Chapter VIII: Gretta

"HAPPIE is beginning to be indeed happy, and without effort," said Miss Bradbury in high satisfaction as she watched her pretty namesake blossoming into increasing brightness every day. It was quite true that Happie was beginning to be happy without effort. The first symptom of her growing reconciliation with her new home was that the lively correspondence with the friends whom she had left behind was abating; she found the days too short for the delights that the farm had to offer her, and she had less and less time for letter writing.

Happie had found a new interest in life besides the many interests of her first country spring-time, and her growing intimacy with the wild creatures,--an interest not unlike the latter, but far more absorbing. And this is how it began.

One day she was walking alone down the roadside. The sun lay on her head as warm as if it were June, and the dust rose under her feet. Out of the tangled growth of the wayside came frequently the fluttering of wings, or a squirrel in vociferous haste, whisking his tail and scolding her.

She came up at last to the furthest boundary of the Ark farm, far down on the margin of the brook, and to the house nearest to the Ark. It interested her, because she had heard that in it lived a girl of her own age, together with two women who had the reputation of being decidedly cross, and of leading this young girl a hard life. They were her cousins, without whose dubious shelter the girl would have been homeless.

As Happie came up she caught a glimpse of a brownish sunbonnet, and paused to peer at her unknown neighbor, herself hidden by a friendly chestnut tree. She saw a pair of shoulders, unmistakably youthful, covered by a faded but scrupulously clean gingham, and a plump brown hand skilfully wielding a paint brush with which it was renewing the storm-beaten red paint on the posts which upheld the wire fence forming the farm boundary.

The girl stopped her work, and, with an upward movement of her arm, threw off her sunbonnet with the back of her left hand, and drew her arm across her warm brow. She had dark brown eyes, darker hair, and her skin was as brown as a berry, but beautifully clear, and her cheeks wore a flush as red as the tint of her red lips. She was so pretty that Happie caught her breath with the pleasure almost all girls feel in another girl's beauty, no matter what sarcasms are pronounced by boys to the contrary. There was a warmth, a charm about this girl that warm-hearted Happie was quick to feel, and with it a look of patience that went to her heart.

"She needs a friend," thought Happie, and went forward without a doubt in her mind that she could fill the want, not because she was conceited, but because her motives were too pure, and her impulse too kindly to allow a doubt of her reception.

"I think you must be Gretta Engel," she said, her sunny face wreathed in smiles, as she came up to the painter.

The girl started violently, and blushed to the dark hair lying in damp rings on her forehead. She quickly pulled her brown sunbonnet into place, and stared at Happie without speaking, like a frightened rabbit cowering beside the fence.

"I'm Happie Scollard, and I live--I'm living this summer--on the next farm, the one that used to be Bittenbenders'," Happie continued. "I've been anxious to know you; we're so near the same age, and such close neighbors."

She paused for the reply which did not come, and then, for lack of it, took up the conversation again.

"It's lovely here; those mountains are glorious. I was so lonely and homesick at first I did not know how to bear it, but I'm getting happier every day. It's a beautiful place, Crestville, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is," returned Gretta.

"Have you always lived here?" asked Happie.

"Yes, I have," replied Gretta.

"And I used to live in a flat in New York; you can't imagine what a change this is!" said Happie cheerfully.

"I guess," said Gretta, looking at the tip of her brush as if hoping it might help her.

"Don't you get lonely here? I do, though there are so many of us," persisted Happie.

"Oh, I don't know; I don't get much time," said Gretta desperately, looking about as if meditating flight from this determined girl with whom she had not the slightest desire to make friends, and whose accent and little air of being accustomed to another world than that of the country girl embarrassed and annoyed her.

To her dismay, Happie seated herself on the grass at her side. "I don't believe there's any risk in sitting on the grass, if it is only May," she said. "It's as warm as June, and it must be dry. I think you need a friend, Gretta, and I want you to look at me hard and see if you don't think I could be she. The girls in New York rather liked me."

