Orphan Bride by Sara Seale Read Free Book Online

looking thoughtfully, at Jennet. “You seem to have a greater knack for confidences than I have.”
    She had been looking happy and altogether different, listening to Luke, but at Julian’s comment, the light went out of her face and she fell silent.
    Julian did not mean to be irritated. But it was irritating to see the animation quenched in the child’s face when he walked into a room, to catch a glimpse for the first time of that sudden grin that so transformed her whole expression, and know that Luke could so easily call it up.
    “And tell me,” Luke said on Sunday, “what does it feel like to be adopted?”
    It was nearly tea time. Julian was resting his leg upstairs, and Emily and Homer were both about on their various pursuits.
    Jennet looked into the fire. It had been such a release to laugh and talk and be natural that Luke seemed like an old friend.
    “I t’s —it’s queer,” she said slowly. “When I was in the orphanage I used to think the best that could happen to me would be adoption. And then Mr. Dane—Cousin Julian came and picked me and— ”
    “ And you don’t like it,” finished Luke.
    “Oh, yes , I do,” she said, distressed. “It’s a wonderful chance, only — ”
    “Only you’re homesick,” said Luke softly. “Homesick for a drab institution with no color, no fun, no affection. How perverse w e mortals are.”
    “Affection,” repeated Jennet, lingering lovingly on the word. “That, was the important thing. I always thought that was the important thing.”
    He glanced at her with interest.
    “You’re right,” he told her. “You can’t rule out affection if you want to be happy, and so I’ve often told Julian. Is it Julian who worries you?”
    “Oh, no,” she said. “Cousin Julian has been very kind. I just don’t understand him. He seems irritable sometimes.”
    Luke’s plain attractive face crinkled up into the many wrinkles that seemed part of it.
    “Pain makes you irritable,” he told her gently. “Julian was pretty badly smashed up in a crash, you know, and that leg’s by no means right yet.”
    “Oh!” she said softly, “I didn’t know.”
    “He’s had a raw deal altogether,” went on Luke, watching her. “He was engaged to a girl who threw him over when he became crippled. Perhaps he told you.”
    “No,” said Jennet, still more softly, “ he didn’t tell me. Why should he? He thinks I’m a child.”
    “ How old are you?”
    “Sixteen. Sixteen’s a bad age, isn’t it? Neither one thing nor the other.”
    He crossed over to Emily’s old seldom-used piano and started to play.
    “Sixteen is the age of loose ends,” he said with a little smile. “The ending of childhood and the beginning of womanhood.”
    She listened to his playing for a little in silence, then as he wandered into an old German carol, she exclaimed: “Oh, we used to sing that in the orphanage !”
    “ Did you?” he said. “Sing it now.”
    She began to hum the air, then she took up the words in a high, sweet soprano, a little timid, but exquisitely true. He stopped playing and looked up at her. “Charming,” he said softly. “And in German, too. Do they teach languages in the orphanage?”
    “Oh, no,” said Jennet, smiling, “we had a German maid who taught us that.”
    “What else do you know?” he asked, and began playing old folk songs, some of which she knew.
    They neither of them heard Julian cornea in until, as they stopped, his voice from the doorway said: “Go on .”
    “Isn’t she delightful, Julian?” demanded Luke, half-rising from the piano. “Go on, Jennet. You play for her, Julian, you’re better than I am.”
    Jennet’s shyness descended on her like a cloak. “Oh, no—no, I couldn’t,” she stammered, and ran out of the room.
    Julian limped across to the fire and filled his pipe. “ I’m not coming up with you tomorrow,” he said.
    Luke shrugged.
    “Just as you say, my dear chap. He watched hi s fingers on the keyboard. “I like