Part 10

I wish I could make you understand what he is like and how entirely companionable we are. We think the same about everything--I am afraid I have a tendency to make over my ideas to match his! But he is almost always right; he ought to be, you know, for he has fourteen years’ start of me. In other ways, though, he’s just an overgrown boy, and he does need looking after--he hasn’t any sense about wearing rubbers when it rains. He and I always think the same things are funny, and that is such a lot; it’s dreadful when two people’s senses of humor are antagonistic. I don’t believe there’s any bridging that gulf!

And he is--Oh, well! He is just himself, and I miss him, and miss him, and miss him. The whole world seems empty and aching. I hate the moonlight because it’s beautiful and he isn’t here to see it with me. But maybe you’ve loved somebody, too, and you know? If you have, I don’t need to explain; if you haven’t, I can’t explain.

Anyway, that’s the way I feel--and I’ve refused to marry him.

I didn’t tell him why; I was just dumb and miserable. I couldn’t think of anything to say. And now he has gone away imagining that I want to marry Jimmie McBride--I don’t in the least, I wouldn’t think of marrying Jimmie; he isn’t grown up enough. But Master Jervie and I got into a dreadful muddle of misunderstanding, and we both hurt each other’s feelings. The reason I sent him away was not because I didn’t care for him, but because I cared for him so much. I was afraid he would regret it in the future--and I couldn’t stand that! It didn’t seem right for a person of my lack of antecedents to marry into any such family as his. I never told him about the orphan asylum, and I hated to explain that I didn’t know who I was. I may be _dreadful_, you know. And his family are proud--and I’m proud, too!

Also, I felt sort of bound to you. After having been educated to be a writer, I must at least try to be one; it would scarcely be fair to accept your education and then go off and not use it. But now that I am going to be able to pay back the money, I feel that I have

## partially discharged that debt--besides, I suppose I could keep on

being a writer even if I did marry. The two professions are not necessarily exclusive.

I’ve been thinking very hard about it. Of course he is a Socialist, and he has unconventional ideas; maybe he wouldn’t mind marrying into the proletariat so much as some men might. Perhaps when two people are exactly in accord, and always happy when together and lonely when apart, they ought not to let anything in the world stand between them. Of course I _want_ to believe that! But I’d like to get your unemotional opinion. You probably belong to a Family also, and will look at it from a worldly point of view and not just a sympathetic, human point of view--so you see how brave I am to lay it before you.

Suppose I go to him and explain that the trouble isn’t Jimmie, but is the John Grier Home--would that be a dreadful thing for me to do? It would take a great deal of courage. I’d almost rather be miserable for the rest of my life.

This happened nearly two months ago; I haven’t heard a word from him since he was here. I was just getting sort of acclimated to the feeling of a broken heart, when a letter came from Julia that stirred me all up again. She said--very casually--that “Uncle Jervis” had been caught out all night in a storm when he was hunting in Canada, and had been ill ever since with pneumonia. And I never knew it. I was feeling hurt because he had just disappeared into blankness without a word. I think he’s pretty unhappy, and I know I am!

What seems to you the right thing for me to do?

JUDY.

October 6th.

_Dearest Daddy-Long-Legs_,

Yes, certainly I’ll come--at half-past four next Wednesday afternoon. Of _course_ I can find the way. I’ve been in New York three times and am not quite a baby. I can’t believe that I am really going to see you--I’ve been just _thinking_ you so long that it hardly seems as though you are a tangible flesh-and-blood person.

You are awfully good, Daddy, to bother yourself with me, when you’re not strong. Take care and don’t catch cold. These fall rains are very damp.

Affectionately,

JUDY.

P. S. I’ve just had an awful thought. Have you a butler? I’m afraid of butlers, and if one opens the door I shall faint upon the step. What can I say to him? You didn’t tell me your name. Shall I ask for Mr. Smith?

Thursday Morning.

