{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_37972/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_37972","id":"gutenberg_37972","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37972","summary":null,"tags":["Bildungsromans","Category: American Literature","Category: Novels","City and town life -- Juvenile fiction","First loves -- Juvenile fiction","Religion -- Philosophy -- Juvenile fiction"],"text":"E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Ernest Schaal, and the Online\nDistributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images\ngenerously made available by Internet Archive/American Libraries\n(http://www.archive.org/details/americana)\n\n\n\nNote: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this\n      file which includes the original illustration.\n      See 37972-h.htm or 37972-h.zip:\n      (https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/37972/pg37972-images.html)\n      or\n      (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/37972/37972-h.zip)\n\n\n      Images of the original pages are available through\n      Internet Archive/American Libraries. See\n      http://www.archive.org/details/sunshinejane00warniala\n\n\nTranscriber's note:\n\n      Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).\n\n      Text enclosed by equal signs is in bold face (=bold=).\n\n      Small capital letters were replaced by all capitals\n\n\n\n\n\nSUNSHINE JANE\n\n\n[Illustration: \"Auntie Susan, it's Aunt Matilda and Mr. Beamer.\"\nFRONTISPIECE. _See Page 265._]\n\n\nSUNSHINE JANE\n\nby\n\nANNE WARNER\n\nAuthor of \"The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary,\" \"Susan\nClegg and Her Friend, Mrs. Lathrop,\" etc.\n\nWith Frontispiece by Harriet Roosevelt Richards\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBoston\nLittle, Brown, and Company\n1914\n\nCopyright, 1913, 1914,\nBy Little, Brown, and Company.\n\nAll rights reserved\n\nPublished, February, 1914\nReprinted, January, 1914\n\nSet up and electrotyped by J. S. Cushing Co., Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.\nPresswork by S. J. Parkhill & Co., Boston, Mass., U.S.A.\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\n    CHAPTER                                          PAGE\n\n        I. GENERAL IGNORANCE                            1\n\n       II. EVERYBODY GETS THERE                         6\n\n      III. MATILDA TEACHES                             22\n\n       IV. JANE BEGINS SUNSHINING                      37\n\n        V. A CHANGE IN THE FEEL OF THINGS              61\n\n       VI. LORENZO RATH                                84\n\n      VII. A NEW OUTLOOK ON MATILDA                    98\n\n     VIII. SOUL-UPLIFTING                             127\n\n       IX. MADELEINE'S SECRET                         138\n\n        X. OLD MRS. CROFT                             148\n\n       XI. SHE SLEEPS                                 159\n\n      XII. EMILY'S PROJECT                            169\n\n     XIII. EMILY IS HERSELF FREELY                    191\n\n      XIV. JANE'S CONVERTS                            208\n\n       XV. REAL CONVERSATION                          220\n\n      XVI. THE MOST WONDERFUL THING EVER HAPPENED     233\n\n     XVII. WHY JANE SHOULD HAVE BELIEVED              243\n\n    XVIII. IN A PERFECTLY RIGHT WAY                   256\n\n      XIX. THE RESULTS                                277\n\n\n\n\nSUNSHINE JANE\n\n\n\n\nSUNSHINE JANE\n\nCHAPTER I\n\nGENERAL IGNORANCE\n\n\nTHERE was something pathetic in the serene unconsciousness of the little\nvillage as the stage came lumbering down the hillside, bearing its\nfreight of portent. So many things were going to be changed forever\nafter,--and no one knew it. Such a vast difference was going speedily to\nmake itself felt, and not a soul was aware even of what a bigger soul it\nwas so soon to be. Old Mrs. Croft, clear at the other end of town and\nparalyzed for twenty years, hadn't the slightest conception of what a\nleading part was being prepared for her to play. Poor Katie Croft, her\ndaughter-in-law and slave, whose one prayer was for freedom, dreamed not\nthat the answer was now at last coming near. Mrs. Cowmull, sitting on\nher porch awaiting the \"artist who had advertised,\" knew not who or what\nor how old he might be or the interest that would soon be hers. Poor\nEmily Mead, shelling peas on the bench at the back of her mother's\nhouse, frowned fretfully and, putting back her great lock of rich\nchestnut hair with an impatient gesture, wished that she might see \"just\none real man before she died,\"--and the man was even then jolting\ntowards her. Miss Debby Vane, putting last touches to the flowers on her\nguest-room table, where Madeleine would soon see them, was also sweetly\nunaware of the approach of momentous events. She thought but of\nMadeleine, the distant cousin whose parents wanted to see if absence\nwould break up an obnoxious love affair, and so were sending her to Miss\nDebby, who was \"only too pleased.\"\n\n\"A love affair,\" she whispered rapturously. \"A _real_ love affair in\nthis town!\" And then she pursed her lips delightfully, never guessing\nthat she was to see so much besides.\n\nMeanwhile Miss Matilda Drew stood looking sternly out of her sister\nSusan's window, considering if there were any necessary yet up to now\nforgotten point to be impressed upon Jane the instant that she should\narrive. Miss Matilda was naturally as ignorant as all the rest,--as\nignorant even as poor Susan, lying primly straight behind her on the\nbed. Susan was a widow and an invalid, not paralyzed like old Mrs.\nCroft, but pretty helpless. Matilda had lived with her for five years\nand tended her assiduously, as she grew more and more feeble. Now\nMatilda was \"about give out,\" and--\"just like a answer out of a clear\nsky,\" as Matilda said--their niece Jane, whom neither had seen since she\nwas a mite in curls fifteen years ago, had written to ask if she might\nspend her holiday with them. They had said \"Yes,\" and Matilda was going\naway for a rest while Jane kept house and waited on her poor old aunt.\nJane was one of the passengers now rattling along in the stage. She\ndiffered widely from the others and from every one else in the village,\nbut all put together, they formed that mass known to literature as \"the\nsituation.\" I think myself that it was the rest that formed \"the\nsituation\" and that Jane formed \"the key,\" but I may be prejudiced.\nAnyway, \"key\" or not, Miss Matilda's niece was a sweet, brown-skinned,\nbright-haired girl, with a happy face, great, beautiful eyes, and a\nheart that beat every second in truer accord with the great working\nprinciples of the universe. She was the only one among them now who had\na foot upon the step that led to the path \"higher up.\" And yet because\nshe was the only one, she had seen her way to come gladly and teach them\nwhat they had never known; not only that, but also to learn of them the\ngreatest lesson of her own life. So we see that although conscious of\nboth hands overflowing with gifts, Jane really was as ignorant, in God's\neyes, as all the rest. She had gone far enough beyond the majority to\nknow that to give is the divinest joy which one may know, but she had\nnot gone far enough to realize that in the greatest outpouring of\ngenerosity which we can ever give vent to, a vacuum is created which\nreceives back from those we benefit gifts way beyond the value of our\nown. \"I shall bring so much happiness here,\" ran the undercurrent of her\nthought; she never imagined that Fate had brought her to this simple\nvillage to fashion herself unto better things.\n\nSo all, alike unaware--those in the stage and those awaiting its advent\nwith passengers and post--drew long, relieved breaths as it passed with\nrattle and clatter over the bridge and into the main street.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\nEVERYBODY GETS THERE\n\n\nJANE sat on the rear seat with old Mr. Cattermole, who was coming home\nto his daughter, Mrs. Mead.\n\n\"Ever been here before?\" old Mr. Cattermole asked her.\n\n\"No, never.\"\n\n\"Hey?\"\n\n\"No, never.\"\n\n\"Once?\"\n\n\"Never.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Never!\"\n\n\"I'll tell you what it is,\" said Mr. Cattermole, beaming benevolently,\n\"it's the jolting. It keeps me from hearing what you say.\"\n\nJane nodded, smiling.\n\nBut old Mr. Cattermole wasn't long inconvenienced by the jolting.\n\n\"Who you going to stop with?\" he asked next.\n\n\"Mrs. Ralston and Miss Drew.\"\n\n\"Who?\"\n\n\"Mrs. Ralston and Miss Drew.\"\n\n\"Who? I don't hear you.\"\n\n\"Miss Drew.\"\n\n\"The Crews?--There ain't no such people in town.\"\n\n\"Miss Drew!\" Jane became slightly crimson.\n\n\"I'll tell you,\" said Mr. Cattermole, \"we'll wait. I can't hear. Really\nI can't.\"\n\nThe next minute they arrived at Mrs. Cowmull's, since she lived in the\nfirst house on the street. Lorenzo Rath, the artist, who had been\nsitting on the middle seat with Madeleine, now pressed her hand, twisted\nabout and shook Jane's, nodded to old Mr. Cattermole, leaned forward and\ndragged his suit-case from under the seat, and then wriggled out, over\ntwo boxes and under a flapping curtain, and down on to the sidewalk.\nMrs. Cowmull was standing on the porch, trying to look hospitable and\nunconscious at the same time. \"Here,\" said the stage driver, suddenly\ndelivering Lorenzo's trunk on to the top of his head,--\"and here's the\nlampshade and the codfish,--they get down here, too.\"\n\nLorenzo couldn't help laughing. \"Au revoir,\" he cried, waving the\nlampshade as the steps began to move.\n\n\"We'll meet again soon,\" Madeleine cried, her face full of bright color.\n\n\"Yes, of course.\"\n\nThen they were off.\n\n\"Seemed a nice young feller,\" said old Mr. Cattermole to Jane.\n\n\"Yes.\" She tried to speak loudly.\n\n\"Hey!\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"I'll tell you,\" said old Mr. Cattermole benevolently, \"you come and see\nmy granddaughter Emily, and then we'll talk. My granddaughter's a great\nstudent. You'll like her. She's full of the new ideas and new books and\nall that. We're very proud of her. Only she don't get married.\"\n\nThen the stage stopped, and Mrs. Mead came running out. \"Oh, Father, did\nyou buy the new magazines,--on the train, you know?\"\n\nOld Mr. Cattermole was descending backwards with the care of a cat in an\napple-tree. \"It's my daughter,\" he said to Jane. \"I can always hear her\nbecause she speaks so plain. Yes, Emma, it _was_ dusty, very dusty.\"\n\n\"This lawn-sprinkler is your's, ain't it?\" said the stage driver,\njerking it off the roof into Mrs. Mead's arms. \"Here's his bag, too.\"\n\nAnd then they went on again. Madeleine now had space to turn about.\n\"You'll come and see me?\" she asked Jane earnestly; \"it'll be so nice.\nWe're both strangers here.\"\n\n\"I'll try,\" Jane answered, \"but I shall be closely tied to the house.\nAunt Susan is an invalid, you see. I'll not only have all the work, but\nif I go out, that poor sick woman will be left helpless and alone\nup-stairs.\"\n\n\"Perhaps I can come and see you, then,\" said Madeleine. \"I'll have the\ntime to come, if you'll have the time to see me.