Janet | Page 3

of?" Mrs. Page inquired in
surprise.
Janet frowned and shook her head. "It's not the slightest use to, for
you'd never, never, understand. You see, it was something entirely
different from all this." She looked around the immaculate room and
shook her head again, this time in despair.
Mrs. Page lifted herself on one elbow and looked at her grand-daughter
carefully for a full minute.

"Janet," she said severely, "what has come over you?"
There was a long pause, for Janet did not reply. She was watching a
butterfly out in the garden and trying to decide what it was he was
whispering to that big floppy rose.
Mrs. Page settled back into her pillows and pulled the coverlet well up
under her chin.
"You may go," she said, pointing a bony finger toward the door. "I am
about to write to your brother. I regret that I will have to tell him that
you are not only careless but rude."
"Yes, grandmother." Janet stood up, and after she had carefully
straightened the chair upon which she had been sitting she walked
quietly out of the room.
Once in the hall, with the door closed, a tiny sigh escaped her. She
leaned up against the old clock and stared at a patch of sunlight on the
rug. Two big round tears rolled down her cheeks unnoticed.
Boru came over inquisitively from his place by the stairs and licked her
hand. She dropped to her knees beside him and hugged him
impulsively.
"Come along, old fellow," she whispered. "Let's go up to the 'widows'
walk' and think it all out. I guess grandmother is right; something has
come over me."
CHAPTER TWO
: ON THE WIDOWS' WALK
"But just what is it?" she mused a few minutes later, as she settled
herself comfortably and pulled Boru's shaggy head down to her knee.
The "widows' walk" was Janet's favorite place in which to think things
out, for it was on the flat roof of the house, away from any possible

interruptions. Martha, the old servant, had long ago given up
attempting the rickety stairs that led to it. It was in itself a rather
dangerous spot. Many of the boards that went to make the platform
were broken or badly rotted from long exposure to wind and rain. The
railing that ran around it was in the last stage of decay. But there was
something about it, perhaps the feeling of being up among the tree tops,
that made Janet disregard its dangers.
As a rule, she was content to sit and gaze out to sea and "pretend." The
name, "widows' walk," opened up so many avenues of imaginings. She
often saw the ghosts of the poor distracted women of long ago, pacing
up and down, their eyes always turned toward the sea, searching for a
familiar masthead. Old Chester had once been a famous fishing village,
and the roof of every house along the shore was topped by some sort of
observatory. Sometimes it was a square glass cupola, but more often it
was a wooden walk, such as crowned the Page house, and because in so
many, many cases the looked-for boats never did return to harbor, these
walks unhappily came to be known as "widows' walks."
To-day, however, Janet had no time for fancy. Something inside her
head and her heart was demanding to be put into words.
"I wonder what is the matter with me?" she said again. "I feel awfully
different. I suppose I'm unhappy. Am I, do you think?"
If anyone had accused Janet of talking to herself she would have
resented it hotly, but it was characteristic of her to pour out her troubles
to the ever-patient and understanding Boru.
"I'm lonely, for one thing," she confided as she pulled one velvety soft
ear. "Of course any one but you would say that was silly, for I have
Harry to play with, and then there are the Blake children." Two
well-behaved, very clean and very shiny girls filled her imagination for
an instant, but she dismissed them with a frown. "They don't count,
because they simply won't play the way I want to. Harry is a boy, and I
do -- no, I did like him a little better, but you know, old fellow, after the
way he acted to-day about the snake, I just -- well, he is a scare-cat and
that's all there is about it."

Boru's eyes, almost as brown as his mistress's, looked up in solemn
confirmation of her last remark.
Her thoughts wandered for a minute and then came back to the original
idea.
"I guess lonely isn't just exactly the word, but it's something a lot like it.
I want someone to be with who is more like me