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Cinder Pond, The

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<h3>CHAPTER XIV</h3> <h4>AT FOUR A.M.</h4> Jeanne spent a very dull summer. Part of the time, her cousins were away, visiting their grandmother, Mrs. Huntington's mother. Jeanne had eyed their departing forms a bit wistfully. "I wish," thought she, "they'd invited me." The sea, she was sure, would prove almost as nice as Lake Superior, unless, of course, one happened to be thirsty. Unfortunately, the grandmother had had room for only three young guests. Possibly she had been told that Jeanne was a "Little Savage," and feared to include her in her invitation. After school closed, she had only her grandfather, the garden, books, and her music lessons. She hated her music lessons from a cross old professor. It was bad enough to hear Pearl and Clara practice, without doing it herself. Her thoughts, when she practiced, were always gloomy ones. Once, downstairs, Maggie had sung a song beginning: "I am always saddest when I sing." "And I," said Jeanne, in the big, lonely drawing-room, whose corners were always dark enough to conceal most any lurking horror, "am always saddest when I practice. I'd much rather make things—that's the kind of fingers mine are." However, after she had discovered that two very deep bass notes rolled together and two others, higher up, could be mingled to make a noise like waves beating against the old dock, she felt more respect for the piano. Perhaps, in time, she could even make it twitter like the going-to-bed swallows. The garden had proved disappointing. Jeanne supposed that a garden meant flowers—it did in Bancroft. But this was a city garden. The air was always smoky, almost always dusty. The garden, except just after a rain, never looked clean. There was a well-kept hedge, but it collected dust and papers blown from the street. The best thing about it was the large fountain, with three nymphs in the center, pouring water from three big shells. The nymphs were about Jeanne's size and looked as if they had been working for quite a number of years. Besides the fountain, there were four vases of red geraniums, two very neat walks, and some closely-trimmed, dusty grass. Also, some small evergreen trees, clipped to look like solid balls, and one large elm. Her grandfather often sat under the elm tree on an iron bench. Fortunately, he didn't object seriously to caterpillars. One day, he discovered Jeanne, flat on her stomach, dipping her fingers into the fountain. "My dear child!" said he, "what are you doing?" "Just feeling to see how warm it is," said Jeanne, kicking up her heels in order to reach deeper. "It's awfully cold, isn't it? If there weren't so many windows and folks around, I think I'd like to go in swimming." "Swimming! Can you swim?" "Of course," returned Jeanne. "I swam in the Cinder Pond." From time to time, homesick Jeanne continued to test the waters of the fountain. In August, to her delight, she found the water almost lukewarm. To be sure, the weather was all but sizzling. Her grandfather, accustomed to seeing her dabble her fingers in the water, was far from suspecting the shocking deed she was contemplating. Then the deed was accomplished. For thirteen blissful mornings, the Cinder Pond Savage did something that made Harold seem, to his mother, like a little white angel, compared with "that dreadful child from Bancroft." Of course, it was pretty dreadful. For thirteen days, Jeanne slipped joyfully from her bed at four o'clock, crept down the stairs, out of the dining-room door, and along the walk to the fountain. She slipped out of her night-dress, slid over the edge, and, for three-quarters of an hour, fairly revelled in the fountain. For thirteen glorious mornings—and then—! Mrs. Huntington had had a troublesome tooth. She rose to find a capsicum plaster to apply to her gum. To read the label, it was necessary to carry the box to the window. She glanced downward—and dropped the box. Something white and wet and naked was climbing out of the fountain. Had some horrid street-boy dared to profane the Huntington fountain? The "boy," poised on the curb, shook his dark head. A bunch of dark, almost-curly hair fell about his wet shoulders. "Jeanne!" gasped Mrs. Huntington. "What will that wretched child do next!" Jeanne was late to breakfast that morning. She had fallen asleep after her bath. When she slipped, rather guiltily, into her place at the table, her Uncle Charles, who ordinarily paid no attention to her, raised his eyebrows, superciliously, and fixed his gaze upon her—as if she were an interesting stranger. Her grandfather, too, regarded her oddly. So did her Aunt Agatha. "I'm sorry I'm so late," apologized Jeanne. "I slept too long." "You are a deceitful child," accused Mrs. Huntington, frigidly. "You were not asleep. For how long, may I ask, have you been bathing in the fountain?" "About two weeks," said Jeanne, calmly. "It's lovely." "Lovely!" exclaimed Mrs. Huntington. "It's disgraceful! And for two weeks! Are