Jessica of the Camerons

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I The Expected Visitor. 7

II The Arrival. 23

Chapter I

“Margie! Margie! Wait for me!”

Jessica Cameron came dancing down the steps of one of the prettiest homes on a certain avenue in Cleveland, Ohio, her brown eyes shining, her every ruffle and ribbon fluttering with excitement. Promptly at her call her chosen schoolgirl affinity, Marjorie Sheldon, half a block ahead, changed the impetuous skippety-skip, with which she had been propelling herself schoolward, to a sedate backward movement, accomplished principally on her heels, until joined by her friend.

“I’ve got the most loveliest news to tell you,” began Jessica, breathlessly. “Papa just got the letter—”

“Most loveliest!” mimicked Marjorie. “That will be a cracker-jack for my list of incorrect ex¬ pressions this afternoon and will make ten for me. How many have you got?”

Marjorie was not indifferent to her friend’s “most loveliest” news, but she was a decided tease, 7 and liked, moreover, to invite Jessica’s protest against the consideration of lessons outside of school hours—a protest which came promptly.

“Oh, bother your old grammar! I hadn’t but two. I’ve got another though, since your latest con¬ tribution, for 'have got’ is as incorrect as 'most loveliest.’ ”

“Ha! Ha!” laughed Marjorie. “You just said 'have got’ yourself.”

“Listen, Margie dear, and let me tell you,” giving her chum’s arm a gentle shake. “My Kansas grandmother is coming next week to make us a long visit and maybe she will stay all winter.”

“Your Kansas grandmotherf Say, kid, I never knew you had a grandmother, Kansas or any other kind. I’m sure I never heard you speak of her.”

Jessica flushed slightly. “Well, you don’t usu¬ ally talk about your own folks very much outside your own family, do you, especially if you don’t know them very well? Mamma and papa talk about her a whole lot, and so does Don.”

“Did you ever see her?”

“Not since I was a weenty, teenty girl. Mamma took me out to Kansas with her when I was only two years old; but Don spent the summer with her three years ago, and he never gets tired telling what a good time he had.”

“Where did you say she lives? In Kansas?”

“Yes; but papa says that if he once gets her settled in Cleveland, he is never going to let her go back. She writes the loveliest letters to mamma, like the letters you read in the magazines sometimes, To My Daughter’; only they are funnier and more interesting. She always sends messages, too, to Don, and Harry, and me. What makes you look so solemn, Margie? You don’t seem glad for me, a bit.”

“Maybe you won’t be glad for yourself before she goes home again,” answered Marjorie, sagely. “Sadie Fowler’s grandmother came here from Nebraska—that’s close to Kansas, isn’t it?—a year or so ago, to visit her folks, and she wasn’t nice at all. Sadie said she was just awful glad when she got tired of Cleveland and went to live with an uncle of hers in New York.”

“How wasn’t she nice?” interrogated Jessica, faintly.

“Oh, she was just so different,” returned Marjorie, carelessly. “Sadie’s folks are awfully rich, you know, and keep no end of servants; but her grand¬ mother used to insist on making her own bed just as soon as she got out of it in the morning, which would be as early as five o’clock, sometimes, a good two hours before anybody except the servants was up; and she would go poking around the house like a spook, or a burglar, and fuss about having her breakfast so late; and when Mrs. Fowler had the cook send an early breakfast to her room, she com¬ plained worse than ever; and said 'she just couldn't eat her meals alone, it was so lonesome.’ Mrs. Fowler couldn’t get her to wear a thing that was a bit stylish; she wore the queerest bonnets and old-fashioned dresses, and Augusta Fowler was so ashamed to have her friends see her that she told some of them, at first, that she was a distant rela¬ tion of her father’s who had been kind to him when he was a boy, and they felt they just had to treat her well. But she always called Mrs. Fowler ‘darter’ when she spoke to her before folks, and that gave Augusta away. She used to spank little Johnny Fowler whenever she caught him sliding down the banisters; she said ‘it wore out his clothes too fast’; and she boxed Sadie’s ears ever so often for nothing at all but talking back to her; ‘being sassy,’ she called it. I don’t suppose your grand¬ mother would do anything like that, though,” she added, as she suddenly became aware of the cloud that was gathering on her friend’s sunny face. “You can’t tell a thing about these old people, though, especially if they have been brought up differently from folks nowadays, as most of ’em have.”

