World War, 1914-1918 -- United States -- Juvenile fiction; Young women -- Societies and clubs -- Juvenile fiction
What an odd summer it had been! So different from what she had expected.
How she would miss her beautiful companions on her morning walks, the
blue-hazed mountains! And yet she had made friends. Ah, there was the
soldier-boy. She wondered if he would write to her. Then there was
Janet. Well, she was never going to let her go out of her life, for she
was to visit them next winter.
Her eyes saddened as she thought of the Sweet-Pea ladies. Oh, how sorry
she would be to bid them good-by, for Miss Whipple seemed to grow
frailer every day, and then what would become of poor Miss Mona? And her
queer little old friend in the red house? Well, she didn’t suppose that
she would ever see her again, for she said that she never wrote to
people. Yes, it was depressing to think that you had to meet people you
liked, and then go away and just have to forget them, because they
passed out of your life.
And the kiddies? She hated to think of their going back to that slum
life again. She wondered if any of the country people up in the
mountains would like to take them to live with them, for, yes, Tony and
Danny could learn to be very useful. But poor Jean—and Sheila! Then she
wondered if her trying to make them Sons of Liberty would help them to
be good and honorable men. Sometimes it seemed as if she hadn’t
accomplished much, and then again she could see how different they were
from what they had been when they came to her. O dear! they _were_
problems.
And Philip de Brie? Surely she had made a friend of him, at least he was
more than a friend to Janet, who—the perverse thing!—was so careful
not to let her know if she really cared for him or not. Perhaps it was
on account of Cynthia, for she had overheard that young lady telling
Janet that Philip was an impostor, and that he had fooled her the way he
had Nathalie Page and her mother. The story of his being a British
soldier, and that story, too, about his grandmother, was all folderol.
And poor Janet had meekly made no reply to this tirade, but Nathalie, in
imagination, saw the red mount into her cheeks, and knew how humiliated
she felt. Well, he was better than that funny little Mr. Buddie anyway.
She believed it was _just_ jealousy on Cynthia’s part, for she herself
had tried to be very nice to Philip, but somehow he didn’t seem to
understand her,—no sensible person could,—and although he had always
been very courteous to her, he had never made a friend of her.
Well, she had done her best to clear him of the horrible suspicion that
had lost him his pupils; but, alas, she seemed to have made the matter
worse, or, at least, she had not done him any good, for when his cabin
on the mountain had been burned one night, people had declared that he
had set it afire himself to destroy evidences of his guilt.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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