\"\n\n\"I don't know anything about what my life will be,\" said Jane. \"As I\ntold you on the train, I've only seen my aunts once in my life and that\nwas fifteen years ago. But I should think that you could come and see\nus. I should think that a little company would do Aunt Susan a lot of\ngood. I'm sure that it would, in fact. But she may not like to see\nstrangers. I really don't know a thing about it. I'm all in the dark.\"\n\n\"I'll come and ask if I may come,\" said Madeleine brightly. \"If she sees\nme, maybe she'll like me. Most everybody does.\" She laughed.\n\n\"I'm sure of that,\" Jane said, laughing, too. Then the stage stopped at\nMiss Debby Vane's, and Miss Debby came flying down to embrace her\ncousin. \"Thanks be to God that you're here safe, my dear. These awful\nstorms at sea have just about frightened me to death.\"\n\n\"But I was on land, Aunt Deborah.\" Madeleine, in getting down, had\ngotten into a warm embrace at the same time.\n\n\"I know, dear, I know. But one can't remember that all the time--can\none?\" Miss Debby was kissing her over and over.\n\n\"Your step-ladder. Look out!\" cried the stage driver, and they had\nbarely time to jump from under.\n\nThen Madeleine reached up and clasped Jane's hand. \"We shall be\nfriends,\" she said earnestly; \"I've never met any one whom I've liked\nquite in the same way that I like you. Do let us see all that we can of\none another.\"\n\n\"_I_ want to, I know,\" Jane answered.\n\nThe stage driver was already remounting his seat.\n\n\"Au revoir,\" Madeleine cried, just as Lorenzo had done.\n\n\"Just for a little,\" Jane called back, and then she was alone in the\nstage, rattling down the long, green-arched street to its furthest end.\n\n\"There goes the stage,\" Katie Croft called out to her mother-in-law in\nthe next room. \"Now Miss Drew'll have her niece and be able to get away\nfor a little rest.\"\n\n\"If it was a daughter-in-law, she couldn't, maybe,\" said a voice from\nthe next room; \"the rest is going to be poor, sweet Susan Ralston's,\nanyhow. Oh, my Susan Ralston, my dear, sweet Susan Ralston, my loving\nSusan Ralston, where I used to go and call!\"\n\n\"Why, Mother, you haven't so much as thought of Mrs. Ralston for years.\"\nKatie's voice was very sharp.\n\n\"Nobody knows what I think of,\" wailed the voice from the other room.\n\"My thoughts is music. They fly and sing all night. They sing Caw, Caw,\nand they fly like feathers.\"\n\nKatie Croft walked over and shut the door with a bang. Katie was almost\nbeside herself.\n\nThe stage now drew up before the Ralston house.\n\nMiss Matilda quitted the window, where she had stood watching for an\nhour, and went to the gate. Her emotions were quite tumultuous--for her.\nSingle-handed she had tended her sister for five years, and now she was\ngoing to have a rest. She had had very trying symptoms, and the doctor\nhad advised a rest,--three weeks of freedom, night and day. She was\ngoing away on a real holiday, going back to the place where she had\ntaught school before the summons had come to cherish, love, and protect\nher only sister, who was not strong and had property. It seemed like a\ndream,--a wild, lively, and joyful dream. She almost smiled as she\nthought of what was at hand.\n\nJane descended, her small trunk came bang down beside her in the same\ninstant, and the driver was paid and drove off. The aunt and niece then\nturned to go into the house.\n\n\"Well, and so it's you!\" Matilda's tone and glance were slightly\ninquisitorial, and more than slightly dictatorial. \"I'm glad to see\nyou're strong. You'll need be. She's an awful care. She ain't up much\nnow. Isn't up at all sometimes for weeks. Sleeps considerable. Take off\nyour hat and coat and hang them there. That's the place where they\nbelong.\"\n\nJane obeyed without saying anything. But her smile spoke for her.\n\n\"Hungry?\" inquired Matilda.\n\n\"A little.\"\n\n\"I surmised you would be and waited supper. Thought you'd see how I\nfixed hers then. She's eating very little. Less and less all the time.\nThere's a garden to weed, too. Awful inconvenient out there across two\nstiles. But she won't give it up. She pays me to tend it, or I'd let the\ndandelions root it out in short order. But I tend it.\"\n\nThey had gone into the kitchen, where a kettle stewed feebly over a\nhalf-dead fire. \"Sit down,\" said Matilda. \"I'll fix her supper first.\nShe takes her tea cold, so I save it from morning and heat it up with a\nlittle boiling water, _so_. Then there's this bit of fish I saved from\nday before yesterday, and I cut a piece of bread. No butter, because her\nstomach's delicate. You'll see that she'll hardly eat this. Watch now.\"\n\nJane sat and watched, still smiling.\n\n\"Mr. Rath, the artist, came down in the stage with you, didn't he?\" Miss\nMatilda went on. \"What kind of a young man was he? Somebody'll tell you,\nso it might as well be me, what's brought him here. Mrs. Cowmull's\ntrying to marry off her niece, Emily Mead. There aren't any men in town,\nso she advertised. She gave it out that she wanted a boarder, but\neverybody see through that. That's what marriage has come to these days,\ncatching men to board 'em and then marrying them when they're thinking\nof something else. I thank Heaven I ain't had nothing to do with any\nmarriage. They're a bad business. There, that's your supper.\"\n\nJane started slightly. Her own cold fish and lukewarm tea sat before\nher. \"Shan't I take Aunt Susan's up first?\" she asked, recollecting that\nshe still had some lunch in her bag, and that Matilda would be leaving\nearly in the morning.\n\n\"No need. She likes things cold. You ought to see her face if she gets\nanything boiling in her mouth. It's no use to give her nothing hot.\nYou'd think it was a snake. I give it up the third time she burnt her.\"\n\n\"But I ought to go up and see her, I think; she hasn't seen me since I\nwas such a little girl.\"\n\n\"No need. You go ahead and enjoy your supper without bothering over her.\nShe knows you're here, and she isn't one that's interested in things.\nShe'll read an old shelf paper for hours, but carry her up a new paper\nand like as not when you get to the bed with it, you'll find her asleep.\nShe sleeps a lot.\"\n\nJane--thus urged--picked the chilled fish with a fork and considered.\n\n\"I'll show you about the house after you've done eating,\" the aunt\ncontinued presently; \"it's easy taken care of, for I keep it all shut\nup. Just Susan's room and mine and the kitchen is open. The neighbors\nwon't bother you, for I give them to understand long ago as I wasn't one\nwith time to waste. There isn't any one in the place that a woman with\nany sense would want to bother with, anyhow.\"\n\n\"I don't fancy that I'll have time to be lonesome,\" smiled Jane, bravely\nswallowing some tea.\n\n\"You'd have if it wasn't for the garden. I don't know whatever in the\nworld makes Susan set such store by that garden. She will have it that\nit shall be kept up in memory of her husband, and you never saw such\nweeds. I've often sat down backwards when one come up--often.\"\n\n\"I can't see it at all,\" with a glance out of the window.\n\n\"You can't from here. And it's got to be watered, and she counts every\npot full of water from her bed. She can hear me pumping. The birds dig\nup the seeds as fast as I can plant 'em, and I never saw no sense in\nslaving in the sun over what you can buy in the shade any day.--Are you\ndone?\"\n\n\"Yes, I'm done.\"\n\n\"Then come on.\"\n\n\"Can I spread the tray?\"\n\n\"Tray! She doesn't have a tray. What should I fuss with a tray for, when\nI've got two hands?\"\n\nJane rose and stood by the table in silence, watching the cup filled\nfrom the standing teapot and the plate ornamented with a lonely bit of\nfish and a slice of bread. \"Don't you butter the bread?\"\n\n\"She's in bed so much she mustn't have rich food,\" Matilda answered;\n\"there, now it's ready. Come on.\"\n\n\"Shan't I carry anything?\"\n\n\"I can take it, I guess. I've carried it alone for five years; I guess I\ncan manage it to-night.\"\n\nJane followed up the stairs in silence; Matilda marched ahead with a\nfirm, heavy tread.\n\n\"Shall I knock for you?\"\n\n\"I don't know what for. She yells anyway, whenever I come in, whether\nshe's knocked or not. Just open the door.\"\n\nJane opened the door gently, and they went in together. The room was\nhalf darkened, and only a little sharp nose showed over the top of the\nbedquilt.\n\n\"Here's your supper,\" said the affectionate sister, \"and here's Jane.\"\n\nA shrill cry was followed by two eyes tipping upward beyond the nose.\n\"Oh, are you Jane?\" There was a lot of pathos in the tone.\n\nThe girl moved quickly to the bedside. \"I hope that we're going to be\nvery happy,\" she said; \"we must love one another very much, you know.\"\n\nThe invalid hoisted herself on to an elbow and looked towards the plate\nwhich Matilda was holding forth.\n\n\"Oh, my! Fish again!\" she wailed.\n\nLater--on their way back to the kitchen fire--Matilda said\nsignificantly: \"Most ungrateful person I ever saw, she is. But just\ndon't notice what she says. It's the only way to get on. I keep her room\ntidy and I keep her house clean and I keep her garden weeded. I'm\ncareful of her money, and she's well fed. I don't know what more any one\ncould ask, but she ain't satisfied and she ain't always polite, but\nyou'll only have three weeks of what I've had for five years, so I guess\nit won't kill you.\"\n\n\"Oh, I think that I'll be all right,\" Jane answered cheerfully.\n\n\"The stage is ordered for seven in the morning, and I shall get up at\nhalf-past four,\" the aunt continued. \"You can sleep till five just as\nwell. I'm going to bed now, and you'd better do the same thing.\"\n\n\"Yes, I think so,\" said Jane cheerfully; \"good night.\"\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\n\nMATILDA TEACHES\n\n\nMATILDA seated herself bolt upright on one of the kitchen chairs and\ndrew a hard, stiff sigh.\n\n\"It'll be a great rest to get away,\" she said, \"more of a rest than any\none but me will ever know. You see, she's left all she's got to me in\nher will, so I'm bound in honor to keep a pretty sharp watch over\neverything. I can't even take a chance at her sinking suddenly away,\nwith the room not picked up or a cobweb in some high corner. I've seen\nher will, and she ain't left you a cent, so you won't have the same\nresponsibility. It'll be easier for you.\"\n\n\"I'll do my very best,\" said Jane.\n\n\"The trouble is I'm too conscientious,\" said Matilda. \"I was always\nconscientious, and she was always slack. It's an awful failing. It's a\nwarning, too, for now there she lays, snug as a bug in a rug, and me\nwith New Asthma in my arm from tending her and the house.\"\n\n\"You'll get over all that very soon,\" said the niece soothingly.\n\nMatilda glanced at her suspiciously. \"No, I shan't. I may get better,\nbut I shan't get over it. It's a nerve trouble and can't never be\ncompletely cured. A doctor can alligator it, but he can't cure it. I'll\nhave it till I die.\"\n\nJane was silent.\n\n\"You wrote that you were some kind of a nurse. What kind did you say you\nwere?\"\n\n\"I'm a Sunshine Nurse.\"\n\n\"A Sunshine Nurse! What's that? Some new idea of never pulling down the\nshades?\"\n\nJane laughed. \"Not exactly. It's an Order just founded by a doctor. He\npicked out the girls himself, and he sends them where he chooses for\ntraining.\"\n\n\"What's the training?