The Girl from Arizona

Excerpt

CHAPTER I

MAKING THE BEST OF THINGS

"Marjorie."

The clear call rang out, breaking the afternoon stillness of the ranch, but there was no response, and after waiting a moment Miss Graham gave her wheeled chair a gentle push, which sent it rolling smoothly across the porch of the ranch house, down the inclined plane, which served the purpose of steps, to the lawn. It was very hot, the sun was blazing down as only an Arizona sun can blaze, and not a breath of air was stirring. But Miss Graham was accustomed to the heat and the glare. She paused for a moment, gazing off over the vast prairie to the California mountains, nearly a hundred miles away. She generally paused on that same spot for one look, although the landscape was the only one she had seen in twelve years. Then she moved on again, across the lawn, now parched and dry from the long summer's heat, toward the stables and out-buildings. It was before the smallest of these out-buildings, a tiny log cabin, that she finally brought the chair to a standstill.

"Marjorie, are you there?"

There was a sound of some one moving inside, and a girl of fourteen, with a book in her hand, appeared in the doorway. She was a pretty girl, with soft light hair that curled over her temples, and bright, merry blue eyes, but just now the eyes were red and swollen, and there were unmistakable tear-marks on the girl's cheeks. At sight of the lady in the wheeled chair, however, Marjorie's face brightened, and she hurried forward, exclaiming remorsefully:

"Oh, Aunt Jessie dear, did you come all this way by yourself? I'm so sorry. Do you want me to do something for you?"

"You needn't be sorry," said her aunt, smiling. "The exercise will do me good, and I am quite proud of being able to manage this chair so easily. I called you from the porch, but you didn't hear. Your mother and Juanita are busy in the kitchen making jam, and I wasn't of any use there, so I thought I would come and see what you were about. I felt pretty sure of finding you in the old playhouse."

"Come in," said Marjorie, eagerly. "You haven't been in the playhouse in ages; not since I grew too big to invite you to "make-believe" tea, but the door is just wide enough for the chair; don't you remember? Let me help you in?" And springing to Miss Graham's side, Marjorie seized the handle of the chair, and carefully guided it through the narrow entrance, into the little house her father had built for her own special use, and which had always been known as the playhouse. It might still have been regarded as a playhouse, although its owner had grown too old to play there. A couple of battered dolls reposed upon a toy bedstead in one corner, and an array of china dishes, all more or less the worse for wear, adorned the shelves. Marjorie loved her few possessions dearly, and in a place where one's nearest neighbor lives five miles away, there are not many people on whom to bestow things which have ceased to be useful to one's self, and they are therefore likely to be preserved....