Rainbow Cottage Read Free Page B

have got here before you in a taxi. She was to take a taxi. Still, perhaps she came on another section. They sometimes have two sections on those through trains, I know.”
    The girl on the couch lay very still for a minute with her eyes closed. Then she slowly opened her eyes and looked at the old lady and spoke, hesitantly: “I guess, perhaps she’s here,” she said in a grave, reserved voice. “I couldn’t believe it would be such a wonderful place as this, but if you say you are Mrs. Harmon Ainslee, then it must be true. I’m Sheila Ainslee!”

Chapter 2
    G randmother whirled around and gave one long, penetrating look at the threadbare little waif who had drifted to her door. Then she swung around to the kitchen door and called, “Janet, bring the pitcher of lemonade and some hot cookies right away.”
    She said it in the tone in which one might have said, “Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him…and shoes on his feet!”
    Then she whirled around to the girl again. “So that’s whose eyes you’ve got—my little Andy’s eyes, and his long bright lashes. I might have known, poor fool I!”
    And she was down on her knees beside the couch working with the buttons of the shabby blue coat, pulling off the dejected felt hat, and smoothing back the waves of hair from the white forehead.
    But Sheila put up her hands to protect the coat from being unbuttoned and reached ashamedly for her hat. “No, please,” she said feebly. “I’m not fit to be seen until I’ve cleaned up a little. I’ve had five days and nights in the common car, and I’m a sight! My blouse is fairly black! And please, I can’t get fixed up nor anything until I’ve said what I’ve come to say.”
    Janet came in just then, and Grandmother rose regally and took the tray from the reluctant Janet, who did not want her cookies and carefully prepared drink wasted on a little tramp-girl.
    But Grandmother thoroughly understood Janet. She placed the tray on a small table beside Sheila, poured her a glass of the tinkling frosty drink, pressed it to the girl’s lips till she drank eagerly, set a plate of cookies in her lap, and then in a voice that conveyed both rebuke and command to the maid, she ordered, “Janet, go up and see that everything is all right in Miss Sheila’s room, and draw the water for a bath. She has had a hard journey and will want to rest. You might open the bed and draw the shades down, for the sun will be shining on that side of the house by now perhaps.”
    Janet stared and turned hastily to do her mistress’s bidding, half sulky that things had turned out this way.
    But when Grandmother turned back to her guest she found her sitting up and putting on her hat again, a grave reserve in her manner.
    “Grandmother, you are very kind,” said Sheila, “and this is a wonderful place, far lovelier than I had ever dreamed any place could be, and not at all the kind of place I thought I was coming to. But I can’t take off my things, nor accept any of your hospitality, until I find out how you feel about one thing.”
    “Why, child!” said Grandmother aghast, sitting down suddenly in the nearest chair.
    “It’s about my mother!” said the girl. “I’ve grown up feeling that you hated my mother, and if that is so, I couldn’t stay here even for a short visit.”
    “I never hated any living soul!” defended Grandmother pitifully. “I certainly do not hate her. How could you get such an idea?”
    “You wrote my father long ago. We found the letter in an old coat pocket after he went away. You said something about his having married beneath him.”
    The blue eyes rested accusingly upon the old lady, and Grandmother sat up bravely under the challenge.
    “My son wrote me that he was marrying a girl who sang in a cabaret,” she answered with dignity. “That was all I knew about her. In my experience, girls who sing in cabarets are not usually well brought up, nor rightly educated nor cultured. I felt that my son