with a funny fork. I ate a round green thing called an olive. I didn't like it but I didn't make a face. I didn't know what to do with the seed so I kept it in my mouth until I had a chance to throw it under the table. Was that right?
There is no lake. They get water out of pipes but not in a pail. Hot and cold right in my room. Maggie, she is the maid, showed me how to make a light. You push a button. You push another and the light goes out. She said two years ago this house was all made over new inside.
This is another day. My bed is very big and lonesome. I am like a little black huckleberry in a pan of milk when I am in it. I can see in the glass how I look in bed. I have a great many new clothes. I have tried them on. Some do not fit and must go back. I have a brown dress. It is real silk to wear on Sunday. I have a white dress. It looks like white clouds in the sky. And a red jacket. And more under things but I like the ones you bought the best, because I like you best.
This is four more days. I have been to church. I stood up and sat down like the others. I liked the feathers on the ladies' hats and the little boys in nightgowns that marched around and sang. Next Sunday I am to go to Sunday School. Mrs. Huntington says I am a Heathen.
I got a chance to touch her. Her back is hard. Now I will say good-by. But I like to write to you; so I hate to send it away but I will begin another letter right now. Maggie will put this in the letter box for me. I like Maggie but I am afraid I will tell her about my past life. Mrs. Huntington says I must never mention bare feet or fish.
Yours truly,
JEANNETTE HUNTINGTON DUVAL.
P.S.—Mrs. Huntington told a lady I was that, but you know I am just your Jeanne. I love you better than anybody.
Jeanne, you will notice, made no complaints against her rude young cousins and passed lightly over matters that had tried her rather sorely. From her letters, her father gathered that she was much happier than she really was. Perhaps nobody ever enjoyed a letter more than Mr. Duval enjoyed that first one. He went to the post office to get it because no letter-carrier could be expected to deliver mail to a tumble-down shack on the end of a long, far-away dock. He read it in the post office. He read it again in Old Captain's freight car, and when Barney Turcott came in, he too had to hear it.
Then Mollie read it. And as she read, her face was quite beautiful with the "mother-look" that Jeanne liked—it was the only attractive thing about Mollie. Then the children awoke and sat up in their bunks to hear it read aloud. Poor children! they could not understand what had become of their beloved Jeanne.
Afterwards, Mr. Duval laid the letter away in his shabby trunk, beside the little green bottle that still held a shriveled pink rose, the late wild rose that Jeanne had left on his table that last day. He had found what remained of it, on his return from his journey. It was certainly very lonely in that little room evenings, without those lessons.
Jeannette Huntington Duval found school decidedly trying at first. The pupils would pry into her past. Their questions were most embarrassing. Even the teachers, puzzled by many contradictory facts, asked questions that Jeanne could not answer without mentioning poverty or fish.
Yes, she had lived in the country (is on a dock "in the country"? wondered truthful Jeanne). No, she truly didn't know what a theater was; and she had never had a birthday party nor been to one. What did keeping one's birthday mean? Jeanne had asked. How could one give her birthday away! Of course she knew all the capitals of South America. Mountains and rivers, too. She could draw maps showing them all—she loved to draw maps. But asparagus—what was that? And velvet? And vanilla? And plumber?
"Really," said Miss Wardell, one day, after a lesson in definitions, "you can't be as ignorant as you seem. You must know the meaning of such words as jardinière, tapestry, doily, mattress, counterpane, banister, newel-post, brocade. Didn't you live in a house?"
"Yes'm—yes, Miss Wardell," stammered Jeanne, coloring as a vision of the Duval shack presented itself.
"Didn't you sleep on a mattress?"
Jeanne hung her head. She had guessed that that thick thing on her bed was a mattress, but how was she to confess that hay in a wooden bunk had been her bed! Fortunately, Jeanne did not look like a child who had slept on hay. She was small and daintily built. Her hands and feet were beautifully shaped. Her dark eyes were soft and very lovely, her little face decidedly bright and attractive. She suffered now for affection, for companionship, for the freedom of outdoor life; but never for food or for suitable garments. It is to be feared that Mrs. Huntington, during all the time that she looked after Jeannette, put clothes before any other consideration. The child was always properly clad.
Unfortunately, in spite of all Jeanne's precautions, her cousins succeeded in dragging from her all the details of her former poverty. They never got her alone that they didn't trap her into telling things that she had meant not to tell. At those times, even Harold seemed almost kind to her.
Mean children, they were pumping her, of course, but for a long time honest Jeanne did not suspect them of any such meanness. After they had learned all that there was to know, Jeanne's eyes were opened, and things were different. Sometimes Harold, in order to embarrass her, told his boy friends a weird tale about her.
"That's our cousin, the Cinder Pond Savage," Harold would say. "Her only home was a drygoods box on the end of a tumble-down dock. She sold fish for a living and ate all that were left over. She never ate anything but fish. She had nineteen stepsisters with red hair, and a cruel stepmother, who was a witch. She wore a potato sack for a dress and never saw a shoe in her life until last month. When captured, she was fourteen miles out in the lake chasing a whale. Step right this way, ladies and gentlemen, to see the Cinder Pond Savage."
Harold's friends seemed to consider this amusing; but Jeanne found it most embarrassing. The strange boys always eyed her as if she really were some little wild thing in a trap. She didn't like it.
Clara put it differently. "My cousin, Jeanette Huntington Duval, has always lived on my uncle's estate in the country. She didn't go to school, but had lessons from a tutor."
But, however they put it, Jeannette realized that she was considered a disgrace to the family, a relative of whom they were all secretly ashamed. And her father, her good, wonderful father, was considered a common, low-down Frenchman, who had married her very young mother solely because she was the daughter of a wealthy man.
"I don't believe it," said Jeanne, when Clara told her this. "My father never cared for money. That's why he's poor. And he's much easier to be friends with than your father—and he reads a great many more books than Uncle Charles does, so I know he isn't ignorant, even if you do think he is. Besides, he writes beautiful letters, with semicolons in them! Did your father write to you that time he was gone all summer?"
Clara was obliged to admit that he hadn't.
"But then," added Clara, cruelly, "a real gentleman always hires a stenographer to write his letters. He doesn't think of doing such things himself, any more than he'd black his own boots."
"Then," said Jeanne, defiantly, "I'm glad my father's just a fishman."