Meanwhile in the handsome home of Colonel Wainright, on the hill-road overlooking the distant lake, a very discontented girl sat staring moodily into the fireplace of a luxuriously furnished living-room. Her brother stood near, leaning against the mantlepiece.

“I won’t stay here!” Geraldine declared, her dark eyes flashing rebelliously. “I won’t! I won’t! Father has no right to send me to this back-woods country village. What if he was born here? That surely was his misfortune, and no sensible reason why I should be condemned to be buried here for a whole winter.”

“But, Sister mine,” the boy said in a conciliatory tone. “I’ve been trying to tell you that there are some nice girls living in Sunnyside, but you won’t let me. If you would join their school life, you would soon be having a jolly time. That’s what I mean to do.”

“Alfred Morrison, I don’t see how you came by such plebian ideas. I should think that you would be ashamed to have your sister attending a district school when you know that I have always been a pupil at a most fashionable seminary and have associated only with the best people.”

“What makes them the best, Sister?”

The girl tapped one daintily slippered foot impatiently as she said scathingly: “Alfred, you are so provoking sometimes. You know the Ellingsworths and the Drexels and all those people are considered the best in Dorchester.”

Alfred was about to reply that there was a family of Drexels living in Sunnyside, but, luckily, before he had said it, his attention was attracted by the ringing of a cow-bell which seemed to be out in the driveway. Geraldine also heard, but did not look up. Some delivery wagon, she thought, but Alfred, who stood so that he could look out of the window, understood what was happening when he saw the village girls descending from a delivery sleigh. They slipped out of their fur coats, leaving them in Johnnie’s care, and appeared in shawls and old-fashioned capes. For a puzzled moment Alfred gazed; then, as something of the meaning of the joke flashed over him, he almost laughed aloud. Luckily Geraldine continued to stare moodily into the fire, nor did she look up when Alfred left the room. Before the girls on the porch had time to ring the bell, the boy opened the door and, stepping out, he asked quietly but with twinkling eyes: “Why the masquerade?”

“Don’t you dare to spoil the joke?” Merry warned when she had told him that since his sister had expected them to be milkmaids, they had not wanted to disappoint her. Then she informed him: “My name is Miss Turnip. You introduce me and I’ll introduce the others.” Alfred’s eyes were laughing, but in a low voice he said, “I’m game!”

Then aloud he exclaimed: “How do you do, Miss Turnip. I am so glad that you came to call. Bring your friends right in. My sister will be pleased to meet you.”

Merry, in telling Jack about it afterwards, said that Alfred played his part as though he had been practicing it for weeks.

“Sister Geraldine,” he called pleasantly to the girl who had risen and was standing haughtily by the fireplace, “permit me to present the young ladies who live in Sunnyside. They have very kindly called to welcome you to their village.”

The newcomers all made bobbing curtsies, and, to her credit be it said, that even little Betty did not giggle, but oh, how hard it was not to.

Of course there had been classes in good breeding in the Dorchester seminary. One of the rules often emphasized was that it did not matter how a hostess might feel toward a guest, she must not be rude in her own home. So Geraldine bowed coldly and asked the young ladies to be seated.

Alfred, daring to remain no longer, bolted to his room and laughed so hard that he said afterwards that he couldn’t get his face straight for a week.

Peggy Pierce, being the best actress among “The Sunny Seven,” had been asked to take the lead, and so, when they were all seated as awkwardly as possible, she began: “My name is Mirandy Perkins. We all heard as haow yew had come to taown, and so we all thought as haow we’d drop in and ask if yew’d like to jine our Litery Saciety. We do have the best times. Next week we’re a goin’ to have a Pumpkin Social. Each gal is to bring a pumpkin pie and each fellow is to bring as many pennies as he is old to help buy a new town pump for the Square. That’s why it’s called Pump-kin Social.”

This remark was unexpected, not having been planned at the dress rehearsal, and it struck Rosamond as being so funny that she sputtered suspiciously, then taking out a big red cotton handkerchief, she changed the laugh into a sneeze.

Geraldine sat stiffly gazing at her callers with an expression that would have frozen them to silence had they been as truly rural as they were pretending, but, if she had only known it, these country girls had been attending a school every bit as fashionable as the seminary of which she so often boasted.

“I thank you,” that young lady replied, “but it is not my intention to remain in this backwoodsy place. I plan leaving here next week at the latest.”

“Wall, naow, ain’t that too bad? We thought as how yew’d be seech an addition to our saciety,” Peggy continued her part. “Of course we all feel real citified ourselves. We get the latest styles right from Dorchester for our toggins.”

“Toggins?” Geraldine repeated icily. “Just what are they?”

