Sunshine Jane Part 14

Jane was deep in the flour-bin. "But I don't want to charm his soul.

I'll leave that to you."

"To me! Why, he doesn't care a rap about me."

"Well, then, to Emily Mead."

"Emily Mead! Oh, my dear, you have put a lot of new ideas into her head!

She says that you told her that any one could get anything that he or she wanted."

"And so they can."

"Suppose she wants Mr. Rath?"

"If she wants him in the right way, she'll have him."

"I don't like that way of speaking of men," said Madeleine, dipping her white fingers into the flour and beginning to chip the b.u.t.ter through it. "Don't you think it's horrid how girls speak of men nowadays? I do."

"Of course I do," said Jane. "But one drops into the habit just because everybody does it. I'll never be married myself, and it's partly because I think it's all being so dragged down. Instead of two people's knowing one another and liking one another better till finally a big, beautiful, holy secret sort of dawns on them and makes the world all over new, girls just go on and act as if men were wild animals to be hunted and caught and talked about, or married and made fun of. I don't think all these new ideas and new ways for women have made women a bit more womanly. When I had to earn my living, I picked out work that a man couldn't do, and that I wouldn't be hurting any man by doing. I'm sorry for men nowadays. And I think women lose a lot the way some of them go on."

"After all, there can't be anything nicer than to be a woman, can there?" said Madeleine, stirring as the other poured in ingredients.

"I've always been glad that I was a woman. I think that a woman's life is so sweet, and it's beautiful to be protected and cared for." The pink flew over her cheeks at the words.

Jane's lashes swept downward for a minute, then rose resolutely. "Or to protect and care for others. It always seems to me as if a woman was the sort of blessed way through which a man's love and strength and care go to his children. Men are so helpless with children, but they do such a lot for wives, and then the mothers pa.s.s it on to the little ones."

"Life's lovely when you think of it rightly, isn't it?" Madeleine said thoughtfully. "I'm so pleased over having come here. You see Father and Mother wanted me to spend a few weeks quietly where I could rest and pick myself up a little, and so they sent me here. I didn't care much about coming, but I'm glad now. You're doing me lots of good, Jane; you seem to help me to unlock the doors to everything that's just best in me."

"It isn't that I do it," said Jane; "it's that it's been done to me, and after it got through me, it's bound to s.h.i.+ne on. It's like light; every window you clean lets it through into another place, where maybe there's something else to clean and let it through again."

"I suppose we just live to keep clean and let light through," laughed Madeleine, cutting out the biscuits.

"That's all."

"I think that you'd make a good preacher, Jane; you've such nice, plain, homely, understandable ways of putting things."

Jane laughed and popped the pan into the oven. "Come and help lay the table," she said. "Oh, you never saw anything as sweet as Aunt Susan's joy in her own things. She's like a little child at Christmas. It's a kind of coming back to life for her."

"They say that her sister was awfully mean to her."

"But she wasn't at all. She thought that she was sicker than she was, and she kept her in bed, and the joke of it was that Aunt Susan didn't like to hurt her feelings by letting her see what mistaken ideas she had, so she hopped up every time the coast was clear and kept lively and interested trying to be about and in bed at once."

"How perfectly delightful! I never heard anything so funny. And then you came and discovered the truth."

"Well, I didn't want her to stay in bed. I'd never encourage any one in a false belief, but she hadn't the belief,--she had only the false appearance. She didn't enjoy being an invalid one bit."

"I think it's too droll," said Madeleine. "Didn't you laugh when it dawned on you first?"

"It dawned on me rather sadly. But we laugh together now."

"What will she do when her sister comes back?"

"Oh, that will all come out nicely. I don't know just how, but I know that it will come out all right."

"Do you always have faith in things coming out rightly?"

"Always. I wouldn't dare not to. I'm one of those people who kind of feel the future as it draws near, and so I wouldn't allow myself to feel any mean future drawing near, on principle. I always feel that nice things are marching straight towards me as fast as ever the band of music plays."

"Do you believe that it really makes any difference?"

"Of course it makes a difference. It makes all the difference in the world, because hope's a rope by which any good thing can haul you right up to it, hand over hand."

"You give me a lot to think about," said Madeleine.

Jane ran out and picked some ivy leaves to place under the vase of flowers in the middle of the table. It made a little green mat. "There; we're all ready when they come, now," she said.

Presently they did come.

"Oh, what will Mrs. Cowmull say to this!" said Lorenzo, as he pulled out Mrs. Ralston's chair. "She's busy marking pa.s.sages in _The Seven Lamps of Architecture_ to read aloud to me while I eat, and now I shan't show up at all."

"Have you seen her niece lately?" asked Madeleine.

"Yes, I saw her this morning. She wants to pose for me, only she stipulated that she should wear clothes. I told her that my models all wore thick wool and only showed a little of their faces. She didn't seem to like that."

"But what did you mean? Surely you don't always have them wear thick woolen?"

"I just do. If they haven't thick wool on, I won't paint them at all."

"What do you mean?"

"Why, I paint sheep."

The mild little joke met with great favor.

"I think you're a very clever young man," Susan said with great sincerity. "To think of me having a good time laughing with a sheep painter," she added. "Who holds them for you to paint, and do you set them afterwards?"

"I paint them right in the fields," said Lorenzo.

"I should think they'd b.u.t.t you from behind."

"I paint over a fence."

"Well, that's safe," said Jane's aunt. "If you're careful not to be on the side where there's a bull."

After supper Madeleine helped Jane wash the dishes.

"What fun you make out of everything," she said.

"It's the only way," Jane answered. "My mission is to make two sunbeams s.h.i.+ne where only one slanted."