A Little Country Girl Part 5

"There is Pulpit Rock," said Gertrude, stopping where a shelving path slanted down toward a great square ma.s.s of stone, which was surrounded on three sides by water. "Would you like to go down and sit on top for a little while? I am rather tired."

"Oh, I should like to so much."

Down they scrambled accordingly, and in another moment were on top of the big rock. It was almost as good as being at sea; for when they turned their backs to the sh.o.r.e nothing could be seen but water and sails and flying birds, and nothing heard but the incessant plash and dash of the waves below.

"Oh, how perfectly splendid!" cried Cannie. "I should think you would come here every day, Gertrude."

"Yes, that's what people always say when they first come," said the experienced Gertrude. "But I a.s.sure you we don't come every day, and we don't want to. Why, sometimes last summer I didn't see the Cliffs for weeks and weeks together. It's nice enough now when there are not many people here; but after the season begins and the crowd, it isn't nice at all. You see all sorts of people that you don't know, and--and--well--it isn't pleasant."

"I can't think what you mean," declared Cannie, opening her eyes with amazement. "I'd just as soon there were twenty people on this rock, if I needn't look at them and they didn't talk to me. The sea would be just the same."

"You'll feel differently when you've been in Newport awhile. It's not at all the fashion to walk on the Cliffs now except on Sunday, and not at this end of them even then. A great many people won't bathe, either,--they say it has grown so common. Why, it used to be the thing to walk down here,--all the nicest people did it; and now you never see anybody below Narragansett Avenue except ladies'-maids and butlers, and people who are boarding at the hotels and don't know any better."

"How funny it seems!" remarked Candace, half to herself, with her eyes on the distance, which was rapidly closing in with mist.

"What is funny?"

"Oh, I was--I was only thinking how funny it is that there should be a fashion about coming down to such a beautiful place as this."

"I don't see how it is funny."

"Yes," persisted Candace, who, for all her shyness, had ideas and opinions of her own; "because the Cliffs are so old and have always been here, and I suppose some of the people who make it the fashion not to walk upon them have only just come to Newport."

"I really think you are the queerest girl I ever saw," said Gertrude.

A long silence ensued. Each of the two girls was thinking her own thoughts. The thickening on the horizon meanwhile was increasing. Thin films of vapor began to blow across the sky. The wind stirred and grew chill; the surf on the beach broke with a low roar which had a menacing sound. Suddenly a wall of mist rose and rolled rapidly inland, blotting out all the blue and the smile of sky and sea.

"Gracious! here's the fog," cried Gertrude, "and I do believe it's going to rain. We must hurry home. I rather think mamma's storm is coming, after all."

CHAPTER IV.

THE MANUAL OF PERFECT GENTILITY.

MRS. GRAY'S storm had indeed come. All the next day it rained, and the day after it rained harder, and on the third day came a thick fog; so it was not till the very end of the week that Newport lay again in clear sunshine.

The first of the wet days Cannie spent happily in the society of Miss Evangeline and Mr. Hiawatha, two new acquaintances of whom she felt that she could scarcely see enough. Marian found her sitting absorbed on the staircase bench, and after peeping over her shoulder at the pictures for a while, begged her to read aloud. It was the first little bit of familiar acquaintance which any of the younger members of the Gray family had volunteered, and Candace was much pleased.

Marian was not yet quite fourteen, and was still very much of a child at heart and in her ways. Her "capable" little face did not belie her character. She was a born housekeeper, always tidying up and putting away after other people. Everything she attempted she did exactly and well. She was never so happy as when she was allowed to go into the kitchen to make mola.s.ses candy or try her hand at cake; and her cake was almost always good, and her candy "pulled" to admiration. She was an affectionate child, with a quick sense of fun, and a droll little coaxing manner, which usually won for her her own way, especially from her father, who delighted in her and never could resist Marian's saucy, caressing appeals. It required all Mrs. Gray's firm, judicious discipline to keep her from being spoiled.

Georgie, who was nearly nineteen, seemed younger in some respects than Gertrude, who was but three months older than Candace. Georgie, too, had a good deal of the housekeeper's instinct, but she was rather dreamy and puzzle-headed, and with the best intentions in the world was often led into sc.r.a.pes and difficulties from her lack of self-reliance, and the easy temper which enabled any one who was much with her to gain an influence over her mind.

Gertrude--but it is less easy to tell what Gertrude was. In fact, it was less important just then to find out what she was than what she was likely to be. Gertrude reminded one of an unripe fruit. The capacities for sweetness and delightfulness were there within her, but all in a crude, undeveloped state. No one could predict as yet whether she would ripen and become mellow and pleasant with time, or remain always half-hard and half-sour, as some fruits do. Meanwhile she was the prettiest though not the most popular of the Gray sisters, and she ruled over Georgie's opinions and ideas with the power which a stronger and more selfish character always has over a weaker and more pliable one.

Marian was less easily influenced. She and Gertrude often came into collision; and it was in part the habit of disputing Gertrude's mandates which led her to seek out Candace on that rainy afternoon. In the privacy of her own room that morning, Gertrude had made some very unflattering remarks about their newly arrived relative.

