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Cinder Pond, The

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<h3>CHAPTER XVI</h3> <h4>AN OLD ALBUM</h4> "There's a great big piece of news in my letter from daddy," confided Jeanne, who had been summoned to sit with her grandfather. He had been alone for longer than he liked. Since his illness, indeed, he seemed to like someone with him; and Jeanne was usually the only person available. "What kind of news?" he asked. "Good news, I guess. My stepgrandmother is gone forever. And I'm sort of glad." "What! Is she dead?" "Oh, no! I wouldn't be glad of that. You see, she had a bad son named John, who ran away from home ever so long ago. He was older than Mollie. His mother and everybody thought he was dead—it was so long since they'd heard anything from him. But he wasn't. He was working. They never guessed he'd do that. He hadn't any children, but he had a real good wife—a very saving one. After she died he didn't have anybody, so he thought of his poor old mother—" "About time, I should think." "Yes, wasn't it? Well, he went to Bancroft to hunt for his mother, and he's taken her to St. Louis to live. He gave Mollie some money for clothes and quilts and things; but it won't do a mite of good." "Why not?" "Mollie would be too lazy to spend it; or to take care of the things if she had them. Her mother spent a great deal for medicine for her rheumatism; but Mollie just bought things to eat—if she bought anything. She loved to sit outside the door, all sort of soft and lazy, with the wind blowing her pale red hair about her soft, white face; and a baby in her lap. I can just see her, this very minute." "I can't see," said Mr. Huntington, testily, "why your father ever married that woman." "He didn't," said Jeanne. "She married him—Barney Turcott said so. Daddy had nursed my mother through a terrible sickness—I think it was typhoid, he said—and in spite of everything he could do, she died. Afterwards he was almost crazy about it—about losing her. He couldn't think of anything else. And while he was like that, he had a fever and was sick for a long, long time. Before he was really well, he was married to Mollie. Barney said the Shannons took ad—adventures—no, that isn't it—" "Advantage." "Yes, that's it. Advantage of him. They thought, because his clothes were good, that he had money. But they took very good care of me at first, Barney said. But Mollie kept getting lazier and lazier, and father kept getting stronger and healthier. But the better he got, the more discouraged he was about having Mollie and all those children and not enough money. You see, he wasn't really well until after they were living on the dock—Barney said the fresh air was all that saved him, and that now he's a different man. Mollie's cooking is enough to discourage anybody; but Barney says: 'By gum! He stuck by her like a man.'" "My child! You mustn't quote Barney quite so literally. Surely, he didn't say all that to you?" "No. Barney never talks to anybody but men, he's so bashful. He was telling another man why he liked my father. They were reeling a net." "Where were you?" "Behind them, peeling potatoes. I didn't know then that it wasn't polite to listen." "You poor little savage." "I don't mind," assured Jeanne, "when you call me a savage; but when Harold does, I feel like one." Jeanne had been warned never to mention her mother in her grandfather's presence; and she had meant not to. But by this time, you have surely guessed that Jeanne, with no one else to whom she could talk freely, was apt to unbottle herself, as it were, whenever she found her grandfather in a listening mood. She was naturally a good deal of a chatterbox; but, like many another little chatterbox, preferred a sympathetic listener. Sometimes, as just now, she spoke of her mother without remembering that she was a forbidden subject. But now, some of the questions that she had been longing to ask, thronged to her lips. Her grandfather was so very gentle with her—Oh, if she only dared! "What are you thinking about?" asked Mr. Huntington, after a long silence. "That is a very valuable picture and you are looking a hole right through it." "I was wondering," said Jeanne, touching her grandfather's hand, timidly, "if you wouldn't be willing to tell me something about my mother. Nobody ever has. What she was like when she was little, I mean. When she was just thirteen and a half. Did she ever look even a tiny little scrap like me?" "Yes," replied her grandfather, quite calmly, "you are like her. Not so much in looks as in other ways. You are darker and your bones are smaller, I think; but you move and speak like her, sometimes; and you, too, are bright and quick. And some part of your face is like hers; but I don't know whether it's your brow or your chin. Now you may clean my glasses for me and hunt up my book; I think James must have moved it. It's time you were changing your dress for dinner." After that, Jeanne learned a number of things about her mother. That she had loved flowers when she was just a tiny baby, that pink was her favorite color. That she had liked cats and peppermint and people. That she was very impulsive, often doing the deed first, the thinking afterwards. And yes, her impulses had almost always been kind. Once (Jeanne's grandfather so far forgot his grievance against his only daughter as to chuckle softly at the remembrance of the childish prank) she had felt so