She thrust her head forward, inviting inspection as she applied for the position, and Gretta looked into the laughing eyes, and into the sweet, dimpling face bent towards her. Her own dark eyes lighted with pleasure in what she saw, and in spite of her shyness, she laughed a little.

"You don't want me for a friend; I'm different," she said.

"You look nice," announced Happie emphatically, "and I'd like to have you try me. If you mean that I've lived in the city, and so had more chance than you to get at books, besides having a clever and learned duck of a mother to teach me, while you have been all your life motherless, and far from libraries and good schools, besides being as busy as a bee, I think that's more to your credit than mine. If we liked each other, I could give you what I got out of books, and you could teach me how to be useful--wouldn't that be a good bargain for us both?"

Gretchen Engel turned to Happie with full appreciation of the kindly tact that so delicately, yet firmly grappled with her unspoken sensitiveness, and put on a level with herself the sweet girl, whose advantages had been many, while hers had been none at all. Her eyes filled with tears; she had a nature that was profoundly loving, and she was starving for kindness. Something had set her apart from the other girls who gathered with her through the winter in the little schoolhouse, and she was scolded all day long for doing her patient best in her meagre and reluctant home. Happie had guessed right that she was desperately lonely; she had not begun to conjecture how lonely, nor how much despair was mingling in that loneliness, though Gretta was but a girl of fourteen. No one could have needed nor wanted a friend more than pretty Gretta.

Seeing the sincerity that shone upon her from Happie's face, feeling her lovableness as she felt the warmth of the May sunshine, Gretta succumbed to her charm, forgetting to be shy.

"You're good," she said decidedly. "I'd like to be friends with you, if you could stand me, but I don't know when we'd ever get to see each other."

Happie gave a little hitch to her chin that meant determination.

"You must be outdoors a good deal to get that beautiful brown tint of yours; it will be queer if we can't get together. I never saw a pair of girls yet that couldn't outwit a pair of old cousins if they set out to do it," she said. "They are your cousins with whom you live, aren't they? Rosie Gruber is living with us, and she told me about you."

"I guess it didn't lose much in telling," said Gretta flushing. "I hate to have folks pitying me, and saying what hard times I have. Not but what it's true, though!" she added in a burst of self-pity and of confidence in the sympathy which she read in Happie's face. "I wouldn't care if I did work all the time, though girls that have mothers get a little time to themselves, even when they're poor. But no matter what I do, it's the wrong thing, and I get so sick of it that I 'most give up. Yes, they're my cousins that I live with, and they grudge me a living, though I earn one hard. I don't feel to owe them one thing; I guess they'd have put me on the township, only they'd have had that much bigger taxes, so they kept me. When I'm a year older I'm going off to work for strangers. I believe I'd have asked your mother to have took me, only I heard them telling you had nice things, and had lived in New York, and I thought I wouldn't do for you."

"You poor Gretta!" exclaimed Happie patting the brown hand nearer to her. "I don't see how you live! Here am I loved to death, the loveliest mother a girl ever had, the best brother in all the world--Bob's a perfect trump!--and Margery's so pretty and sweet you couldn't help loving her--she's seventeen, and just bursting into young ladyhood. And Laura, well, Laura's all right, of course, and Polly's the most dependable, good little creature, and Penny--Penelope, the baby--is the dearest little four-year-old you ever saw. To think I have all these, and you have no one! It doesn't seem fair!"

"Yes, and you can go to school yet!" cried Gretta with a bitterness that she had not shown before in speaking of her cousins. "They won't let me go much, and we don't have good schools here anyway. That's why I hate to see folks; I don't know anything, and they'll laugh at my way of talking."

