At half past eight, Elise had seen that the two little girls had their
books and their packages of sandwiches, and started them off to school,
Carl and Jane marching behind.
"Oh, and Janey!" she called, hastening back to the doorway. "Will you
remember to give those patterns back to Lily Deacon for me. I'm going to
be _so_ busy. Any time this afternoon will do. I put them in your school
bag."
"All right," said Jane, and Elise, always busy, always placid and
gentle, went back to her work.
"Well, what do _you_ think about it?" Jane asked, presently. She had
quite forgotten her recent friction with Carl, for quick tempered as she
was, she rarely remembered a quarrel ten minutes after it occurred.
"Think about what?" said Carl, gruffly.
"About Paul's coming, of course. It's awfully sad about Uncle Franz--but
it _is_ sort of exciting having a new cousin to stay with us, I think."
"You wouldn't think it so awfully exciting if _you_ had to share your
room with someone you never saw in your life," returned Carl, sulkily.
"I don't see why one of the store-rooms couldn't be cleared out for him.
All I know is that I won't stand for it a second if he tries to sling my
things around, or scatter his all over the place."
Carl was never very enthusiastic about sharing anything with anyone
(though in this instance one might sympathize with his annoyance) and
his fussy love of neatness reached a degree that one would far sooner
expect to find in a crabbed old maid than in a boy of sixteen years.
Jane did not reply to this indignant objection.
"What do you think he'll be like?" she asked next, scuffling through the
piles of ruddy brown leaves that lay thick on the uneven brick walk.
"I think he'll be a big, roistering bully. That's what I think,"
answered Carl savagely; his lips set in a stubborn line, and the lenses
of his spectacles glinted so angrily, that Jane decided to drop the
subject.
For several minutes they walked along in silence: the twins marching
ahead, chattering like little magpies, their yellow pigtails bobbing
under their round brown felt hats. Each clutched her spelling book and
reader, and her package of sandwiches and cookies; each wore a bright
blue dress, a bright red sweater, and a snow white pinafore.
It was fully a mile to the school, but as a rule the brisk young
Lamberts walked it in twenty minutes. This morning, however, Jane
dawdled shamelessly.
"I don't feel like school to-day a bit," she remarked, looking up
through the trees.
"You never do," returned Carl, dryly, "but you've got to go all the
same. I bet you don't play hookey again in a hurry."
"H'm?" said Jane, "why not?"
"Why not?" the first really mirthful grin that Carl had shown that day
spread slowly over his serious features. "Didn't you catch it hot enough
last time? You're such an idiot anyway. If you'd only do your work
conscientiously you wouldn't mind school. I'd hate it too if I were as
big a dunce as you."
"Oh,--you would, would you, Goody-goody?" retorted Jane with spirit.
"I'm not a dunce. I'm the brightest girl in my class."
"Whoo-ee!" whooped Carl, staggered by this cool conceit. "Well! If you
haven't got cheek!"
"'Tisn't cheek," said Jane, calmly, "I am. I heard Dr. Andrews say so to
Miss Trowbridge."
"Well--he must have been talking through his hat, then," observed Carl.
"He was _probably_ talking about someone else."
"No, he wasn't. They were standing outside the school-room door, at
lunch-hour, and I was in there, and I heard Dr. Andrews say, 'That
little Jane Lambert has brains. She's one of the brightest children--'"
"That's the trouble with you!" broke in Carl, thoroughly exasperated.
"You've got such a swell-head that you won't work at all. And I don't
see how anyone could say that you were clever when you get about one
problem right out of a dozen."
"I don't see how either," said Jane placidly; "but he did. Oh,
look--Miss Clementina has got a new canary!"
There was no event that occurred in Frederickstown which did not excite
Jane's interest. She stopped to peer into the front window of a small
brick house, where amid a perfect jungle of banana plants and ferns, a
brightly gilded cage hung between two much befrilled net curtains.
"Poor old lady, I'm glad she got her bird. He has a black spot on his
head just like her old one. I daresay her cat will eat him too. I wonder
what she has named him. Her old one was named William." Jane giggled.
