  There were many conflicting emotions in the heart of the tall, beautiful girl as she walked slowly back to the house, her father at her side with one arm lovingly about her. “Jane,” he said tenderly, “I wish there were words in our English language that could adequately express the joy it is to me because you are so like your mother, and, strangely perhaps, Dan is as much like me as I was at his age as you are like that other Jane. She was tall and willowy, with the same bright, uplifting of her dark eyes when she was pleased.” Then the man sighed, and he said almost pleadingly, “You do realize, do you not, daughter, that I would do anything that was right to give you pleasure?” Vaguely the girl replied, “Why, I suppose so, Dad. I don’t quite understand ideals and ethics. I’ve never given much thought to them.” Jane could say no more, for, vaulting over the low fence beyond the orchard, a vigorous boy of twelve appeared, and, if ten-year-old Julie had made a terrifying onrush, this boy’s attack resembled that of a little wild Indian. “Whoopla!” he fairly shouted, “If here isn’t old Jane! Bully, but that’s great! Did you bring me anything?” There was no fending off the boy’s well meant embraces, and Jane emerged from them with decidedly ruffled feelings. “I certainly don’t like to have you call me old Jane,” she scolded. “I think it is very lacking in respect. Father, I wish you would tell Gerald to call me Sister Jane.” Mr. Abbott reprimanded the crestfallen lad, then he told the girl that the boy had not meant to be disrespectful. “You know, Jane, that children use certain phrases until they are worn ragged, and just now ‘old’ is applied to everything of which Gerald is especially fond. It is with him a term of endearment.” Then, with a smile of loving encouragement for the boy, their father added: “Why, that youngster even calls me ‘old Dad’ and I confess I rather like it.” The boy did not again address his sister, but going to the other side of his father, he clung affectionately to his arm and hopped along on one foot and then on the other as though he had quite forgotten the rebuff, but he had not. They entered a side door and Jane went upstairs to her own pleasant room with its wide bow windows that opened out over the tops of the apple trees and toward the sloping green hills for which New Jersey is famous. Grandmother was in the kitchen preparing a supper such as Jane had liked two years before when she had visited the Vermont farm, and Julie was setting the table, when Gerald appeared. Straddling a chair he blurted out, “Say, isn’t Jane a spoil-joy? I’m awful sorry her school’s let out, and ’tisn’t only for vacation that she’ll be home. Dan says it’s forever ’n ever ’n ever. She’ll be trying to tell us where to head in. We’ll have about as much fun as—as—(the boy was trying hard to think of a suitable simile)—as—a——” Then as he was still floundering, Julie, holding a handful of silver knives and forks, whirled and said brightly, “as a rat in a dog kennel. You know last week how awful unhappy that rat was that puppy had in his kennel, till you held his collar and let the poor thing get away.” Then as the small girl continued on her way around the long table placing the silver by each plate, she said hopefully, “Don’t let’s mope about it yet. Jane always goes a-visitin’ her school friends every summer and like’s not she will this.” “Humph! She must be heaps nicer other places than she is here, or folks wouldn’t want her.” Their mutual commiserating came to an abrupt end, for Grandma appeared from the kitchen with a covered dish, out of which a delicious aroma was escaping. Then in from the other door came Dad, one arm about Jane and the other about Dan. Grandma glanced anxiously at her big son. His expression was hard to read, but he seemed happier. How she hoped Jane had proved herself a worthy daughter of her mother. It is well, perhaps, that we cannot read the thoughts of those nearest us, for all that evening Jane was wondering how she could make over her last summer’s wardrobe that it might appear new even in a fashionable cottage-hotel. On Thursday, directly after breakfast, Jane went up to her room without having offered to help with the morning work. She had never even made her own bed in all the eighteen years of her life and the thought did not suggest itself to her that she might be useful. Or, if it did, she assured herself that Julie was far more willing and much more capable as a helper for their grandmother than she, Jane, could possibly be. The truth was that bright-eyed, eager, light-footed little Julie was far more welcome than the older girl, bored, sulky, and selfish, would have been. Dan left early for the city, where he wished to purchase a few things he would need while “roughing it” in the Colorado mountains. Gerald went with him as far as the cross-roads, then the older boy tramped on to the depot while the younger one, whistling gaily and even turning a handspring now and then, proceeded to his place of business, and was soon nearly hidden in an apron much too big for him, while he swept out the store. Mr. Abbott had watched his older daughter closely during that morning meal. He had said little to her, but had conversed cheerily with Dan, telling him just what khaki garments he would need, and, at Gerald’s urging, he had retold exciting adventures that he had had in that old log cabin in the long ago days, when he had first purchased it. How the boy wished that he, also, could go to that wonderful Mystery Mountain, but not for one moment would he let Dad know of this yearning. He was needed at home to earn what he could by working at the Peterson grocery. His big brother was not well, so he, Gerald, must take his place as father’s helper. He was a little boy, only twelve, and it took courage to whistle and turn handsprings when he would far rather have crept away into some hidden fence corner and sobbed out his longing for travel and adventure. All that sunny July morning Mr. Abbott worked in his garden back of the apple orchard. Often as he hoed between the long rows of thrifty vegetables, the sorrowing man glanced up at the windows of the room in which he knew his beloved daughter sat. How he wished she would come out and talk with him, even if it were to tell him that she had decided that she wanted to go with her friends to Newport. He had promised to find a way to obtain the $300 she would need, if she wished to go for three months. He sighed deeply, and, being hidden from the house by a gnarled old apple tree, he stopped his work and took from his pocket an often read letter from an old friend who had offered to loan him any sum, large or small, at any time that it might be needed. “If Jane wants to go, I’ll wire for the money,” he decided. Never before had a morning dragged so slowly for the man who was used to the whirl, confusion and excitement of Wall Street. And yet, though he hardly realized it, the warm, gentle breeze rustling among the leaves of the trees, the smell of the freshly turned earth in which he was working, the cheerful singing of the birds far and near—brought into his soul a sense of peace. At the end of one row he stood up, very straight as he had stood before it had all happened, and looking up into the radiant blue sky, he seemed to know, deep in the heart of him, that all would be well. It was with a brisker step than he had walked in many a day that he returned to the house, when little Julie appeared at the back door to ring the luncheon bell. “Surely Jane has decided by now,” he told himself. “And equally surely she will want to go West with the brother who has sacrificed himself, his ease and his health that she might finish her course at Highacres.” So confident was he of his daughter’s real nobility of nature that he found himself planning what he would suggest that she take with her. She would ask him about that at lunch. There was not much time to prepare, but she would need little in that wild mountain country. At last he heard her slowly descending the stairs. His anxiety increased. What would Jane’s decision be? |
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