Jane liked Uncle Tombstone, too. In fact, nothing in her new life amazed her more than the ease with which she liked people. It seemed as if every one she met was sealed of her tribe. She thought it must be that the P. E. Islanders were nicer, or at least more neighbourly, than the Toronto people. She did not realize that the change was in herself. She was no longer rebuffed, frightened, awkward because she was frightened. Her foot was on her native heath and her name was Jane. She felt friendly towards all the world and all the world responded. She could love all she wanted to ... everybody she wanted to ... without being accused of low tastes. Probably grandmother would not have recognized Uncle Tombstone socially; but the standards of 60 Gay were not the standards of Lantern Hill.
As for the Jimmy Johns, Jane felt as if she must have known them all her life. They were so called, she discovered, because Mr James John Garland had a James Garland to the north-east of him and a John Garland to the south-west of him, and so had to be distinguished in some way. Her first forenoon at Lantern Hill all the Jimmy Johns came galloping over in a body. At least, the young fry galloped with the three dogs ... a brindled bull-terrier, a golden collie and a long brown dog who was just a dog. Mrs Jimmy John, who was as tall and thin as her Jimmy John was short and fat, with very wise, gentle grey eyes, walked briskly, carrying in her arms a baby as fat as a sausage. Miranda Jimmy John, who was sixteen, was as tall as her mother and as fat as her father. She had had a double chin at ten and nobody would ever believe that she was secretly overflowing with romance. Polly Jimmy John was Jane's age but looked younger because she was short and thin. "Punch" Jimmy John who had brought the key was thirteen. There were the eight-year-old twins ... the George twin and the Ella twin ... their bare chubby legs all spotted with mosquito bites. And every one of them had a pleasant smile.
"Jane Victoria Stuart?" said Mrs Jimmy John with a questioning smile.
"Jane!" said Jane, with such an intonation of triumph that the Jimmy Johns all stared at her.
"Jane, of course," smiled Mrs Jimmy John. Jane knew she was going to like Mrs Jimmy John.
Everybody except the baby had brought a present for Jane. Mrs Jimmy John gave her a lamb skin dyed red for a bedside rug. Miranda brought her a little fat white jug with pink roses on its sides, Punch brought her some early radishes, Polly brought her a rooted geranium slip and the twins brought a toad apiece "for her garden."
"You have to have toads in your garden for luck," explained Punch.
Jane felt it would never do to let her first callers go home without something to eat, especially when they had come bearing gifts.
"Mrs Meade's pie will go round if I don't take a piece," she thought. "The baby won't want any."
The baby DID want some but Mrs Jimmy John shared hers with him. They sat around in the kitchen on the chairs and on the sandstone doorstep and ate the pie while Jane radiated hospitality.
"Come over whenever you can, dear," Mrs Jimmy John told her. Mrs Jimmy John thought Jane pretty young to be keeping house for anybody. "If there's any way we can help you, we'll be glad to."
"Will you teach me how to make bread?" said Jane coolly. "We can get it at the Corners of course but dad likes home-made bread. And what kind of cake flour would you recommend?"
Jane got acquainted with the Snowbeams also that week. The Solomon Snowbeams were a rather neglected rapscallion family who lived in a ramshackle house where the spruce barrens ran down to a curve of the harbour shore known as Hungry Cove. Nobody knew how Solomon Snowbeam contrived to feed his family ... he fished a little and "worked out" a little and shot a little. Mrs Snowbeam was a big, pink, overblown woman and Caraway Snowbeam, "Shingle" Snowbeam, Penny Snowbeam and "Young John" Snowbeam were impudent, friendly little creatures who certainly did not looked starved. Millicent Mary Snowbeam, aged six, was neither impudent nor friendly. Millicent Mary was, so Polly Garland told Jane, not all there. She had blank, velvety nut-brown eyes ... all the Snowbeams had beautiful eyes ... reddish golden hair and a dazzling complexion. She could sit for hours without speaking--perhaps that was why the chattering Jimmy Johns thought her not all there--with her fat arms clasped around her fat knees. She seemed to be possessed of a dumb admiration for Jane and haunted Lantern Hill all that summer, gazing at her. Jane did not mind her.
If Millicent Mary did not talk, the rest of the Snowbeams made up for it. At first they were inclined to resent Jane a bit, thinking she must know everything because she came from Toronto and would be putting on airs about it. But when they discovered she hardly knew anything ... except the little Uncle Tombstone had taught her about clams ... they became very friendly. That is to say, they asked innumerable questions. There was no false delicacy about any of the Snowbeams.
"Does your pa put live people in his stories?" asked Penny.
"No," said Jane.
"Everybody round here says he does. Everybody's scared he'll put them in. He'd better not put US in if he doesn't want his snoot busted. I'm the toughest boy in Lantern Hill."
"Do you think you are interesting enough to put in a story?" asked Jane.
Penny was a little scared of her after that.
"We've been wanting to see what you looked like," said Shingle, who wore overalls and looked like a boy but wasn't, "because your pa and ma are divorced, ain't they?"
"No," said Jane.
"Is your pa a widow then?" persisted Shingle.
"No."
"Does your ma live in Toronto?"
"Yes."
"Why doesn't she live here with your pa?"
"If you ask me any more questions about my parents," said Jane, "I'll get dad to put you into one of his stories--every one of you."
Shingle was cowed but Caraway took up the tale.
"Do you look like your mother?"
"No. My mother is the most beautiful woman in Toronto," said Jane proudly.
"Do you live in a white marble house at home?"
"No."
"Ding-dong Bell said you did," said Caraway in disgust. "Ain't he the awful liar? And I s'pose you don't have satin bedspreads either?"
"We have silk ones," said Jane.
"Ding-dong said you had satin."
"I see the butcher bringing your dinner up the lane," said Young John. "What are you having?"
"Steak."
"My stars! We never have steak ... nothing but bread and molasses and fried salt pork. Dad says he can't look a pig in the face 'thout grunting and mam says let him bring her home something else and she'll be mighty glad to cook it. Is that a cake you're making? Say, will you let me lick out the pan?"
"Yes, but stand back from the table. Your shirt is all over chaff," ordered Jane.
"Ain't you the bossy snip?" said Young John.
"Foxy-head," said Penny.
They all went home mad because Jane Stuart had insulted Young John. But they all came back next day and forgivingly helped her weed and clean up her garden. It was hard work and it was a hot day so that their brows were wet with honest sweat long before they had done it to Jane's taste. If anybody had made them work as hard as that they would have howled to high heaven; but when it was for fun ... why, it WAS fun.
Jane gave them the last of Mrs Meade's cookies. She meant to try a batch of her own next day anyhow.
Jane had already decided that there was never a garden in the world like hers. She was crazy about it. An early, old-fashioned yellow rose-bush was already in bloom. Shadows of poppies danced here and there. The stone dike was smothered in wild rose-bushes starred with crimson bud-sheaths. Pale lemon lilies and creamy June lilies grew in the corners. There were ribbon-grass and mint, bleeding- heart, prince's feather, southernwood, peonies, sweet balm, sweet may, sweet-william, all with sated velvet bees humming over them. Aunt Matilda Jollie had been content with old-fashioned perennials and Jane loved them too, but she made up her mind that by hook or crook she would have some annuals next summer. Jane, at the beginning of this summer, was already planning for next.