"Mercy, Gretta, that's nothing!" cried Happie energetically. "My mother says if a person has brains, nothing can crush them; they'll prove themselves in spite of obstacles, and if they haven't, no amount of schooling can give them. Now that we're friends--for we are friends and that's settled--I can help you lots, so easily that neither you nor I will know it's done. You can speak just as well as any other girl, if you won't mind a hint now and then, and I have loads of books to lend you. And you must teach me practical things, milking--Aunt Keren's going to get two cows--and churning and everything I don't know. Isn't that a large order to fill? Why, I begin to see why I came here, over and above mother's health!" Happie had grown brighter-eyed and more enthusiastic as she talked. "Mother says each soul has certain tasks set for it that no other soul can do, and that we are led along to places where our work is ready for us, and that we must be careful not to miss it when it comes to us. Maybe it was for your sake as well as mama's that dear Aunt Keren brought us all up here to her farm, which she had never seen, to spend this summer! Maybe it was because you were so lonely and needed friends so much. You've such a strong, beautiful face that I'm sure you are too fine not to get some slight chance to be happy and clever."

Gretta looked keenly and quickly at Happie, suspecting mockery in these compliments, for she mistrusted praise, having been carefully trained to consider herself far below meriting it. She saw nothing but perfect truth in the brown eyes gazing into her darker ones, eyes alight with overflowing love and the joy of the thought that their owner might do good to another who lacked so much.

All the repressed riches of the country girl's nature leaped up to meet the good offered her, caring less for the material good than for the treasure of affection, inestimable to one to whom it had thus far been denied, and who had more than most the capacity for receiving and returning it.

Gretta struggled for adequate expression, and missed it; she could not have voiced or understood what she felt at that moment.

"You're good," was what she said.

Happie understood. "So are you," she retorted. "And very lovable. That makes us both good, so we will have good times. Now go on painting, or you may get scolded. If I had a brush I think I could help you."

Gretta shook her head. "I'm used to scolding," she said. "And you'd get red paint all over your dress."

She dipped her brush in the pot, carefully scraped it on the edge, and made a vigorous stroke down the side of the post next in order.

"Can't you ever come to see me?" Happie asked as she watched her. "You know our place, the Bittenbender farm?"

Gretta nodded. "Mrs. Bittenbender was my grandmother," she said.

"Not really!" cried Happie. "Why, I've been wondering about that family, and you must know all about them! It seemed so queer for them to go off and leave their furniture in the house. Of course there isn't----" Happie stopped herself on the point of saying that there was not much furniture, fearing that Gretta might mind it, and said instead: "There isn't any reason why they shouldn't leave their furniture, only most people take it with them, or sell it when they move. And you are a Bittenbender!"

"No, indeed, I'm not!" cried Gretta. "My grandmother married Mr. Bittenbender for her second husband. She was my father's mother, and so her name was Engel before that. I guess her second husband mortgaged the place, furniture and all, so he had to leave the furniture. But he didn't have to give up the place if he hadn't wanted to. He had plenty money; he was an old miser. That's why he liked better to keep his money than to pay your aunt, so he gave up the place. My grandmother died when I was a baby. I guess that old Isaac Bittenbender wasn't too honest. My grandmother was a good woman, and they say she had a hard life after she married him. He got too old to farm towards the last, so he left your aunt take the place."

"He _let_ my aunt take the place," suggested Happie, fulfilling her promise of hint-giving for Gretta's improvement. "They left an old, worn-off horsehair trunk in the attic. Some day when you can, you must come and open it. You are the nearest to being a representative of the family whom we have found here, and I'm dying to investigate that trunk."

"If there'd been anything in it worth seeing he wouldn't have let--have left it," said Gretta. "They say he was the closest man in Madison County. I heard he made my grandmother----" She stopped suddenly to listen. "I hear Eunice calling; she's the crossest of my cousins, if there's a difference. I've got to go."

She arose, and Happie was surprised to discover that her height overtopped her own by a full head, for she had thought of her as she sat as being rather short.

Gretta moved with a grace and dignity that also surprised her; there was a freedom in every motion, and a splendor of poise won from her intimacy with the mountains, which made Happie wish that she could see her clad in beautiful garments. But the faded reddish gingham gown, and the brown sunbonnet were far from unbecoming to the girl. Happie said to herself: "Why, I thought she was pretty, but I believe she is a beauty!"

