Jacquette, a Sorority Girl

It was nine o’clock in the evening when a heavy train rolled into the Union Station of a great western city. Among the passengers to alight was a fair-haired girl who glanced timidly about the big, cavernous station before falling in with the procession of travellers that had begun to move toward the waiting-room. Suddenly, one face shone clearly from among the indiscriminate mass of faces outside the iron gates, and she gave a glad little cry, as a tall boy stepped forward, caught her suitcase from her, and grasped her hand.

“Jacquette, isn’t it?” he exclaimed, his dark eyes shining with welcome. “I’d know you anywhere from your pictures.”

“But I shouldn’t know you!” she answered. “I’d no idea you were so big and--and grand!” she finished, roguishly.

“As for that, I am rather grand, to-night,” he laughed, stealing admiring glances at her as he led the way through the crowded station to the street. “I’m down here in the governor’s new auto to meet a long-lost country cousin, and I find a fairy princess, instead. What more could a fellow ask?”

“Not an automobile! Truly? I’ve never been in one, yet.”

“Oh, well, you’ll do a lot of things in Channing that you never did in Brookdale. Here’s the machine. Just step in and be comfortable while I look after your baggage.”

He gave an order to the respectful chauffeur and disappeared into the station, while Jacquette Willard looked after him, feeling that she had suddenly entered a new world. She sat up very straight, brushing a bit of lint from the jacket of her wine-coloured travelling-gown, and, more than once, she patted the sunny mist of hair about her face, and put both hands to the jaunty hat, to make sure that it was poised exactly as it should be. In a few minutes her tall cousin came back and seated himself beside her, and then they went spinning along the brilliantly lighted streets toward her uncle’s home.

“It seems like a fairy story to me, Quis,” she said, looking up at him with a shy smile.

“Didn’t I tell you you were the princess?” Marquis answered gaily. “Do you know?--there’s a pink rose in our conservatory that looks just like you, only it lacks the eyes--poor rose! Your pictures showed your hair was curly, but they didn’t tell the gold colour of it, and those stunning braids didn’t show, either. Wonder if the girls will make you put up your hair?”

“What girls?”

“Oh, the bunch I’ll show you, to-morrow morning. Nicest girls in Marston High.”

“High school, do you mean?”

“Yes; we never stop to put on the school, though. Everybody knows Marston. It’s famous all through the west for its football team. I’m mighty glad you came while I’m a senior here, instead of waiting till next year when I’ll be off at college. I can give you no end of pointers. By the way, I liked it just now, when you said ‘Quis.’ I suppose you know about your mother and my father getting our Frenchy sounding names out of the same old novel? Funny, wasn’t it? I have to answer to ‘Markee’ about half the time. The fellows do it to guy me. I wonder what you’d think if I should call you ‘Jack’?”

“I’d like it,” she agreed, promptly. “I never had a nickname.”

“All right, that’s settled. Don’t you think it’s queer we feel so well acquainted, just from the letters we’ve written? Do you realise that it’s twelve years since I even saw you? We lived abroad ten whole years, you know. Mother was saying, last night, that I’d spent two years more of my life in Europe than in this country, so far. I’m a pretty good American, though, for all that. The last two years here in Channing seem worth more than the whole ten on the other side. My father feels the same way, too, and he’s mighty happy to think that you and Aunt Sula and grandfather are coming to live so near us.”

“And perhaps we’re not happy about it too! You ought to hear the plans Aunt Sula and I have made for this winter. We’re going to make the most of the chance to hear good music, and see all the exhibitions at the Art Institute, for one thing.”

“Whew! How cultured we are!”

“We aren’t, yet, but wait!” Jacquette laughed. Then she added, seriously, “Our plans aren’t all selfish, though. We’re hoping we can interest grandfather in some of the new things, and make him happier. He has been so lonely since grandmother died, Quis.”

“I suppose he has. How soon are they coming?”

