Jane Lends A Hand Part 7

"There you are, Eve. Like Adam, I'd be much better without it."

With the agility of a monkey, Jane, holding the apple between her teeth, swung herself lightly and easily to the ground. A little later Mr.

Sheridan saw the curly auburn head and the green sweater moving up the hill, and with the feeling that he would very much like to be going in the same direction, toward that busy little town-yes, in the very same direction of that human society which he had resolved to shun-he turned away.

He had already begun to doubt his wisdom in allowing this slight infringement of the iron rule of seclusion he had resolved to follow.

Already he felt very little inclined to spend the rest of the morning going over the battalions of musty volumes in the Major's library, as he had planned,-his idea had been to bury his sorrows in grave bookishness.

Already he found himself possessed by a desire to venture out beyond the security of his garden. And if he had followed Janey up the hill, if he had seen her stop for a few moments, at the gate of the house on the left hand side, to report to a demure and shocked and vastly interested young lady on various features of her late venture, he would have felt that all his doubts on the wisdom of allowing anything feminine within thirty yards of him, were more than justified.

CHAPTER IV-THE APPEARANCE OF PAUL

Jane lay on her stomach, stretched out comfortably on the window-seat in Granny's room, her elbows propped on a cus.h.i.+on, her chin in her hands and a book open on another cus.h.i.+on. The light was already waning, for the days were growing perceptibly shorter, and furthermore the afternoon had been dark and stormy. A driving autumn rain pattered steadily against the window, drummed on the roof, gushed from the drain pipes, and angrily stripped the branches of the trees of their gaudy foliage.

Now, only the stark black boughs creaked in the wind; here and there one stubborn brown leaf still clung to a twig, but you could see the whole lead grey sky clearly, and the irregular outlines of glistening roofs.

But Granny's room, always cosy, was cosiest when the outside world was bleakest. A coal fire glowed brightly in the old fas.h.i.+oned open stove, reflecting in the window panes, on the elaborately carved head-board of the great four-poster bed, and in the plump, bulging surfaces of the well-polished pewter jugs which stood in a row along the shelf-treasured heirlooms, glistening self-complacently, as if they knew that they had outlived four generations of human beings. Granny's room, was in fact, a regular museum; a big, speckled sea sh.e.l.l served as the door prop; chunks of rock sparkling with mica lay on each side of the stove; a stuffed owl, with only one gla.s.s eye stared down from the lintel of the door. Wherever you looked you saw some singular object which interested you simply because you could not imagine what it was for, why it had been treasured, or how it had ever got into Granny's room in the first place. But there was not an article that Granny would not have missed sadly if it had been removed. Each curiosity had its particular a.s.sociation which made it valuable to her; each was linked to some memory, and she could not have parted with one without parting with the thing it stood for.

The atmosphere, warm almost to the point of suffocation, was permeated with a peculiar, and far from unpleasant odor, of apples, spices, and camphor, emanating from the gigantic chest on one side of the room. Like all good Winklers, Granny had a sweet tooth, which was one reason why the young Lamberts found her society so desirable. To be sure, some people might not care much for the flavor of camphor or cedar in their candied orange peel, or Smyrna figs, but it was inseparable from Granny's tid-bits, and her grandchildren had cultivated an especial taste for it.

The twins sat on the floor in front of the fire, playing with their paper dolls, while Granny nodded over the many-coloured quilt she was knitting, happily unconscious of the fact that Phyllis, her maltese cat, had playfully carried the ball of red wool off to a far corner, and was gleefully tangling it around the legs of the dressing table. Every now and then a burst of fresh laughter from one of the flaxen haired twins roused her, and she smiled sympathetically, and for a little while listened to their chatter; then her head drooped again, her steel-rimmed spectacles slid down on her nose, and lulled by the heat of the fire, the drumming of the rain, and the sound of their soft, happy voices, she dozed off peacefully.

Lottie, looking up, and seeing that Jane was no longer engrossed in "John Halifax," ventured to suggest timidly,

"Will you play with uth, Janey?"

Occasionally, Jane condescended to forget her fifteen years, and to take part in their infantile games.

"All right." She rolled herself off the window seat. "Want to play 'French Revolution'?" Jane had little taste for the domestic character of the twin's doll games.

"How do you play that?" asked Minie.

"Why, first of all you get me some books out of my room," ordered Jane, and Minie obediently trotted off to return grunting under the burden of "stage properties."

"Now, you see, build a prison out of 'em," went on Jane; "this is the Conciergerie, and it has to be full of prisoners; princesses and d.u.c.h.esses, and of course Marie Antoinette. Now, we'll make a guillotine, and chop all their heads off. Don't you think that'll be fun?"

