Elsie Marley, Honey

Excerpt

CHAPTER I

Mrs. Bennet, her travelling companion from San Francisco, having proved to be talkative and uninteresting, Elsie Marley was more than content to find herself alone after the change had been made and her train pulled out of Chicago. It was characteristic of the girl that she did not even look out of the window to see the last of Mrs. Bennet, who, having waited on the platform until the train started and waved her handkerchief in vain, betook herself indignantly to her carriage. Quite unaware of any remissness on her part, Elsie settled herself comfortably—Mrs. Bennet had disposed of her luggage—folded her hands in her lap, and gazed idly out the window opposite.

A pale, colorless girl, the simplicity of her dress was in almost too great contrast with its elegance—a contrived simplicity that left no room for any trace of careless youth or girlishness. Slender and rather delicate-looking, she had brown eyes, regular features, and soft, light-brown hair waving loosely about her face and hanging in two long, demure curls from a shell clasp at her neck. But her eyes were of rather a shallow brown, her brows and lashes still lighter; her features were almost too regular, and her skin, though soft and clear, was quite colorless. Even so, she might have been pretty, perhaps lovely, had she possessed any animation. But the girl's face and even her eyes were as nearly expressionless as human features may be. She was like a superior sort of doll with white cheeks in lieu of red.

After a little she opened a small leather satchel, took out a letter, and perused it attentively. It was the last she had received from her guardian and only living relative, Cousin Julia Pritchard, and, as she was to see her soon, it behooved her to prepare herself so far as she might for that occasion. For Elsie Marley realized, though dimly, that she was to encounter a personality unlike any with which she had come in contact in all her sheltered, luxurious life.

"My dear Elsie," the letter ran, "I find myself very much pleased at the thought of having you with me. The heart of a woman of fifty cannot but rejoice in anticipation of the company of a young girl with the ideals, the vigor, and buoyancy of sixteen. And since we are both alone in the world, you representing all my kith and kin as I believe myself to represent all yours, it is only fitting that we should be together instead of being separated by the breadth of our great American continent.

"You will, I am sure, like this great, busy, restless, humming city, though the only home I have to offer you, I am truly sorry to say, is in a boarding-house, comfortable though it is. Remembering Aunt Ellen's beautiful home in California, which I visited fifteen years ago, I fear the change may be difficult, though, for a young person, not too painfully so, I trust. A boarding-house is the only home I have myself known for thirty years, and this particular one is excellent and full of interesting people, though the youngest among them are middle-aged....