“Oh, it will be six weeks or two months before Aunt Sula can settle up things and leave Brookdale. I ought to be there to help her, but she was so anxious to have me begin school the first day that she made me come.”

“Then you’re going to stay at our house six weeks or more. That’s great. Perhaps you’ll make up your mind to live with us all the time after this.”

“Aunt Sula wouldn’t hear of that,” Jacquette said, smiling. “She thinks I belong to her as much as if I were her very own daughter. I guess I do, too. She’s taken care of me ever since I was three years old, you know.”

“Three!” Marquis repeated, in a softened tone. “Were you that little when your father and mother died, Jack?”

She nodded, a wistful look creeping into the hazel eyes, and they were both silent for a little. The automobile had turned on to a fashionable boulevard, and was skimming along like the wind. Presently a grey stone house loomed before them.

“Here we are!” cried Marquis--and, a minute later, Uncle Mac and Aunt Fanny were welcoming the Brookdale niece to their city home.

Aunt Fanny was tall and distinguished looking. Quis was like her; Jacquette saw that at a glance. Uncle Mac was stout and blue-eyed--and dear and kind.

After the first greetings he held his niece off at arm’s length, and looked deep into her eyes.

“Your mother’s own girl,” he said, with a mist in his voice. “Fanny, let’s keep her for ours after this.”

“At any rate, we shall be very glad to keep her for ours until Father Granville and Sula come, Malcolm,” Aunt Fanny answered in even tones, and Jacquette, glancing shyly up at the white profile of her statuesque, dark-haired aunt, felt, suddenly, that she knew who ruled her uncle’s home.

Mrs. Malcolm Granville was a woman who prided herself on her practical common sense, and, though she was very willing to receive Jacquette into her luxurious home for a visit, she had no intention of allowing her husband to put any foolish ideas, even for a minute, into the mind of his niece. As she reasoned, Jacquette, with the modest inheritance left to her by her father, was very suitably placed in the unpretentious home of her grandfather and unmarried aunt, and there was no good reason for saying or doing anything which might cause her to feel discontented with this arrangement.

As a matter of fact, there was not the slightest danger. Jacquette was too devotedly attached to her adopted mother to consider, for a moment, the thought of leaving her, and she felt an impulse to tell Aunt Fanny so on the spot, but she controlled it, and, after a few days, she learned, as people always did, to make allowances for Aunt Fanny’s “way,” and to appreciate her kindness, in spite of it.

“Now I’m going to carry this girl straight off to bed,” Aunt Fanny declared, presently, after Jacquette, relieved of her wraps and seated in a rocker before the fireplace in the library, had been served with a dainty tray of refreshments. “You see she can’t eat a mouthful, even though she confesses to not having taken dinner on the train. I believe she has swallowed three sips of milk and one nibble of that roll, altogether. She’s tired and excited, and the longer she stays here answering your questions, Malcolm, the more tired she’ll be.”

“Oh, mother, it’s disgracefully early!” Marquis protested, but Uncle Malcolm, leaning back in his big leather chair, smiled good-naturedly.

“Guess you’re right, Fanny,” he agreed. “If she’s going to begin school to-morrow morning, the sooner those pretty eyes are shut, the better.”

“There won’t be any school-work to speak of, the first day--nothing but fun--and I had forty things more to say to her,” Marquis was still grumbling as he rose to say good-night, but his mother’s word was law, and even Marquis grudgingly admitted her wisdom, next morning, when he saw the bright, rosy girl that emerged from the good night’s rest. As he started for school with Jacquette, after breakfast, he turned and looked her over with a smile of satisfaction.

“Well, what is it? Country cousin?” she asked him, saucily.

“Not much! I meant ‘fairy princess’ when I said it. I was just thinking that if your dress were an inch or two longer, you’d look precious little like a freshy.”

“There’s a double hem in all of them, to let out if I need to,” Jacquette confided to him, “but Aunt Sula thought they were long enough for fifteen.”

“Oh, well, the Sigma Pi girls will post you on all those matters.”

“The Sigma what?”