_My very dearest Master-Jervie-Daddy-Long-Legs-Pendleton-Smith_,

Did you sleep last night? I didn’t. Not a single wink. I was too amazed and excited and bewildered and happy. I don’t believe I ever shall sleep again--or eat either. But I hope you slept; you must, you know, because then you will get well faster and can come to me.

Dear Man, I can’t bear to think how ill you’ve been--and all the time I never knew it. When the doctor came down yesterday to put me in the cab, he told me that for three days they gave you up. Oh, dearest, if that had happened, the light would have gone out of the world for me. I suppose that some day--in the far future--one of us must leave the other; but at least we shall have had our happiness and there will be memories to live with.

I meant to cheer you up--and instead I have to cheer myself. For in spite of being happier than I ever dreamed I could be, I’m also soberer. The fear that something may happen to you rests like a shadow on my heart. Always before I could be frivolous and care-free and unconcerned, because I had nothing precious to lose. But now--I shall have a Great Big Worry all the rest of my life. Whenever you are away from me I shall be thinking of all the automobiles that can run over you, or the sign-boards that can fall on your head or the dreadful, squirmy germs that you may be swallowing. My peace of mind is gone forever--but anyway, I never cared much for just plain peace.

[Plate: THE IDENTITY OF DADDY-LONG-LEGS IS ESTABLISHED.]

Please get well--fast--fast--fast. I want to have you close by where I can touch you and make sure you are tangible. Such a little half hour we had together! I’m afraid maybe I dreamed it. If I were only a member of your family (a very distant fourth cousin) then I could come and visit you every day, and read aloud and plump up your pillow and smooth out those two little wrinkles in your forehead and make the corners of your mouth turn up in a nice cheerful smile. But you are cheerful again, aren’t you? You were yesterday before I left. The doctor said I must be a good nurse, that you looked ten years younger. I hope that being in love doesn’t make every one ten years younger. Will you still care for me, darling, if I turn out to be only eleven?

Yesterday was the most wonderful day that could ever happen. If I live to be ninety-nine I shall never forget the tiniest detail. The girl that left Lock Willow at dawn was a very different person from the one who came back at night. Mrs. Semple called me at half-past four. I started wide awake in the darkness and the first thought that popped into my head was, “I am going to see Daddy-Long-Legs!” I ate breakfast in the kitchen by candle-light, and then drove the five miles to the station through the most glorious October coloring. The sun came up on the way, and the swamp maples and dogwood glowed crimson and orange and the stone walls and cornfields sparkled with hoar frost; the air was keen and clear and full of promise. I _knew_ something was going to happen. All the way in the train the rails kept singing, “You’re going to see Daddy-Long-Legs.” It made me feel secure. I had such faith in Daddy’s ability to set things right. And I knew that somewhere another man--dearer than Daddy--was wanting to see me, and somehow I had a feeling that before the journey ended I should meet him, too. And you see!

When I came to the house on Madison Avenue it looked so big and brown and forbidding that I didn’t dare go in, so I walked around the block to get up my courage. But I needn’t have been a bit afraid; your butler is such a nice, fatherly old man that he made me feel at home at once. “Is this Miss Abbott?” he said to me, and I said, “Yes,” so I didn’t have to ask for Mr. Smith after all. He told me to wait in the drawing-room. It was a very somber, magnificent, man’s sort of room. I sat down on the edge of a big upholstered chair and kept saying to myself:

“I’m going to see Daddy-Long-Legs! I’m going to see Daddy-Long-Legs!”

Then presently the man came back and asked me please to step up to the library. I was so excited that really and truly my feet would hardly take me up. Outside the door he turned and whispered, “He’s been very ill, Miss. This is the first day he’s been allowed to sit up. You’ll not stay long enough to excite him?” I knew from the way he said it that he loved you--and I think he’s an old dear!

Then he knocked and said, “Miss Abbott,” and I went in and the door closed behind me.

