"I don't think I can eat anything, Aunt Irene."
"But you must, lovey. I'm going to love you but I'm not going to spoil you. I expect you've always had a little too much of your own way. Your father may be along almost any minute now. Sit right down here and eat your cereal."
Jane tried. Aunt Irene had certainly prepared a lovely breakfast for her. Orange juice ... cereal with thick golden cream ... dainty triangles of toast ... a perfectly poached egg ... apple jelly between amber and crimson. There was no doubt Aunt Irene was a good cook. But Jane had never had a harder time choking down a meal.
"Don't be so excited, lovey," said Aunt Irene with a smile as to some very young child who needed soothing.
Jane did not think she was excited. She had merely a queer, dreadful, empty feeling which nothing, not even the egg, seemed able to fill up. And after breakfast there was an hour when Jane discovered that the hardest work in the world is waiting. But everything comes to an end and when Aunt Irene said, "There's your father now," Jane felt that everything had come to an end.
Her hands were suddenly clammy but her mouth was dry. The ticking of the clock seemed unnaturally loud. There was a step on the path ... the door opened ... someone was standing on the threshold. Jane stood up but she could not raise her eyes ... she could not.
"Here's your baby," said Aunt Irene. "Isn't she a little daughter to be proud of, 'Drew? A bit too tall for her age perhaps, but ..."
"A russet-haired jade," said a voice.
Only four words ... but they changed life for Jane. Perhaps it was the voice more than the words ... a voice that made everything seem like a wonderful secret just you two shared. Jane came to life at last and looked up.
Peaked eyebrows ... thick reddish-brown hair springing back from his forehead ... a mouth tucked in at the corners ... square cleft chin ... stern hazel eyes with jolly looking wrinkles around them. The face was as familiar to her as her own.
"Kenneth Howard," gasped Jane. She took a quite unconscious step towards him.
The next moment she was lifted in his arms and kissed. She kissed him back. She had no sense of strangerhood. She felt at once the call of that mysterious kinship of soul which has nothing to do with the relationships of flesh and blood. In that one moment Jane forgot that she had ever hated her father. She liked him ... she liked everything about him from the nice tobaccoey smell of his heather-mixture tweed suit to the firm grip of his arms around her. She wanted to cry but that was out of the question so she laughed instead ... rather wildly, perhaps, for Aunt Irene said tolerantly, "Poor child, no wonder she is a little hysterical."
Father set Jane down and looked at her. All the sternness of his eyes had crinkled into laughter.
"Are you hysterical, my Jane?" he said gravely.
How she loved to be called "my Jane" like that!
"No, father," she said with equal gravity. She never spoke of him or thought of him as "he" again.
"Leave her with me a month and I'll fatten her up," smiled Aunt Irene.
Jane felt a quake of dismay. Suppose father did leave her. Evidently father had no intention of doing anything of the sort. He pulled her down on the sofa beside him and kept his arm about her. All at once everything was all right.
"I don't believe I want her fattened up. I like her bones." He looked at Jane critically. Jane knew he was looking her over and didn't mind. She only hoped madly that he would like her. Would he be disappointed because she was not pretty? Would he think her mouth too big? "Do you know you have nice little bones, Janekin?"
"She's got her Grandfather Stuart's nose," said Aunt Irene. Aunt Irene evidently approved of Jane's nose but Jane had a disagreeable feeling that she had robbed Grandfather Stuart of his nose. She liked it better when father said:
"I rather fancy the way your eyelashes are put on, Jane. By the way, do you like to be Jane? I've always called you Jane but that may be just pure cussedness. You've a right to whatever name you like. But I want to know which name is the real YOU and which the shadowy little ghost."
"Oh, I'm Jane," cried Jane. And was she glad to be Jane!
"That's settled then. And suppose you call me dad? I'm afraid I'd make a terribly awkward father but I think I could be a tolerable dad. Sorry I couldn't get in last night but my jovial, disreputable old car died right on the road. I managed to restore it to life this morning ... at least long enough to hop into town like a toad ... our mode of travelling added to the gaiety of P. E. Island ... but I'm afraid it's got to go into a garage for a while. After dinner we'll drive across the Island, Jane, and get acquainted."
"We're acquainted now," said Jane simply. It was true. She felt that she had known dad for years. Yes, "dad" was nicer than "father." "Father" had unpleasant associations ... she had hated father. But it was easy to love dad. Jane opened the most secret chamber of her heart and took him in ... nay, found him there. For dad was Kenneth Howard and Jane had loved Kenneth Howard for a long, long time.
"This Jane person," dad remarked to the ceiling, "knows her onions."
Chapter 14
Jane found that waiting for something pleasant was very different from waiting for something unpleasant. Mrs Stanley would not have known her with the laughter and sparkle in her eyes. If the forenoon seemed long it was only because she was in such a hurry to be with dad again ... and away from Aunt Irene. Aunt Irene was trying to pump her ... about grandmother and mother and her life at 60 Gay. Jane was not going to be pumped, much to Aunt Irene's disappointment. Questioned she never so cleverly, Jane had a disconcerting "yes" or "no" for every question and still more disconcerting silence for suggestive remarks that were disguised questions.
"So your Grandmother Kennedy is good to you, Janie?"
"Very good," said Jane unflinchingly. Well, grandmother WAS good to her. There were St Agatha's and the music lessons and the pretty clothes, the limousine and the balanced meals as evidence. Aunt Irene had looked carefully at all her clothes.
"She never had any use for your father, you know, Janie. I thought perhaps she might take her spite out on you. It was really she that made all the trouble between him and your mother."
Jane said nothing. She would not talk about that secret bitterness to Aunt Irene. Aunt Irene gave up in disgust.
Dad came back at noon without his car but with a horse and buggy.
"It's going to take all day to fix it. I'm borrowing Jed Carson's rig and he'll take it back when he brings the car and Jane's trunk out to-morrow. Did you ever have a buggy ride, my Jane?"
"You're not going without your dinners," said Aunt Irene.
Jane enjoyed that dinner, having eaten next to nothing ever since she left Toronto. She hoped dad wouldn't think her appetite terrible. For all she knew he was poor ... that car hadn't looked like wealth ... and another mouth to fill might be inconvenient. But dad himself was evidently enjoying his dinner ... especially that chocolate peppermint cake. Jane wished she knew how to make chocolate peppermint cake, but she made up her mind that she would never ask Aunt Irene how to make it.
Aunt Irene made a fuss over dad. She purred over him ... actually purred. And dad liked her purring and her honey-sweet phrases just as well as he had liked her cake. Jane saw that clearly.
"It isn't really fair to the child to take her out to that Brookview boarding-house of yours," said Aunt Irene.
"Who knows but I'll get a house of my own for the summer?" said dad. "Do you think you could keep house for me, Jane?"
"Yes," said Jane promptly. She COULD. She knew how a house should be kept even if she had never kept one. There are people who are born knowing things.
"Can you cook?" asked Aunt Irene, winking at dad, as if over some delicious joke. Jane was pleased to see that dad did not wink back. And he saved her the ordeal of replying.