Sunshine Jane Part 16

"Lonely. I never feel lonely. I'd thank Heaven if I could be let alone for a little, once in a while. I don't want to come, and that's a fact.

If that be treason, make the most of it."

"Oh, but you must come," said Jane; "you'll like it. We want you, and you must come."

"Well, get me my bonnet then," said old Mrs. Croft. "Run, Katie, I've been sitting here waiting for it for over an hour."

Katie and Jane regarded one another in consternation. They hadn't quite counted on this.

"I'm going visiting," said Mrs. Croft gaily. "Oh, my, and how I shall visit. Years may come and years may go, and still I shall sit there visiting away, and when I hear the door-bell, I shall know it's time for Christmas dinner."

Katie took Jane's hand and drew her out of the room. "I don't believe you'd better take her," she said; "she's so flighty. I know how to manage her, and you don't. Just give it up."

"No, I won't," said Jane, smiling. "I know that it's a kind thing to do and that I must do it. I'm going to take her."

"Seems so odd you're wanting to," said Katie. "You're very funny, I think. People are saying that you think that everything's for the best.

Do you really believe that?"

"Of course. We can't get outside of G.o.d's plan, whatever we may do. If we do wrong, we have to bear the consequences because it's as easy to _see_ the right thing to do as the wrong, but the great Plan never wavers."

"Oh, my," said Katie. "I'm glad to know that."

Jane pressed her hand. "I'll get things all ready, and we'll bring her over tomorrow night," she said; "that'll be best. Then she can go right to bed and get rested from the effort."

So it was arranged, and the Suns.h.i.+ne Nurse went home to tell Susan that Mrs. Croft had consented to come. She felt quite positive that now they would both attain unto a higher plane without any difficulty, if they kept such a guest in the house for a week.

"It isn't going to be easy, Auntie," she said, a bit later, "but it will teach you and me a lot, and if one wants to voyage greatly, one must get out into the deep water."

"I'll do anything to get hold of some different way of getting on with Matilda," said Susan, "and I begin to see what you mean when you say that if I change _me_, I'll change it all. If you could make flour into sugar, you'd have cake instead of biscuit, but, oh, my! Old Mrs. Croft!"

"It won't be for so very long," said Jane, "and think of Katie Croft through all these years! She's been splendid, I think."

"Well, she didn't have any other place to live, you know," Susan promptly reminded her niece.

"Work's work, no matter why you do it," Jane said, "and all the big laws work greatly. This having old Mrs. Croft is a pretty big step for you and me to take, and you'll see that when Aunt Matilda returns, we'll be so strongly settled in our new ways that she can't unsettle us. We'll be absolutely different people."

"Y--yes," said Susan, confidence fighting doubt stoutly. "I'm willing to try, although left to myself I should never have thought of old Mrs.

Croft as a way of getting different."

"Anything that we do with earnest purpose is a way of getting better,"

said Jane. She looked out of the window for a minute, and her lip almost quivered. Susan didn't notice. "Everything is always for the best, if we're sure of it," she then said firmly.

CHAPTER IX

MADELEINE'S SECRET

THE two girls were enjoying a pleasant time in Susan's big, tidy kitchen.

"I never knew that a kitchen could be so perfectly lovely," said Madeleine, as they took tea by the little table by the window. "Jane, you are a genius! One opens the gate here with a bubbling feeling that everything in the whole world's all right."

"I'm so glad," said Jane; "it's grand to feel that one is a real channel of happiness. I always seem to see people as made to form that kind of connection between G.o.d and earth, and that happiness is the visible sign of success, a good 'getting through,' so to speak."

"Do you know, the English language is awfully indefinite. That sentence might mean good flowing like water through people, or people so made that good can go through them easily. Do you see?"

"Yes, I see. But either meaning is all right. It isn't what I say that matters so much, anyway. It's how you take it."

"I took that two ways."

"Yes, and both were good. That's so fine,--to get two good meanings, where I only meant one."

They smiled together.

"Mr. Rath and I were talking about that last evening," said Madeleine, the color coming into her face a little. "Do you know, he's really a very dear man. He's awfully nice."

Jane jumped up to drive a wasp out of the window. "You know him better than I do," she said, very busy.

"I've known him for several years, but never as well as here."

Jane came back and sat down. Madeleine was silent, seeming to search for words.

"You were going to tell me a secret," her friend said, after a little.

"I know, but I--I can't."

Jane lifted her eyes almost pitifully. "Why not?"

"I don't feel that I have the right, after all. Secrets are such precious things."

"If I can help you--?"

"Oh, no, no.--It isn't any trouble. It's something quite different--I--I thought that perhaps I could tell you my thoughts, but--I can't."

There was a silence.

"There are such wonderful feelings in the world," Madeleine went on, after a little; "they don't seem to fit into words at all. One feels ashamed to have even planned to talk about them. One feels so humble when--" she paused--then closed her lips.

Jane put out her hand and took the hand upon the other side of the little table, close. "Don't mind me, dear; I understand."

"Do you really?"

"Yes."

Madeleine's eyes were anxious. "Do you guess? Did you guess?"

"Yes."