Jane Journeys On | Page 7

happy, Aunt Lyddy! Now,
we'll wait till morning and then talk it all over." She pulled up the gay
quilt smoothly, but her aunt sat stiffly upright, her face twisted with
alarm.
"My dear child! What is it?"
Jane stood looking down at her for an instant before she stooped and
gathered her into a hearty hug. "It's nothing to be frightened about. It's
just this, Aunt Lyddy; I do want to write, and I don't want to marry
Martin Wetherby!"
* * * * *
In the difficult days which followed she found Sarah Farraday the most
rebellious. Miss Vail had a little creed or philosophy which was as
plump and comfortable as she was herself, and which had helped to
make her, Jane considered, the world's most satisfactory maiden aunt,
and after a few tears and those briskly winked away, she was able to be
sure that her dear girl knew best what was best for herself, much as she
would miss her, empty as the house would be without her. Nannie Slade
Hunter, though she disapproved, was too deeply engulfed in the real
business of life to be much concerned over the vagaries of a
just-about-to-be-engaged girl, and Martin Wetherby, coached, Jane
knew, by the sapient father of the Teddy-bear, was presently able to
translate her exodus into something very soothing to his own piece of

mind. Jane could watch his mental processes as easily as she could
watch the activities of a goldfish in a glass globe; he was concluding
that it was the regular old startled fawn stuff ... he had been rushing her
pretty hard ... better let her have a little time ... play around with this
writing game. He'd be Asst. Cashier (that was the way he visualized it)
the first of the year, and that would be a great time to get things settled.
But Sarah, in the burlapped studio, between piano pupils, was aghast
and bitter. "'Going to seek your fortune!' I never heard anything so
absurd, Jane! You've got more than most girls right now,--a hundred
dollars a month of your very own to do just what you like with, and
when your Aunt Lydia--is taken from you, you'll have that adorable old
house, jammed full of rosewood and mahogany and willow pattern
ware!" Wrath rose and throve in her. "I've sometimes--I'm ashamed to
admit it, but it's the truth--I've sometimes envied you your advantages,
Jane,--going away to that wonderful school, and six months in Europe
after you graduated--but if the result has been to make you dissatisfied
with your own home and your own friends"--she was crying
now--"why, then I'm thankful I've always stayed here, and never known
or wanted anything different!"
Jane crossed over to her and put penitent arms about her, and at the
touch Sarah began to cry in earnest.
"Oh, Jane! I can't stand it! I can't have you go away! Jane,--for you to
go away----"
"Oh, Sally dear," said Jane, patting her, "it isn't really going
away,--geography doesn't matter! It's just--going on, Sally! That's
it,--I'm just going on. And on, I hope! And I'll write you miles of
letters."
"Letters!" her friend sniffed. "What are letters?"
"Mine are something rather special, I've been told. I'll write you
everything, Sally,--letters like diaries, letters like stories, letters like
books. Think of all the marvelous things I'll have to write about! Why,
Rodney Harrison thinks my letters from Wetherby Ridge, with

nothing----"
Sarah Farraday jerked away from her, her cheeks suddenly hot, her
eyes accusing. "So, that's it! That's the reason! It's the man you met on
the boat!" She said it with hyphens--"The-man-you-met-on-the-boat!"
She knew his name quite well, but she always spoke of him thus
descriptively; it was her little way of keeping him in his place, which
was well outside of the sacred circle of Wetherby Ridge.
Jane laughed. "Goose! Of course, he's part of the picture, and a very
pleasant part, and it will be very nice to have him meet me and drive
me opulently to Hetty Hills' sedate boarding-house. Aunt Lyddy is so
rejoiced to have me there with some one from the village that I couldn't
refuse, but I suspect it will be a section of the Old People's Home."
"Poor Marty!" said Sarah. "Poor old Marty! After all his years of
devotion----"
"But don't you think he got large chunks of enjoyment out of them?"
Her best friend's earnestness made her flippant, and it was a curious
fact that good old Sally, a predestinate spinster herself, settled on her
moated grange of music teaching, always took a most militant part in
other people's love affairs. In every lovers' quarrel in the village, in the
rare divorces, she had stood fiercely, hot dabs of color on her
cheekbones, for the swain