Dad handed over fifty dollars and said the rest would be paid next day.
"The house is yours," said Jimmy John with an air of making them a present of it. But Jane knew the house had always been theirs.
"The house ... and the pond ... and the harbour ... and the gulf! A good buy," said dad. "And half an acre of land. All my life I've wanted to own a bit of land ... just enough to stand on and say, 'This is mine.' And now, Jane, it's brillig."
"Four o'clock in the afternoon." Jane knew her Alice too well to be caught tripping on that.
Just as they were leaving, a pocket edition of Jimmy John, with a little impudent face came tearing through the maple grove with the key which had turned up in his absence. Jimmy John handed it to Jane with a bow. Jane clutched it tightly all the way back to Brookview. She loved it. Think what it would open for her!
They discovered they were hungry, having forgotten all about dinner, so they fished out Mrs Meade's butter cookies and ate them.
"You'll let me do the cooking, dad?"
"Why, you'll have to. I can't."
Jane glowed.
"I wish we could move in to-morrow, dad."
"Why not? I can get some bedding and some food. We can go on from there."
"I just can't bear to have this day go," said Jane. "It doesn't seem as if there could ever be another so happy."
"We've got to-morrow, Jane ... let me see ... we've got about ninety-five to-morrows."
"Ninety-five," gloated Jane.
"And we'll do just as we want to inside of decency. We'll be clean but not too clean. We'll be lazy but not too lazy ... just do enough to keep three jumps ahead of the wolf. And we'll never have in our house that devilish thing known as an intermittent alarm clock."
"But we must have some kind of a clock," said Jane.
"Timothy Salt down at the harbour mouth has an old ship's clock. I'll get him to lend it to us. It only goes when it feels like it, but what matter? Can you darn my socks, Jane?"
"Yes," said Jane, who had never darned a sock in her life.
"Jane, we're sitting on the top of the world. It was a piece of amazing luck, your asking that man, Jane."
"It wasn't luck. I KNEW he'd know," said Jane. "And oh, dad, can we keep the house a secret till we've moved in?"
"Of course," agreed dad. "From every one except Aunt Irene. We'll have to tell her, of course."
Jane said nothing. She had not known till dad spoke that it was really from Aunt Irene she wished to keep it secret.
Jane didn't believe she would sleep that night. How could one go to sleep with so many wonderful things to think of? And some that were very puzzling. How could two people like mother and dad hate each other? It didn't make sense. They were both so lovely in different ways. They must have loved each other once. What had changed them? If she, Jane, only knew the whole truth, perhaps she could do something about it.
But as she drifted off into dreams of spruce-shadowed red roads that all led to dear little houses, her last conscious thought was "I wonder if we can get our milk at the Jimmy Johns'."
Chapter 17
They "moved in" the next afternoon. Dad and Jane went to town in the forenoon and got a load of canned stuff and some bedding. Jane also got some gingham dresses and aprons. She knew none of the clothes grandmother had bought for her would be of any use at Lantern Hill. And she slipped into a bookstore unbeknown to dad and bought a Cookery for Beginners. Mother had given her a dollar when she left and she was not going to take any chances.
They called to see Aunt Irene but Aunt Irene was out, and Jane had her own reasons for being pleased about this but she kept them to herself. After dinner they tied Jane's trunk and suitcase on the running-boards and bounced off to Lantern Hill. Mrs Meade gave them a box of doughnuts, three leaves of bread, a round pat of butter with a pattern of clover-leaves on it, a jar of cream, a raisin pie and three dried codfish.
"Put one in soak to-night and broil it for your breakfast in the morning," she told Jane.
The house was still there. Jane had been half afraid it would be stolen in the night. It seemed so entirely desirable to her that she couldn't imagine any one else not wanting it. She felt so sorry for Aunt Matilda Jollie who had had to die and leave it. It was hard to believe that, even in the golden mansions, Aunt Matilda Jollie wouldn't miss the house on Lantern Hill.
"Let me unlock the door, please, dad." She was trembling with delight as she stepped over the threshold.
"This ... this is home," said Jane. Home ... something she had never known before. She was nearer crying then than she had ever been in her life.
They ran over the house like a couple of children. There were three rooms upstairs ... a quite large one to the north, which Jane decided at once must be father's.
"Wouldn't you like it yourself, blithe spirit? The window looks over the gulf."
"No, I want this dear little one at the back. I want a LITTLE room, dad. And the other one will do nicely for a guest-room."
"Do we need a guest-room, Jane? Let me remind you that the measure of any one's freedom is what he can do without."
"Oh, but of course we need a guest-room, dad." Jane was quite tickled over the thought. "We'll have company sometimes, won't we?"
"There isn't a bed in it."
"Oh, we'll get one somewhere. Dad, the house is glad to see us ... glad to be lived in again. The chairs just want someone to sit on them."
"Little sentimentalist!" jeered dad. But there was understanding laughter behind his eyes.
The house was surprisingly clean. Jane was to learn later that as soon as they knew Aunt Matilda Jollie's house was sold, Mrs Jimmy John and Miranda Jimmy John had come over, got in at one of the kitchen windows and given the whole place a Dutch cleaning from top to bottom. Jane was almost sorry the house was clean. She would have liked to clean it. She wanted to do everything for it.
"I am as bad as Aunt Gertrude," she thought. And a little glimmer of understanding of Aunt Gertrude came to her.
There was nothing to do just now but put the mattresses and clothes on the beds, the cans in the kitchen cupboard, and the butter and cream in the cellar. Dad hung Mrs Meade's codfish on the nails behind the kitchen stove.
"We'll have sausages for supper," Jane was saying.
"Janekin," said dad, clutching his hair in dismay, "I forgot to buy a frying-pan."
"Oh, there's an iron frying-pan in the bottom of the cupboard," said Jane serenely. "And a three-legged cooking-pot," she added in triumph.
There was nothing about the house that Jane did not know by this time. Dad had kindled a fire in the stove and fed it with some of Aunt Matilda Jollie's wood, Jane keeping a watchful eye on him as he did it. She had never seen a fire made in a stove before but she meant to know how to do it herself next time. The stove was a bit wobbly on one of its feet but Jane found a piece of flat stone in the yard which fitted nicely under it and everything was shipshape. Dad went over to the Jimmy Johns' to borrow a pail of water--the well had to be cleaned out before they could use it--and Jane set the table with a red and white cloth like Mrs Meade's and the dishes dad had got at the five-and-ten. She went out to the neglected garden and picked a bouquet of bleeding-heart and June lilies for the centre. There was nothing, to hold them but Jane found a rusty old tin can somewhere, swathed it in a green silk scarf she had dug out of her trunk--it was an expensive silk scarf Aunt Minnie had given her--and arranged her flowers in it. She cut and buttered bread, she made tea and fried the sausages. She had never done anything of the kind before but she had not watched Mary for nothing.
"It's good to get my legs under my own table again," said dad, as they sat down to supper.