Read Ebook: The Girl Next Door by Seaman Augusta Huiell Relyea C M Charles M Illustrator

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Ebook has 162 lines and 40409 words, and 4 pages

ssor Hardwick," said Marcia, "and I've practised quite hard lately. It's about all I had to do. He says I've made some progress already."

So Marcia obligingly went to the parlor and brought back her violin. When she had tuned it and tucked it lovingly under her chin, she sat down in the window-seat and ran her bow over the strings in a shower of liquid melody. For one so young she played astonishingly well. Janet listened, breathless, absorbed.

"Look!" she breathed. Marcia followed the direction of her gaze, and turned to stare out of the window at the house opposite. And this is what she saw:

The shutter of a window on the top floor had been pushed partly open, and a face looked out,--a face with big, appealing eyes, and a frame of golden, curling hair falling all about it. Straight over at the two in the window it gazed, eager, absorbed, delighted. And then suddenly, as it detected their own interested stare, it withdrew, and the shutter was softly closed.

The two girls drew a long breath and gazed at each other.

THE GATE OPENS

For the two ensuing days, Marcia and Janet, tense with excitement, discussed the most recently discovered inmate of "Benedict's Folly," and watched incessantly for another glimpse of the face behind the shutter. How was it, they constantly demanded of each other, that a girl of fourteen or fifteen had come to be shut up in the dreary old place? Was she a prisoner there? Was she a relative, friend, or servant? Was she free to come and go?

"Do you suppose she has always lived there?" queried Marcia, for the twentieth time. And as Janet could answer it no better than herself, she propounded another question:

Of course she knew, but it didn't help them in the least to solve this latest phase of their mystery. Finally Marcia, who still clung a bit shyly to the fairy lore of her earlier years, declared:

The two girls put on their hats and strolled out for their usual afternoon walk and treat of ice-cream soda. But they had gone no farther from their own door than the length of the Benedict brick wall when they were suddenly brought to a halt in front of the closed gate by hearing a sound on the other side of it. It was a sound indicative of some one's struggling attempt to open it--the click of a key turning and turning in the lock and the futile rattling of the iron knob. And then the sound of a voice murmuring:

"No," Janet whispered back. "Let's just stroll on a little way, and then turn back. We can see what happens then without seeming to be watching."

They walked on quickly for a number of yards, and then turned to approach the gate again. Even as they did so they saw it open, and out stepped a little figure.

It was not Miss Benedict! The slim, trim little girlish form was clad in plain dark clothes of a slightly unfamiliar cut. But the face was the one that had appeared in the upper window, and the thick golden curls were surmounted by a black velvet tam-o'-shanter. On her arm she carried a small market-basket, and her eyes had a bewildered, almost frightened, look.

"Why, certainly!" she cried. "You walk over five blocks in that direction, then turn to your left and down three. You can't miss it; it's right next to a shoemaker's place."

The child looked more bewildered than ever, and her eyes strayed to the busy street-crossing near which they stood, crowded with hurrying trucks and automobiles.

"Thank you!" she faltered. "Do I go this way?" And then, with sudden candor, "You see, I'm strange in these streets." Her voice was clear and pretty, but her accent markedly un-American. Both girls half consciously noted it.

"See here," said Marcia; "would you care to have us take you there? We're not going in any special direction, and I've been there before."

They turned to accompany her, one on each side, and piloted her safely across the busy avenue. Then, in the quiet stretch of the next block, they proceeded together in complete and embarrassing silence.

It was a silence that Marcia and Janet had fully expected their companion to break--possibly to reveal some reason for her errand and her strangeness in the streets. They themselves hesitated to say much, for fear of seeming curious or anxious to force her confidence. But she said not a word. The strain at last became too much for Janet.

"I don't blame you for feeling nervous in these city streets," she began. "I'm a country girl myself, and I act like a scared rabbit whenever I go out alone here." The girl turned to her with a little confiding gesture.

"I've never been out in them alone before," she said. Then there was another silence during which Marcia and Janet both searched frantically in their minds for something else to say. But it was the girl herself who broke the silence the second time.

"Thank you for your music the other day," she said, turning to Marcia. "I heard you. I often hear you and listen."

"Oh, I'm so glad you liked it!" cried Marcia. "Do you care for music?"

"I adore it," she replied simply.

"Look here!" exclaimed Marcia, suddenly; "how did you know it was I that played the violin?"

"Because I've watched you often--through the slats!"

"That last thing you played the other day--will you--will you tell me what it was?" went on their new companion, shyly.

"Why, that was Schumann's 'Tr?umerei,'" answered Marcia. "I love it, don't you?"

Marcia and Janet again exchanged glances. What a strange child this was, who talked of having "dreamed" music that was quite familiar to almost every one.

"Perhaps you heard it at a concert," suggested Janet.

"I never went to a concert," she replied, much to their amazement. And then, perceiving their surprise, she added:

"You see, I've always lived 'way off in the country, in just a little village--till now."

"Oh--yes," answered Janet, pretending enlightenment, though in truth she and Marcia were more bewildered than ever.

But by this time they had reached the little grocery-shop, and all proceeded inside while their new friend made her purchases. These she read off slowly from a slip of paper, and the grocer packed them in her basket. But when it came to paying for them and making change, she became entangled in a fresh puzzle.

"I think you said these eggs were a shilling?" she ventured to the grocer.

"Shilling--no! I said they were a quarter," he retorted impatiently.

"A quarter?" she queried, and turned questioning eyes to her two friends.

"He means this," said Marcia, picking out a twenty-five-cent piece from the change the girl held.

"Oh, thank you! I don't understand this American money," she explained. And Marcia and Janet added another query to their rapidly growing mental list.

On the way back home, however, she grew silent again, and though the girls chatted back and forth about quite impersonal matters,--the crowded streets, the warm weather, the sights they passed,--she was not to be drawn into the conversation. And the nearer they drew to their destination, the more depressed she appeared to become. At last they reached the gate.

"Shall you be going out again to-morrow?" ventured Marcia. "If so, we will go with you, if you care to have us, till you get used to the streets."

"Just hang a white handkerchief to your shutter before you go, and we'll see it. We'll watch for it!" cried Marcia, inventing the signal on the spur of the moment. And then, impetuously, she added:

"My name is Marcia Brett, and this is Janet McNeil. Won't you tell us yours, if we're to be friends?"

As they listened to her footsteps retreating up the path and the closing of the front door Marcia and Janet turned to each other, a thousand questions burning on their tongues. But all they could exclaim in one breath was:

THE BACKWARD GLANCE

The next twenty-four hours were spent in delightful speculation. So her name was Cecily Marlowe! Was she any relation of Miss Benedict? "Marlowe" and "Benedict" were certainly dissimilar enough.

"But then she might be a relation on Miss Benedict's mother's side," suggested Marcia.

"But where do you suppose she has come from?" marveled Marcia. "She said she'd always lived in a little country village, and she didn't know a thing about American money. She's foreign--that's certain. Even her clothes and her way of speaking show it. But from where?"

Marcia couldn't. "Maybe it's all just a notion," she suggested helplessly. "Suppose I play some on the violin here in our window right now. She seems to enjoy it so. And maybe she'll open her shutter again."

So they sat on the window-seat, and Marcia played her very best, including the "Tr?umerei," but no golden head appeared from behind the shutter that afternoon.

"Never mind," said Janet. "We'll see her to-morrow, most likely. Perhaps she's busy downstairs now."

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