Jane Journeys On | Page 8

or the husband. "I still contend," she would
say, "that with all his faults, and I'm not denying that he has faults, a
different sort of a woman could have saved him and made something of
him!"
Sarah came to stay the night with her before she was to leave in the
morning, and cried herself to sleep with a thin drizzle of tears which
Jane found at once flattering and touching and irritating, and when at
last the weeper was drawing long and peaceful breaths she slipped out
of bed and flung on her orange-colored kimono and knelt down before
the open window, her shining hair, so darkly brown that it was almost
black, hanging gypsylike about her shoulders. (The greater portion of
Sarah's hair was at rest upon the rosewood bureau top, coiled like a pale
snake, and the remainder was done up on curlers in Topsy twists.)

Over in the east there was the first graying advance of the dawn. (There
had been a "little gathering of the young folks" and then Jane had
finished packing and they had talked for two hours.) Jane felt a little
guilty, and a little foolish--leaping thus into the village spotlight,
sallying forth into the wide world--and a little gay and thrilled. The
morning was coming steadily up the sky; the daily miracle was going
on. And she was going on--on! Old Sally's scoldings didn't matter, nor
Marty's smug confidence. She shivered a little but kept her eyes on the
growing glory. She was--going--on!
A week later Sarah Farraday tore open the first letter with the New
York postmark.
SALLY DEAR, the typed page began, I meant to write at once, but I've
been settling down so busily! Of course Aunt Lyddy telephoned you of
my safe arrival?--Safe, my dear?--It was positively regal. Visiting
royalty effect. Rodney Harrison met me and I find I had quite forgotten
how very easy to look at he is! He apologized for the taxi which
seemed most opulent to me, because his own speedster was in the shop,
he having "broken a record and some vital organ the night before, and
the mater was using the limousine and the governor was out of town
with the big bus." His pretty plan was for dinner and the theater and
then supper and some dancing, but I thought there was just the least bit
of the King and the Beggar Maid lavishness about that, so I discreetly
revised it to tea.
We purred extravagantly up the Avenue, and how horrified Aunt Lyddy
would be at the taximeter! It makes me think of when we used to play
Hide-and-Seek, "Twenty-five, thirty, thirty-five, forty, forty-five,
fifty--ready or not you shall be caught!"
He had brought me a corsage of orchids and lilies-of-the-valley, and I
had to wear it at tea--and the price of that tea, my dear, would feed a
first family in Wetherby Ridge for a day!--and when I came up here to
my room I found three dozen red roses with stems like stilts and a
three-story red satin box of chocolates. Hardly a thrifty person, this
man-I-met-on-the-boat, as you persist in calling him, Sally, but the last
word in Reception Committees! Just as I had forgotten his charms, so

he seemed to have mislaid the memory of mine, and we really made a
very pleasant fuss over each other. Rodney had several bright and
beamish ideas for the next few days, but I reminded him that while he
may be an Idle Rich, I'm a Laboring Class, and I frugally accepted one
invitation out of four. "A Country Mouse came to visit a Town
Mouse--" But I can clearly see that he will greatly add to the
livableness of life.
I have bought myself a second-hand, elderly, but still spry think-mobile
with only a slight inclination to stutter, and a pompous-looking eraser
with a little fringe of black whiskers on its chin, and I'm beginning to
begin, Sally, dear!
It's going to be a marvelous place to work. Nice old Hetty Hills keeps a
really super-boarding house, and the personnel isn't going to be in the
least distracting,--staid, concert-going ladies, some teachers, a musician
or two, a middle-aged bank clerk; only two other youngish people, both
Settlement workers, a man and a woman. Her name is Emma Ellis and
she's only about thirty, but she acts fifty--you know--shabby hair and
dim fingernails and a righteously shining nose,--and I wish you could
see her hat! It looks exactly like the lid to something. She doesn't like
me at all, though I've been virtuously nice to her. The man is a big, lean
Irishman, named Michael Daragh. Don't you like the sound of that,
Sally? It makes me think of those Yeats and Synge things I was reading
up on