she was my guest was very disagreeable to me; but I have learned that you were yourself somewhat to blame in the affair, and therefore you should have borne the harsh treatment you received with considerable patience, and perhaps have kept it quite to yourself. (‘That little cat told her, after all,’ said Laura, when she read this. ‘I didn’t think she was that kind.’) Polly would never have confessed the cause of the quarrel, because she knew nothing could justify her language; but Elsie was lying in the hammock behind the tent and overheard the remark which so roused Polly’s anger. You were not aware, of course, how sore a spot you touched upon, or you could never have spoken as you did, though I well know that you were both too angry to reflect. Polly is a peculiarly proud and high-spirited girl—proud, I confess, to a fault; but she comes, on her mother’s side, from a long line of people who have had much to be proud of in the way of unblemished honesty, nobility, fine attainments, and splendid achievements. Of her father’s honourable services to his country, and his sad and untimely death, you may have heard; but you may not know that Mrs. Oliver’s misfortunes have been very many and very bitter, and that the only possibility of supporting and educating Polly lies at present in her taking boarders, for her health will not admit just now of her living anywhere save in Southern California. I fail to see why this is not thoroughly praiseworthy and respectable; but if you do not consider it quite an elegant occupation, I can only say that Mrs. Oliver presides over the table at which her ‘boarders’ sit with a high-bred dignity and grace of manner that the highest lady in the land might imitate; and that, when health and circumstances permit her to diminish the distance between herself and the great world, she and her daughter Polly, by reason of their birth and their culture, will find doors swinging wide to admit them where you and I would find it difficult to enter. Polly apologises sincerely for her rudeness, and will write you to that effect, as of course she does not know of this letter.
Sincerely your friend,
Truth Winship.
Chapter IX.
Round the Camp-Fire
‘The time before the fire they sat,
And shortened the delay by pleasing chat.’
The August days had slipped away one after another, and September was at hand. There was no perceptible change of weather to mark the advent of the new month. The hills were a little browner, the dust a little deeper, the fleas a little nimbler, and the water in the brook a trifle lower, but otherwise Dame Nature did not concern herself with the change of seasons, inasmuch as she had no old dresses to get rid of, and no new ones to put on for a long time yet; indeed, she is never very fashionable in this locality, and wears very much the same garments throughout the year.
Elsie seemed almost as strong as any of the other girls now, and could enter with zest into all their amusements. The appetite of a young bear, the sound, dreamless sleep of a baby, and the constant breathing in of the pure, life-giving air had made her a new creature. Mrs. Howard and Jack felt, day by day, that a burden of dread was being lifted from their hearts; and Mrs. Howard especially felt that she loved every rock and tree in the cañon.
It was a charming morning, and Polly was seated at the dining-room table, deep in the preparation of a lesson in reading and pronunciation for Hop Yet. Her forehead was creased with many wrinkles of thought, and she bit the end of her lead-pencil as if she were engaged in solving some difficult problem; but, if that were so, why did the dimples chase each other in and out of her cheeks in such a suspicious fashion? She was a very gentle, a very sedate Polly, these latter days, and not only astonished her friends, but surprised herself, by her good behaviour, her elegant reserve of manner, her patience with Jack, and her abject devotion to Dicky.
‘I’m afraid it won’t last,’ she sighed to herself occasionally. ‘I’m almost too good. That’s always the way with me—I must either be so bad that everybody is discouraged, or else so good that I frighten them. Now I catch Bell and Elsie exchanging glances every day, as much as to say, “Poor Polly, she will never hold out at this rate; do you notice that nothing ruffles her—that she is simply angelic?” As if I couldn’t be angelic for a fortnight! Why I have often done it for four weeks at a stretch!’
Margery was in the habit of giving Hop Yet an English lesson every other day, as he had been very loath to leave his evening school in Santa Barbara and bury himself in a cañon, away from all educational influences; but she had deserted her post for once and gone to ride with Elsie, so that Polly had taken her place and was evolving an exercise that Hop Yet would remember to the latest day of his life. It looked simple enough:—
1. The grass is dry.
2. The fruit is ripe.
3: The chaparral is green.
4. The new road is all right.
5. The bay-‘rum’ tree is fresh and pretty.
But as no Chinaman can pronounce the letter ‘r,’ it was laboriously rendered thus, when the unhappy time of the lesson came:
1. The-glass-is-dly.
2. The-fluit-is-lipe.
3. The-chap-lal-is-gleen.
4. The-new-load-is-all-light-ee.
5. The bay-lum-tlee-is-flesh-and-plitty.
Finally, when she attempted to introduce the sentence, ‘Around the rough and rugged rock the ragged rascal ran,’ Hop Yet rose hurriedly, remarking, ‘All lightee; I go no more school jus’ now. I lun get lunchee.’
Bell came running down the path just then, and linking her arm in Polly’s said, ‘Papa has the nicest plan. You know the boys are so disappointed that Colonel Jackson didn’t ask them over to that rodeo at his cattle ranch—though a summer rodeo is only to sort out fat cattle to sell, and it is not very exciting; but papa promised to tell them all about the old-fashioned kind some night, and he has just remembered that to-morrow is Admission Day, September 9, so he proposes a real celebration round the camp-fire to amuse Elsie. She doesn’t know anything about California even as it is now, and none of us know what it was in the old days. Don’t you think it will be fun?’
‘Perfectly splendid!’
‘And papa wants us each to contribute something.’
‘A picnic!—but I don’t know anything.’
‘That’s just what I’m coming to. I have such a bright idea. He said that we might look in any of his books, but Geoff and Jack are at them already, and I’d like a surprise. Now Juan Capistrano, an old vaquero of Colonel Jackson’s, is over here. He is a wonderful rider; papa says that he could ride on a comet, if he could get a chance to mount. It was he who told the boys that the rodeo was over. Now I propose that we go and interview Pancho and Juan, and get them to tell us some old California stories. They are both as stupid as they can be, but they must have had some adventures, I suppose, somewhere, sometime. I’ll translate and write the things down, for my part, and you and Margery can tell them.’
‘Lovely! Oh, if we can only get an exciting grizzly story, so that
Every one’s
