Dan pressed his lips firmly together. He feared that if his torrent of angry thoughts were expressed it might form a barrier between himself and his sister that the future could not tear down, and so, after taking a deep breath that seemed almost a half sob, he again placed his hand tenderly on the cold white one that lay listlessly near him.
“Sis, dear,” he implored, “try to be brave, won’t you? I’ll do all I can to make things easier for you, and so will Dad. He’s pretty much stunned, just now, but, oh, little girl, you can’t guess how he is dreading your homecoming. That’s why I offered to meet you at the ferry station. I wanted to tell you and save Dad that agony of spirit. If you would only go in brightly and say, what our dear mother would have said, it will do more to help our father than anything else in this world.”
Selfish as Jane was, she dearly loved the brother who had idolized her, and who in moments of great tenderness had always called her his little girl, remembering only that she was three years younger and in need of his protection.
Tears sprang to her eyes, but as the train was drawing in at the Edgemere station she only had time to say, “I’ll try. But, oh, it is so hard, so hard.”
Dan engaged a hack and after assisting his sister in, he sat beside her. Then, as they drove along the pleasant streets of the village that were shaded by wide spreading elms, the lad told her what changes had occurred in their home.
“Mrs. Beach, our housekeeper, and Nora, her assistant, have left, and our dear old grandmother has closed up her farm in Vermont and is staying with father. It has been his greatest comfort to have his mother with him. You always thought her ways so old-fashioned and farmerish, Jane, but for all that she is the sweetest kind of a little old lady and as brisk and capable as she was two years ago when we visited the farm.”
There was a slight curl to Jane’s lips, but she merely said: “I suppose I shall be expected to wash dishes now. We must be terribly poor if we couldn’t even keep Nora.”
“But we have one big blessing,” Dan said brightly, “the home, which was mother’s can not be taken from us, for it belongs to us children.”
Jane was not listening. She was trying to figure out something in her own mind. “Dan.” She turned toward him suddenly. “I can’t see why Dad lost his money, just because he did not want to be a partner in what he considered a dishonest oil deal. Explain it to me a little more clearly.”
“I didn’t at first,” her brother confessed, “fearing that it would not have your sympathy. Many poor people invested their entire savings in the oil deal, supposing that father’s firm could be relied upon to be absolutely honest. It is their money, much of it, which is making the rich men richer. Our father, knowing that many had invested their all because they trusted his personal integrity, has turned over his entire fortune to make up their losses, as far as it will go.” Dan was sorry he had to make this explanation, for he saw at once the hard expression returning to the eyes of his sister.
“If our father has greater consideration for the poor of New York than he has for his own children, you can not expect me to express much sympathy for him.”
“Dear girl, wouldn’t you rather have our father honest than rich?” The lad’s clear grey eyes looked at her searchingly.
Jane put her hand to her forehead as though it ached. “Oh, Dan,” she said, wearily, “you and father have different ideals from what I have, I guess. I never really gave any thought to these things. I like comfort and nice clothes and I hate, hate, hate drudgery and work of every kind. I suppose now I shall have to scrub for a living.” Jane was recalling what the working girl on the ferry had said.
Dan’s amused laughter rang out. “Oh, Jane, what nonsense. Do you suppose that while I have a strong right arm I would let my little pal work in any of those drudgery ways? No, indeed, so forget that fear, if it’s haunting you.” But the boy could say no more, for another violent coughing spell racked his frail body.
Instantly Jane was self-reproachful. “Oh, Dan, Dan,” she said, “I know you would give your very life to help me. I’m so selfish, so very selfish! I’m going to think of only one thing, and that is how I can help you to get well, for I can see now that you must have been ill.”
The boy took advantage of this momentary tender spell to turn and take the girl’s hands in his and say imploringly: “Dear, we’re almost home. If you really want to help me to get well, be loving and brave to Dad. Your unhappiness grieves me more than our loss, little girl, and I can’t get strong while I am so worried.”
There were again tears in the beautiful dark eyes of the girl, and impulsively she kissed the one person on earth whom she truly loved. “Brother, for your sake I’ll try to be brave,” she said with a half sob as the hack stopped in front of their home.
CHAPTER IV
A SAD HOMECOMING
As Jane walked up the circling graveled path which led to the picturesque, rambling, low-built brown house that she called home her heart was filled with conflicting emotions. She bit her trembling lips and brushed away the tears that quivered on her eyelashes. She knew, oh, how well she knew, that they were prompted only by self-pity. She struggled to awaken the nobler self that her brother was so confident still slumbered in her soul, but she could not. She felt cold, hard, indignant every time she recalled that her father had sacrificed his children’s comfort for a Quixotic ideal. “It is no use trying,” she assured herself, noticing vaguely that they were passing the rose garden, which was a riot of fragrant, colorful bloom. How tenderly her father cared for that garden, for every bush in it had been planted by the loved one who was gone.
The tall lad carrying her satchels walked silently at Jane’s side. He well knew the conflict that was raging in the heart of the girl he had always loved, in spite of her ever-increasing selfishness, with a tenderness akin to that which he had given his mother, but he said no word to try to help. This was a moment when Jane must stand alone.
They were ascending the wide front steps when the door of the house was flung open and a little girl of ten leaped out with a glad cry. “Oh, Janey, my wonderful big sister Janey.” Two arms were held out, and in another moment, as the older girl well knew, she would be in one of those crushing embraces that the younger children called “bear hugs.” She frowned slightly. “Don’t, Julie!” she implored. “My suit has just been pressed. Won’t you ever grow up, and greet people in a more dignified way?”
The glad expression on the freckled face of the little girl, who could not be called really pretty, changed instantly. Her lips quivered and her eyes filled with tears. “Don’t be a silly,” Jane said rebukingly, as she stooped and kissed the child indifferently on the forehead.
A dear old lady, wearing a pretty lavender gingham and a white “afternoon apron,” appeared in the doorway all a-flutter of happy excitement. She had not seen Jane for two years, and she took the girl’s hands in her own that trembled.
“Dear, dear Jenny!” (How the graduate of fashionable Highacres had always hated the name her grandmother had given her.) “What a blessing ’tis that you have come home at last. It’ll mean more to your father to have you here than you can think.” The old lady evidently did not notice the scornful curling of the girl’s lips, or, if she did, she purposely pretended that she did not, and kept on with her speech. “You know, dearie, you’re the perfect image of that other Jane my Daniel loved so dearly, and she was just your age, Jenny, when they met. It’ll be like meeting her all over again to have you coming home now, when he’s in such trouble, you being so like her, and she was most tender and brave and unselfish.”
Even the grandmother noticed that her well-meant speech was not acceptable, for the girl’s impatience was ill concealed.
“Where is my father?” she said in a voice which gave Dan little hope that the nobler self in the girl had been awakened.
“He’s working in the garden, dearie; out beyond the apple orchard,” the old lady said tremulously. “He told me when you came