It was so dim coming in from the brightly lighted hall that for a moment I could scarcely make out anything; then I saw a big easy chair before the fire and a shining tea table with a smaller chair beside it. And I realized that a man was sitting in the big chair propped up by pillows with a rug over his knees. Before I could stop him he rose--sort of shakily--and steadied himself by the back of the chair and just looked at me without a word. And then--and then--I saw it was you! But even with that I didn’t understand. I thought Daddy had had you come there to meet me for a surprise.

Then you laughed and held out your hand and said, “Dear little Judy, couldn’t you guess that I was Daddy-Long-Legs?”

In an instant it flashed over me. Oh, but I have been stupid! A hundred little things might have told me, if I had had any wits. I wouldn’t make a very good detective, would I, Daddy?--Jervie? What must I call you? Just plain Jervie sounds disrespectful, and I can’t be disrespectful to you!

It was a very sweet half hour before your doctor came and sent me away. I was so dazed when I got to the station that I almost took a train for St. Louis. And you were pretty dazed, too. You forgot to give me any tea. But we’re both very, very happy, aren’t we? I drove back to Lock Willow in the dark--but oh, how the stars were shining! And this morning I’ve been out with Colin visiting all the places that you and I went to together, and remembering what you said and how you looked. The woods to-day are burnished bronze and the air is full of frost. It’s _climbing_ weather. I wish you were here to climb the hills with me. I am missing you dreadfully, Jervie dear, but it’s a happy kind of missing; we’ll be together soon. We belong to each other now really and truly, no make-believe. Doesn’t it seem queer for me to belong to some one at last? It seems very, very sweet.

And I shall never let you be sorry for a single instant.

Yours, forever and ever,

JUDY.

P. S. This is the first love letter I ever wrote. Isn’t it funny that I know how?

THE END

CHARMING BOOKS FOR GIRLS

#May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap’s list#

^WHEN PATTY WENT TO COLLEGE,^ By Jean Webster.

Illustrated by C. D. Williams.

One of the best stories of life in a girl’s college that has ever been written. It is bright, whimsical and entertaining, lifelike, laughable and thoroughly human.

^JUST PATTY,^ By Jean Webster.

Illustrated by C. M. Relyea.

Patty is full of the joy of living, fun-loving, given to ingenious mischief for its own sake, with a disregard for pretty convention which is an unfailing source of joy to her fellows.

^THE POOR LITTLE RICH GIRL,^ By Eleanor Gates.

With four full page illustrations.

This story relates the experience of one of those unfortunate children whose early days are passed in the companionship of a governess, seldom seeing either parent, and famishing for natural love and tenderness. A charming play as dramatized by the author.

^REBECCA OF SUNNYBROOK FARM,^ By Kate Douglas Wiggin.

One of the most beautiful studies of childhood--Rebecca’s artistic, unusual and quaintly charming qualities stand out midst a circle of austere New Englanders. The stage version is making a phenominal dramatic record.

^NEW CHRONICLES OF REBECCA,^ By Kate Douglas Wiggin.

Illustrated by F. C. Yohn.

Additional episodes in the girlhood of this delightful heroine that carry Rebecca through various stages to her eighteenth birthday.

^REBECCA MARY,^ By Annie Hamilton Donnell.

Illustrated by Elizabeth Shippen Green.

This author possesses the rare gift of portraying all the grotesque little joys and sorrows and scruples of this very small girl with a pathos that is peculiarly genuine and appealing.

^EMMY LOU:^ Her Book and Heart, By George Madden Martin.

Illustrated by Charles Louis Hinton.

Emmy Lou is irresistibly lovable, because she is so absolutely real. She is just a bewitchingly innocent, hugable little maid. The book is wonderfully human.