"What an idiotic name for a bird!" said Carl. Like his father, he was
never amused by anything that seemed to him fantastic. "You'd better
hurry up and stop peeking into everyone's window. Come on."
Jane reluctantly obeyed.
"William is a queer name for a bird," she agreed amicably, "but it's no
queerer than calling her cat Alfred, and that awful little monkey of
hers, Howard. She told me that she named her pets for all her old
sweethearts."
"Her old sweethearts!" echoed Carl derisively.
"Yes. She said that she had dozens. And you know what? I believe it's
true. Anyhow, she has lots of pictures of beautiful gentlemen, with
black moustaches and curly side-whiskers. I've seen the whole
collection. She said she never could bear fair men."
"Humph!" said Carl.
"She said that she was dreadfully heartless when she was a girl. An
awful flirt. Professor Dodge still calls on her every Sunday
afternoon--all dressed up with a flower in his button-hole, and kid
gloves, and a little bouquet wrapped up in wet paper. And she plays the
piano for him, and sings 'Alice Ben Bolt' and 'The Mocking Bird' and
'Coming Thro' the Rye.'"
"What a busybody you are. Always prying into other people's affairs. It
wouldn't hurt you to mind your own business for a while, I must say."
"I don't pry into other people's affairs," said Jane, quite unruffled.
"Most of 'em seem to like to talk, and I just listen--that's all."
"There's the bell, now! Hang it, we're late. Why can't you--" but here
Carl set off in a race for the school-house, outstripping the two
squealing, panting twins. And in another moment, Jane, too, was
scampering across the square as fast as her legs would carry her.
That was, in truth, not destined to be a very successful day for Jane.
To begin with, she was marked "tardy" for the third time that month. The
first classes went off passably; but she came to grief as she was
congratulating herself on the fact that she had managed to scrape along
fairly well.
With all her quickness and curiosity, Jane had small love for hard
study; but her aptness in gathering the general sense of a lesson at
almost a glance stood her in good stead, and with very little trouble on
her part she succeeded in shining quite brilliantly in history, general
science, and geography. When it came to mathematics however, she met her
Waterloo.
This class was presided over by Miss Farrel, a vague old lady, with
near-sighted, reproachful blue eyes, and an almost inaudible voice, who
taught a dry subject in the dryest possible manner.
For some reason, Jane found it more difficult than ever to keep her mind
on square roots and unknown quantities that morning. Her eyes wandered
longingly to the window. It was open, for the day had grown warmer
toward noon, and in the quiet square an old man was raking up the fallen
leaves into a row of small bonfires, and lifting them in bundles into a
little wheeled cart. Patiently he limped back and forth, stopping every
now and then to push his old felt hat back on his head and mop his
forehead with a colored handkerchief, which in between times waved
jauntily from his hip pocket. The pungent smell of leaf smoke drifted in
through the window. The golden and ruddy foliage of the elm-trees and
lindens made a fretted canopy over the drowsy green, through which
sifted the mellow light of an Indian summer sun.
Fat Lulu Pierson's thick, glossy pig-tails next engrossed Jane's
attention. She took one gently in her fingers; the evenly clipped end of
it reminded her of the brush that Sam Lung, the Chinese laundry-man used
when he wrote out his receipts. She dipped it in the ink, and began to
make hieroglyphics on her scratch-tablet. Then Lulu gave an impatient
jerk, and the wet pig-tail just missed causing general disaster. Jane
carefully took it again, dried it on her blotter, and made a serious
effort to concentrate her attention by fixing her gaze gravely on Miss
Farrel's wrinkled face. But she soon found that she was merely wondering
why that prim old dame took the trouble to wear a little bunch of false
curls across her forehead--such a remarkable cluster, as smooth and
crisp as spun glass, pinned with a little bow of black taffeta ribbon.
And so honestly false--certainly they could not have been selected with
the intention of deceiving, for not even Miss Farrel, near-sighted as
she was, could have imagined for a moment that they matched the
diminutive nubbin into which her own grey locks were twisted every
morning.