\"\n\nJane looked at her and hesitated a little. \"I expect you'll laugh,\" she\nsaid finally; \"it does sound funny to any one who isn't used to such\nideas. We're to see the sun as always shining, and always shine\nourselves, and our training consists in going where there isn't any\nbrightness and being bright, and going where there isn't any happiness\nand teaching happiness.\"\n\n\"Sounds to me like nonsense,\" said Matilda, rising abruptly;\n\"don't you go letting up the sitting-room shades and fading the\nupholstering,--that's all I've got to say. Come now and I'll show you\nabout locking up, and then we'll go to bed.\"\n\nJane obeyed with promptness and was most observant and attentive.\nMatilda loaded her with behests and instructions and seemed appreciative\nof the intelligence with which they were received.\n\n\"I wouldn't go in for nothing fancy,\" she said, as they completed their\ntask; \"the less you stir up her and the house, the easier it'll be for\nme when I come back. You don't want to ever forget that I'm coming back,\nand don't put any fancy ideas into her head. There's plenty to do here\nwithout going out of your way to upset my ways.\"\n\n\"I'll remember,\" said Jane.\n\nThen they started up-stairs, and a few minutes later the Sunshine Nurse\nwas alone in her own room, free to stand quietly by the window and let\nher outward gaze form a bond between the still beauty of a country night\nand the glad vision of work in plenty, and that of a kind which Miss\nMatilda couldn't prohibit, because she knew not the world in which such\nwork is done.\n\n\"Not--\" said Jane to herself with a little whimsical smile--\"not but\nwhat I'm 'most sure that my teaching will be manifest in a lot of\nmaterial changes, too, but by the time that she comes back, her own\nfeelings will be sufficiently 'alligatored' so that she'll see life\ndifferently also. God's plan is just as much for her good in sending her\naway as it is for mine in sending me here, and I mustn't forget that for\na minute. I'll be busy and she'll be busy, and we'll both be learning\nand we'll both be teaching and we'll both be being necessary.\"\n\nShe drew a chair close and sat down, full of her own bright and helpful\nthoughts. Much of love and wonder came flooding into her through the\nmedium of the sweet, calm night without. \"It's like being among angels,\"\nshe fancied, and felt a close companionship with those who had known the\nGreat White Messengers face to face.\n\nLong she sat there, praying the prayer that is just one indrawn breath\nof content and uplifted consciousness. Not many girls of twenty-two\nwould have seen so much in that not unusual situation, and yet it was to\nher so brimful of fair possibilities that she could hardly wait for\nmorning to begin work.\n\nWhen she rose to undress, when she climbed into the plain, hard bed that\nreceived her so kindly, when she slept at last, all was with the same\nsense of responsibility mixed with energetic intention. All that she had\n\"asked\" in the usual sense of \"asking in prayer\" had been \"to be shown\nexactly how,\" and because she was one of those who know every prayer to\nbe answered, in the hour of its making she knew that to be answered,\ntoo. \"I'll be led along,\" was her last thought before sleeping, and it\nswept the fringe of her consciousness, leaving her to enter dreamland\nwith the happy security of a trusting child.\n\nIt really seemed no time at all before Matilda rapped loudly on her\ndoor, bringing her suddenly to the knowledge that the hour to begin all\nthe longed-for work was at hand.\n\n\"Five o'clock!\" Matilda howled gently through the crack.\n\n\"Yes, yes,\" she cried in response.\n\nThe door opened a bit wider. \"You'd better get right up or you'll go to\nsleep again,\" Matilda said, putting her head in, \"right this minute.\"\n\n\"Yes, I will.\"\n\nShe sat up in bed to prove it.\n\n\"All right,\" said her aunt--and shut the door.\n\nJane had unpacked her small trunk the night before, and so was able to\ndress quickly and get down-stairs without a minute wasted. She found\nMatilda in the kitchen, very busy with the stove.\n\n\"I do hope you'll remember what I said last night,\" she said, shoveling\nout ashes with an energy that filled the room with dust. \"I can't have\nher habits all upset. It'll be no good giving me this change if you go\nand spoil her. Remember that.\"\n\n\"I won't make any trouble,\" promised Jane. \"I'll always remember that\nyou're coming back.\"\n\nAs she spoke, she saw again the thin, hopeless face on the pillow\nup-stairs and knew that Matilda herself was to know a glad surprise over\nthe change which should welcome her home-coming. It was the learning to\ninstantly realize the better side of those who insisted on exhibiting\ntheir worst that was the leading force in the training of that beaming\nlittle Order to which she belonged. The Sunshine Nurses were forbidden\nto consider anything or anybody as fixedly wrong either in kind,\nconception, or working out. It would be a very comfortable way of\nlooking at things--even for such mere, ordinary, everyday folk as you\nand me.\n\nMatilda now said, \"Ugh, ugh!\" over the dust and proceeded to dive into\nthe wood-box with one hand and get a sliver in her thumb.\n\n\"In the morning she has tea,\" she said, going to the window to put her\nhand to rights. \"One cup. Piece of bread. At noon, whatever is handy.\nNight, cup of tea and whatever she fancies. Bread or a cracker usually.\nShe eats very little and less all the time. The cat eats more than she\ndoes. He's a snooper, that cat,--you'll have to watch out.\"\n\nJane didn't seem to understand. \"A--a snooper?\"\n\n\"Steals food. Awful thief. Slap him when you catch him at it; it's all\nyou can do. Sometimes I throw water over him. He'll make off with what\nwould be a meal for a hired man, and he's sly as any other thief.\"\n\n\"Can't I help you with your hand?\"\n\n\"No, you can't. I get lots of them. They bother me a little because Mrs.\nCroft's cousin died of blood-poison from one. There, it's out. What was\nI saying? Oh, yes, the cat.\"\n\n\"Where is she now?\"\n\n\"It's a he. Named Alfred for her husband. He's up in her room now.\nAlways sleeps on her bed. She will have him, and I humor her. She's my\nonly sister and she can't live long and she's left me all her money, and\nI humor her. It's my plain duty.\"\n\n\"Is it healthy for an invalid to sleep with a cat?\"\n\n\"No, it ain't. But I promised to do whatever she said about the cat and\nthe garden, and I do.\"\n\n\"I'm sure it's very good in you,\" Jane murmured, looking out of the\nwindow.\n\n\"It is. I'm a good woman. I do my whole duty, and there's not many in a\ntown this size can say as much.\"\n\n\"Where is the garden?\"\n\n\"I'll show you, if you don't mind getting your feet wet. I have my\nrubbers on already, to travel, so I can go right there now while the\nfire is kindling.\"\n\n\"Is it wet?\"\n\n\"Most grass is wet, at five in the morning.\"\n\nJane wanted to laugh. \"I mean, isn't there a path?\"\n\n\"Part way, and then you have to climb two fences.\"\n\n\"Climb! Two!\" the niece turned in surprise.\n\n\"Climb two fences. You never saw such a place. The strip between is\nrented for a cow-pasture. That's why there's two fences.\"\n\n\"But why not have gates?\"\n\n\"Don't ask me. Find out if you can. I've lived here five years, and I\nain't found out. You try and see if you'll do better. She's very\nsecretive, and so was he before he died. I've just had to get along the\nbest I could. She fails and fails steady, but it don't seem to affect\nher health none, and now at last it's affected mine instead and give me\nneophytes in my left arm.\"\n\nJane turned her head and looked some more out of the window.\n\n\"We'll go now. Might as well. The kettle will get to boiling while we're\naway, and then we'll have breakfast. It boils slow, because I've got the\neggs in it for my lunch. Come on.\"\n\nThe question of the wet grass seemed to have faded. They went out the\nkitchen door. It was a clear, bright morning. \"Weedy weather,\" commented\nMatilda, and led the way down the path.\n\n\"It's a pretty place,\" said Jane, her eyes roaming happily.\n\n\"Yes, I suppose so. But it takes an artist or some one who hasn't lived\nin it for five years to feel that way.\" She paused to climb the first\nfence. It was three rails high and very awkward. \"I'll go over first,\"\nshe said. \"Think of it; I've done this six times a day for five years.\"\n\nJane didn't wonder that she was so agile at it. \"But how funny to have a\ngarden away off here!\" she said.\n\nMatilda was now over on the other side. \"Yes, and think of keeping it\nup. Folks about here make no bones of telling me that they were both\nhalf-witted, only as she's my sister, they try to give me to understand\nas she caught it from him. He was a miser, you know.\"\n\nJane was just getting her second leg over. \"I don't know a thing about\nhim,\" she said.\n\n\"Well, you will, soon enough. The neighbors'll come flocking as soon as\nI'm gone, and you'll soon know all there is to know about us all.\nThey'll pick me to pieces, too, and tell you I'm starving Susan to\ndeath, but I don't care. Climbing these fences has hardened me to\ncalumny.\"\n\nThey crossed the strip of cow-pasture, and Matilda got over another\nfence, saying as she did so: \"Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth,\"\nleaving Jane to make the application and follow her at the same time.\n\nThen they found themselves in a trim little garden.\n\n\"How sweet,\" said the niece.\n\n\"You can see I've done my duty by it, too,\" said Matilda; \"that's my\nway. I'm hard and I ain't pretty to look at, but I do my duty, which is\nmore'n most handsome women do. Every last bean here is clawed around\nlike it ought to be, and the whole thing neat as wax. Same with Susan;\nyou'd think from her face I'd murdered her, and yet the Recording Angel\nknows she's had a cold sponge and every last snarl combed out of her\nhair every day since I came. I don't boast, but I do work.\"\n\n\"Dear me, it's a long way from the house,\" said Jane, forgetting her\nhigher philosophy for the minute.\n\n\"It's a good ten minutes to get here. A picking of peas is a half-hour's\njob. And ten to one, when I get back, the cat's been at the cream.\"\n\nJane had had time to remember. \"I can see you've been awfully good,\" she\nsaid warmly, \"and my, but you've worked hard. Everything shows that.\"\n\nMatilda's face flushed with pleasure, the sudden pathetic flushing of\nunexpected appreciation. \"I just have,\" she declared. \"I've worked hard\nall my life and done a lot of good, and nobody's ever bothered to thank\nme. She don't. She just lays there and lets me run up and down stairs\nand climb fences and dig weeds and scamper back and forth with a extra\nhike, when I hear the bell of the door, till it'll be a mercy if I don't\nget neophytes all over, and the New Asthma in both legs, _I_ think.\"\n\nAfter a brief tour of the tiny whole, devoted mainly to instructing the\nnovice, Matilda led the way back to the house.\n\n\"Does it ever need watering?\" Jane asked, lapsing again to a lower\nlevel.\n\n\"Sometimes,\" said Matilda briefly. Jane hadn't the heart to say another\nword until--several steps further on--it occurred to her that the garden\nalso could be only a good factor in God's plan, if she wreathed it and\nshrined it and saw it in her world, as He saw all His world on the day\nwhen it was first manifest and set. \"And God saw everything that He had\nmade, and behold, it was very good.