At first Jane had believed with a touching faith in that epic of Methuselah. But now it was just a standing joke at Lantern Hill. When dad said he must knock off another canto, Jane knew he had to write some profound treatise for Saturday Evening and must not be disturbed. He did not mind having her around when he wrote poetry-- love lyrics, idylls, golden sonnets--but poetry did not pay very well and Saturday Evening did.
Jane set out after supper for Little Aunt Em's. The Snowbeams, who had already missed one excitement that afternoon, wanted to go with her in a body, but Jane refused their company. Then they were all mad and--with the exception of Shingle who decided it wasn't ladylike to push yourself in where you weren't wanted and went home to Hungry Cove--persisted in accompanying Jane for quite a distance, walking close to the fence in exaggerated awe and calling out taunts as she marched disdainfully down the middle of the road.
"Ain't it a pity her ears stick out?" said Penny.
Jane knew her ears didn't stick out so this didn't worry her. But the next thing did.
"S'posen you meet a crocodile on the side-road?" called Caraway. "That'd be worse than a cow."
Jane winced. How in the world did the Snowbeams know she was afraid of cows? She thought she had hidden that very cleverly.
The Snowbeams had got their tongues loosened up now and peppered Jane with a perfect barrage of insults.
"Did you ever see such a high-and-lofty, stuck-up minx?"
"Proud as a cat driving a buggy, ain't you?"
"Too grand for the likes of us."
"I always said you'd a proud mouth."
"Do you think Little Aunt Em will give you any lunch?"
"If she does I know what it will be," yelled Penny. "Raspberry vinegar and two cookies and a sliver of cheese. Yah! Who'd eat that? Yah!"
"I'll bet you're afraid of the dark."
Jane, who was not in the least afraid of the dark, still preserved a withering silence.
"You're a foreigner," said Penny.
Nothing else they had said mattered. Jane knew her Snowbeams. But this infuriated her. She--a foreigner! In her own darling Island where she had been born! She stopped short at Penny.
"Just you wait," she said with concentrated venom, "till the next time any of you want to scrape a bowl."
The Snowbeams all stopped short. They had not thought of this. Better not rile Jane Stuart any more.
"Aw, we didn't mean to hurt your feelings ... honest," protested Caraway. They promptly started homeward but the irrepressible Young John yelled, "Good-bye, Collarbones," as he turned.
Jane, after she had shrugged off the Snowbeams, had a good time with herself on that walk. That she could go where she liked over the countryside, unhindered, uncriticized, was one of the most delightful things about her life at Lantern Hill. She was glad of an excuse to explore the side-road where Little Aunt Em lived. She had often wondered where it went to--that timid little red road, laced with firs and spruces, that tried to hide itself by twisting and turning. The air was full of the scent of sun-warmed grasses gone to seed, the trees talked all about her in some lost sweet language of elder days, rabbits hopped out of the ferns and into them. In a little hollow she saw a faded sign by the side of the road ... straggling black letters on a white board, put up years agone by an old man, long since dead. "Ho, every one that thirsteth come ye to the waters." Jane followed the pointing finger down a fairy path between the trees and found a deep clear spring, rimmed in by mossy stones. She stooped and drank, cupping the water in her brown palm. A squirrel was impudent to her from an old beech and Jane sassed him back. She would have liked to linger there but the western sky above the tree-tops was already filled with golden rays, and she must hasten. When she passed up out of the brook hollow, she saw Little Aunt Em's house curled up like a cat on the hillside. A long lane led up to it, edged with clumps of white and gold life-everlasting. When Jane reached the house she found Little Aunt Em spinning on a little wheel set before her kitchen door, with a fascinating pile of silvery wool rolls lying on the bench beside her. She stood up when Jane opened the gate--she was really a little higher than dad's knee but she was not so tall as Jane. She wore an old felt hat that had belonged to one of her husbands on her rough, curly grey head, and her little black eyes twinkled in a friendly fashion in spite of her blunt question.
"Who are you?"
"I'm Jane Stuart."
"I knew it," said Aunt Em in a tone of triumph. "I knew it the minute I saw you walking up the lane. You can always tell a Stuart anywhere you see him by his walk."
Jane had her own way of walking ... quickly but not jerkily, lightly but firmly. The Snowbeams said she strutted but Jane did not strut. She felt very glad that Little Aunt Em thought she walked like the Stuarts. And she liked Little Aunt Em at first sight.
"You might come and sit down a spell if you've a mind to," said Little Aunt Em, offering a wrinkled brown hand. "I've finished this lick of work I was doing for Mrs Big Donald. Ah, I'm not up to much now but I was a smart woman in my day, Jane Stuart."
Not a floor in Aunt Em's house was level. Each one sloped in a different direction. It was not notoriously tidy but there was a certain hominess about it that Jane liked. The old chair she sat down in was a friend.
"Now we can have a talk," said Little Aunt Em. "I'm in the humour for it to-day. When I'm not, nobody can get a word out of me. Let me get my knitting. I neither tat, sew, embroider nor crochet, but the hull Maritimes can't beat me knitting. I've been wanting to see you for some time ... everybody's talking about you. I'm hearing you're smart. Mrs Big Donald says you can cook like a blue streak. Where did you learn it?"
"Oh, I guess I've always known how," said Jane airily. Not under torture would she have revealed to Little Aunt Em that she had never done any cooking before she came to the Island. That might reflect on mother.
"I didn't know you and your dad was at Lantern Hill till Mrs Big Donald told me last week at Mary Howe's funeral. I don't get anywhere much now 'cept to funerals. I always make out to get to them. You see everybody and hear all the news. Soon as Mrs Big Donald told me I made up my mind I'd see you. What thick hair you've got! And what nice little ears! You have a mole on your neck ... that's money by the peck. You don't look like your ma, Jane Stuart. I knew her well."
Jane's spine felt tickly.
"Oh, did you?" breathlessly.
"I did. They lived in a house at the Harbour Head, and I was living there too, on a bit of a farm, beyant the barrens. It was just after I'd married my second, worse luck. The way the men get round you! I used to take butter and eggs to your ma and I was in the house the night you were born ... a wonderful fine night it was. How is your ma? Pretty and silly as ever?"
Jane tried to resent mother being called silly but couldn't manage it. Somehow, you couldn't resent anything Little Aunt Em said. She twinkled at you so. Jane suddenly felt that she could talk to Little Aunt Em about mother ... ask her things she had never been able to ask any one.
"Mother is well ... oh, Aunt Em, can you tell me ... I MUST find out ... why didn't father and mother go on living together?"
"Now you're asking, Jane Stuart!" Aunt Em scratched her head with a knitting-needle. "Nobody ever knew rightly. Every one had a different guess."
"Did they ... were they ... did they really love each other to begin with, Aunt Em?"
"They did. Make no mistake about that, Jane Stuart. They hadn't a lick of sense between them but they were crazy about each other. Will you have an apple?"
"And why didn't it last? Was it me? They didn't want me?"
"Who said so? I know your ma was wild with joy when you was born. Wasn't I there? And I always thought your pa uncommon fond of you, though he had his own way of showing it."