"Why doesn't she wear a wig? Though after all that auburn is rather
nice. I don't see why she doesn't change 'em around sometimes--"
"Well, Jane, perhaps you can tell us," Miss Farrel's soft voice broke in
upon these reflections, and Jane started as if she had been awakened
from a sound sleep. She gasped, and then quickly recovering herself,
said blandly,
"Yes, Miss Farrel."
There was a dead silence. Jane looked about her in surprise, to find
every eye in the room fixed on her.
"Well?" prompted Miss Farrel.
Jane swallowed. She had not the remotest idea what the question was.
Nevertheless she made a bold attempt to conceal this fact, and with an
aplomb admirable under the circumstances, said,
"I didn't exactly understand the question, Miss Farrel."
A faint tinge of color appeared upon each of Miss Farrel's cheekbones,
and her almost invisible eyebrows went up.
"And what didn't you understand about it? I am sure I don't see how it
could be expressed in any clearer terms. Will you repeat it to me? Then
we can soon find out just where my words confused you." The old lady
felt that she was being exceedingly cunning.
Jane winked her eyes rapidly, opened her mouth, shut it, and moistened
her lower lip with the tip of her tongue. She knew she was cornered.
"Yes, Jane. And stand up please when you recite," said Miss Farrel in
ominously gentle tones. "And don't fidget, Jane. Put that eraser down.
We are waiting, Jane."
"Well, what I didn't understand was--was--I didn't understand--I didn't
understand the question."
Another silence.
"Did you _hear_ the question?"
"No, Miss Farrel."
"Oh. And what, pray, have you been doing?"
"Why--just thinking."
"Ah. How interesting. And what were you thinking of?"
Jane tried to keep her face straight, and looked down to hide the
laughter in her eyes.
"Nothing, Miss Farrel."
Silence again. Miss Farrel opened her little black record book, and
slowly and deliberately registered Jane's crime.
"Sit down, Jane. And will you please wait for me here after school. At
three o'clock. Well, Isabel, will _you_ give me the formula for finding
the area of a circle."
Jane took her seat.
"What a goose I am, anyway," she thought, and accepted her punishment
with her usual calmness.
At three o'clock, when the other girls, chattering and laughing gathered
their books and left the school-room singly and in groups, she sat at
her desk waiting for Miss Farrel. The cleaning woman came in, with her
mop and bucket, and began to splash the dusty wooden floor. She was a
talkative, good-natured old thing, and one of Jane's numerous intimates.
"Well, now, what are they keepin' you here for, this fine afternoon,
Miss Janey?" she said sympathetically.
"Oh, I don't mind much. How's Amelia, Mrs. Tinker?"
"Fine. Fine, miss, thank yer."
"And how's Henry Clay?"
"He's fine, too, I thank yer."
"Is Mr. Tinker out of the hospital yet?"
"Not yet, I thank yer," said Mrs. Tinker, cheerfully. "They think as how
he'll have to be there another six weeks or so. Well, I'm not one to
complain against what the Lord thinks best, and I says to Henry Clay,
'Don't complain, Henry. You let well enough alone,' says I."
"Is Henry Clay the one that's going to be an undertaker?"
"That's right, miss. The boy's always had his heart set on it, and as I
says to Mr. Tinker, 'Don't oppose him.' And Henry shows wonderful talent
for it, miss. Wonderful."
Jane was going to ask how a precocious talent for undertaking manifested
itself, when Miss Farrel appeared.
"Perhaps, Mrs. Tinker, you might work just now in one of the other
rooms," she suggested with dignity. "You may return in an hour."
And then she turned her attention to Jane.
The old lady began by a plaintive little discourse on Jane's
shortcomings, and on the future disasters that they would most certainly
lead to. She tried to sound severe and cold, but now and then she said
"my dear," and once she laid her small, old hand on Janey's. It was so
difficult to be severe with Jane.
"And now, Jane, we must review all last week's work. You see how much
time you lose?"
The lesson began; but it turned out that Jane was able to answer very
nearly every question that Miss Farrel asked.