“I don’t believe my grandmother would be any¬ thing like that,” protested Jessica, weakly. “She has a fine home out in the oil belt somewhere—a big ranch, papa says—but she is going to let the man and his wife who live on it take care of it this winter. Mamma hasn’t seen her for a good many years, so papa wrote to her without mamma’s knowing anything about it, to come and spend the winter with us, and she is coming next week in time for mamma’s birthday anniversary.”

“There’s always so many funny things in the papers about Kansas and Kansas people,” Marjorie rambled on, reflectively. “There was that Mrs. Nation, you know, who went around knocking things to pieces in saloons. Claude read the fun¬ niest thing about her smashing her own knee with a hatchet one day because she found out there was a ‘joint’ in it. I laughed myself nearly sick over that. Then there was that Mary Ellen Lease, who went all over the country making queer political speeches, while her husband stayed at home and took care of the kids and did the housework. They lived in a sort of Indian wigwam, which they called Medicine Lodge. Claude read a funny thing about him, too— that he was such a good housekeeper that he never tucked the dishrag away in the corner of the sink any more, but washed it out and hung it up over the dishpan. There was a Jerry Simpson, too, a long time ago, who never wore any socks—‘sockless Jerry’ they called him in the papers—and he was a congressman too. And I don’t remember how many more, but Kansas is said to be the home of freaks. I wonder if your grandmother knows any of those funny people. How old is she?”

Jessica looked doubtful. “I don’t know, exactly. We have her picture hanging in mamma’s room, but it was taken a good while ago. She must be fifty or more; she must be over sixty; for she was a little baby at the time of the war.”

“Goodness gracious!” exclaimed Marjorie. “She must be awful old; wouldn’t think your folks would dare to let her travel around alone! Wouldn’t it be dreadful if she has rheumatism or asthma—all oldish people get something the matter with ’em— and you’d have to have the doctor coming to see her all the time? Mrs. Titus’ father, who lives two blocks west of us, isn’t sixty yet, and Mrs. Titus says he is more trouble than all the children put together; and they have six.”

Jessica slipped her hand from her friend’s arm, and her face assumed a very decided frown. “I think you are perfectly horrid, Margie Sheldon,” she cried indignantly. “Grandma Keith is my mamma’s very own mother; and I know she couldn’t be a bit like any of those dreadful people you have been talking about. She has an auto and runs it herself; and papa says she manages her big ranch as well as a man could. She lives near a big university town, and she goes in the best society; for she tells mamma in her letters about going to re¬ ceptions and committee meetings. She couldn’t be anything but nice—so there! If you make believe like that about her any more, I’ll not even ask you to come to see her when she gets here, so I won’t!”

The two girls had reached the great building where they attended school; and, more hurt than she would have cared to admit, by her friend’s careless chatter, Jessica flounced into the cloakroom, unheeding Marjorie’s half-laughing, half-serious protest that “she was only just talking, and did not intend to make fun of her grandmother.”

“As if any of mamma’s folks could be like that horrid, bent-up, old Mr. Titus!” she thought angrily to herself, as she passed to her seat at the summons of the bell. “I just hope Grandmother Keith will be lovely, when she comes, and I guess that will take some of the conceit out of Miss Margie Shel¬ don!”

She evaded her friend’s questioning glances in her direction as much as possible throughout the afternoon session, and ignored altogether the plead¬ ing look that friend bestowed upon her as they stood together for a few minutes at the blackboard. The paper containing a half-dozen chocolate creams— her favorite confection—which the repentant Marjorie left on her desk in passing she flirted promptly to the floor as soon as her teacher’s back was turned; and it was as quickly appropriated by the grinning red-headed boy across the aisle, who was Jessica’s pet abhorrence.

