Chapter III Princess
As the wagons creaked slowly along over the burning, dusty prairies the little stranger cried more quietly, while the children stared at her with growing interest and wonder.
They had never seen any one quite like her before.
Living as they had in the quiet Friends settlement on their farm in Ohio, they had seen but little of the outside world, and that little had contained nobody in the least like this fairy-like creature, with her dainty clothing, her delicate features and coloring and her sunny golden hair.
“Say,” whispered Sam, who was a great devourer of juvenile literature; “she looks just exactly like the fairy princesses you read about in story-books, don’t she? Look at her little feet, and her little teenty white hands, and how her hair curls, and how little and white her neck is!”
Lige looked and nodded. “An’ look at her clothes, too! City folks’ clothes. Wonder why her mother let her wear clothes like that in the wagon? Our mother wouldn’t let Sara and Ruth.”
“You bet she wouldn’t. She makes ’em wear calico aprons.”
They glanced again at the little figure on the seat in front of them; at the dainty white dress, the little lace-trimmed petticoat that showed below its edge, the white stockings, the dainty little kid slippers, and then at each other and their own rough clothes and rough red hands.
“Makes you feel kind of like a tramp, don’t it?” muttered Lige, and privately resolved to get out his second-best suit and put it on in the morning.
Joe meanwhile was casting sympathetic glances at the little figure beside him, and trying hard to think of something to say or do to comfort her. The sight of a meadow-lark flying up from a little bunch of grass near by gave him an opening.
“Bet there’s a nest and some eggs in that bunch of grass,” he remarked nonchalantly, and was rewarded by seeing the big violet eyes come up from the little monogramed handkerchief, and the golden head raised to see.
“Where?” she asked, with a child’s readily aroused interest.
Joe was enchanted.
“Right over there,” he explained, pointing with the whip. “Want to see if there ain’t?” He stopped the horses and all the children sprang out and ran to the patch of grass.
Sam reached it first, and made emphatic signs to the others to come quietly. When they had all crept up they found a nest indeed, but better than eggs in it, for there were four big-headed, wide-mouthed speckled little birds, that, when they felt the stir in the grass near them, stretched up their skinny necks and peeped industriously.
The boys laughed, and even Nina managed a little smile. When they went back to the wagon she was not crying, and her three anxious escorts exerted themselves to their utmost to keep her busy and interested for the remainder of the day.
After a time Sara and Paul joined them, and Mr. and Mrs. Peniman, riding in the other wagon with the younger children, were pleased and glad to hear as the day progressed that the voice of the little stranger joined in their talk and laughter.
“What shall we do with her, Hannah?” asked Joshua Peniman anxiously. “Somehow it weighs heavily upon my heart to think of leaving this little orphaned child among strangers at a Mission. I presume they would be kind to her, and perhaps would exert themselves to get her home to her own people, but——”
The sigh with which the sentence ended found an echo in Hannah Peniman’s heart. She had been thinking of the matter all day, wondering in what direction lay their duty.
“I agree with thee, Joshua,” she answered. “A Mission is no place for a little girl like her. She bears every evidence of delicate and tender rearing, and gives promise of great beauty. She is thirteen years old now, her mother told me, and in a very few years will grow into a beautiful young maiden.”
For many miles the couple drove along in silence, the voices from the other wagon coming frequently to their ears. After long and earnest thought Hannah Peniman spoke:
“Joshua,” she said, “my heart cannot forget that the hand of the Lord was laid upon us, too, in crossing these prairies. There is always before me the picture of that tiny mound we left behind us in this great trackless desert when our own little girl was taken from us. Perhaps God has intended to comfort us by sending to us this other child, whose sorrow has linked her to us. Somehow I cannot find it in my heart to abandon her to such care as she would find at a Mission.”
Joshua Peniman turned to her, love and approval beaming in his eyes.
“Spoken like the true woman thee is, Hannah,” he said, clasping her hand. “But I would not that an added burden should be laid upon thee. Thou hast many little ones to attend to, and this stranger child——”
“—Would not make me any more care, dear. She can run wild with Ruth and Sara out there on the plains, and I believe that our boys are kind and chivalrous enough to take care of her.”
“But her clothes, Hannah? With eight children of our own to keep covered——”
“One more would not matter. Beside, the child is thirteen years old, and should learn to sew. Soon she will be able to attend to her own clothes. And”—with a little smile that had in it a tinge of pain,—“I imagine few clothes will suffice in the country to which we are going.”
“But the cooking——”
“She would be a help to Ruth and Sara in their share of the work. And as for the food she will eat——”
“We must not think of that,” cried Joshua Peniman hastily. “The Providence which threw her into our hands will see to it that we are able to feed her. When we reach another town of size I will write to the relatives of which her mother spoke. Until that time——”
“—Until that time,” interrupted Mrs. Peniman, with her motherly smile, “she shall be even as our own, and we will care for her as her poor young parents would have wished her to be cared for.”
