The Cinder Pond Part 15

"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, blus.h.i.+ng 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 s.h.i.+p 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 fas.h.i.+onable street.

Jeanne wondered about that s.h.i.+p of Aunt Agatha's. The river--she had seen it once--was a small, muddy affair. Surely no s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+p," 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 Sat.u.r.day 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 gra.s.s, 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 princ.i.p.al 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."

CHAPTER XIV

AT FOUR A.M.

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 ba.s.s 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 sh.e.l.ls. 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 gra.s.s. Also, some small evergreen trees, clipped to look like solid b.a.l.l.s, 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 capsic.u.m 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!"