\"\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\nJANE BEGINS SUNSHINING\n\n\nTHE stage came for Matilda at eight o'clock. For half an hour before it\ncould possibly be due, the traveler sat ready on a chair in the hall,\nwith her umbrella tightly gripped in both hands, delivering bits of\nuseful information as they occurred to her.\n\n\"Be careful to lock up well every night.\"\n\n\"Remember if she dies sudden, I shall want to know at once.\"\n\n\"Don't look to enjoy yourself, but remember you're doin' a act of\nChristian charity.\"\n\nJane sat on a small, hard ottoman in the corner by the whatnot and said:\n\"I'll try,\" or \"Yes, indeed,\" every time.\n\n\"You're a good girl,\" the aunt said finally. \"I'm glad to know you.\nThose Rainy-day Cooks or whatever you call yourself--\"\n\n\"Sunshine Nurse.\"\n\n\"Yes, of course,--well, it's a good idea. I feel perfectly sure you'll\ndo everything you know how.\"\n\n\"Yes, I will,\" said Jane, resolving all over fresh that everything was\ngoing to come out fine, even to the return of Matilda herself.\n\n\"There, I hear the stage on the bridge,\" said her aunt, jumping to her\nfeet suddenly. \"I must go and say good-by to Susan.\"\n\n\"Isn't she still asleep?\"\n\n\"It doesn't matter. She's my only living sister, and it's my duty to\nwake her up.\"\n\nShe rushed up-stairs, and a feeble little yell from above soon announced\nher duty done. Then followed a brief hum and jabber, and then she came\nrunning down again.\n\n\"Feels bad to see me go,\" she said briefly. \"That's natural, as she's\nturned over to you body and soul and ain't the least idea what you're\nlike. I told her it was no more chances than every child run just being\nborn, and a third of them lived, but she never could see reason,--kind\nof clung to my arm,--she's my only sister, and it makes me feel bad.\"\nWith which hasty statement Matilda gave a brief dab to each eye, put up\nher pocket-handkerchief, and opened the front door. Jane had her bag in\nher hand, and they had carried the trunk to the gate before.\n\nThe stage was empty, and the driver was tying the trunk-strap with a\nrope.\n\n\"Well, good-by,\" said Matilda; \"remember to lock up well every night.\"\n\n\"Yes, I will,\" said Jane. \"I hope you'll have a good time and a splendid\nchange.\"\n\n\"I'm sure of the change,\" said Matilda, swinging herself up with an\nagility bred of her liberal diet on stiles. \"Five years,--will you only\nthink of it?\"\n\nThe driver picked up the reins, gave them a slap, and the expedition was\noff.\n\nMatilda Drew was really \"gone off on a visit.\"\n\n\"Think of it,\" said Katie Croft, who, despite her town-name of \"Katie,\"\nwas a gray-haired woman of fifty. \"Think of it! A vacation! What luck\nsome folks have. I shall never have a vacation in all--\" her voice\nceased, and she continued sweeping down the steps, the stage passing out\nof sight as she did so.\n\nMeanwhile Jane had re-entered the house and carefully closed the door\nafter her. She felt curiously freed in spirit, and that subtly supreme\njoy of seeing a helplessly bad situation delivered bound and gagged into\none's hands to be mended was hers.\n\n\"I'll go straight and ask about auntie's breakfast first,\" she thought,\nmounting the staircase. To her light tap at the door, a feeble \"come in\"\nresponded. She entered then and observed, with a slight start, that the\ninvalid had just been up. The blind was drawn, and a pair of kicked-off\nslippers betrayed a hasty jump back into bed. Her eyes sought Susan's in\nexplanation. \"I didn't know that you could move about,\" she said, with a\npleased look.\n\nSusan's little, sharp nose had an apologetic appearance, as it showed\nover the sheet-fold. \"I can get about a little, days when I'm strong,\"\nshe explained, \"and I wanted to see her off. I wanted to see if she\nreally did go.\" She paused, gave a sharp choke and gasp, and then\nwaited.\n\nJane leaned over and kissed her forehead. \"I will try very hard to make\nyou comfortable and happy,\" she said gently.\n\nSusan rather shrunk together in the bed. \"What kind of a girl are you,\nanyhow?\" she asked suddenly and sharply. \"Are you really religious, or\ndo you only just go to church?\"\n\n\"I try to do what's right,\" her niece answered simply.\n\nThe invalid contemplated her intently. \"It can be pretty hard living\nwith any one that tries to do right,\" she said. \"My experience is that\ngood people is often more trying than bad ones. Maybe it's just that\nI've had more to do with them, though. I suppose Matilda told you about\neverything and the garden and all?\"\n\n\"Yes, I think I know what to see to.\"\n\n\"And the cat?--and his stealing?\"\n\n\"Yes, she told me about him.\"\n\n\"The garden must be weeded,\" Susan pronounced, sinking down deep into\nthe bed. \"Don't you ever forget that. And that cat has got to be\nfed--and well fed, too--even if he does steal.\"\n\nJane watched her disappear beneath the bedclothes.\n\n\"Auntie,\" she said, \"I've got lots of funny ideas, and one of them is\nthat it's wicked not to be just as happy as possible every minute. Now\nI'm to be here three weeks, and I think that I ought to be able to make\nthem a real change for you as well as for Aunt Matilda. We'll begin with\nyour breakfast. You tell me what you like best, and I'll fix it for\nyou--\"\n\nSusan's head came up out of the bed-clothes with the suddenness of a boy\nrising from a dive. \"If I can have anything I want,\" she cried, \"I want\nsome hot tea--some boiling hot tea, some tea made with water that's\nboiling as hard as it can boil. And I want the pot hot. Burning hot\nbefore the tea goes in.\"\n\nJane started. \"I thought you liked your tea cold.\"\n\nSusan's eyes fairly snapped. \"Well, I don't. I don't like nothing cold.\nI like everything hot.\"\n\nJane moved towards the door. \"I'll go and make some right away,\" she\nsaid.\n\nSusan's small, bright eyes looked after her very hard indeed. \"I wonder\nif you really mean what you say about my doing what I please.\"\n\n\"Of course I mean what I say.\"\n\n\"Then I want to go back into my own room.\"\n\nThe niece stopped. \"Isn't this your room?\" she asked in surprise.\n\n\"No, this is the nearest room to the top of the stairs. I'll show you\nwhich is my room.\" With a quick leap she was out of bed.\n\n\"Barefooted!\" cried Jane.\n\n\"I'll get into slippers quick enough, and I always wear stockings in\nbed. It's one of my peculiar ways. I'm very peculiar.\" She was running\nout of the room. Jane followed, astonished at the strength and\nsteadiness of the bedridden.\n\n\"But I thought that--that you were always in bed,\" she stammered.\n\nSusan stopped short and turned about. \"It was the pleasantest way to get\nalong,\" she said briefly. \"I guess that you've a really kind heart, so\nI'll trust you and tell you the truth. Matilda wasn't here very long\nbefore I see that if her patience wasn't to give out, I'd got to begin\nto fail. I went to bed, and I've failed ever since. I've failed steady.\nIt's been the only thing to do. It wasn't easy, but it was that or have\nthings a lot harder. So I failed.\"\n\nJane stared in amazement, and then suddenly the fun of it all overcame\nher, and she burst out laughing. Susan laughed, too. \"It was all I could\ndo,\" she repeated over and over.\n\n\"And so you failed,\" said her niece, still laughing.\n\n\"Yes, and so I failed.\"\n\n\"Mercy on us, it's the funniest thing I ever heard in all my life,\"\nexclaimed the Sunshine Nurse.\n\n\"It ain't always been funny for me,\" said Susan, \"but come, now, I want\nto show you my room.\"\n\nShe opened a door as she spoke and led the way into a dark,\nmusty-smelling place. It was the work of only a minute to draw the blind\nand throw up the window. \"Right after we've had breakfast, we'll clean\nit,\" the aunt declared, \"and then I'll move right back in. Husband and\nme had this room for twenty long years together. He was a saving man,\nand most of what he was intending to save when I wanted to buy things\nwas told me in this room. Whatever I wanted he always said I could have,\nand then when it came night, he said I couldn't. The room is full of\nmemories for me--sad memories--but after he was mercifully snatched to\neverlasting blessedness, I grew fond of it. It's a nice room.\"\n\n\"I think I'll get your tea,\" said Jane, \"and then I'll clean this room\nand help you move into it. We'll have you all settled before noon.\"\n\nShe turned and ran down to the kitchen. The kettle was singing, and she\nstuffed more wood in under it and began to hunt for a tray and the other\nconcomitants of an up-stairs breakfast. Things were not easily found.\n\n\"Well, I declare!\" a voice at the window behind her exclaimed, as she\nwas down on her knees getting a tray-cloth out of a lower drawer. The\nvoice gave her a violent start, being a man's. She sprang to her feet\nand faced about.\n\n\"I'm sorry; I thought you'd know me.\" It was the artist of the day\nbefore, the young man who had come down in the stage.\n\n\"It's so early.\" She went to the window and shook hands. \"But I'm glad\nto see you, anyhow.\"\n\n\"I always get up at six and walk five miles before breakfast when I'm in\nthe country,\" he explained.\n\n\"Do you really? What enterprise!\"\n\n\"And so this is where you've come. Why, it's the quaintest old place\nthat I ever saw. A regular tangle of picturesque possibilities. Who are\nyou visiting?\"\n\n\"I'm taking care of my invalid aunt while my other aunt has a little\nrest.\"\n\n\"Is she very ill?\"\n\n\"Oh, no. But this is her tea that I'm making, and I must take it up to\nher now.\"\n\n\"I'll go, then. But may I come again--and sketch?\"\n\n\"I can't have company. I'll be too busy.\"\n\n\"Can't I help with the work?\"\n\nHe was so pleasant and jolly that she couldn't help laughing. \"I'm\nafraid not,\" she said, shaking her head.\n\nHe stood with his hand on the window-sash. \"Do you know my name?\" he\nasked.\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"It's Lorenzo, Lorenzo Rath. I've to grow famous with that name. Think\nof it.\"\n\nShe laughed again.\n\n\"I can draw the outside of the house, anyhow--can't I?\"\n\n\"Dear me, I suppose so,\"--she picked up the tray,--\"you must go now,\nthough. Good-by.\"\n\n\"Good-by,\" he cried after her.\n\n\"Oh, see the steam,\" was Susan's exultant exclamation, as she entered\nher room. \"I ain't seen steam coming out of a teapot's nose for upwards\nof three years. Matilda just couldn't seem to stand my taking my tea\nhot, and she's my only sister, and I humor her. Who was you talking to?\"\n\n\"A man who came down on the stage yesterday. He was out walking and\ndidn't know that I lived here.\"\n\n\"Oh, a love affair!\" cried Susan, in high-keyed ecstasy. \"He's fallen in\nlove with you, and like enough was prowling around all night. Oh! How\ninteresting! I ain't seen a love affair close to for years.\" She was so\ngenuinely joyful that Jane felt sorry to dampen the enthusiasm.\n\n\"I don't believe you'll see one now,\" she said, smiling good-humoredly.\n\"You see, I don't mean to marry, Auntie. I'm a Sunshine Nurse, and they\nhave their hands too full for that kind of thing.\"\n\n\"A nurse! I didn't know you were a nurse.\"\n\n\"A Sunshine Nurse is a person who does what doctors can't always\ndo,--who makes folk well.