“God bless thee for a good and noble woman, Hannah,” said her husband; and so the fate of the little stranger was decided.
Meanwhile as the wagons jogged on through the long, hot, silent afternoon the children grew better acquainted, and presently began to talk of themselves and one another.
“How long have you been on the way, Princess?” asked the irrepressible Sam. “We been out eight weeks now.”
The little stranger looked up at him quickly.
“My name isn’t ‘Princess,’ it’s Nina,” she said.
“But you look just like a princess—like the princess in the fairy stories, don’t you know?”
Nina, who had been an indefatigable reader of fairy tales herself, recognized the compliment.
“Aw, no I don’t, either!” she ejaculated scornfully. “The princesses in fairy stories are always beautiful.”
“So’re you,” urged the gallant Sam. “You do, too, look like a princess, don’t she, Joe?”
Joe glanced up shyly. “I’ve never seen a princess,” he admitted, “but I think you do. I think you are beautiful. You are the most beautiful person I have ever seen.”
Long years after, when time and fate had wrought many changes in their lives, Joe remembered the speech and thought no differently.
The little girl blushed and hung her head.
“You’re a silly boy,” she told him. “I don’t look a bit like a princess. What makes you boys say such foolish things?”
Joe seldom said anything that he had not thought out pretty thoroughly, and he now puckered his forehead and searched for the reason in his mind that made this little girl seem different from any other he had ever seen.
“I guess,” he began thoughtfully, “it’s ’cause you’re kind of different. You see we’ve always lived on the farm, and the folks we knew were just plain Friends, who didn’t think much about dress or looks, just work and service, you know. But you—well—I dunno, I don’t know how to say it—but you look like—like something out of the sky, or the air, or a book or something. Not like us—like you were meant for work and service, but kind o’ like the birds and flowers an’ the pretty things of life. I guess that’s what Sam means when he says you look like a princess.”
“W-ell, partly,” admitted Sam. “Anyhow I’m going to call you ‘Princess.’”
“I don’t care what you call me,” cried the little girl, with a smile that brought little sparkles into her eyes and made a dimple play hide-and-seek in either rose-hued cheek. Then turning again to Joe, “You’re Quakers, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” he replied, “all our people have been Friends for generations back. Father was the founder of a sect where we lived.”
“But you boys don’t talk like Quakers!”
“No, we don’t use the plain language any more. You see we have been at school with other boys who didn’t use it, so we got out of the way. Father doesn’t use it to people of the world, either; we only use it at home. We’ve always lived in Ohio. Where did you used to live?”
The sadness which the conversation of the last few minutes had driven from the face of the little “Princess” returned.
“We really lived in New York,” she said. “But we traveled about so much I don’t know just where our home really was. You see Papa was a writer—wrote books, you know, and he had to travel about a lot, and Mama and I always went with him. She could never bear to be away from him, and they always took me. We lived in France and Italy and Germany and Russia, and it was awful cold there in Russia, and Papa took sick. He was awfully sick, we thought he was going to die. The doctors sent us back to America, and we came out West for his health. We got a wagon and team in Chicago and were on our way to Colorado. He was better—lots and lots better, and he might have got well, but then—then——” Her voice broke and the tears welled up into her eyes.
“Oh,” broke in Lige, who could not bear to see the clouds obscure the sunshine of the past few minutes, “you ought to see what we’ve been through! I tell you we’ve had adventures! We came all the way from Ohio in these wagons, and I tell you what we’ve had some lively times!”
“What kind of adventures?” queried the Princess, the natural curiosity of a child aroused by these allusions to incidents of a thrilling nature.
“O Jerusalem, all kinds of ’em!” cried the delighted Lige, fairly swelling with importance. “We got into a flood an’ nearly lost our wagon, and coyotes got after the horses, and little David got lost an’ fell into the river, an’—an’—oh, all kinds of things!”
“Tell me about them,” demanded the Princess, who dearly loved a story.
Lige looked at Joe. He was a handsome boy, who was fond of occupying the centre of the stage, but he knew that his brother could do greater justice to the thrilling adventures they had been through than he could.
“You tell her, Joe,” he said. And as Joe pulled the horses into a smoother place in the road and threw one leg over the other, the little Princess settled down beside him, her chin in her hand, her great violet eyes fastened upon his face, as he proceeded to tell their story.
That the reader may know as much about the Peniman family and their great adventure of crossing the plains as did the little Princess, we will leave the wagons lumbering slowly along over the baking plains and return to the Muskingum Valley in Ohio from whence they made their start.