There surely was a titter somewhere; but Peggy, pretending to be surprised, remarked: “Why, toggins are hats and things like Jerushy’s here.” She nodded at the caricature of a red hat with green and pink trimmings which was perched on Rosamond’s head.

Merry returned to the rehearsal lines from which they had sidetracked.

“Yew’d enjoy our Litery Saciety, I’m sure,” she said, “bein’ as yew have a litery sort of a look. We meet onct a week around at differunt houses. We sew on things for the missionary barrel, and then one of us reads aloud out of The Farmers’ Weekly.”

Just then the clock on the mantelpiece chimed the hour of four, and Peggy sprang up. “Crickets!” she exclaimed, “Here ’tis comin’ on dark most, and me not home to milk the caows.”

“An’ I’ve got to churn yet before supper,” Doris Drexel ventured her first remark. Luckily Geraldine did not glance at the soft, white hands of the speaker. They were all smiling in the friendliest fashion, but as soon as they were outside and riding away in their queer equipage, they shouted and laughed as they had never laughed before.

“Her highness will probably leave town tomorrow,” Doris remarked, “but if she does, the town will be well rid of her.”

“I wonder if we put it on too thick,” Bertha questioned as they were slipping on their fur coats, which they had left in the sleigh. “I was afraid she would see through our joke.”

“I don’t believe she did,” Merry said. “Alfred told Jack that his sister got her ideas of girls who live in country villages from the moving pictures, and they are always as outlandishly dressed as we are.”

“Well it will be interesting to see what comes of our nonsense,” Gertrude remarked. “On the whole I feel rather sorry for that poor, unhappy girl.”

When Alfred saw the queer equipage disappearing, he descended to the library. “Oh, hello, Sis,” he said, “Have your callers gone?”

Geraldine’s eyes flashed and she stamped her small foot as she said:

“Alfred Morrison, I just know that you asked those dreadful creatures to call on me. I suppose you would like to have me attend their Pumpkin Social, which is to be given to raise money to buy a town pump.”

This was too much for Alfred and he laughed heartily.

“Well,” he said at last, when he could speak, “I take off my hat to the young ladies of Sunnyside. They are the cleverest damsels that I ever met.” So saying, he disappeared, fearing that he would break his promise to Merry and reveal that it was all a joke if he remained any longer with his indignant sister.

Geraldine would probably have packed her trunk that very night and departed the next day if she had had sufficient money with which to buy a ticket, but for some reason her monthly allowance from her father had been delayed.

CHAPTER VIII.
THREE LETTERS

The following morning Colonel Wainright called the girl into his study, and, laying his hand on her shoulder, he said: “Little lassie, why don’t you try to please your daddy and go to school in the village here at least until the spring vacation. Then, as you know, you will be able to return to Mrs. Potter’s seminary, if you wish.”

“If I wish, Colonel Wainright?” the maiden exclaimed. “Why, of course I wish to go back there this very minute, where I can associate with girls who are my equals. I am sorry to seem ungrateful to you, Colonel, but I simply must leave this horrid village. I wish you could have seen the outlandish girls who called on me yesterday. What would Adelaine Drexel or Muriel Ellingworth think if they knew I was associating with milkmaids and – and butter churners!”

Alfred had told the older man about the joke which had been played on poor Geraldine and he had been much amused. Before he could reply, however, the door bell rang. “The postman, I expect!” the Colonel said as he went into the hall.

“Good!” Geraldine exclaimed. “I do hope he has a letter for me from Papa. It is long past time for my allowance, and I simply must have it.”

There were two letters for the girl, but neither bore the desired postmark. “Oh, dear, it is so provoking!” she declared, and then she climbed the stairs to her room. Colonel Wainright did not tell her that one of his envelopes bore her father’s handwriting. Again in his study, he opened and read the letter.

“Dear old Pal: – Your report of my little girl is discouraging, but we must remember that she was brought up without a mother and has undoubtedly received false ideas of life from her associates, a few of whom I do not approve. Geraldine had, while in Dorchester, two intimate friends who were very unlike. Adelaine Drexel is a very nice, wholesome girl, whose ancestors have been gentry for generations, but my chief reason for sending my daughter to Sunnyside was to separate her from her chosen companion, Muriel Ellingworth. Alfred has been much concerned about this friendship. He has often told me that Muriel, who is pretty in doll fashion, makes secret engagements with boys of whom her mother would not approve, and she invites my little girl to join them. Now I want Geraldine to have boy friends in a frank, open way, but of this sub-rosa business, my son and I heartily disapprove, and since my daughter hasn’t a mother to guide her, I decided that nothing would do her as much good as a winter spent in the wholesome atmosphere of Sunnyside, where the rich and poor play together in a happy, healthy way.

“Geraldine will feel terribly about it at first, but I am hoping that she is intrinsically too much like her splendid mother to remain a snob when she is convinced that among that class she will not find the worth-while people.