\"\n\n\"Are you going to make me well?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Jane, resolutely.\n\nSusan stopped eating and looked at her with an expression full of\ncontradictory feelings. \"I shall like it,\" she said slowly. \"But, oh my!\nMatilda won't. Why, she--\" she paused. \"Oh, I _do_ wonder if I can trust\nyou?\"\n\n\"Anybody can trust me,\" said Jane. \"It's part of my training to be\nhonest.\"\n\n\"Dear me, but that's a good idea,\" said Susan, with sincerest approval.\n\"Well, if I can trust you, I don't mind telling you that it's taken\nconsiderable care for me to live along with Matilda. I don't mean\nanything against her--not rat-poison nor anything like that, you\nknow?--but she hasn't just approved of my living; she's looked upon it\nas a waste of her time. And I've had to manage pretty careful in\nconsequence. You see, she's my only sister, and she'd have my property\nanyhow, but if I had to have a nurse or a woman to look out for me long,\nthere'd be no property to leave. She's real sensible, and we both know\njust how it is, but it's been pleasantest for me to stay more and more\nin bed and kind of catch at things as I walk, and once in a while I\ndon't eat all day, and so it keeps up her hope and keeps things\npleasant.\"\n\nJane looked paralyzed. \"How can you go without food all day?\"\n\nSusan considered a little. Then she took a big drink of hot tea and\nconfessed. \"I don't really. I watch till she goes to the garden, and\nthen I skip down-stairs and make a good meal and lay it all on the cat.\"\n\nJane sank down on the foot of the bed and burst out laughing again.\nAgain she just couldn't help it. Susan laughed, too; first softly and\ngingerly, then in a way almost as hearty as her niece's.\n\n\"Oh me, oh my,\" the latter declared, after a minute, wiping her eyes.\n\"Well, we'll have a very lively three weeks, I see.\"\n\n\"Oh, yes,\" Susan exclaimed, \"and we'll have liver and bacon, and I'll\nsee the neighbors when they come in. I give up seeing them because it\nmade so much trouble, and the way I'm made is--'Anything for peace.'\nThat's what I always used to say to husband, whatever he said. First\nalong I used to say real things, but all the last years I just said\nwhatever he said; anything for peace.\"\n\n\"You've finished your tea now,\" said Jane, rising. \"I'll take the tray\ndown while you dress a bit, and then we'll move you into the other\nroom.\"\n\n\"Oh, and _how_ I will enjoy it,\" cried Susan, clasping her hands in\necstasy. \"Oh, you Sunshine Jane, you--how glad I am you've come.\"\n\n\"I'm glad, too,\" said Jane. \"We'll have an awfully nice time.\"\n\nShe ran down-stairs with the tray and found Madeleine sitting in the\nkitchen, waiting. \"Why, how long have you been here?\" she asked.\n\nMadeleine lifted a rather mournful countenance and tried to smile. \"Oh,\nMiss Grey. I'm so blue. I can't stand this place at all, I don't\nbelieve. My situation is going to be unbearable.\"\n\n\"What's the matter with it?\"\n\n\"It's so small and petty and spiteful. All last evening I had to sit and\nlisten to gossip. I hate personalities. Why, whatever I do is going to\nbe seen and talked about the minute I do it.\"\n\nJane looked grave. \"That nice woman who came out to meet you didn't look\nlike a gossip.\"\n\n\"She isn't, but she sits and listens, and every once in a while she\nthrows oil on the fire by saying, '_I_ never believed the story.'\"\n\n\"Who did the talking?\"\n\n\"The neighbors--a woman named Mrs. Mead, who came in with her daughter.\nThe mother was old-fashioned in her ideas, and the daughter was new.\nThat old man in the stage stopped there, you know.\"\n\n\"My aunt spoke of them last evening,\" said Jane; \"she said that Emily\nMead was picked out to marry that young man who came down with us.\"\n\nMadeleine laughed and then blushed. \"I'm afraid not,\" she said. \"I know\nhim. He won't marry anybody here.\"\n\nJane turned and began to put away the breakfast things.\n\n\"Don't be bored,\" she said gently. \"Put on this extra apron, and help me\nwash these dishes; and then I'll set the kitchen to rights and get ready\nto move my aunt into another bedroom. She's an invalid, you know.\"\n\n\"What kind of a person is your aunt?\"\n\n\"Awfully nice,\" began Jane, but was stopped by the sudden opening of the\nhall door.\n\nThere stood Susan, all dressed.\n\n\"It seems good to have clothes on again,\" she remarked calmly; \"I ain't\nbeen dressed for upwards of three years.\"\n\nThen she saw Madeleine. \"How do you do,\" she said, holding out her hand.\n\"I suppose you're the Miss Mar from Deborah's?\"\n\n\"Yes, I am,\" Madeleine admitted, smiling.\n\n\"My, but you look good to me,\" said Susan; \"it's so nice to see a\nstrange face. You see, I've been in bed for a long time, and I give up\nseeing strangers long before that.\" She sat down on one of the kitchen\nchairs and beamed on them both, turn and turn about. \"Husband always\nthought that strangers was pickpockets,\" she said, \"but I like to look\nat 'em. My, but I will enjoy these next weeks. You see, I live with my\nsister,\" she explained to Madeleine, \"and I've had a pretty hard time.\nMy sister's got a good heart, but maybe you know how awful hard it is to\nlive with that kind of people. It's been pleasanter to stay in bed.\"\n\n\"But you won't do that any more, Auntie,\" said Jane, moving busily\nabout.\n\n\"No, indeed I won't. You see,\" again to Madeleine, \"she was my only\nsister, so I humored her. It's the only way to get on with some people.\nBut you can even humor folks too much, and she got a disease they call\nthe Euphrates all up and down her ear and her elbow, just from being\nhumored too much. So she's gone off for a change.\"\n\n\"What are you doing?\" Madeleine asked Jane.\n\n\"Making waffles. I thought it would be fun to eat them hot right now.\"\n\nSusan fairly shrieked with joy. \"I ain't so much as smelt one since\nhusband died. Waffles in the morning, and I'm so awful hungry, too. Oh,\nJane, the Lord will surely set a crown of glory on your head the minute\nHe sees it. Your feet won't be into heaven when the crown goes on. How\ndid you ever think of it?\"\n\nJane brought out the iron, laughing as she did so. \"Why, Auntie, it's\npart of my training.\"\n\n\"Cooking waffles in the morning?\"\n\n\"No. Giving joy. If I think of any way to give pleasure and don't do it,\nI count it a sin. To make more happiness is all the work of a Sunshine\nNurse.\"\n\n\"Isn't that splendid?\" Susan appealed to Madeleine.\n\nMadeleine's great, beautiful eyes were lifted towards the other girl's\nface with an expression mysterious in its longing. \"Teach me the gift,\"\nshe said; \"I want to make more happiness, too.\"\n\n\"We'll be her class,\" exclaimed Susan, \"just you and me.\"\n\n\"The first lesson is eating waffles,\" Jane announced solemnly.\n\n\"And me, too,\" cried a voice in the kitchen window, and there was\nLorenzo Rath back for his second call that day, and it not yet ten\no'clock. \"I've been to Mrs. Cowmull's and eaten breakfast, and I'm as\nhungry as a wolf.\" He came in through the window as he spoke.\n\n\"Oh, a young man!\" cried Susan. \"I ain't seen a young man since the last\ntime the pump broke. Oh, my! Ain't this jolly? Ain't this fun?\"\n\n\"You show Madeleine where to find plates and forks and knives, Auntie,\"\nsaid Jane. \"Here, Mr. Rath, I'll break two more eggs and you can beat\nthem. I haven't made enough batter, if there's a man to eat, too.\"\n\n\"I feel as if I'd leave Mrs. Cowmull's to-morrow and come here to\nboard,\" said Lorenzo. \"Could I?\" His tone was very earnest.\n\n\"No, you couldn't,\" said Jane firmly.\n\n\"Oh, let him,\" exclaimed Susan, from the pantry, where she was getting\nout plates. \"It'll make Mrs. Cowmull so mad, and I ain't made any one\nmad for years and years. I'd so revel to be human again. And it would be\nso nice having a man about, too.\"\n\n\"I couldn't think of it,\" said Jane, getting very crimson.\n\nMadeleine looked at the artist.\n\n\"Then I shall leave Mrs. Cowmull's, anyway,\" said Lorenzo, decidedly; \"I\nshall look up another place at once. Why, that woman would drive me mad.\nShe says something ridiculous every time she opens her mouth. She asked\nme this morning if I'd ever climbed to the top of the Kreutzer Sonata.\"\n\n\"What did you say?\" Madeleine asked.\n\n\"I told her no, but I'd been to the bottom of the Campanile and seen\nthem getting out coal from the mine there.\"\n\n\"Well, that showed you'd seen some sights, anyhow,\" said Susan,\nplacidly.\n\n\"The waffles are done!\" Jane announced. They all drew up round the\ntable.\n\n\"This is living,\" the invalid exclaimed. \"If my sister would only never\ncome back!\"\n\n\"Maybe she won't!\" suggested Lorenzo.\n\n\"I wouldn't like her to die,\" said Susan, gravely. \"I'm sensitive over\nfeeling people better off dead. But if she'd marry, it would be nice.\"\n\n\"For the man?\" queried Lorenzo.\n\n\"For us all,\" said Susan, gravely.\n\n\"Just exactly the right thing is going to happen to her and everybody,\"\nsaid Jane, firmly--dividing the waffles as she spoke.\n\n\"Are you so sure?\" the artist asked, looking a little amused.\n\nSusan noticed the look. \"She's a Sunshine Nurse,\" she explained quickly.\n\"It's her religion to be like that. She can't help it. She's promised.\"\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V\n\nA CHANGE IN THE FEEL OF THINGS\n\n\nIT didn't take long for the town to wake up to the fact that some new\nelement had entered into its composition.\n\n\"I can't get over it, Susan Ralston's being up and about,\" Miss Debby\nVane said distressedly to Mrs. Mead. \"Why, she was 'most dead!\"\n\n\"Matilda ought not to have gone away,\" Mrs. Mead said sternly. \"Sick\nfolks in bed can't bear a change. A new face gives them a little spurt\nof strength, and then when they see the old face again, they kind of\ngive up hope and drop right off.\"\n\n\"Yes, I know that,\" said Miss Debby; \"my father had a cousin die that\nway. There was a doctor going about in a wagon, pulling teeth and giving\nshocks, and he said he'd give Cousin Hannah a shock and cure her. So\nthey took him up-stairs, and there she was dead of heart disease. They\nthought of prosecuting him, but the funeral coming right on they hadn't\ntime, and then he was gone to another place, and it seemed too much\nbother.\"\n\n\"That girl is just the same kind, I believe,\" said Mrs. Mead; \"that\ndreadful way of making you feel that after all what she says is pretty\nsensible, maybe. My Emily is awfully took with her, and Father's just\ncrazy about her. He come down on the stage with her, and then he went\nout to see her. She knows how to get around men; she was frying\ndoughnuts.\"\n\n\"Yes, and Mrs. Cowmull's artist was out there, and they had waffles in\nthe middle of the morning. That's a funny kind of new religion.\"\n\n\"Has she got a new religion?\" Miss Debby looked frightened. \"I hadn't\nheard of it.\"\n\n\"Why, yes; Emily says she's got the funniest religion you ever heard of.\nWhatever she wants to do or don't want to do, she says it's her\nreligion.\"\n\n\"Dear me, but I should think that that would be very convenient,\" said\nMiss Debby, much impressed. \"Why, my religion is always just the\nopposite of what I want to do or don't want to do. It says so every\nSunday, you know,--'we have done those things,' and so forth.