The Girl from Sunset Ranch Part 16

She walked uptown. At Thirty-fourth and Forty-second streets the crosstown traffic had already begun. She pa.s.sed the new department stores, already opening their eyes and yawning in advance of the day's trade.

There were a few pedestrians headed uptown like herself. Some well-dressed men seemed walking to business. A few neat shop girls were hurrying along the pavement, too. But Helen, and the dogs in leash, had the avenue mostly to themselves at this hour.

The sleepy maids, or footmen, or pages stared at the Western girl with curiosity as she strode along. For, unlike many from the plains, Helen could walk well in addition to riding well.

She reached the plaza, and crossing it, entered the park. The trees were just coloring prettily. There were morning sounds from the not-far-distant zoo. A few early nursemaids and their charges asleep in baby carriages, were abroad. Several old gentlemen read their morning papers upon the benches, or fed the squirrels who were skirmishing for their breakfasts.

Several plainly-dressed people were evidently taking their own "const.i.tutionals" through the park paths. Swinging down from the north come square-shouldered, cleanly-shaven young men of the same type as Dud Stone. Helen believed that Dud must be a typical New Yorker.

But there were no girls abroad--at least, girls like herself who had leisure. And Helen was timid about making friends with the nursemaids.

In fact, there wasn't a soul who smiled upon her as she walked through the paths. She would not have dared approach any person she met for any purpose whatsoever.

"They haven't a grain of interest in me," thought Helen. "Many of them, I suppose, don't even see me. Goodness, what a lot of self-centred people there must be in New York!"

She wandered on and on. She had no watch--never had owned one. As she had told Dud Stone, the stars at night were her clock, and by day she judged the hour by the sun.

The sun was behind a haze now; but she had another sure timekeeper. There was nothing the matter with Helen's appet.i.te.

"I'll go back and join the family at breakfast," the girl thought. "I hope they'll be nice to me. And poor Aunt Eunice dead without our ever being told of it! Strange!"

She had come a good way. Indeed, she was some time in finding an outlet from the park. The sun was behind the morning haze as yet, but she turned east, and finally came out upon the avenue some distance above the gateway by which she had entered.

A southbound auto-bus caught her eye and she signaled it. She not only had brought her purse with her, but the wallet with her money was stuffed inside her blouse and made an uncomfortable lump there at her waist. But she hid this with her arm, feeling that she must be on the watch for some sharper all the time.

"Big Hen was right when he warned me," she repeated, eyeing suspiciously the several pa.s.sengers in the Fifth Avenue bus.

They were mostly early shoppers, however, or gentlemen riding to their offices. She had noticed the number of the street nearest her uncle's house, and so got out at the right corner.

The change in this part of the town since she had walked away from it soon after seven, amazed her. She almost became confused and started in the wrong direction. The roar of traffic, the rattle of riveters at work on several new buildings in the neighborhood, the hoa.r.s.e honking of automobiles, the shrill whistles of the traffic policemen at the corners, and the various other sounds seemed to make another place of the old-fashioned Madison Avenue block.

"My goodness! To live in such confusion, and yet have money enough to be able to enjoy a home out of town," thought Helen. "How foolish of Uncle Starkweather."

She made no mistake in the house this time. There was Gregson--now spick and span in his maroon livery--haughtily mounting guard over the open doorway while a belated scrubwoman was cleaning the steps and areaway.

Helen tripped up the steps with a smile for Gregson; but that wooden-faced subject of King George had no joint in his neck. He could merely raise a finger in salute.

"Is the family up, sir?" she asked, politely.

"In Mr. Starkweather's den, Miss," said the footman, being unable to leave his post at the moment. Mr. Lawdor was not in sight and Helen set out to find the room in question, wondering if the family had already breakfasted. The clock in the hall chimed the quarter to ten as she pa.s.sed it.

The great rooms on this floor were open now; but empty. She suddenly heard voices. She found a cross pa.s.sage that she had not noticed before, and entered it, the voices growing louder.

She came to a door before which hung heavy curtains; but these curtains did not deaden the sound entirely. Indeed, as Helen hesitated, with her hand stretched out to seize the portiere, she heard something that halted her.

Indeed, what she heard within the next few moments entirely changed the outlook of the girl from Sunset Ranch. It matured that doubt of humanity that had been born the night before in her breast.

And it changed--for the time being at least--Helen's nature. From a frank, open-hearted, loving girl she became suspicious, morose and secretive. The first words she heard held her spell-bound--an unintentional eavesdropper.

And what she heard made her determined to appear to her unkind relatives quite as they expected her to appear.

CHAPTER XI

LIVING UP TO ONE'S REPUTATION

"Well! my lady certainly takes her time about getting up," Belle Starkweather was saying.

"She was tired after her journey, I presume," her father said.

"Across the continent in a day-coach, I suppose," laughed Hortense, yawning.

"I _was_ astonished at that bill for taxi hire Olstrom put on your desk, Pa," said Belle. "She must have ridden all over town before she came here."

"A girl who couldn't take a plain hint," cried Hortense, "and stay away altogether when we didn't answer her telegram----"

"Hush, girls. We must treat her kindly," said their father. "Ahem!"

"I don't see _why_?" demanded Hortense, bluntly.

"You don't understand everything," responded Mr. Starkweather, rather weakly.

"I don't understand _you_, Pa, sometimes," declared Hortense.

"Well, I'll tell you one thing right now!" snapped the older girl. "I've ordered her things taken out of that chamber. Her shabby old trunk has gone up to the room at the top of the servants' stairway. It's good enough for her."

"We certainly have not got to have this cowgirl around for long,"

continued Hortense. "She'd be no fit company for Flossie. Flossie's rude enough as it is."

The youngest daughter had gone to school, so she was not present with her saucy tongue to hold up her own end of the argument.

"Think of a girl right from a cattle ranch!" laughed Belle. "Fine! I suppose she knows how to rope steers, and break ponies, and ride bareback like an Indian, and all that. Fine accomplishments for a New York drawing-room, I must say."

"Oh, yes," joined in Hortense. "And she'll say 'I reckon,' and drop her 'g's' and otherwise insult the King's English."

"Ahem! I must warn you girls to be less boisterous," advised their father.

"Why, you sound as though you were almost afraid of this cowgirl, Pa,"

said Belle, curiously.

"No, no!" protested Mr. Starkweather, hurriedly.

"Pa's so easy," complained Hortense. "If I had my way I wouldn't let her stay the day out."

"But where would she go?" almost whined Mr. Starkweather.