you sure that no one has seen you?" "Only a policeman. He was on horseback. You see, I frightened a blue-jay and he squawked. The policeman stopped to see what had frightened him, but I pretended I was part of the statue in the middle of the fountain." Uncle Charles suddenly choked over his coffee. Her grandfather, too, began suddenly to cough. Dignified James, standing unobserved near the wall, actually bolted from the room. Mrs. Huntington continued to frown at the small culprit. "You may eat your breakfast," said she, sternly. "Come to me afterwards in my room." There was to be no more bathing in the fountain—even in a bathing suit. Jeanne learned that she had been a very wicked child and that it wouldn't have happened if her father hadn't been "a common fishman." "I am thankful," concluded Aunt Agatha, "that your cousins are out of town. They wouldn't think of doing anything so unladylike." After that, Jeanne's liveliest adventures were those that she found in books. Fortunately, she loved to read. That helped a great deal. She was really rather glad when the dull vacation was over and, oh, so delighted to see Lizzie and Susie! All that first week she couldn't help whispering to them in school, even if the new teacher did give her bad marks and move her to the very front seat. "I'd go home with you if I could," said Jeanne, declining one of Susie's numerous invitations, "but I have to go straight home from school, always." "You went into Lydia Coleman's house, yesterday," objected jealous Susie. "Only to get a book for my cousin. Besides, that's right on my way home." "Maybe if you lived on the Avenue, Susie," sneered Lizzie, who understood Mrs. Huntington's snobbishness only too well, "she'd be allowed to go with you." "Hurry up and move," said Jeanne. "I'd love your house, Susie. I know it's a home-y house. I liked your mother when she came to the school exercises and I'm sure I'd like any house she lived in. But you see, I do so many bad things without knowing that I'm being bad, that it never would do for me to be really bad. Besides I promised my father I'd mind Aunt Agatha, so of course I have to. I'd love to go home with both of you." Next to her grandfather, Jeanne's pleasantest companion out of school was the small brown maid in the big mirror set in her closet door. There were mirrors like that in all the Huntington bedrooms, so it sometimes looked as if there were two Claras and two Pearls and two Aunt Agathas, which made it worse if either of the girls were snippish, or if Aunt Agatha happened to be thinking of the fountain. Apparently, Mrs. Huntington would never forget that, Jeanne thought. But to Jeanne's mind, the girl she saw in her own mirror had a nice face, even if it was rather brown. She liked the other child's big, dark eyes; now serious, now sparkling under very neat, slender eyebrows, with some new, entertaining thought. The mirror-girl's mouth was just a bit large, perhaps, with red lips, full of queer little wiggly curves that came and went, according to her mood. Her nose, rather a small affair, at best, did it turn up or didn't it? One couldn't be quite sure. Lizzie's turned up, Ikey Goldberg's turned down; but this nose seemed to do both. For that reason, it seemed a most interesting nose, even if there were no freckles on it. When lips are narrow and straight, when noses are likewise absolutely straight, as Pearl's and Clara's were, they may be perfect or even beautiful, but they are not interesting. A wiggly mouth, as Jeanne said, keeps one guessing. So does an uncertain nose. Then there was the mirror-child's chin. Not a big chin like the one in the picture of Bridget's first husband, the prize-fighter; nor a chinless chin like Ethel's. "Quite a good deal of a chin, I should say," was Jeanne's verdict. Then the rest of the mirror-child. A little smaller, perhaps, than many girls of the same age; but very nicely made. Arms the right size and length, hands not too big, shoulders straight and not too high like Bridget's, nor too sloping like Maggie's. A slight waist that didn't need to be pinched in like Aunt Agatha's. Legs that looked like girls' legs, not like piano legs—as Hannah Schmidt's did, for instance, when Hannah wore white stockings. The feet were small. The hair grew prettily about the bright, sociable face. "You're just about the best young friend I have," declared Jeanne, kissing the mirror-child. "I'm glad you live in my closet—I'd be awfully lonesome if you didn't." Jeanne, however, was not a vain little girl, nor a conceited one. She simply didn't think of the mirror-child as herself. The girl in the mirror was merely another girl of her own age, and she loved her quite unselfishly. Perhaps Jeanne's most personal thought came when she washed her face. "I'm so glad I don't have beginning-whiskers like the milkman," said she, "or a wart on my nose like Bridget's. It's much pleasanter, I'm sure, to wash a smooth face like this." <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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