This incident did not tend to improve her injured feelings, and she purposely remained after school to ask Miss Dunn’s assistance in solving a difficult problem. In answer to Marjorie’s subdued inquiry as to whether she should wait for her Jessica re¬ plied, very pointedly for her, that she didn’t know when she was going home, but she knew the way.

If kind Miss Dunn noticed “the rift within the lute” between the two usually warm friends, she wisely kept her own counsel and gave her pupil the help which she saw had not been needed; and Jessica walked slowly homeward alone, her mind dwelling more and more on her friend’s thoughtless speech.

What if it should happen to be true, as Marjorie had inferred, that her grandmother should be— well, queer, like the people her chum had men¬ tioned? Pride, pride in her own appearance, in her perfectly appointed home, her ideal father and mother, and her two fine brothers—this was one of Jessica Cameron’s weaknesses, and it gave her many uneasy hours in the week that followed.

“Do you remember Grandmother Keith very well, Don?” she asked her older brother, a lad of sixteen, as the two sat together over their lessons that evening in the cosy library at home.

“Well, I should snicker!” was the boyish reply. “And I can also remember what lickin’ good cookies and doughnuts she used to make, too; and what a lot of fun I had out there on that old ranch!”

As Jessica had told Marjorie, her brother had spent the summer with his grandmother, some three years before, on the Kansas farm, having been sent out to take “rugged treatment,” as he called it, after a winter’s round with scarlet fever.

“Tell me something about her,” invited his sister, pushing her history aside, and laying her head on her folded arms. “How did you have fun?”

“Oh, there were some old coal mines—surface mines, they called them—in the timber on grand¬ mother’s farm, and the boys from town—it was only a mile away—used to come out there and play Tobber.’ We would make believe to rob banks, and hold up stagecoaches, and everything like that, using the coalholes to hide in. On the next farm there was the biggest mulberry grove I ever saw; it was just alive with crows, a regular crow colony, and the man who owned the farm used to let us boys go over there any time, and shoot crows. They were so troublesome that he gave us a nickel apiece for every crow we killed; and some days we would get as many as a dozen. Then I went to the river sometimes, too. It was five miles away, but grand¬ mother would always let me go when there were big boys or men going over on a fishing excursion. There was a cave over there so large you could almost get lost in it, and there were hundreds of names carved on a big rock that hung over the front of it. I nearly wore out my best knife one day—”

“But I want you to tell me something about grandmother,” interrupted Jessica. “You’ve told me about that cave dozens of times! Was she always nice to you?”

Donald looked up queerly. “Nice to me? What do you mean, sis? Isn’t a fellow’s grandmother always nice to him, that is, when he does the square thing?” the latter clause hastily added as a sudden recollection came to him of a certain night when he had remained away far past bedtime, and had found only bread and milk awaiting him for supper, though the cooky jar had been replenished only that morning and there were two fresh blackberry pies on the pantry shelf.

Then Jessica unburdened her soul. The matter was something she could not discuss with her mother—“grandma’s very own little girl,” as she thought to herself—but her chum’s insinuations had robbed her grandmother’s coming of all its pleasurable anticipations, and she longed to confide her doubts and fears to someone.

“Margie says that most old people are cranky and fussy, and sometimes sickly and awfully cross,” she ventured, doubtfully. “I wondered if perhaps Grandmother Keith might be that way. I looked at her picture up in mamma’s room; but it was taken nearly ten years ago, and you couldn’t have much of an idea from it how she looks now. She isn’t so pretty in the picture, but she is awfully young-looking, and kind-looking too.”

“That picture doesn’t look anything like her. It isn’t half as good-looking as she is, and I wouldn’t give a minute’s thought to anything that Margie says about her,” declared her brother warmly, noting, for the first time, the cloud on his sister’s brow and the gloom apparent in her tone. “That girl knows less every day. Grandmother’s a peachy and she isn’t old and infirm, either; and if we can persuade her to stay all winter, I’m going to coax dad mighty hard to let us both go home with her next summer. If we could both get a mild case of measles, or something or other, early next spring, and get sent out there to recruit up, wouldn’t it be jolly?”