"Now, you see? Oh, if you would only put your mind on your work, my
dear, it would really be a pleasure to teach you. My dear old teacher
used to say--"
And here, veering away from the discussion of altitudes and bases, the
good dame began to prattle in the friendliest way about her own
girlhood, and about the little school she used to go to, way up in the
country, where half the tuition was paid in salt pork and other
provisions, and about her father and brothers. Everybody seemed to drift
into talking about their own affairs to Jane, and Jane remembered
everything they told her. There was hardly a soul in Frederickstown
whose general history she was not familiar with; very simple histories
for the most part, for the inhabitants of Frederickstown were simple
souls, yet each had its measure of comedy and tragedy, and each had its
mysterious relationship to the character of its confiding narrator.
So now Miss Farrel told her about her sister, Miss Elizabeth, who was,
she said, so much the cleverer and better in every way--the last of her
whole family, and crippled with inflammatory rheumatism; and about her
wonderful cat, Amaryllis, and so on, and so on.
It was nearly half-past four when the old lady suddenly realized how
little of the time she had given to the lesson. Then she made a last
attempt to assume her dignity.
"Well, now, my dear. Let me see. I think that if only you will train
yourself--so much depends on our own selves, you know, my dear." And
then after a second little discourse, delivered no doubt principally to
assure herself that everything she had been saying had had some bearing
on Jane's particular case, she picked up her inevitable knitting-bag,
and took her departure.
Jane, remembering her promise to Elise, to return Lily's patterns, set
out toward the Deacon's house.
It stood just at the top of Sheridan Lane, a sleepy, prim old street,
regarded as being rather fashionable and aristocratic, principally
because at the lower end of it stood the deserted Sheridan mansion,
which, notwithstanding the fact that its owners had not deigned to pay
any attention to it in fifteen years, was still one of the prides of
Frederickstown.
The quiet street was paved with cobblestones as it descended the hill
from Frederickstown itself, as far as the ancient rusty fountain, in
whose basin the leaves collected in the autumn, and the birds bathed in
the spring; but on the opposite side, where the hill began its rise, the
street became simply a white dusty road, leading on through sweet
smelling fields, over wooden bridges, where a meadow stream doubled back
on itself in loops, past the Sheridan mansion, which marked the limits
of Frederickstown proper, and on to the open country.
The branches of the elm trees arched over Janey's head, and now and
then, shaken by a drowsy breeze, the yellowed leaves fell noiselessly.
Through the open window of the Deacon's little parlour, came the sound
of chords struck on a tinkling square piano, followed by scales and
arpeggios sung in a sweet, if rather timid and unsubstantial, feminine
voice.
"Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah." Chord. "Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah."
Chord. And so on, patiently up the scale. Miss Deacon was practising. It
was a part of her daily program, and never would it have entered Lily's
head to deviate from that daily program, mapped out by her excellent but
strong-minded and dictatorial mamma. Singing was a very genteel
accomplishment for a young lady, and Mrs. Deacon desired above all
things that Lily should be elegant.
Jane leaned on the window sill, and listened to the scales for a little
while, watching Miss Lily's slender throat swell and quiver like a
bird's.
"How pretty she is. If I were as pretty as that, I think I'd be
perfectly happy; but she always looks sort of sad. Maybe it's because
she's always being fussed at."
There was indeed no girl in Frederickstown who could claim to be quite
as pretty as Lily Deacon. Slender and small, with a little tip-tilted
nose, which gave the most unexpected and charming spice of coquetry to
her delicate face, with large serious blue eyes, and glossy black hair
so neatly coiled on the nape of her neck, with beautifully drawn
eyebrows, and a tiny mole at the corner of her under lip, accentuating
the whiteness of her skin, she would have drawn her tributes of
admiration from any pair of eyes that rested on her--and would have been
perfectly blind to them. Lily's mother would not have allowed her for a
moment to imagine that she was pretty, and Lily never thought of
disobeying mamma. Prettiness, according to Mrs. Deacon's severe
judgement, counted for nothing; as she had once observed, "It was only
as deep as the epidermis." Elegance alone was desirable. You should
never say that you were "hot"--a lady spoke of being "warm." And the
word "scared" was abominable; you should speak of being "startled" or
"alarmed." Lily was almost perfectly elegant. She wore a silk dress, and
her pink nails were polished, and even when she sat at the piano, she
was so afraid of not having her feet demurely crossed, that she did not
dare to use the pedals.
