Part 27 (1/2)

Merry indeed regretted that she had asked Jane to send the letter which was causing her so much unhappiness. ”Try to forget about it, Janey, just for today,” she implored, ”while we are celebrating your eighteenth birthday.” Then an inspiration came to her and she asked: ”What would your mother have done if she had had a sorrow that would sadden others if they knew about it?”

Jane sat up on the side of the bed, and, after glancing at the miniature on the table near, she turned and looked thoughtfully out of the wide window and into the sun-s.h.i.+mmering valley. Merry wondered what her reply would be. A moment later she knew, for Jane sprang up and after kissing the golden-haired girl impulsively, she caught her by the hand, saying: ”I'm going out to the brook to wash my face in that clear, cold water, just as Dan and I did the first day that we came. And I'll try to wash away all selfish grievings and to think, if I can, only of the happiness of the guests at my birthday party. That's what my mother would have done. I am so glad that Dan told me that we can choose a model or an ideal and carve our own characters like it and I'm grateful to you for having recalled it to me, because, for the moment, I had forgotten.” The girls took their towels and hand in hand they skipped around to the brook. Jane knelt by the big boulder and splashed the cold spring water over her tear-stained eyes. When she looked up her wet cheeks were rosy.

And later, when they had gone back to the bedroom to complete their preparations for the party, Merry begged Jane to wear a wine-colored dress which was especially becoming to her. It was of soft, clinging crepe de chine and had a deep collar of Irish crochet. Then they went into the living-room to await the coming of their guest. Merry, whose dainty blue summer dress made her lovely eyes the color of a June sky, sat smiling admiringly at her friend. ”Jane,” she said, ”you are wonderful. But there is just one more touch needed to make you look a bit more partified. I will get it.”

Springing up, Merry went into their bedroom, took from her suitcase a box which contained a beautiful scarlet rose with satin and velvet petals.

This she pinned into Jane's soft, dark hair just above her left ear.

Standing off to note the effect, Merry declared that her friend was certainly the most beautiful girl she had ever seen. A short month before Jane would have considered this praise her just due, but, so greatly had she changed, her reply was given in entire sincerity: ”I may be the most beautiful to you, because you love me, but Meg Heger is really the more beautiful.” Before Merry could reply, there was an excited shouting without. Both girls leaped to the open door. They saw Meg Heger riding on her spotted pony, while Dan on the big brown mare was at her side, but they were conversing quietly. The halloos came from the brook. Turning to look in that direction, the girls saw Julie, Bob and Gerald racing toward them as fast as they could over the rocky way, and it was quite evident that they were all very much excited. ”I wonder what they have seen?”

Jane said.

Before the children and Bob could reach the cabin, Meg and Dan had climbed the stairway and had been greeted by the two girls.

The trapper's daughter wore a simply fas.h.i.+oned Scotch plaid gingham dress in which many colors were mingled.

They all turned toward the brook when the three, who were racing toward them, neared.

”What, ho!” Dan called gayly, and Jane noted that never before had she seen in her brother's face an expression of such radiant happiness. ”Did you three see a bear? It never will do for us to go back East without having at least sighted a grizzly.”

To the surprise of the four who awaited them, the newcomers became suddenly embarra.s.sed, and even Bob acted as though he hardly knew what to say, which was quite unusual in so straightforward and impulsive a lad.

”Dan,” he said, ”may I speak with you a moment?”

The older boy walked away from the curious group of girls.

”We did not know that Meg Heger had come,” Bob began, ”and we were just going to call out that we had found another place where we would like to look for the lost box. It's such a queer place, Dan, but it is one that as yet we have not investigated. Can't we get away from the girls somehow? Gerald and Julie and I want to show the spot to _you_ at least.”

”Why, I presume so,” Dan agreed, and after explaining to the three older girls that Bob and the youngsters wished to show him something, he followed them back along the brook. It was the way that he had gone on that day when he had first visited the Heger cabin. When they reached the waterfall which Dan had thought so pretty, they climbed down to the red rock basin into which it fell. Excitedly, Gerald pointed back of the tumbling water.

”Look-it, Dan!” he fairly shouted. ”See that little cave opening in there! Doesn't it look to you as if it had been made with a pickaxe? Bob thinks it does.”

Dan looked through the transparent sheet of hurrying water and smilingly shook his head as he replied:

”I don't suppose that a human being has ever been through that crevice, and, moreover, I don't quite see how we can investigate, do you, Bob?”

Dan, noting the disappointed expression on his small brother's face, turned toward the older boy.

”We sort of had it figured out that Gerald could stand back of the waterfall and then he could see better whether that is just a crevice in the rocks or the mouth of a cave.”

The youngest boy looked up eagerly. ”You know, Dan, I fetched along my bathing suit. Mayn't I go back to the cabin and put it on? Mayn't I, Dan?”

”Why, of course, if you wish, but perhaps you had better say nothing to the girls about it. I do not like to have Meg know that we are searching for that box, since there is no real likelihood of our finding it.”

Luckily the girls were not in sight, and so no questions were asked of the small boy, who dived into his own room, donned his bathing suit and raced away, without having been seen. Dan held the younger boy's hand in a tight clasp as Gerald went down into the clear, cold pool.

”Now, hold your breath and step up on that ledge back of the waterfall,”

the older brother advised.

Julie watched wide-eyed, almost frightened.