sorry for a hungry tramp that the cook had turned away, that the moment cook's back was turned Bessie had, at the risk of being severely burned, pulled a huge crock of baked beans from the oven, wrapped a thick towel about it, slipped outside, and thrust it upon the tramp. The tramp had been burned; and they had had to send for a policeman, in order to get his bad language off the premises. Jeanne had heard this story the night that she had had her dinner with her grandfather. She was supposed to be eating in the breakfast-room with her cousins; but when Maggie had cleared Mr. Huntington's little table, that evening, preparatory to bringing in his tray, Jeanne had said: "Bring enough for me, too, Maggie. I'm going to stay right here. You'll let me, won't you, grand-daddy?" "I'll invite you," was the response. "I don't know why I didn't think of doing it long ago." You see, whenever the Huntingtons entertained at dinner, as they frequently did, the children were banished to the breakfast-room. Between Pearl's snippishness, Clara's snubbing, and Harold's teasing, these were usually unhappy occasions for Jeanne. And generally the three young Huntingtons quarreled with one another. Besides, with no elders to restrain him, Harold was decidedly rude and "grabby." "I think," said Jeanne, after one particularly uproarious meal during which Harold had plastered Pearl's face with mashed potato and poured water down Jeanne's back, "that I've learned more good manners from Harold than from anybody else—his are so very bad that it makes me want nice ones." After the meal with her grandfather was finished, he showed her where to find an old photograph album, hidden behind the books in his bookcase. "There," said he, opening it at a page containing four small pictures. "This is your mother when she was six months old. She was three or four years old in this next one, and here is one at the age of twelve. She was seventeen when this last one was taken." "Is this all there are?" asked Jeanne, who had studied the four little pictures earnestly. "Of her, I mean?" "Yes, only those four. Young people didn't have cameras in those days, you know." "Keep the place for me," said Jeanne, returning the book to her grandfather's knee. "I'll be back in just a second." She returned very quickly with the miniature of Elizabeth Huntington Duval that she had been longing to show to her grandfather. "My father had a friend who was an artist," said Jeanne, breathlessly. "He painted that soon after they were married. For a present, father said. Wasn't it a nice one?" "Why, I'm delighted to see this, my dear," said her grandfather, gazing eagerly at the lovely face. "It's by far the best picture of Bessie I've ever seen. It is very like her and her face is full of happiness—I'm very glad of that. I had no idea of its existence. I am very glad indeed that you thought of showing it to me." "So am I," said Jeanne. "You're always so good to me that I'm glad I could give you a pleasure for once." "You must take very good care of this," said Mr. Huntington. "It's a very fine miniature." "I always do," returned Jeanne. "I thought it was ever so good of my father to give it to me—the only one he had." "It was, indeed," said Mr. Huntington, appreciatively. "Now, put it away, my dear, and keep it safe." In the dining-room, to which the guests had just been ushered by James in his very grandest manner, a lady had leaned forward to say, gushingly, to her hostess: "What a lovely child your youngest daughter is, Mrs. Huntington. I saw her at dancing school last week and simply fell in love with her. So graceful and such a charming face. She came in with your son." "Clara is a lovely child," returned Mrs. Huntington, complacently. "I think," said the guest, "my little son said that her name was Jeannette." "That," said Mrs. Huntington, coldly (people were always singing that wretched child's praises), "was merely my husband's niece, who has been placed in our care for a short time. That time, I am happy to say, is almost half over. She is a great trial. Fortunately, my children have been too well brought up to be influenced by her incomprehensible behavior; her hoidenish manners." At this moment there came the sound of a sudden crash, followed by shrieks faintly audible in the dining-room. Although Mrs. Huntington guessed that Harold had at last succeeded in upsetting the breakfast-room table; and that either Pearl or Clara had been burned with the resultant flood of soup, she turned, without blinking an eyelash, to the guest of honor on her right to speak politely of the weather. It was Jeanne who rushed to the breakfast-room to find the table overturned and all three of her cousins gazing with consternation at a wide scalded area on Clara's white wrist. It was Jeanne, too, who remembered that lard and cornstarch would stop the pain. Also, it was Jeanne whom Mrs. Huntington afterwards blamed for the accident. Her bad example, her wicked influence was simply ruining Harold's disposition. "Sure," said Maggie, telling Bridget about it later, "that lad was born with a ruined disposition. As for Miss Jeannette, there's more of a mother's kindness in one touch of that little tyke's hand than there is in Mrs. H.'s whole body. And think of her knowing enough to use lard and cornstarch. The doctor said she did exactly the right thing." <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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