Gretta stood for a moment dipping her brush uncertainly in and out of her paint pot, not knowing how to take her leave, once more self-conscious and embarrassed.

Happie solved the difficulty. "You won't mind if this Eunice does scold now, will you, Gretta? And you won't feel lonely? Because we are going to be friends forever and forever, amen." And she put her arm around the faded gingham-clad waist.

Gretta drew off and looked at her. "Oh, I guess you don't want me!" she said, But there was a ring of happiness in her voice, as if she were sure of contradiction.

"You'll see!" laughed Happie, and kissed her new friend. "At any rate I _think_ I want you. Good-bye till next time. Can you come to see me?"

"I don't know; I shall be painting this fence for the next few days," said Gretta suggestively, as she returned the kiss.

"All right," cried Happie triumphantly, and ran away waving her hand to Gretta, who walked backwards looking after her, leaving a slight trail of paint in her wake which threatened trouble for her when it should be discovered.

"I have made friends with Gretta Engel," she announced, coming into the dining-room where her family were busied with helping or waiting for the dinner which Rosie Gruber was "dishing up."

"She's so handsome I couldn't tell you how handsome she is, and there is something about her that draws you to her like a magnet! I'm going to lend her books and give her pleasure, and she's going to do lots for me. I shouldn't wonder if we came here for her sake--partly, at least."

Rosie surveyed Happie with high approval; of all the young Scollards, Happie was her favorite.

"Gretta's the prettiest and brightest girl in Crestville," she declared. "But she's awful shy. If you've got her to talk to you, you've done wonders. And if you make her friends with you, you'll be doin' the best thing you've ever done in your short life. If you was to know the whole of Gretta's story, you'd think she'd had pretty hard luck. I'm glad you hain't one of the sort of folks that can't see through a faded dress, nor yet under a sunbonnet, Happie."

"If she's got Happie to take her up, she's had one piece of good luck," said Bob, who never hesitated to show publicly his appreciation of his sister. "Happie makes every one else happy--that's a well-wearing, well-worn family joke, Ralph--and she's not the sort to let them slip back again into unhappiness because she gets tired of her bargain, are you, Hapsie? Are you going to adopt your beauty?"

Margery, Laura and their mother laughed. The family had never exhausted the fun of the story of Happie's adoption of a colored girl of twelve when the young woman herself was at the suitable age of four. She had insisted on bringing big Cora Jackson home with her, and on opening her bank to take out her pennies to buy ice cream for her sustenance. She had been much grieved when her protégée had been found to have decamped, taking with her her little protector's gold shoulder pins, as well as Margery's new parasol.

Happie now joined in the laugh, but gave her decided little hitch of the chin.

"And if I did," she said, "it wouldn't be a bad plan. At least I wouldn't scold her all day and every day, as her cross old cousins do. And there's a great difference between the Cora Jackson of my childhood, and this pretty Gretta of my old age! You wait till you see her, Bob! She's far prettier than Allie Herford." Which was a home thrust, for Bob considered Allie Herford the prettiest girl of his acquaintance.

Ralph looked up quizzically. "Don't you mind 'em, Happie," he said. "I believe in your four-leaf-clover-of-the-fields, and that you will find her good luck. Besides, you must not let your young mind get embittered by these cynics. 'It's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.' So it's better to invest your trust, even though your bubbles--bust. Pardon the inelegance, Laura; I did not realize that 'burst' only rhymed with 'trust' when it was 'bust,' until I was too far embarked on my poem to tack--to carry on my metaphor with an unmixedness that I hope you appreciate. Never mind if your Gretta deceives you!"

"I never knew any other boy so imbued with the poets!" said Margery in mock admiration of Ralph's outburst.

But Rosie, flying in and out with steaming dishes, was impressed only by the matter, not the manner of his remarks.

"Don't you talk silly, Ralph Gordon," she said spiritedly. "Gretta Engel never will deceive nobody. She will do Happie good too, and she's made a good bargain yet. Your meat's fried most too much. Set up and eat awhile before it gits cold."