"It's really quite dreadful to have a girl like that come to spend the whole summer with one," she said to Georgie. "She hasn't a bit of style, and her clothes are so queer and old-timey; and she's always lived up on that horrid farm, and hasn't an idea beyond it. Everything surprises her so, and she makes such a fuss over it. You should have heard her yesterday when we were out walking; she said the Cliffs had been there always, and some of the fashionable people had only just come."

"What _did_ she mean?"

"I'm sure I don't know. She says the queerest things. And she looks so funny and so different from the other girls; and of course everybody will know that she is our cousin."

"Mamma has ordered her some dresses from Hollander's," observed Georgie; "and that was a real pretty hat that came home last night."

"I don't care. They won't look like anything when she puts them on."

"Gertrude Gray, I think it's real mean to talk so about your own cousin," cried Marian, who, with the instinct of a true "little pitcher," had heard every word. "It isn't Cannie's fault that she has always lived on a farm. She didn't have anywhere else to live. Very likely she would have preferred Paris," with fine scorn, "or to go to boarding-school in Dresden, as you and Georgie did, if anybody had given her the choice. She's real nice, I think, and now that her hair is put up, she's pretty too,--a great deal prettier than some of the girls you like. I'm going down now to sit with her. You and Georgie don't treat her kindly a bit. You leave her all alone, and very likely she's homesick at this moment; but I shall be nice to her, whatever you do."

Whereupon Miss Marian marched out of the room with her nose in the air, and devoted herself to Candace for the rest of that day, much to the lonely little visitor's contentment.

They grew quite at home with each other over "Evangeline." Birthday books had just come into fashion. Somebody had given Marian one; and she now brought it and asked Candace to write in it.

"June 17," she said, as Cannie sought out the right page; "why, that is next Sat.u.r.day."

"So it is, though I shouldn't have remembered it if it hadn't been for your book."

"Why, how funny!" cried Marian, opening her eyes wide. "Don't you keep your birthdays?"

"Keep them?" repeated Candace, in a tone of perplexity.

"Yes; keep--celebrate them? Don't people ever give you presents? Didn't you ever have a cake?"--her voice increasing in dismay, as Candace in answer to each question shook her head.

"Cake--on my birthday, you mean? No, I don't think I ever did. Aunt Myra doesn't believe in cake. She says she liked it when she was young; but since she was converted to cracked wheat and oatmeal at the age of thirty-three, she has hardly ever touched it. We never had any at North Tolland, except gingerbread sometimes."

"What a dreadful kind of aunt for a girl to have!" remarked Marian, meditatively. She sat for some time longer on the floor, with her head on Candace's knee; but she seemed to be thinking deeply about something, and said she didn't feel like being read to any longer. At last she went away "to speak to mamma," she said.

Candace had forgotten all about this birthday discussion before Sat.u.r.day morning dawned dimly out of the still persistent fog. All the time she was dressing, her eyes were on "The Golden Legend" which lay open on the bureau beside her; and her thoughts were so much occupied with Prince Henry and poor pretty Elsie, for whom she felt so very sorry, that she had none to spare for the comparatively unimportant fact that she, little Candace Arden, had that day turned the corner of her seventeenth year.

It was all the more a delightful surprise, therefore, when she went down to breakfast and found a pile of dainty, white, ribbon-tied parcels on her plate, a gla.s.s of beautiful roses beside it, and was met with a special kiss from Cousin Kate, and a chorus of "Many happy returns" from the rest of the family.

The little softnesses and prettinesses of life, the gifts and surprises, the sweet words, the being made much of on special occasions, were quite unknown to the old farm-house in North Tolland. Aunt Myra was a stanch Presbyterian. She disapproved on principle of Christmas day, as belonging to popery and old superst.i.tion. She didn't see that one day was any better than any other day. It was just an accident on what day of the year you were born, and it was no use to make a fuss about it, she said. There were plenty of people in the world before you came, and there would have been plenty if you had never come at all. Such was Aunt Myra's _dictum_.

With these views, it may be supposed that Candace's idea of an anniversary was not a very lively one. For a moment she scarcely took in the meaning of what she saw, but stood regarding the plate-ful of parcels with a bewildered look on her face.

"It's your birthday, you know," exclaimed little Marian. "Many happy returns! Don't you recollect that it's your birthday? We shouldn't have found it out, though, if it hadn't been for my book."

"I'm not so sure about that," said Mrs. Gray, smiling at her. "I had the date of Cannie's birthday put down securely somewhere, and I've been keeping a special gift for it. It's something that I brought you from Geneva, Cannie; but as it had waited so long before getting to you, I thought it might as well wait a little longer and come on your anniversary."

"Oh, thank you," said Candace, glancing shyly at the parcels.

"Please do begin to open them!" urged Marian. "It is such fun to see people open presents. That's mamma's; open it first."

It was a flat squarish bundle, tied with a rose-colored ribbon. Cannie's fingers shook with excitement as she undid the knot. Breakfast meantime was at a stand-still. The girls were peeping over her shoulders, Mr.

Gray watching from behind his newspaper; even Frederic, with a plate of hot toast in his hand, had paused, and out of one discreet eye was observing her movements.

Inside was a flat case of gray polished wood, with a little silver ornament in the middle. It opened with a snap. Cannie pressed the spring, the lid flew up, and there, on a cushion of blue velvet, lay the prettiest little Swiss watch imaginable, with C. V. A. enamelled on its lid. There was a slender gold chain attached, a little enamelled key,--nothing could be more complete.