“It was mighty good of you, old pal, to help me out in this matter, but if you find the task a troublesome one, pack her up and send her to a good boarding school until I return. I am enclosing a check. Do not give my little girl much at a time, just sufficient for her needs. Some day I will do something for you.

“Yours,
“Al.”

The Colonel re-read the letter and then, leaning over the fireplace, he carefully burned it. The check he placed in his long pocketbook.

“Poor girl,” he mused, as he watched the last bit of white paper charring among the coals. “How disappointed she will be just at first. She has many hard lessons to learn, but her father was wise to send her here, where the girls are all so wholesome and still children at heart.”

Then his pleasant face wrinkled into a smile as he thought of the prank which those same wholesome girls had played only the day before upon the poor, unsuspecting city maiden.

“I wonder if she will ever forgive them when she finds out that it was all a joke. She’ll probably be very indignant at first. Well,” he added, as he turned away and put on his great coat preparing to take his daily constitutional into town, “this winter’s experience will prove of what fiber the girl is really made, and, somehow, in spite of her present snobbishness and vanity, I have faith in her.”

Meanwhile Geraldine, up in her pleasant room, was seated in an easy chair close to the fire on the hearth. She was reading the letters, which were from her two best girl friends.

Out of the first letter that Geraldine opened there fluttered a kodak picture. A pretty yet weak face smiled out at her. It was Muriel Ellingworth and it had been taken at the Public Baths. Tom Blakely was also in the picture and, as Geraldine well knew, Muriel’s mother had forbidden her daughter to go either with that boy or to the public bathing pool.

In a languid scrawl, the letter assured her “dearest” friend that she was just terribly missed and suggested that Geraldine run away.

“I do wish I had some money to send to you, poor dear, but I haven’t. I spent the last penny of my allowance buying a pair of silk stockings. They are simply adorable! They have open work edged with gold thread, and of course I had to buy the slippers to match and they have gold buckles. You remember Mother said positively that I must not have them, and so I keep them over at Kittie Beverly’s, and when I go out with Tom, I stop there and put them on. As usual, I was asked what I had done with my allowance, but I was expecting it and had an answer ready. I said that I had given it to the poor babies’ milk fund.”

Geraldine dropped the letter in her lap and gazed at the fire. Lying was repugnant to her. She had always told the truth fearlessly and had taken the consequences. Then she continued reading the indolent scrawl: “Oh, Gerry dear, I have another piece of news to tell you. Adelaine Drexel took it upon herself to preach to me the other day after school. She told me that if I continued to meet boys and go to public baths and places like that, she feared that I would be asked to leave the seminary. And then, if you please, the minx told me that she hoped the advice would be taken as kindly as it was given. I told her in my best French to mind her own business, and I haven’t spoken to her since, and if you are my friend, you will snub her too. She is expecting a letter from you, but if I hear that you have written her I shall know that you have taken her side against your devoted Duckie Muriel.”

Again Geraldine gazed in the fire. All these dishonorable things looked so different in cold black and white. When Muriel herself was telling them in her vivacious, chattery manner, they didn’t seem half so, well, yes, dishonest was the word, and Geraldine had inherited her father’s scorn for dishonesty.

With a sigh she opened the other letter and read the pretty, evenly written words:

“Dear little neighbor who is so far away. You can’t think how lonely it seems to have the big house next door closed up so tight. Every morning I go to the window hoping to wave you a greeting in the old way, but all I see is a drawn curtain and a snow-piled ledge. How suddenly everything happened! Truly, Geraldine, I do envy you. One can have such a nice time in a village and I have the dearest cousin living in Sunnyside. You have often heard me speak of Doris Drexel, but you were away last year when she visited me. I’ll write a little note of introduction, and I do wish that you would take it today and call upon my dear Cousin Doris. Tell her that you are the friend I love most and that we have been chums ever since our doll days, though truly my doll days aren’t over yet. I have the tenderest feeling for Peggoty Anne and I tell her all my secrets.

“You will be sorry to hear that Muriel and I are not on speaking terms. I did not mean to hurt her, but she thinks I did. Now, dear little neighbor, do write real soon to your loving, lonesome friend.

“Adelaine.”

And so she had to choose between them. How different the two girls were, she mused. Both sixteen, but one was vain and pretty, thinking only of clothes and boys, while the other, still a little girl at heart, told secrets to her doll.

Geraldine smiled as she remembered the Christmas when that doll had first arrived. What happy times she and Adelaine had had together. They had been playmates for years, and what a loyal friend her little neighbor had always been. Springing up from her chair, she opened her desk as she thought, “I’ll write to Adelaine this very moment and tell her that I am just as lonely for her as she is for me.”

