The Open Question Part 24

She revelled gloomily in the tragic picture till she heard Emmie coming up-stairs. She hid the "remainder biscuit" and hurriedly dried her eyes.

There had long been a theory in the family--even her mother had shared it--that Val never cried, and hadn't any heart to speak of. She was intensely proud of this reputation for stoicism, and wouldn't for worlds have undeceived any one. She brushed past Emmie now with lofty looks and ran down-stairs and out-of-doors. She ranged about the grounds, finding that her father was right--there were great possibilities of enjoyment in these neglected haunts. She was not long in discovering the grape-vine climbing the pear-tree in the wilderness, and satisfying herself that "peaches were ripe." The osage orange-trees that grew along the fence behind the drying-ground had dropped their rugged globes on the gra.s.s, and one could play ball with these oranges till their tough fibres grew soft and yielded grudgingly, like rubber. Presently one that she had sent flying over the trees into the adjoining grounds came mysteriously back. Val parted the fringe of lower undergrowth and peered between the fence rails, but could see no one. She s.h.i.+ed another orange, and this time she saw a boy dart out from behind a tree and send the orange swiftly through the suns.h.i.+ne over her head. Val leaped up, and by a fluke caught it firmly in her hands.

"Hooray!" came involuntarily from the next-door neighbor; and they went on playing ball in ambush till curiosity prevailed over shyness.

When the next-door neighbor drew near the osage barrier, he revealed himself as a boy about Val's age, with a freckled face and a queer little k.n.o.b of a nose.

"Wot's your name?" he inquired.

"Val Gano. What's yours?"

"Jerry--I mean, Jerningham Otway."

"That your house?"

She climbed upon the fence and distinguished glimpses through the bushes of an imposing place beyond.

"Yes," he answered; "and we got a bank over the river."

This eliciting nothing, he went on, genially:

"You can fire a ball 'bout as well as a boy!"

"I should hope so."

"My sister can't, and she's a year older 'n me. Most girls can't, and they're all awful mad they wasn't born boys."

"That so?"

"Yes. I know a girl over the river--awfully jolly girl--she's got a monkey--nicest girl I ever knew!--and Geerusalem! don't she want to be a boy!"

"She _must_ be a ninny," observed his next-door neighbor.

"Hey?"

"Can't think why any girl in her senses should want to be a _boy_!" as who should say: the least of created things.

Jerry widened saucer eyes.

"If a girl likes," his neighbor continued, "she can do all the jolly things a boy does without the bother of _being_ a boy."

"Ho! ho! Don't find it much bother."

"Well, but it's a little dull, ain't it?"

"Hey?"

"Not now exactly, but don't you ever think about the future?"

Jerry looked vaguely alarmed for a single instant, and then strutted off with his hands in his pockets, whistling defiantly all across the lawn.

He stopped at the barn door, and whistled his way back, in time to catch a friendly ball.

The feminine wile that eventually won the young gentleman's heart, and "did for" the girl with the pet monkey, was Val's gift for turning the most surprisingly rapid somersaults all across the drying-ground. A small contorting ball, she rolled head over heels, without stopping, from one side to the other, and came up smiling, in spite of a crack on her crown against the pump.

"Gee-_rusalem_!" observed Jerry, when he saw she was laughing. "I say,"

he added, with a child's fine disregard for preface or preliminary--"I say, come over to Bentley's Pond and let's be pirates."

It seems highly probable that Val would have closed with the offer if Emmie had not made a timely appearance.

"What you doin'?" she asked, Jerry being invisible.

"None o' your business," said her polite sister.

"Oh-h," purred Emmie. "Gamma don't let us--"

She paused.

"Don't let us what?"

"What you're doin'."

"What am I doin'?"

It was difficult to say. She seemed to be just sauntering about, occasionally kicking an osage orange. But Emmie, not without reason, had got it into her law-abiding head that whatever this sister of hers might be engaged in it was pretty sure to be something taboo, and Emmie, as an older inhabitant here, and one who never made these mistakes, was bound to keep the new-comer from transgression. Her sister had gone back to the house now. Emmie followed her up-stairs to their room. Val found her trunk gone from the upper hall, and its contents disposed in drawers and wardrobe with Emmie's belongings.

Who had done this thing?

"Venie," said Emmie.

The new-comer anathematized the officious servants of the Fort. Emmie stood looking on with growing consternation, as Val flung forth from the wardrobe to the middle of the room a shower of pinafores and petticoats, books and toys. They lay on the floor in an indiscriminate ma.s.s. What was this daring person about? Emmie stood shyly by the door, her face flus.h.i.+ng with excitement.

"I won't have my things mixed up with other peoples'!" Val announced, severely. Then, after a moment: "What are you standing there for?"

"I--I don't know," responded Emmie.

"Haven't you got any place of your own, where you belong?"

Emmie looked bewildered, as well she might.

"I've got a little rocking-chair down in gamma's room--used to be cousin Efan's."

"Humph! rocking-chair's just the thing for _you!_ Why don't you go and sit in it?"

Val was clearing out the bureau now at the other end of the room. It was Emmie's things this time that were being flung out with disdain. Val's harsh question, coupled with the moving spectacle of Emmie's best hat on the floor, brought ready tears to the soft brown eyes.

"What you got in this?" demanded Val, shaking the rattling contents of a well tied-up box.

"B'longs to cousin Efan. Gamma don't let us open it."

Val untied the cord and revealed the forbidden spoil--marbles, a jack-knife, a broken whistle, and at the bottom a little drawing-book and a French grammar.