Meg of Mystery Mountain. North Grace May
give him his pay every night, and he fetches it right home to his Dad. Of course my Daniel puts the money in bank for Gerald’s schooling, but the boy don’t know that. He thinks he’s helping, and bless him, nobody knows how much he is helping. There’s ways to bring comfort that no money could buy.”
Dan knew that Jane believed their gentle old grandmother was preaching at her. He was almost sorry. He feared that it was antagonizing Jane; nor was he wrong.
“Well, I think the back orchard was a strange place for father to have me meet him,” she said, almost angrily, as she flung herself out of the house. Dan sighed. Then, stooping, he kissed the little old lady. “Don’t feel badly, grandmother,” he said, adding hopefully: “The real Jane must waken soon.”
The proud, selfish girl, again rebellious, walked along the narrow path that led under the great, old, gnarled apple trees which the children had used for playhouses ever since they could climb. She felt like one stunned, or as though she were reading a tragic story and expected at every moment to be awakened to the joyful realization that it was not true.
Her father saw her coming and dropped the hoe that he had been plying between the long rows of beans. “How terribly he has changed,” Jane thought. He had indeed aged and there was on his sensitive face, which was more that of an idealist than a business man, the impress of sorrow, but also there was something else. Jane noticed it at once; an expression of firm, unwavering determination. She knew that appealing to his love for his daughter would be useless, great as that love was. A quotation she had learned in school flashed into her mind – “I could not love thee, dear, so much, loved I not honor more.”
There was, indeed, infinite tenderness in the clear gray eyes that looked at her, and then, without a word, he held out his arms, and suddenly Jane felt as she had when she was a little child, and things had gone wrong.
“Father! Father!” she sobbed, and then she clung to him, while he held her in a yearning, strong embrace, saying, “It’s hard, my daughter, terribly hard for all of us, but it was the thing that I had to do. Dan, I am sure, has told you all that happened. But it won’t be for long, Janey. What I have done once, I can do again.” He led her to a rustic bench under one of the trees, and removing her hat, he stroked her dark, glossy hair. “Jane, dear,” he implored, when her sobs grew less, “try to be brave, just for a time. Promise me!” Then, as the girl did not speak, the man went on, “We have tried so hard, all of us together, to make it possible for you to finish at Highacres. Poor Dan made the biggest sacrifice. I feared that I would have to send for you to come home, perhaps only for this term, but Dan wrote, ‘Father, use my college money for Jane’s tuition. I’ll work my way through for the rest of this year.’ And that is what he did. Notwithstanding the fact that he had to study until long after midnight, he worked during the day, nor did he stop when he caught a severe cold. He did not let us know how ill he was, but struggled on and finished the year with high honors, but, oh, my daughter, you can see how worn he is. Dr. Sanders tells me that Dan must go to the Colorado mountains for the summer and I have been waiting, dear, to talk it over with you. You will want to go with Dan to take care of him, won’t you, Jane?”
Almost before the girl knew that she was going to say it, she heard her self-pitying voice expostulating, “Oh, Dad, how cruel fate is! Marion Starr wanted me to go with her to Newport. They’re going to one of those adorable cottage-hotels, she and her Aunt Belle, and we three girls who have been Merry’s best friends were to go with her. It would only cost me one hundred dollars a month. That isn’t so very much, is it, Dad?”
Mr. Abbott sighed. “Jane,” and there was infinite reproach in his tone, “am I to believe that you are willing that Dan should go alone to the mountains to try to find there the health he lost in his endeavor to help you?”
Again the girl sobbed. “Oh, Dad, how selfish I am! How terribly selfish! I love Dan, but the thing I want to do is to go to Newport. Of course I know I can’t go, but, oh, how I do want to.”
The girl feared that her father would rebuke her angrily for the frank revelation of her lack of gratitude, but, instead, he rose, saying kindly as he assisted her to arise, “Jane, dear, you think that is what you want to do but I don’t believe it. Dan is to go West next Friday. My good friend Mr. Bethel, being president of a railroad, has sent me the passes. As you know, I still own a little cabin on Mystery Mountain which I purchased for almost nothing when I graduated from college and went West to seek my fortune. There is no mystery, and there was no wealth, but I have paid the taxes until last year and those Dan shall pay, as I do not want to lose the place. It was to that cabin, as you have often heard us tell, that your mother and I went for our honeymoon. You need not decide today, daughter. If you prefer to go with your friends, I will find a way to send you.”
CHAPTER V
JANE’S SMALL BROTHER
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