_Ask for complete free list of G. & D. Popular Copyrighed Fiction_

GROSSET & DUNLAP, 526 WEST 26TH ST., NEW YORK

STORIES OF RARE CHARM BY

GENE STRATTON-PORTER

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[Illustration]

^THE HARVESTER^

Illustrated by W. L. Jacobs

“The Harvester,” David Langston, is a man of the woods and fields, who draws his living from the prodigal hand of Mother Nature herself. If the book had nothing in it but the splendid figure of this man, with his sure grip on life, his superb optimism, and his almost miraculous knowledge of nature secrets, it would be notable. But when the Girl comes to his “Medicine Woods,” and the Harvester’s whole sound, healthy, large outdoor being realizes that this is the highest point of life which has come to him--there begins a romance, troubled and interrupted, yet of the rarest idyllic quality.

^FRECKLES.^ Decorations by E. Stetson Crawford

Freckles is a nameless waif when the tale opens, but the way in which he takes hold of life; the nature friendships he forms in the great Limberlost Swamp; the manner in which everyone who meets him succumbs to the charm of his engaging personality; and his love-story with “The Angel” are full of real sentiment.

^A GIRL OF THE LIMBERLOST.^

Illustrated by Wladyslaw T. Brenda.

The story of a girl of the Michigan woods; a buoyant, lovable type of the self-reliant American. Her philosophy is one of love and kindness towards all things; her hope is never dimmed. And by the sheer beauty of her soul, and the purity of her vision, she wins from barren and unpromising surroundings those rewards of high courage.

It is an inspiring story of a life worth while and the rich beauties of the out-of-doors are strewn through all its pages.

^AT THE FOOT OF THE RAINBOW.^

Illustrations in colors by Oliver Kemp. Design and decorations by Ralph Fletcher Seymour.

The scene of this charming, idyllic love story is laid in Central Indiana. The story is one of devoted friendship, and tender self-sacrificing love; the friendship that gives freely without return, and the love that seeks first the happiness of the object. The novel is brimful of the most beautiful word painting of nature, and its pathos and tender sentiment will endear it to all.

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MYRTLE REED’S NOVELS

MAY BE HAD WHEREVER BOOKS ARE SOLD. ASK FOR GROSSET & DUNLAP’S LIST

[Illustration]

^LAVENDER AND OLD LACE.^

A charming story of a quaint corner of New England where bygone romance finds a modern parallel. The story centers round the coming of love to the young people on the staff of a newspaper--and it is one of the prettiest, sweetest and quaintest of old fashioned love stories, * * * a rare book, exquisite in spirit and conception, full of delicate fancy, of tenderness, of delightful humor and spontaniety.

^A SPINNER IN THE SUN.^

Miss Myrtle Reed may always be depended upon to write a story in which poetry, charm, tenderness and humor are combined into a clever and entertaining book. Her characters are delightful and she always displays a quaint humor of expression and a quiet feeling of pathos which give a touch of active realism to all her writings. In “A Spinner in the Sun” she tells an old-fashioned love story, of a veiled lady who lives in solitude and whose features her neighbors have never seen. There is a mystery at the heart of the book that throws over it the glamour of romance.

^THE MASTER’S VIOLIN,^

A love story in a musical atmosphere. A picturesque, old German virtuoso is the reverent possessor of a genuine “Cremona.” He consents to take for his pupil a handsome youth who proves to have an aptitude for technique, but not the soul of an artist. The youth has led the happy, careless life of a modern, well-to-do young American and he cannot, with his meagre past, express the love, the passion and the tragedies of life and all its happy phases as can the master who has lived life in all its fulness. But a girl comes into his life--a beautiful bit of human driftwood that his aunt had taken into her heart and home, and through his passionate love for her, he learns the lessons that life has to give--and his soul awakes.

Founded on a fact that all artists realize.

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AMELIA BARR’S STORIES

DELIGHTFUL TALES OF OLD NEW YORK

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^THE BOW OF ORANGE RIBBON.^ With Frontispiece.