For the next half hour, the only sound in the room was the crackling of the fire and the scratching of the pen. Geraldine had made her choice.

When the letter was finished, the girl arose and slipped on her beautiful blue velvet coat with its deep squirrel fur collar and cuffs and a jaunty blue velvet cap. Then, going down the hall, she tapped on a closed door.

“Who’s there?” the voice sounded as though it came from the depths of many cushions, as indeed it did, for Alfred, buried among them on his lounge, was reading an absorbing story.

“Brother, I wish you would drive me into the village. I have a letter that I would like to mail today.”

The door was flung open and the lad exclaimed: “I’ll tell you what, Sis! Let’s walk to town! It’s glorious weather and Dad told me especially that he wanted us to tramp about the way he did when he was a boy.”

Geraldine pouted. “Oh, Alfred,” she said, “you know I don’t like to walk, and certainly you wouldn’t expect me to wade through snow drifts like a country girl. I do wish I had stayed in the city. When I wanted to go anywhere, all I had to do was ring for Peters and he brought around the car.”

The lad was getting into his great coat, and he said wheelingly:

“I feel like taking a hike today, Sis. Try it once, just to please me, won’t you? Be a good pal.”

Geraldine hesitated. “Well, just this once,” she said. Then Alfred, happening to look down at her daintily shod feet, laughed gaily. “But, my dear girl!” he exclaimed. “You certainly couldn’t walk through snow drifts with those slipper things on. Trot along and put on the hiking shoes that Dad bought for you, and I’ll see if I can unearth some leggins.”

“But those shoes are so heavy,” Geraldine protested, “and I’m sure I don’t know where you could get leggins, whatever they are.”

“Never you mind, Sis, you do as little Alfred asks this once; I’ll be back in a jiffy.”

True to his word, the lad reappeared as soon as the strong hiking shoes were on, and triumphantly he held aloft a pair of warm knitted leggins. “Alfred Morrison,” cried the horrified girl, “do you expect me to wear those ugly things? Why, I’d be the laughing stock of Dorchester if I appeared in thick woolen stockings like those.”

“But, Sister mine, geographically speaking, Dorchester and Sunnyside are so far apart that your exclusive friends are not likely to see you today.”

At last Geraldine stood arrayed in the first pair of heavy shoes and leggins she had ever worn. As they were walking along the sparkling highway, the boy asked, “Who have you been writing to? Dad?”

“No, to Adelaine Drexel. I had a letter from her this morning, and oh, Buddy, I forgot to tell you, Adelaine writes that she has a first cousin living in this town. I am so thankful to find that after all there is at least one girl of my own set in this dreadful place, but what I would like to know is, why didn’t she call upon me instead of those – ”

“Butter churners and milkmaids,” Alfred finished for her.

Geraldine, who had been carefully picking her way through a snowdrift, trying to step just where her brother did, happened to look up suddenly and saw the shoulders of the boy ahead shaking with silent laughter. Before she could ask the cause of this, sleigh bells were heard back of them and a merry voice called: “Ho there, Alfred Morrison! Through stage for Sunnyside! Any passengers wish to ride?”

Jack Lee and Bob Angel were beaming down from the high seat of a delivery sleigh belonging to the father of the latter boy.

Bob often assisted his father after school hours, sometimes acting as clerk in the busy little grocery, or again doing the rural delivering.

Geraldine was indignant. “Ride with a grocer boy? Indeed not!” she was thinking. “Probably a brother to one of the milkmaids.” She flushed angrily when she saw Alfred turn back and answer the salutation with a hearty, “Hullo there, boys. Sure thing, I’d like to ride! Would you, Geraldine?”

The girl drew herself up haughtily as she said in a low tone: “A Morrison ride in a delivery cart? Never.”

Bob, not having heard a word of the conversation, stopped the horse, and Jack, leaping down from the high seat, snatched off his hat and acknowledged the introduction to Geraldine with as much courtesy as a city boy would have done; and what was more, the girl’s eyes, even though they were disdainful, quickly perceived that Jack was unusually good looking.

So, too, was the beaming face of the driver, who called pleasantly: “Miss Morrison, please pardon me for not getting out, but my steed is restless today. Our conveyance is not a fashionable one, I know, but if you will honor us, we will gladly take you to your destination.” Geraldine hardly knew how to reply. This boy seemed nice, but of course he belonged to the trades-people, and – Bob was again speaking: “Why don’t you let me drive you over to our house? The girls are having a sewing bee, I think they call it. Doris Drexel and all the rest of them are there.”

Geraldine looked up brightly: “Thank you,” she said, “I would like to go.”

If the seven girls seated around the fireplace in the pleasant Angel library had known that the haughty Geraldine was unconsciously about to return their call, they would have been filled with consternation for fear the joke they played upon her would be found out.