"I have a letter from Old Captain," confided Jeanne, that same afternoon. "Don't you want to read it? You wouldn't laugh at it, would you?"
"Certainly I wouldn't laugh," assured her grandfather, taking the letter.
DEAR AND HONORED MISS [wrote Old Captain, in a large, sprawling hand]:
This is to let you know that it is a warm day for April. The lake is still froze. It seems as if the sun shines more when you are here. Sammy lost his freckles for a while, but they come back again last week. Michael and Annie were here yestiddy. He says your father is teaching him to read. As I am a better hand with a boat-hook than I am with this here pen, I will close, so no more at present.
Your true friend and well-wisher,
CAPTAIN JOHN BLOSSOM.
"Old Captain is my true friend," explained Jeanne. "He taught me to make dresses and things. But I've learned some more things about sewing in school. I can put in a lovely patch, with the checks and stripes all matching; and darn, and hem, and fell seams, and make buttonholes. Old Captain's buttonholes were so funny. He cut them round and all different sizes. I'm ever so glad Michael is learning to read. It's too far for small children to walk to school. Besides, their clothes—well, their best clothes aren't just right, you know. I guess they haven't any by this time."
"Do you really like those children?" asked her grandfather.
"I love them. Annie and Patsy are sweet and Sammy is so funny. He's so curious that he gets too close to things and either tumbles in or gets hurt. Once it was a wasp! I guess I couldn't live with people and not like them a little."
"Then you like your cousins?"
"I—I haven't lived with them very long," evaded Jeanne.
Her grandfather chuckled. He had lived with them for quite a while.
With the coming of June, Jeanne began to yearn more than ever for the lake. She told Miss Wardell about it the day she had to stay after school to redraw her map.
"Jeannette," asked the teacher, "what possessed you to draw in all those extra lakes? You know there are no lakes in Kansas."
"That's why I put them in," explained Jeanne, earnestly. "There ought to be. If there were a large lake in the middle of each state with all the towns on the shore, it would be much nicer. But I didn't mean to hand that map in, it was just a play map. You see, when you can't have any real water you like to make pictures of it."
"Are you lonesome for Lake Superior?"
"Oh, yes. Last Sunday, when the minister read about the Flood I just hoped it would happen again. Not enough to drown folks, you know, but enough to make a lot of beautiful big lakes—enough to go round for everybody."
"You've been to the park?"
"Yes, but the lake there isn't as big as our Cinder Pond, and its brick edges are horrid. It looks built."
"Of course it is artificial; but it's better than none."
"Ye-es," admitted Jeanne, very doubtfully. "I guess I like real ones best."
Along toward spring, when her "past" had become a little more comfortably remote, Jeanne had made a number of friends among her classmates. She had particularly liked Lizzie McCoy because Lizzie's red hair was even redder than that of the young Duvals, and her freckles more numerous than Sammy's. And Lizzie had liked Jeanne.
But when Lizzie had ventured to present herself at Mrs. Huntington's door, she had been ushered by James into the awe-inspiring reception-room, where Mrs. Huntington inspected her coldly.
"I came," explained Lizzie, nervously, "to see Jeanne."
"I don't seem to recall your name—McCoy. Ah, yes. What is your father's business?"
"He's a butcher," returned Lizzie.
"Where do you live?"
"Spring Street."
Mrs. Huntington shuddered. Fancy anyone from Spring Street venturing to ring at her exclusive portal!
"Jeannette is not at home," said she.
Susie Morris fared no better. Susie was round and pink and pleasant. Everybody liked Susie. Several times she had walked home with Jeanne; but they had always parted at the gate.
"Do come in," pleaded Jeanne. "I'll show you my new party dress. It's for the dancing school party; next week, you know."
"All right," said Susie.
The dress was lovely. Susie admired it in her shrill, piping voice. The sound of it brought Mrs. Huntington down the hall to inspect the intruder.
"Jeannette," she asked, "who is this child?"
"Susie Morris. She's in my class."
"What is her father's business?"
"He's a carpenter," piped Susie.
"Where do you live!" asked Mrs. Huntington.
"Spring Street," confessed Susie.
Mrs. Huntington shuddered again. Another child from that horrible street! A blind child could have seen that she was unwelcome. Susie, who was far from blind, stayed only long enough to say good-by to Jeanne.
"You must be more careful," said Mrs. Huntington, "in your choice of friends."
"Everybody likes Susie," returned Jeanne, loyally.
"Her people are common," explained Mrs. Huntington. "I should be glad to have you bring Lydia Coleman or Ethel Bailey home with you."
"I don't like them," said Jeanne.
"Why not?"
"There isn't a bit of fun in them," declared Jeanne, blushing because their resemblance to her cousins was her real reason for disliking them.
"Well, there's Cora Farnsworth. Surely there's plenty of fun in Cora."
"I don't like Cora, either. She says mean things just to be funny," explained Jeanne, who had often suffered from Cora's "fun." "I don't like that kind of girls."
"Lydia, Ethel, and Cora live on the Avenue," returned Mrs. Huntington. "You ought to like them. At any rate, you must bring no more East Side children home with you. I can't have them in my house."
Mrs. Huntington always talked about the Avenue as Bridget, who was very religious, talked of heaven. When their ship came in, Mrs. Huntington said, they should have a home in the Avenue. The old house they were in, she said, was quite impossible. Old Mr. Huntington, Jeanne gathered, did not wish to move to the more fashionable street.
Jeanne wondered about that ship of Aunt Agatha's. The river—she had seen it once—was a small, muddy affair. Surely no ship that could sail up that shallow stream would be worth waiting for. She asked her grandfather about it.
Her grandfather frowned. "We won't talk about that ship," said he. "I don't like it!"
"Don't you like boats?" asked Jeanne.
"Very much, but not that kind."
Jeanne was usually a very well-behaved child, but one Saturday in June she fell from grace. An out-of-town visitor, a very uninteresting friend of Mrs. Huntington's, had expressed a wish to see the park. Pearl, Clara, and Jeanne were sent to escort her there. It was rather a bracing day. Walking sedately along the cement walks seemed, to high-spirited Jeanne, a very tame occupation. Presently she lagged behind to feed the crumbs she had thoughtfully concealed in her pocket to a sad squirrel with a skinny tail. He was not half as nice as the chipmunks that sometimes scampered out on the Cinder Pond dock, but he reminded her of those cheerful animals. The squirrel seized a crumb and scampered up a tree. Jeanne looked at the tree.
"Why," said she, "it's a climb-y tree just like that big one on the bank behind Old Captain's house. I wonder—"
Off came Jeanne's jacket. She dropped it on the grass, seized the lowest branch, and in three minutes was perched, like a bluebird, well toward the top of the tree.
About that time, her cousins missed her and turned back. Unhappily, the park policeman noticed the swaying of the topmost branches of that desecrated tree and hurried to investigate. Clara and Pearl arrived in time to hear the policeman shout:
"Here, boy! Come down from there. It's against the park rules to climb trees."
Jeanne climbed meekly down, much to the astonishment of the policeman, who grinned when he saw the expected boy.
"Well," said he, "you ain't the sort of bird I was lookin' for."
"I should think," said Pearl, who was deeply chagrined, "you'd be ashamed. At any rate, we're ashamed of you."
"I shall tell mother about it," said Clara, virtuously. (Clara's principal occupation, it seemed to Jeanne, was telling mother.) "The idea! Climbing trees in the park! Right before mother's company, too. I don't wonder that Harold calls you the Cinder Pond Savage."