Jessica smiled, but her smile was somewhat for¬ lorn. “I am afraid that wouldn’t work,” she answered. “There would be Harry to be thought of, too, and if one of us was sick and not the other, it wouldn’t be so 'jolly’ for the one that had to be shut away from mother for three weeks, like I was when you had scarlet fever.”

Donald grinned. “It did take you a long time to get used to saying good-night through two doors and across a hall, didn’t it? You should have com¬ forted yourself with the thought that there was nobody around to keep you poked up all the time, to do your w T ork. By the way, sis, Grandmother Keith is the worst person to keep busy I ever saw in all my life.”

“Is she worse than mamma?” inquired Jessica, her spirits sinking once more; for Jessica Cameron was undeniably indolent.

“Mamma isn’t a circumstance,” declared Donald, decidedly. “Grandmother can do more things, and do them easier, than anyone else I know. But speaking of work, we must cut out this gabble, or I will get zero on this geometry lesson tomorrow morn¬ ing.”

Jessica was very fond of her big brother Donald, who seldom teased her as Marjorie’s older brother sometimes did her chum; and now she felt some¬ what comforted by Don’s assurance that grand¬ mother was “a peach,” even if the information seemed a trifle vague. She put away her history— she could not study with anything else on her mind— promising herself that she would rise early and complete the scarcely-looked-over lesson, a promise that Don would have laughed at if she had voiced it openly, and, going up to the nursery, she indulged in her usual romp with her small brother, Harry, before Nora, the maid, should tuck him away for the night. This put her in better spirits, and she practiced her music lesson with extra care, then said good-night to her brother, who was still ab¬ sorbed in his studies, and went quietly away to bed.

Alone, however, in her dear, white bedroom, all the doubts and forebodings which had been con¬ jured up by Marjorie’s careless comments revived, and would not be banished. Shadowy visions of all the ugly, homely people she had ever known or read of came trooping before her eyes: Mary Mc- Taggart’s grandmother who, it was reported, was nearly one hundred years old, and was toothless and nearly blind; old Mrs. Manley, who lived over on Prospect Avenue, and who, though worth many thousands of dollars, was so niggardly that she per¬ sisted in piecing quilts for a living, and carrying home her own marketing; Hazel Lee’s grandfather, who because of exceeding deafness always shouted “Hey” at her when she addressed him, which al¬ ways made her jump—these real beings, as well as all the dwarfed, misshapen goblin men and women of her fairy stories (and she had read many), invaded her quiet room like so many veritable human beings. The result was that when her mother, who had been out with her father to hear a noted lec¬ turer, slipped into the room for a parting look at this “apple of her eye,” Jessica lay with wide, staring eyes, and cheeks upon which there was an excess of color.

“I supposed you would be asleep, little daughter,” said the gentle voice. “You are not sick?” laying a soft hand against the flushed cheek.

Jessica shook her head. It was in her mind to confide in this unfailing comforter—there had never been any secrets between them—but through the tender concern for herself in her mother’s tones the girl suddenly became aware of a deeper note of joy; the dear mother-eyes were alight with it.

“You are glad because grandmamma is coming, aren’t you, mamma?” she queried, half doubtfully.

An emphatic hug and a royal smile were her answer, before her mother added, “Suppose you had not seen your mother, Jessica, for ten years, and all at once you found you were to have her in your own home for a whole winter! This is, indeed, a lovely surprise papa has given us for mamma’s birthday gift, big enough to reach around the whole family. We will all enjoy grandma.”

“Does she look like the picture of her in your room?” questioned Jessica.

“Yes and no. That is not a very good picture of grandmother,” answered Mrs. Cameron. “But it was the best one we could get at the time, and I was so hungry for the sight of her when your little sister Grace left us, that I was quite foolish about it; so papa had that picture enlarged from the best photograph we had at the time, so that I could have it hung on the wall to look at.”

“That was eight years ago,” said Jessica, softly. “Why didn’t she come to you then?”

