CHAPTER V

So winter passed at the mine, and at the brown house under the shoulder of Tamalpais.  Alix still kept her bedroom windows open, but the rain tore in, and Anne protested at the ensuing stains on the pantry ceiling.  Creeks rushed swollen and yellow; fog smothered the mountain peak; the forest floor oozed moisture.  Spring came reluctantly; muddy boots cluttered the doctor’s hearth, for he and Alix and Peter tramped for miles through the woods and over the hills, bringing home trillium and pungent wild currant blossoms, and filling the house with blooms.

Cherry’s wedding, once satisfactorily over, was a cause of great satisfaction to her sister and cousin.  They had stepped back duly, to give her the centre of the stage; they had admired and congratulated, had helped her in all hearty generosity.  They had listened to her praises of Martin and his of her, and had given her more than her share of the household treasures of silver spoons and yellowed old lace.

And now that she was gone they enjoyed their own lives again, and cast over hers the glamour that novelty and distance never fail to give.  Cherry, married and keeping house and managing affairs, was an object of romantic interest.  The girls surmised that Cherry must be making friends; that everyone must admire her; that Martin would be rich some day, without doubt.  When her letters came, there was always animated chatter about the fire.

Cherry wrote regularly, now and then assuring them that she was the same old Cherry.  She described her tiny house right at the mine, looking down at the rough scaffoldings that covered the mouth of the tunnels, and the long sheds of the plant, and the bare big building that was the men’s boarding-house.  Martin’s associates brought her trout and ducks, she wrote; she and Martin had driven three hundred miles in the superintendent’s car; she was preparing for a card party.

“Think of little old Cherry going off on week-end trips with three men!” Alix would say proudly.  “Think of Cherry giving a card party!” Anne perhaps would make no comment, but she often felt a pang of envy.  Cherry seemed to have everything.

Alix was working hard with her music this winter, aided and abetted by Peter, who was tireless in bringing her songs and taking her to concerts.  Suddenly, without warning, there was a newcomer in the circle, a sleek-headed brown-haired little man known as Justin Little.

He had been introduced at some party to Anne and Alix; he called; he was presently taking Anne to a lecture.  Anne now began to laugh at him and say that he was “too ridiculous,” but she did not allow any one else to say so.  On the contrary, she told Alix at various times that his mother had been one of the old Maryland Percies, and his great-grandfather was mentioned in a book by Sir Walter Scott, and that one had to respect the man, even if one didn’t choose to marry him.