\"\n\n\"Hers is different,\" said Mrs. Mead.\n\n\"Well, I declare,\" repeated Miss Debby; then, suddenly, \"I remember now\nthat Madeleine said that they had waffles because Jane said that she\nthought waffles would taste good, and it was her religion to do whatever\nyou thought of right off. Well, I declare!\"\n\nBoth ladies stared in solemn amazement at one another.\n\n\"This'll be a nice town to live in, if she sets everybody to doing\nwhatever you like, because it's right,\" Mrs. Mead said finally. \"Father\nwon't put on his coat again this summer.\"\n\n\"It'll make a great difference in the feeling of the town,\" said Miss\nDebby, mysteriously, \"a great difference. Well, I hope it won't change\nMadeleine any way her family won't approve. Madeleine's in love, and I\nsuppose it's Mr. Rath. They knew each other before, and her family don't\nwant it. I've pieced it all out of scraps.\"\n\n\"Oh, dear!\" said Emily Mead's mother, her face falling; \"my, I hadn't\nheard but what he was a free man.\"\n\n\"Oh, no,\" said Miss Debby, \"your sister isn't sure. But everybody else\nis. My own view of artists is they're deluders and snares. I give an\nartist a picture and a dollar once to enlarge, and that was the last I\never heard of them both--of all three.\"\n\n\"I wonder if Emily knows Mr. Rath's engaged,\" said Mrs. Mead, sadly.\n\"Dear me, I never thought of that.\"\n\n\"Not engaged, but in love,\" corrected Miss Debby.\n\n\"Perhaps he's a real artist and changeable,\" suggested Mrs. Mead.\n\n\"There's no comfort in that for any one, 'cause if he'll change once,\nhe'll change right along.\"\n\nMrs. Mead sighed very heavily. \"Well, I must keep up for Father and\nEmily,\" she remarked, not tracing any very clear connection between word\nand deed.\n\n\"Yes,\" said Miss Debby, \"you must, and we'll all keep a sharp eye on\nthese new kind of ways of looking at things, for we don't know where\nthey'll end.\"\n\nThe \"new way of looking at things\" had already been very efficacious in\nthe house at the other end of the street. It had assumed an utterly new\nappearance, both outside and in.\n\n\"And I never felt nothing like the change in the _feel_ of it,\" Susan\nexclaimed that afternoon, as she re-arranged her belongings in her own\nroom. \"Oh, you Sunshine Jane, you, you've just sunshone into every room,\nand I'm so happy turning my things about I don't know what to do.\nMatilda wouldn't never let me turn a china cow other end to, and I've\nlived with some of the ornaments facing wrong for the whole of these\nfive long years.\"\n\n\"It isn't me, Auntie,\" said Jane, washing shelves with the hearty and\nhappy energy which she threw into every task in which she engaged; \"it's\nthe opening of the windows and the letting in of God and His sunshine\ntogether. I'll soon have time to clean the whole house, and then we'll\nhave fun re-arranging every room. You've such pretty things, and they\nmust be rubbed up and given a chance to play a part in the world. God\nnever meant anything to be idle,--not even a brass andiron. If it can't\nwork, it can shine and be cheerful, anyway. What can't smile ought to\nshine, you know.\"\n\n\"I wonder why rubbing things makes 'em bright,\" said Susan, opening her\nbonnet-box and hitting her bonnet a smart cuff to knock dust out of the\nfolds. \"I never could understand that.\"\n\n\"It's your individuality that you transfer till the poor dull things get\nenough of it to shine alone, without anybody's help.\"\n\n\"What a good reason,\" said Susan. \"My, to think maybe I'll go to church\nagain in this bonnet! Matilda was always wanting to rip it up, but\nsomething made me cling to it. It's a kind of souvenir. I wore it to\nhusband's funeral and my last picnic, and there are lots of other\npleasant memories inside it.\"\n\n\"I'll freshen it up with a cloth dipped in ammonia,\" said Jane. \"Dear\nme, how I _do_ enjoy washing shelves. I love to sop the soapy water over\nand mop the corners, and dry the whole, and fit a clean newspaper in,\nand then see the closet in perfect order.\"\n\n\"You like to do everything, seems to me,\" said Susan.\n\n\"Yes, I do. I've been led to see that doing things well is about the\nfinest way in which one can pass one's time. And I'm crazy over doing\nthings _well_. If I fold a towel, I like to fold it just square, and if\nI make a bed, I want the fold in the spread and the fold in the sheet to\nmeet even.\"\n\n\"You'll make a fine wife, Jane,\" said Susan, gravely, \"only no man'll\never appreciate the folds lying straight.\"\n\nJane laughed merrily. \"I'm never going to marry; I'm one of the new sex,\nthe creatures who are born to live alone and lend a hand anywhere.\nDidn't you know that?\"\n\n\"That's nonsense,\" said Susan; \"no woman's made so.\"\n\n\"No. It's a big fact. One of the newest facts in the world. The New\nWoman, you know!\"\n\n\"Mercy on us,\" said Susan, \"don't you go in for any of that nonsense.\nThe idea of a girl like you deciding not to marry! I never heard of such\na thing!\"\n\n\"It's so, though,\" said Jane, smiling brightly; \"you see, my little\nOrder is a kind of Sisterhood. We're taught to want to help in so many\nhomes and to never even think of a home of our own. We're taught to love\nall children so dearly that we mustn't limit ourselves to one family of\nlittle ones. We're trained to be so fond of the best in every man that\nwe see more good to be done as sisters to men than as wives.\"\n\n\"I don't believe Mr. Rath will agree with you,\" said Susan, \"nor any\nother real nice fellow.\"\n\nJane was cutting paper for the shelves. \"Yes, he will,\" she said,\nnodding confidently; \"men are so scarce nowadays that they are ready to\nagree with any one.\"\n\n\"Jane, _I_ think he's in love with you already.\" Susan's tone was very\nsolemn.\n\nJane merely laughed.\n\nThen the door-bell rang, and she had to run. Presently she was back, a\nlittle breathless. \"It's Mrs. Mead and her daughter. Can you come down?\"\n\n\"Yes, in a minute. You say, in a minute.\"\n\nJane ran down again with the message.\n\n\"Most remarkable,\" said Mrs. Mead, now dressed for calling, with her\nblack hair put back in three even crinkles on either side, \"about your\naunt, you know, I mean. Why, we looked upon her as 'most dead. You know,\nEmily, we've always been given to understand she was nearing her end.\"\n\n\"It does an invalid a lot of good to have something new to think about,\"\nsaid Jane. \"I'm very enlivening. Aunt Susan just couldn't help getting\nup, when she heard me upsetting her house in all directions.\"\n\n\"Yes, I expect it was enough to make her nervous,\" said Mrs. Mead,\nsincerely. \"How long are you going to stay?\"\n\n\"Until Aunt Matilda comes back.\"\n\n\"I don't believe she'll like these changes,\" said Mrs. Mead, gravely. \"I\nshould think that you'd feel a good deal of responsibility. It's no\nlight matter to leave a shut-up house and an invalid in bed to a niece\nand come home to find the house open and the invalid all over it.\"\n\n\"And a man coming in and having waffles in the morning,\" said Emily\nMead, with a smile meant to be arch.\n\nJane laughed. \"That was dreadful, wasn't it?\" she said, twinkling--\"it\nwas all so impromptu and funny. And everybody had such a good time. It\njust popped into my head, and you see it's my religion to have to do\nanything that you think will make people happy, if you see a chance.\"\n\n\"Yes, we've heard about your religion,\" said Mrs. Mead; \"dear me, I\nshould think you'd get into a lot of trouble! Waffles in the morning\nwould upset some folks, except on Sunday.\"\n\n\"Perhaps most people haven't enough religion to manage them week-days,\"\nJane suggested.\n\n\"My aunt, Mrs. Cowmull, says Mr. Rath could hardly eat any lunch,\"\nobserved Emily, smiling some more.\n\n\"Oh, dear!\" said Jane, \"but I'm not surprised. Aunt Susan couldn't,\neither.\"\n\nMrs. Mead coughed significantly. \"Susan Ralston's pretty delicate to\nstand many new ideas, I should think,\" she began, but stopped suddenly\nas Susan entered, and viewed her with an expression of shocked surprise.\n\n\"Why, Mrs. Ralston, I'd no idea you were so well. Where have you kept\nyourself these last years, if you were so well?\"\n\n\"In my own room,\" said Susan, with dignity. \"I didn't see no special\ncall to come down. Matilda knew where everything was, but Jane doesn't,\nso I've changed my ways for a little.\"\n\nJane took her hand and pressed it affectionately. The sunshine seeds\nwere sprouting finely. \"Don't you want to come out into the garden with\nme?\" she asked Emily Mead, and Emily rose at once. \"I thought auntie\nwould enjoy visiting alone with her old friend,\" she added, as they\npassed through the hall.\n\n\"What are you, anyway?\" Emily asked curiously. \"I've heard you were a\ntrained nurse,--are you?\"\n\n\"I'm one of the brand-new women,\" said Jane; \"not a Suffragette, nor an\nadvanced anything, but just a creature who means to give her life up to\nteaching happiness as an art.\"\n\n\"Yes, I heard that. But how do you do it?\" asked Emily Mead.\n\n\"By being happy and thinking happy thoughts and doing happy things.\"\n\nEmily considered. \"But don't you ever have hard things to do?\"\n\n\"Never. I enjoy them all--I love to work.\"\n\nEmily looked at her wonderingly. \"But washing dishes?--We don't keep a\ngirl, and I hate washing dishes. What would you say to them?\"\n\nJane laughed. \"What, those two lovely tin pans and that nice boiling\nkettle? And all the dirty plates sinking under the soap-suds and then\npiling up under the clean hot water. And the shining dryness and the\nputting them on the shelves all in their own piles. And then the knowing\nthat God wanted those dishes washed, and that you've done them just\nexactly as He'd like to see them done. Why, I think dish-washing is\ngrand!\"\n\nEmily opened her eyes widely. \"How funny you are! I never heard such\ntalk before! But, then, you've lived in a big city and learned to think\nin a big way. You wouldn't see dish-washing so if you'd done it all your\nlife and never been told it was nice. You couldn't.\"\n\n\"But you've been told now,\" said Jane, \"and no work need ever seem\nhorrid to you again. Just look at it in my way after this.\"\n\n\"But all work seems horrid to me. I'd like to marry an awfully rich man\nand never see this place again. I hate it.\"\n\nJane thought a minute; then said in sweet, low, even tones: \"You won't\nevolve any man fit to marry out of that spirit, you know.\"\n\nThe other girl stared at her. \"Evolve!\"\n\n\"Yes. Don't you know that every minute in this world is the result of\nall the minutes that have gone before, and that who we marry is part of\na result--not just an accident?\"\n\n\"_What?_\"\n\n\"Don't you know that? Don't you understand?\"\n\n\"Not a bit. Tell me what you mean?\"\n\n\"It's too long to explain right this minute, because one can't tell such\nthings quickly, and if you've never studied them, you haven't the\nbrain-cells to receive them. You see brain-cells are the houses for\nthoughts, and they have to be built and ready before the thoughts can\nmove in. That's what they told me, when I was learning.\"\n\nEmily looked at her in bewilderment.