how I’d poison the air they breathed if I sat too close. I hate ’em! I hate ’em all!”

Hate was a new word to Jenny and she did not like it. “I suppose some rich folks are that way, but I don’t believe they all are.” Then she laughed, her happy rippling laugh which always expressed real mirth. “Hear me talking as though I knew them, when I don’t. I never spoke to but one rich person in all my life, and just a minute ago I was wishing that I never would have to speak to her again.” Jenny wondered why Etta had walked to the railway station. As they turned the last bend before their destination was to be reached, she impulsively put her free hand on the arm of her companion and said, “Etta, would it help any if you told me why you are so dreadfully unhappy? I don’t suppose I could do anything, but sometimes just talking things over with someone who wishes she could help, makes it easier.”

The china blue eyes of the rebellious girl at her side were slowly turned toward the speaker and in them was mingled amazement and doubt. Then she remarked cynically, “There ain’t nobody cares what’s making me miserable.” But when Jenny succeeded in convincing the forlorn girl that she, at least, really did care, the story of her unhappiness was revealed.

CHAPTER IV.
A PITIFUL PLIGHT

“There ain’t much to tell,” Etta said bitterly, “but I haven’t always been miserable. I was happy up to the time I was ten. I lived with my grandfolks over in Belgium. My mother left me there while she came to America. She’d heard how money was easy to get, and, after my father died in the war and the soldiers had robbed my grandfolks of all they had on the farm, we had to get money somewheres. That’s why she came, takin’ all that she’d saved for her passage. How my mother got away out here to Californy, I don’t know, but anyway she did. She was a cook up in Frisco. Every month she sent money to my grandfolks. My mother kept writing how lonesome she was for me and how she was savin’ to send for me. The next year I came over with a priest takin’ charge of me, but when I got here they told me my mother had died and they put me in an orphanage. My grandfolks tried to save money to send for me to go back to Belgium, but what with sickness and they bein’ too old to work the farm, it’s seven years now, an’ the money ain’t saved. Last year, me bein’ sixteen, I got turned out o’ the orphanage and sent here to work parin’ vegetables. I don’t get but three dollars a week and board, and I’ve been savin’ all I can of it. But ’tain’t no use. That’s why I walked to the railway station over to Santa Barbara to ask how much money I’d have to save to take me home to my grandfolks.” The girl paused as though too discouraged to go on.

Jenny had been so interested that she had not even noticed that Dobbin had stopped to rest at one side of the steep road.

“Oh, you poor girl, I’m so sorry for you!” she said with a break in her voice. “I suppose it takes a lot of money for the ticket to New York and then the passage across the Atlantic in one of those big steamers.”

The tone in which her companion answered was dull and hopeless. “’Tain’t no use tryin’. I never can make it. Never! It’d take two hundred dollars. An’ I’ve only got a hundred with what my grandfolks have sent dribble by dribble.” The dull, despairing expression had again settled in the putty-pale face. “’Tain’t no use,” she went on apathetically. “I can’t save the whole three dollars a week. I’ve got to get shoes an’ things. Cook said yesterday how she’d have to turn me out if I didn’t get some decent work dresses; a fashionable seminary like that couldn’t have no slatterns in the kitchen.” Then, after a hard, dry sob that cut deep into the heart of the listener. Etta ended with “I don’t know what I’m goin’ to do, but it’s got to be done soon, whatever ’tis.”

Jenny felt alarmed, she hardly knew why. “Oh, Etta, you don’t mean you might take——” She could not finish her sentence. Her active imagination pictured the unhappy girl going alone to the coast at night and ending her life in the surf, but to her surprise Etta looked around as though she feared she might be overheard; then she said, “Yes, I am. I’m going to take one hundred dollars out of the school safe, and after I’ve got over to Belgium I’m going to work my fingers to the bone and send it back. That’s what I’m goin’ to do. I’ve told ’em at the station to keep me a ticket for the train that goes out tomorrow morning.” Then, when she felt, rather than saw, that her companion was shocked, she said bitterly, “I was a fool to tell you. Of course you’ll go and blab on me.” To the unhappy girl’s surprise she heard her companion protesting, “Oh, no, no! I won’t tell, Etta. Never, never! But you mustn’t steal. They’d put you in prison. But, most of all, it would be very, very wrong. You can’t gain happiness by doing something wicked. I just know that you can’t.”

Then, after a thoughtful moment, Jenny amazed her companion by saying, “I have some money that is all my very own. If Granny and Granddad will let me, I’ll loan you a hundred dollars, because I know you’ll pay it back.”

Radiant joy made Etta’s plain face beautiful, but it lasted only a moment and was replaced by the usual dull apathy. “They won’t let you, an’ they shouldn’t. I just told you as how I was plannin’ to steal, and if I’d do that, how do you know I’d ever send back your hundred dollars?”

“I know that you would,” was the confident reply. Jenny then urged Dobbin to his topmost speed, and since he had rested quite a while, he did spurt ahead and around a bend to the very crest of the low foothill where stood the beautiful buildings of the seminary in a grove of tall pine trees. The majestic view of the encircling mountain range usually caused Jenny to pause and catch her breath, amazed anew each time at the grandeur of the scene, but her thoughts were so busy planning what she could do to help this poor girl that she was unconscious of aught else.

They turned into the drive, which, after circling among well-kept gardens and lawns, led back of the main building to the kitchen door.

“I’m awful late and I’ll get a good tongue lashin’ from the cook but what do I care. This’ll be the last night she’ll ever see me.” Jenny glancing at her companion, saw again the hard expression in the face that had been so radiant with joy a few moments before.

“She doesn’t believe that I’m going to loan her my money,” Jenny thought. “And maybe she’s right. Maybe Granny and Granddad will think I ought not.” But what she said aloud was: “Etta, let me go in ahead and I’ll fix things up if you’re late and going to be scolded.” And so, when they climbed from the wagon, it was the girl from Rocky Point Farm who first entered the kitchen. “Good afternoon, Miss O’Hara,” she called cheerily to the middle-aged Irish woman who was taking a roast from the huge oven of the built-in range.

“Huh,” was the ungracious reply, “so you had that lazy good-for-nothing out ridin’, did you?” The roast having been replaced, the cook turned and glared at Etta, her arms akimbo. “Here ’tis, five o’clock to the minute and not a potato pared. How do you suppose I’m going to serve a dinner for the young ladies at six-thirty and all that pan of peas to shell besides.”

Etta was about to reply sullenly when Jenny, who had placed her basket of eggs on one end of