"But, Miss Lily, don't you ever sing anything but scales?" demanded Jane
presently. Miss Deacon jumped, put her hand to her throat, and then
slowly turned her head.
"Oh--Janey! How you sc-alarmed me!"
"I'm sorry," said Jane, "Elise told me to give you these patterns. Here
they are in my bag. No--I don't believe she put 'em in at all. Well,
then it's her fault this time--no, here they are."
"Thank you so much. How thoughtful of you. Won't you come in?"
"Well, you're practising, aren't you?"
Lily shook her head.
"It's nearly five. And I'm tired."
"What a lovely day it is," she got up, and came to the window, where she
stood, looking up the street, one hand resting on the frame above her
head. The wind ruffled her hair a little, and blew the end of her lacy
kerchief against her cheek, shaking free a faint scent of sachet.
She sighed gently, and a momentary frown ruffled her smooth forehead.
"I wish--" she began impetuously, and then abruptly checked herself.
"What?" prompted Jane, curiously. For some reason, she really wanted
very much to know what Miss Lily wished. But Lily shook her head,
smiling a little awkwardly as if she regretted even having said so much;
or as if she wasn't sure herself what she did wish. Every now and again,
one caught that quick, vanishing expression in her large blue eyes,
which seemed to say, "I wish--" and never got any farther.
"Oh, I don't know what I was going to say. Something foolish, no doubt,"
and then to change the subject, she said hastily,
"I suppose you have heard the news about the Sheridan house?"
"No! What? It isn't sold, is it? If they tear it down, and build a
horrid old factory there, I don't know what I'll do."
"Oh, no--not that. But some member of the family is going to live there
again, and is already moving in."
"Why, that's nice," said Jane. What a lot of events were taking place in
Frederickstown! "Do you know who it is? Man, woman or child? Any people
of my age? Anybody _interesting_?"
Lily blushed slightly.
"Why, I'm not sure. I think there's only one--a Mr. Sheridan, I
suppose."
"Young, old or middle-aged?" inquired Jane, who had already rather lost
interest.
"Why, he seemed rather youngish," said Lily, blushing again, "but I
couldn't tell very well."
"When did you see him?"
"Why, I didn't exactly see him. I heard mamma talking about it last
night, and then this morning I just happened to see a carriage drive
past--in my mirror, while I was doing my hair, so of course, I couldn't
be sure--but, anyhow, someone was sitting in it leaning back, with a
stick--but it seemed to be fairly young--though I couldn't tell," Lily
explained confusedly. It seemed to her to be a little indelicate perhaps
to look at a fairly young man in a mirror, while you were doing your
hair.
"Um," said Jane. "Well, I suppose it's too late to go and investigate
now. But I think I'll go to-morrow."
"Oh, Jane! You couldn't do that!" said Lily, in a shocked tone.
"Why not? How else'll I find out."
"Why, I don't know."
"Very well then. Somebody's got to know something about strangers when
they come here."
"Yes--that's true," said Lily.
"Of course," said Jane. "It's what you call civic interest."
"Oh," said Lily,--she had been taught to call "it" curiosity; but then
mamma's vocabulary was not like other peoples'.
"I have a tremendous amount of civic interest," said Jane, complacently,
"I ought to be able to do this town a lot of good."
And with a jaunty wave of her hand, she took her leave. As she turned
out of Sheridan Lane, she once more heard the light, pure tones of
Lily's voice, but now they sounded a little gayer, a little warmer and
sweeter than they had before, and what was more, instead of the
monotonous scales, Lily was singing a pert song, which mamma, had she
heard it, would probably not have thought elegant at all.