\n\n\"It's very interesting,\" said Jane. \"I think that it's the most\ninteresting thing in the whole world. You see, I didn't have any life at\nall; I was an orphan and not very bright. And then I happened to get\nhold of a book that said that all the life there was in the world was\nmine, if I'd just take it. So I wrote to the man who wrote the book--\"\n\n\"How did you ever dare?\"\n\n\"Why, I knew that the man who wrote that book would help any one--he\ncouldn't have written the book if he hadn't been made to help\npeople--and I asked him how I could begin.\"\n\n\"What did he answer?\"\n\n\"He said: 'Seize every chance to prove your mind the master of your own\nbody first, and when you are thoroughly master of yourself, you can\nmaster all else.'\"\n\n\"What did he mean?\"\n\n\"Well, I took it that he meant me to do anything that I thought of,\nright off, and that if I got in the habit of sweeping all work out of my\nsmall way, I'd soon be given a chance at big work in a big way.\"\n\n\"And were you?\"\n\n\"Yes. I began to get through so quick--I lived with an uncle and helped\nhis wife with the sewing and the children--that I had some spare time,\nand I went into the kitchen and learned to cook. Then one of the\nchildren was ill, and the doctor thought I'd make a good nurse, so he\ngot me into a hospital, and I met a woman there who had all the books\nthat I wanted to read and who just took hold and helped me right out. I\nsaw that I didn't want to be a sick-nurse, because there's such a lot of\nhumbug and such a lot that's silly, and my friend said that I was one\nwho would evolve opportunities--\"\n\n\"What does that mean?\"\n\n\"Evolve means to sort of develop out of the world and yourself together\nat the same time.\"\n\n\"I don't understand.\"\n\n\"Why, if you want anything, you want it because it's there, and you can\nget it if you've got the strength and perseverance to build a road to\nit.\"\n\n\"_What!_\"\n\n\"I mean just what I say. We can get anything, if we have sufficient\nwill-power to build a way right straight to it.\"\n\n\"Suppose I want to marry a millionaire?\"\n\n\"It would mean a lot of well-directed effort, and the effort would\nslowly train you to want something much better than to live rich and\nidle.\" Jane paused a minute, and Emily looked at her curiously. \"If you\nwant to marry a millionaire bad enough to start in and make yourself all\nover new, you'll have such control over your future that I think you'll\nget something much better than a millionaire.\"\n\n\"I never heard any one like you in all my life,\" said Emily Mead.\n\n\"I'd be so glad to help you straight along,\" Jane said. \"I've got two\nbooks with me, and you can read one and then the other. Then you'll get\nwhere you can get the meaning out of the Bible, and then you'll begin to\nsee the meaning of everything. The world gets so wonderful. You see\nmiracles everywhere. You feel so well. The sun shines so bright. Life\nbecomes so lovely.\"\n\nEmily looked at her with real wonder.\n\n\"How did you happen to come here?\" she asked.\n\n\"Oh, that came long after all the rest of the story. One day I\nremembered that my mother had two sisters, and I wrote to them. My\nletter arrived just as Aunt Matilda's arm began to trouble her, and she\nasked me if I could come for a visit. You see that was another\nopportunity I evolved.\"\n\nEmily seized her hand impulsively. \"I'm so glad that you came. I'm going\nto try, and you'll help me?\"\n\n\"Yes, indeed, I will. Would you like one of the books right now?\"\n\n\"Oh, I should.\"\n\n\"I'll get it for you, and then I'll tell you some day about the doctor I\nmet and his Sunshine Order.\"\n\nThey went towards the house. \"You mustn't expect to understand\neverything right off, you know,\" Jane said to her gently. \"You see this\nis all new to you, and that means that you can't any more understand\nright off than you could paint a picture right off. You have to learn\ngradually.\"\n\n\"But I mean to learn,\" said Emily.\n\nThey went in the door, and Jane ran upstairs and fetched the book.\n\"There!\" she said, \"you read it, and I'll help you all I can. You see\nthe thing is to learn with your whole heart to do God's will, and then,\nin some strange, subtle way, you get to feel what is coming and to sort\nof shape all. It's so fascinating and thrilling to realize that what you\nwant is marching towards you as fast as you can march towards it.\"\n\n\"What do you want?\" Emily asked.\n\n\"I want to do exactly what I'm doing,\" said Jane, very quietly. \"I've\npassed wanting anything else. I want lots of chances to teach and\nhelp,--that's all.\"\n\n\"Don't you want to marry?\"\n\n\"Oh, no,--I want to be able to teach and help everywhere. I don't want\nthings for myself, somehow.\"\n\n\"How strange!\"\n\nThey went into the sitting-room.\n\n\"Oh, Jane,\" Susan cried, \"how I have enjoyed hearing about everybody in\ntown! Sister never told me about Eddy King's running off with the store\ncash or Mrs. Wilton's daughter going to cooking-school, or one thing.\"\n\n\"We must be going,\" said Mrs. Mead, rising; \"we'll come again, though.\nIt's good to see you up, Mrs. Ralston, and I only hope you may stay up.\nYou know Katie Croft's mother-in-law got up just as you have and then\nhad a stroke that night.\"\n\n\"Oh, is old Mrs. Croft dead?\"\n\n\"No, she isn't,\" said Mrs. Mead; \"if she was, she wouldn't be such a\nwarning as she is.\"\n\n\"Dear, dear,\" said Susan, \"think of all I've missed. Has she got it just\nin her legs or all over? Matilda never told me.\"\n\n\"Legs,\" said Mrs. Mead, \"and it's affected her temper. Katie has an\nawful time with her.\"\n\n\"Dear, dear,\" said Susan again,--\"and, oh, Jane, a boy I've known since\nhe was a baby has had his skull japanned and nearly died. Matilda's\nnever told me a thing!\"\n\n\"Well, she didn't know much, you know,\" said Mrs. Mead; \"she kept\nherself about as close as she kept you. We were given to understand\npretty plainly that we weren't wanted to call.\"\n\n\"Think of that now,\" said Susan, \"and me up-stairs, feeling all my\nfriends had forgot me!\"\n\n\"Everybody'll come now,\" said Mrs. Mead; \"folks will be glad to see you\nso well. We were told you never got up and hardly ate enough to keep a\ncat.\"\n\n\"An ordinary cat,\" corrected Emily; \"Miss Matilda's always told what a\nlot your cat ate.\"\n\n\"He is an eater,\" said Susan, crinkling a bit about the eyes; \"but I\neat, too, now, I can tell you.\"\n\nAfter they were gone, Jane came back into the sitting-room. Her aunt was\nstanding by the window. \"It's so beautiful to be down-stairs,\" she said,\nwithout turning. \"My goodness, and to think that only a week ago I laid\nup-stairs wanting to die.\"\n\n\"You can thank Aunt Matilda that you didn't die,\" said Jane, going and\nputting her arm around her. \"If she had kept you thinking of all the\nillnesses in town, you'd have died long ago. Sick thoughts are more\ncatching than diseases. But we don't need to talk of that now.\"\n\n\"No, indeed we don't,\" said Susan, \"for there's Mr. Rath coming.\"\n\nJane gave a little start. \"I wonder what for,\" she said.\n\n\"What for!\" Susan's tone was full of deep meaning; \"why, he's fallen\ndead in love with you, Jane, that's what it means, and I don't wonder,\nfor you're the nicest girl I ever saw.\"\n\n\"Oh, Auntie!\" said Jane, quite red. \"The very idea!\"\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI\n\nLORENZO RATH\n\n\nIT wasn't to be supposed for a minute that Lorenzo Rath, a real live\nyoung man and an artist, shouldn't take first place in the town talk.\nJane's remarkable religion might attract the attention of a few who were\nsufficiently religious themselves to be naturally shocked over the\nwaffles and depressed over the invalid's recovery, but Lorenzo was of\ninterest to every one.\n\n\"If he ain't took already, there's a fine chance for Emily,\" Mr.\nCattermole said benevolently to his daughter. Being a man, he naturally\nsupposed that Mrs. Mead would never have come by such an idea if she\nhadn't had a bright old father to point it out to her.\n\n\"Emily doesn't want to marry,\" said Mrs. Mead, compressing her lips and\nexpanding her dignity simultaneously; \"she wouldn't marry an artist,\nanyway.\"\n\n\"Maybe he ain't much of an artist,\" said Mr. Cattermole, with a tendency\nto look on the bright side. \"Why don't Emily want to marry? I thought\ngirls always wanted to marry. They did when I was young.\"\n\n\"It's different nowadays,\" said Mrs. Mead, with condescending reserve.\n\"You don't understand, Father, but nothing is like it used to be. The\nworld is getting all changed. When Emily was an only child, she was\nlooked upon as very odd, but most women have an only child nowadays.\nLife is quite different.\"\n\n\"I'd like to see Emily married,\" said Mr. Cattermole, thoughtfully.\n\n\"Emily has had plenty of chances,\" said her mother, waving the brave,\ntattered mother-lie that seems to cover over such cruel wounds.\n\n\"Has she really?\" said Mr. Cattermole, in genuine surprise. \"I didn't\nknow that. And she wouldn't have 'em! Laws sakes! Who, for instance?\"\n\n\"No one you knew,\" said his daughter, telling the truth then.\n\n\"Sarah knew 'em, I suppose?\" (Sarah was Mrs. Cowmull.)\n\n\"No, no one Sarah knew.\"\n\n\"Think of that now! Why, I s'posed there wasn't nothing Sarah didn't\nknow.\"\n\nIn voicing this opinion Mr. Cattermole voiced the town opinion, too. It\nwas popularly supposed that Sarah Cowmull always knew everything. But\nshe didn't know the status of Lorenzo Rath's heart, and Lorenzo Rath\nhimself puzzled her not a little.\n\nLorenzo puzzled everybody, mainly because he was so open and simple that\neven a child must have suspected him of keeping something back. Such\nfrankness was unthinkable, such innocence incredible.\n\n\"Why, he's gallivanting all over with Madeleine, and yet she's gotten\nanother man's picture on her table!\" said Miss Debby to Katie Croft.\n\n\"And he's skipping in Mrs. Ralston's gate at all hours,\" said Katie\nCroft--\"no kind of ceremony to him. The other day he see mother in the\nwindow, and he waved his hat at her and give her an awful turn. She\ndon't see well, and thought he threw a stone at her. She ain't used to\ncity ways; she's used to country ways. I had to let her smell camphor\nfor a good hour, and while she was smelling, the kitchen fire went out.\nI wish he'd keep his hat on his head another time. My life's hard enough\nwithout having a artist suddenly set to, to cheer up mother.\"\n\n\"What do you think of Mrs. Ralston's niece? Think she's nice?\"\n\n\"Nice! With Susan Ralston about as lively as a cricket! I don't think\nmuch of such new ways. I don't know whatever Matilda will say. She's\njust got life all systematized, and now here's Susan up and out of bed.\nI'm so scared the girl'll come over and go at mother, I don't know what\nto do.\"\n\n\"My, suppose Mrs. Croft was to be up and about!\" said Miss Debby,\nopening her eyes widely. \"Whatever would you do?\"\n\n\"Do! I know what I'd do.\" Young Mrs. Croft looked dark and mysterious.\n\"I know just exactly what I'll do. And I'm all ready to do it, and if\nI'm interfered with, I will do it,--good and quick, too.\"\n\n\"How is old Mrs. Croft now?\" Miss Debby asked.\n\n\"Oh, she's grabbin' as ever. I never see such a disposition. She's\nalways catching at me or the cat or something. Seems to consider it a\nway of attracting attention. Crazy folks has such crazy ideas, and she's\ncrazy,--crazy as a loon.