“She was out in Oregon with my only brother, Horace, who needed her then even worse than I,” was the quiet response. “He had just lost his wife and his only child—your Aunt Kate and little cousin Lucy—in a frightful railroad accident in which both were burned to death; and mother was with him for several years. He married again five years ago, and he did not need her so much, so she came back to Kansas. She takes an active part in the affairs of her home community, has a good many acres of land leased out in the oil and gas region which is being developed in her part of the state, and, in looking after these and managing the large ranch where she lives, she has been such a busy woman that it has not seemed convenient for her to make us a visit. But we will make her so much at home this winter, will we not, little daughter, that she will not wish to leave us for Kansas again?

She is to have the big room next to yours. We will begin fitting it up for her tomorrow, and I shall depend on my little Jessica to look after all her small needs and wishes, and help to make her winter with us a happy one.”

‘Til try, mamma,” and, returning sleepily her mother’s warm kiss, the young girl went com¬ fortably away at last on her deferred journey to “Slumberland,” and dreamed that a lovely old lady, with snow-white hair, and a dress of shimmering silk, was carrying her off to Kansas in a beautiful motor car!

Chapter II

For Jessica, the next few days went by on wings. If she had any further misgivings regarding the personality of the expected guest, she kept them to herself and, outside of school hours and duties, threw every waking minute into the plans for her grandmother's reception and entertainment.

After Marjorie's frank, offhand apology, which came as promptly next morning as Marjorie her¬ self, the subject of the expected guest was scarcely mentioned between the two girls; but, though Jessica had graciously extended the desired for¬ giveness, a shadow of reserve remained between them for the remainder of the week, and prevented Jessica from admitting her chum to her confidence during the time of the home preparations.

* “I’ll forgive her, of course,” she had thought to herself, “for if I didn't, however could I say 'for¬ give us our debts as ,' when I say my prayers; but I just hope, I do, that I will have such a lovely grandmother to surprise her with that she'll be ashamed she talked that way.”

Though the time passed quickly, bringing at last her mother’s birthday anniversary and the day of grandmother’s coming, the anxiety of the waiting was almost too much for the sensitive little girl, and even her father noticed her attitude of strained expectancy.

“Jessica seems to be all worked up over mother’s coming,” he remarked to his wife. “I do not re¬ member ever to have seen her so excited.”

“I am afraid I have allowed her to over-interest herself in arranging mother’s room, without in¬ tending to do so,” rejoined Mrs. Cameron. “She is not given to overwork, as you know; but she has seemed so enthusiastic over the furnishing and arrangement that it was hard to refuse her help. I do not know what she anticipates, Dick,” with a gay little laugh, “but, from some of her remarks and suggestions, I fancy she expects to find mother a decrepit, half-invalid octogenarian. She kept at Donald until he gave up his favorite hassock to put under mother’s writing desk, which, by the way, is a great puzzle to her because of its size and businesslike appearance. And today I discovered her examining the hot-water bottle, in the medicine chest, to make sure it was ready for service.”

Mr. Cameron laughed heartily. “Well, her sus¬ pense is about over; but, from the little I saw of mother when I made that flying trip to Kansas with Don three years ago, I imagine Jessica will have the surprise of her life when she comes.”

“I am hoping much from mother’s influence on the child this winter,” continued Mrs. Cameron. ‘‘I have tried in every possible way to encourage in Jessica a spirit of industry—I am afraid I have al¬ most nagged her at times—but my efforts seem to be of little avail. Miss Dunn tells me she is doing very indifferent work at school this fall, and she certainly does not exert herself at home. If she were anyone else’s daughter than yours and mine, Dick, I fear I would look on her as downright lazy.”

“She’ll come out all right,” declared her husband, indulgently. “She has a tender conscience and mother will reach her somehow, through that. She was always working the ‘duty racket,’ as Don would say, to keep me in the path of rectitude,” with a laugh. “Jessica is growing; and a girl of fourteen is a sort of Chinese puzzle, anyway.”

Late that afternoon Jessica was in the library, her mind and body in a turmoil of feverish expecta¬ tion, when she heard the humming of the motor which was bringing the guest from the station. She slipped quietly into the hall in time to see her father whirl a lady in a plain traveling dress from the car to her mother’s waiting arms, and she dashed a sudden tear from her eye as she heard the glad exclamations of mother and daughter in this longdeferred meeting.