The twins were enchanted. Lottie piled the hooks into a "scaffold,"

while Minie sat by, clas.h.i.+ng the scissors, eagerly. And presently, one by one, the poor paper prisoners were marched to their doom, Jane directing the carnage, describing the history of each victim, like a Greek chorus, and delivering their last speeches, while Minie, hypnotized into pa.s.sive obedience, snipped off the paper heads of her innocent, and dearly treasured dolls.

Suddenly Jane jumped up.

"I think this is an _awful_ game!" she exclaimed.

"Oh, Jane, aren't you going to play any more?" cried Lottie in dismay.

Jane shook her head.

"And all my poor dollies are dead!" wailed Minie, suddenly realizing the extent of the disaster. Jane looked really guilty.

"We can make some more," she said hastily; "there are lots of old magazines in mother's room."

"But you can't make Isabel again," wept Minie.

"Well, _you_ cut her head off," said Jane.

"But _you_ told her to," cried Lottie, taking up her twin's cause.

"Well, you asked me to play with you, didn't you?" But Minie's tears went to Jane's heart. "I'm sorry, Minie, darling. Please don't cry. I'll tell you a story if you like."

Minie's chubby, tearful face brightened.

"A fairy story?"

"Yes. About a prince and princess."

"And you won't have it end up badly?"

"No. I promise." So Jane, whose mind was a perfect storehouse of stories and legends, had soon charmed the twins into forgetfulness of their late bereavement while she launched forth upon her tale of giants and enchanted princes.

On this very afternoon, and in fact, at exactly the time that Jane had staged her disastrous amus.e.m.e.nt, a boy was tramping stolidly with his head bent against the rain, along one of the country roads a good three miles from Frederickstown. He was a big, raw-boned boy, whose shabby clothes originally much too loose for his lean frame, and now soaked through, gave him an almost grotesque appearance. A faded dark blue cap, with a patent leather visor, such as sea-captains wear, and the upturned collar of his coat, almost concealed his long brown face, in which the most striking features were a pair of black eyes, set rather close together, and a big handsome Roman nose. With a bundle slung over his shoulder on the end of a stick, he looked like any one of the foreign immigrants who were frequently seen seeking for work as laborers on the neighboring farms.

He did not raise his head until he reached a cross-roads. Then he stopped, pushed back his cap from his face, which was flushed and hot from his long walk, and looked up at the signs. On the left, the white board, roughly carved into the semblance of a pointing finger, read, "Frederickstown, 2- Miles." The name on the right-hand sign-post was too badly damaged by weather to be intelligible to a stranger's eyes; only the distance, "30 miles" was legible.

There was no reason why the boy should have hesitated for a moment; his destination was Frederickstown, the second direction did not concern him in the least; and yet, perhaps because the vagueness of the destination of the second road appealed to his imagination; perhaps because the greater distance lent it greater charm, and the very impossibility of walking thirty miles that day made it seem the more desirable, at any rate there he stood, looking uncertainly to the right, then to the left, and back to the right again. A gust of wind, flapping the skirts of his coat rudely, seemed to shove him forward, as if impatient of his indecision, but he planted his feet firmly, and continued to gape uncertainly up at the sign posts. "I'll make up my own mind, thank you, and I'm not to be hurried," was the reply which his determined att.i.tude made to the impatience of the wind.

There was little difference in the features of the country traversed by the two roads; all that he could see through the blur of the rain, were bleak fields, muddy furrows, here and there a clump of leafless trees, the skeleton of a forest, or, down in a hollow the sheds and barns of a little farm. A cheerless prospect for a hungry and footsore Wanderer.

Behind him he heard the weary splas.h.i.+ng of a horse's feet, and the creaking of wheels. He turned around. A covered wagon, drawn by a tired, steaming horse was approaching.

"Hey!" he hailed the driver, who pulled in the horse to a stand-still, and thrust out a grizzled face from under the canvas.

"Where does that road go to?" asked the boy, pointing to the right.

The driver tilted his hat, scratched his head, and straightened his hat again before replying, thus gaining time to cast a shrewd eye over the appearance of the questioner. He was one of those excellent back-country farmers who regard every stranger with suspicion, and do not like to be hurried into speech.

"That road," he said at length, "goes to the City-thirty miles. Going to walk it, stranger?"

"Which way are you going?"

The farmer jerked his head in the direction of Frederickstown.

"Will you let me go with you?" asked the boy, feeling nervously in his pocket. "I cannot pay you much, but I will gladly give you what I can."

He pulled the last coin out of his pocket, and looked at it uncertainly as if he were not at all sure how much it was. "I will give you twenty-five cents."

"That's all right. Keep your money, young feller, and get in if you want to. I'll be glad of yer company."

The boy looked surprised and grateful, and without wasting any more words, clambered up to the hard wooden seat, and settled himself beside the farmer.