This exquisite little romance opens in New York City in “the tender grace” of a May day long past, when the old Dutch families clustered around Bowling Green. It is the beginning of the romance of Katherine, a young Dutch girl who has sent, as a love token, to a young English officer, the bow of orange ribbon which she has worn for years as a sacred emblem on the day of St. Nicholas. After the bow of ribbon Katherine’s heart soon flies. Unlike her sister, whose heart has found a safe resting place among her own people, Katherine’s heart must rove from home--must know to the utmost all that life holds of both joy and sorrow. And so she goes beyond the seas, leaving her parents as desolate as were Isaac and Rebecca of old.

^THE MAID OF MAIDEN LANE;^ A Love Story. With Illustrations by S. M. Arthur.

A sequel to “The Bow of Orange Ribbon.” The time is the gracious days of Seventeen-hundred and ninety-one, when “The Marseillaise” was sung with the American national airs, and the spirit affected commerce, politics and conversation. In the midst of this period the romance of “The Sweetest Maid in Maiden Lane” unfolds. Its chief charm lies in its historic and local color.

^SHEILA VEDDER.^ Frontispiece in colors by Harrison Fisher.

A love story set in the Shetland Islands.

Among the simple, homely folk who dwelt there Jan Vedder was raised; and to this island came lovely Sheila Jarrow. Jan knew, when first he beheld her, that she was the one woman in all the world for him, and to the winning of her love he set himself. The long days of summer by the sea, the nights under the marvelously soft radiance of Shetland moonlight passed in love-making, while with wonderment the man and woman, alien in traditions, adjusted themselves to each other. And the day came when Jan and Sheila wed, and then a sweeter love story is told.

^TRINITY BELLS.^ With eight Illustrations by C. M. Relyea.

The story centers around the life of little Katryntje Van Clyffe, who, on her return home from a fashionable boarding school, faces poverty and heartache. Stout of heart, she does not permit herself to become discouraged even at the news of the loss of her father and his ship “The Golden Victory.” The story of Katryntje’s life was interwoven with the music of the Trinity Bells which eventually heralded her wedding day.

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THE NOVELS OF

CLARA LOUISE BURNHAM

#May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset and Dunlap’s list.#

^JEWEL:^ A Chapter in Her Life.

Illustrated by Maude and Genevieve Cowles.

A sweet, dainty story, breathing the doctrine of love and patience and sweet nature and cheerfulness.

^JEWEL’S STORY BOOK.^

Illustrated by Albert Schmitt.

A sequel to “Jewel” and equally enjoyable.

^CLEVER BETSY.^

Illustrated by Rose O’Neill.

The “Clever Betsy” was a boat--named for the unyielding spinster whom the captain hoped to marry. Through the two Betsys a clever group of people are introduced to the reader.

^SWEET CLOVER:^ A Romance of the White City.

A story of Chicago at the time of the World’s Fair. A sweet human story that touches the heart.

^THE OPENED SHUTTERS.^

Frontispiece by Harrison Fisher.

A summer haunt on an island in Casco Bay is the background for this romance. A beautiful woman, at discord with life, is brought to realize, by her new friends, that she may open the shutters of her soul to the blessed sunlight of joy by casting aside vanity and self love. A delicately humorous work with a lofty motive underlying it all.

^THE RIGHT PRINCESS.^

An amusing story, opening at a fashionable Long Island resort, where a stately Englishwoman employs a forcible New England housekeeper to serve in her interesting home. How types so widely apart react on each other’s lives, all to ultimate good, makes a story both humorous and rich in sentiment.

^THE LEAVEN OF LOVE.^

Frontispiece by Harrison Fisher.

At a Southern California resort a world-weary woman, young and beautiful but disillusioned, meets a girl who has learned the art of living--of tasting life in all its richness, opulence and joy. The story hinges upon the change wrought in the soul of the blasè woman by this glimpse into a cheery life.

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JOHN FOX, JR’S.

STORIES OF THE KENTUCKY MOUNTAINS

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[Illustration]

^THE TRAIL OF THE LONESOME PINE.^