“I’ll just have to like her, for mamma’s sake,” she instantly confided to herself, 'even if she is as homely as Hans Andersen’s ugly duckling.”

She was scarcely conscious what happened in the next few minutes. She saw Donald go forward and bestow an awkward kiss and a bearlike hug on the newcomer; saw her mother lift her little brother Harry up to be most warmly greeted; and then, in response to her father’s surprised inquiry, “Where is Jessica?” she caught her breath in one swift spasm of fear and hope, and went forward to look into the sweetest face, it seemed to her just then, that, next to her mother’s, she had ever seen, the face of her Kansas grandmother.

“Why, she looks just like you, mamma!” was the girl’s first surprised exclamation, as she felt herself folded in a pair of warm arms; and, looking beneath the odd remark, Mrs. Cameron thought she de¬ tected something of the cause of her daughter’s uneasiness the past week.

“Not so young by twenty years, nor yet so good-looking!” was the gay rejoinder from the new arrival. “But if I 'look like mamma,’ I hope that is an indication that I shall find an unoccupied corner for myself somewhere in her Jessica’s heart. How very like you, when you were her age, she is,

Margaret/’ holding her at arm’s length for a tender look, then gently encircling her again.

‘Three of a kind!” exclaimed Mr. Cameron, gayly, attempting to take them all in his arms at once; but his efforts failed, for grandma was a wellrounded matron, mamma was no featherweight, and Jessica promptly wriggled out of the group. So papa whirled grandma off to the living-room, di¬ vested her of her wraps, and installed her in a great, easy chair, amid her laughing protests.

“I am not in the least tired,” she insisted. “I slept like a baby both nights I was on the road, and have eaten every meal as though I never expected to see another!”

From her favorite perch in the deep bay-window, where Don was wont to say his sister did most of her daydreaming, Jessica shyly inspected this addi¬ tion to the Cameron family. Her heart swelled with pride and triumph as she sent timid glances grandmother-ward. The new arrival might be sixty years of age, or she might be fifty; she certainly did not look much older than Jessica’s own mother, for her eye was not dim to the point of wearing glasses, and her natural force did not appear to be in the least abated, as she sat in the big chair and conversed easily and interestingly concerning her journey. The removal of her traveling hat, a tur¬ ban of soft, gray silk, showed but few gray hairs among the brown and still abundant tresses that were parted in light waves, coiled in a dainty coiffure, and confined by an amber comb and a few hand¬ some gold pins. Her costume was quite such a one as Jessica saw frequently on the ladies of her moth¬ ers acquaintance, and she noticed that the silk shirt waist, with its plain but elegant gold buttons, was immaculate and matched the perfectly tailored skirt.

Jessica’s spirits rose as she looked and listened. She breathed a long sigh of relief as she took in the ladylike figure, and heard the refined speech of the new arrival, who seemed scarcely past the prime of beautiful womanhood.

“I’m going to tease Margie a whole lot before I give her a chance to inspect my Kansas grand¬ mother,” she thought, secretly. “As Don says, I’ll just ‘put one over on her’ for thinking she is so smart!” These thoughts, alas, showed that in Jessica’s girlish heart her chum had not yet been quite forgiven.

“You may show grandmother to her room, Jes¬ sica, if she wishes to freshen up before dinner”— her mother’s voice recalled Jessica from her own reflections—“while I help Nora out a little.” Jes¬ sica proudly led the way to the well-appointed room, and shyly called her guest’s attention to the fact that it was adjoining her own, but that there was a lock on the door connecting the two rooms, to make use of whenever she wished.

“We will make arrangements to hide the key, or lose it altogether, before we go to bed,” declared the newcomer; “and the good times we shall have in these two rooms this winter will go down in history— the history of your life and mine, eh, Jessica?”

Jessica smiled a shy assent. “I’ll show you about the bathroom and the hot- and cold-water faucets, if you would like me to,” she said. “They are a kind of puzzle if you are not used to them.”