\"\n\nKatie Croft took up her market basket and went on up the street. Miss\nDebby stayed behind to wait for the noon mail. \"Katie's so bitter,\" she\nsaid to herself, shaking her head; \"she ought to be more grateful for\nbeing supported.\"\n\nMiss Debby forgot that there are few things so irritating in this world\nas being supported. It is a situation which has become especially\nunpopular lately, particularly with women and political motives.\n\nBut no old worn-out aphorism held for one minute in the breezy bloom of\nthe House Where Jane Lived.\n\n\"Oh, I'm so happy,\" Susan exclaimed many times daily, \"I'm so happy. I\nnever felt nothing like your sunshining in all my life before, you\nSunshine Jane, you! I feel like my own cupboards, all unlocked and aired\nand nice and used again.\"\n\nJane stopped caroling as she kneaded bread and laughed--which sounded\nequally pleasant.\n\n\"I'm as happy as you are, Auntie; it's so nice to be in heaven.\"\n\n\"I used to think maybe I'd die suddenly and find myself there some day,\"\nsaid Susan. \"I'm glad I didn't.\"\n\n\"It's better to live suddenly than to die suddenly,\" said Jane, merrily;\n\"when people are awfully bothered sometimes, I've heard their friends\nsay: 'But if you died suddenly, it would work out somehow,' and I wanted\nto say: 'Why not live suddenly instead of dying suddenly, and then\neverything's bound to come out splendidly.'\"\n\n\"Oh, Jane, what a grand idea,--to live suddenly! That's what I've done,\nsurely.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Jane, \"that's what I did, too. Instead of fading out of\nlife, we just bloomed into life. It's just as easy, and a million times\nmore fun.\"\n\n\"And it's all so awfully agreeable,\" said Susan. \"My things look so\nnice, all set different, and it's so pleasant having folks coming in,\nand I like it all, and we haven't to fuss with the garden.\"\n\n\"I attend to the garden!\" cried a voice outside, and a mysterious hand\nshoved a basket of peas over the window-ledge.\n\n\"I know who that is,\" said Susan; \"it's that boy, and he's smelt\ncinnamon rolls and come to lunch. How do you do?\"\n\nLorenzo, brown and merry, was getting in at the window.\n\n\"Why, you've really been weeding!\" exclaimed Susan.\n\n\"Of course! I've tended the garden ever since you gave it up.\"\n\n\"I declare! Well, I never. Jane, we must give him a bite of something.\"\n\n\"Yes, that's what I came for,\" said Lorenzo, cheerfully, \"cookies,\njelly-roll,--anything simple and handy. Madeleine and I were out\nwalking, discussing our affairs, and when I stopped for the garden, she\nwent on for her mail. I'm awfully hungry.\"\n\n\"People say you're engaged to her,\" said Susan. Jane turned to get the\ntin of cookies.\n\n\"Yes, naturally. People say so much. She is a pretty girl, isn't\nshe?--but then there's Emily Mead. I must look at myself on all sides\nand consider carefully. Old Mr. Cattermole took me to drive yesterday\nand told me that he was healthy and his dead wife was healthy and that,\nexcept for what killed him, Mr. Mead was healthy, too; and there was\nEmily, perfectly healthy and the only grandchild, and why didn't I come\nover often,--it wasn't but a step.\"\n\n\"Well, you do beat all,\" said Susan. Jane offered the tin of cookies.\nLorenzo took six. They were all laughing.\n\nLater, when he'd gone away, Susan said, almost shyly this time: \"Jane, I\ndon't want to interfere, but he _is_ in love.\"\n\n\"With Madeleine?\"\n\n\"With you.\"\n\n\"Auntie,\" Jane came to her side, \"you mustn't speak in that way about\nme. I can't marry,--not possibly. I'm a Sunshine Nurse, and I shall be a\nSunshine Nurse till I die. I'll make homes happy, but I shall never have\none of my own.\"\n\nSusan looked frightened and timid. \"But why?\"\n\n\"For many reasons. And all good ones.\"\n\nThere was that in the young girl's tone that ended the subject for the\ntime being.\n\nBut Susan thought of it a great deal, and alone in her room that night,\nJane thought, too. She had made herself ready for bed, and then sat down\nby the window, clasping her hands on the sill. Lorenzo Rath was\nbuoyantly dear and jolly, and she realized that he was the nicest man\nthat she had ever met. It had all been fun, great fun, and she had\nenjoyed it mightily. But with all her learning Jane was not so very much\nfarther along the Highway to Happiness than some others. In many cases\nshe was only a holder of keys as yet--the distinct knowledge to be\ngained by unlocking secrets with their aid was as yet not hers. To hold\nthe keys and look at the doors is to realize what power means,--but to\nunlock is to use it. Jane was still a novice; she left the doors locked\nand was content to hold the keys, and no more.\n\nThe next night Lorenzo appeared again. \"I'm half-dead,\" he said. \"I've\ntramped twelve miles, sketching.\"\n\n\"Dear, dear,\" said Susan, \"seems like nobody in this world ever wants\nwhat's close to.\"\n\n\"Sometimes it's no use to want what's close to,\" said Lorenzo, \"or else\nwhat's close to is like Emily Mead, and you just ache to run.\"\n\n\"Emily Mead is a very nice girl,\" said Jane, in a tone clearly\nreproachful.\n\nLorenzo just laughed. But then Susan made some excuse to slip away. \"I\nwonder if you'd help me a little,\" he said then, hesitating a bit.\n\n\"Is it something that I can do? Of course I'll help you if I can.\"\n\n\"It's something very necessary.\"\n\n\"Necessary?\"\n\n\"To my welfare and happiness.\"\n\n\"What is it?\"\n\n\"I think--I'm--falling in love.\"\n\n\"Oh, dear,\" Jane was carefully tranquil.\n\n\"I've never really been in love in my life, so I can't be sure. But I\nthink it's that.\"\n\nJane said nothing. The room was getting dark.\n\n\"I've never seen any one so pretty in all my life as Miss Mar,\" said the\nyoung artist, slowly. \"You know we're old friends.\"\n\n\"Oh, she's lovely,\" said Jane, with sudden fervor.\n\n\"I thought that we might make up little picnics and walks and things?\"\nhesitated the young man.\n\n\"Of course,\" said Jane, heartily. \"And you can come here all you like.\nAuntie likes you both so much.\"\n\nLorenzo Rath stood by the door. \"Were you ever in love?\" he asked\nbluntly.\n\n\"No,\" said Jane. \"I've never had the least little touch of it.\"\n\n\"Haven't you ever thought about it?\"\n\n\"No, I've never had time. I've never seen any man that I could or would\nmarry.\"\n\n\"Never?\"\n\n\"Never.\"\n\n\"That's too bad,\" said Lorenzo Rath slowly. \"Seems to me you'd make such\na splendid wife.\"\n\nShe laughed a little. Then she had to wink quickly to drive back tears\nwhich leapt suddenly.\n\n\"I won't say any more,\" said Lorenzo. She thought that he did not care\nto speak of Madeleine to her.\n\nThen she went. And later she found herself sitting in her own room\nagain, sitting by the same window, thinking. \"Poor Emily Mead and her\nillusory millionaire! I'm about as silly as she is,\" thought Jane. \"And\nyet I know it's higher and more beautiful to make life lovely for others\nthan to make it lovely for one's self.\" She sighed because the\nreflection--all altruistic as it was--was not quite the truth, and she\nwas true enough herself to feel jarred by the slightest cross-shadow of\nfalsehood. Truth plays as widely and freely as the sunbeams themselves\nand goes as straight to the heart of each and all.\n\nFinally she opened a little book and read aloud a few pages to herself\nin a low tone. \"I know I'm on the right path,\" she said, when she had\nclosed the book; \"the thing is to stick resolutely to keeping on\nstraight ahead. And I must be absolutely content with all that comes.\nYou have to be content if you're going to grow in goodness, for you have\nto know that you've been trying and been successful.\" She sat still a\nwhile longer and then rose with a deep, long breath. \"Well, to-day's\nbeen something, and to-morrow I'll be something better, I know.\"\n\nThe truth did shine then, and she went to bed calmed, but was hardly\nstretched down between the cool sheets when Susan rapped at the door.\n\n\"Come in.\"\n\n\"Oh, Jane, I can't sleep. I've got to thinking of when Matilda comes\nback, and I'm scared blue.\"\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII\n\nA NEW OUTLOOK ON MATILDA\n\n\nTHE next morning Susan looked half-sheepish and half-anxious. \"I just\ncouldn't help it, Jane. I laid in bed so long, thinking, and then it\ncome over me what life was going to be when she was back and you gone\nand--well--I just couldn't help coming. I felt awful.\"\n\nJane was busy with breakfast. \"I know, Auntie, I know. I ought to have\nthought of Aunt Matilda sooner. Half her stay is over.\"\n\n\"Oh, my, I should say it was,\" wailed Susan; \"that's what scares me so.\nWe're so happy, and the time is going so fast. It's about the most awful\nthing I ever knew.\"\n\nJane began beating eggs for an omelette.\n\n\"We never were one bit alike,\" Susan intoned mournfully; \"we were always\nso different, and then when husband died, there was just nothing to do\nbut for us to live together. She's my only sister, and it's right that I\nshould humor her, but, oh my, what a scratch-about life she has led me.\nI was getting to feel more like a mouse than a woman--soon as I got a\nbite, I'd begin to tremble and to listen and then how I _did_ run!\"\n\n\"But it will be all so different when she comes back,\" Jane said\ncheerily. \"She'll be very different, and so will you. It'll be just like\nI told you last night.\"\n\n\"I know,--I know. But somehow I can't see it as you do. I'm all upset.\nAnd I'm so happy without her. We're so happy. The house looks beautiful.\nYou've just made everything over. I declare, Jane, I never saw anything\nlike you. All my old things have turned new, and so pretty. I feel like\na bride. That is, I feel like a bride when I ain't thinking of Matilda.\"\n\n\"It looks very nice, surely,\" said Jane, smiling. \"Your things were so\npretty, anyhow. But what I was gladdest about was to really get it all\nopened up and fresh. I didn't want any one to come while it was so\ngloomy. The whole town may call now.\"\n\n\"They do, too,\" said Susan, diverted for the minute; \"they certainly do.\nOh, it is so nice, I so adore to hear all about things again. Matilda\njust shut everybody out. She didn't like company.\"\n\n\"She was pretty busy, you know.\"\n\n\"She hadn't any more to do than you have. She hadn't so much to do as\nyou have, because she didn't do a thing you do.\"\n\n\"But you were ill. She was always up and down stairs--\"\n\n\"No, she wasn't, Jane. No, she wasn't.\"\n\n\"Well, she had your meals to carry upstairs.\"\n\n\"I don't call it meals to run with a teacup. Meals! _Such_ meals! It's a\nwonder I didn't die. She'd turn anything upside down on a plate and\nsomething else upside down on that, and call it a meal for me. I was\nabout sick, just from how she fed me. If I said something was cooked too\ndry, she emptied the tea-kettle into it next time; and if I said\nanything was too wet, she put on fresh coal and left it in the oven over\nnight. If I said the room was too light, she shut it up as dark as a\npickpocket; and if I said it was too dark, she turned the sun into my\neyes. She's my only sister and I must humor her, but I've had a very\nhard time, Jane, and I don't blame myself for waking up with my teeth\nall of a chatter over the thought of living with her again.\"\n\nJane had their breakfast ready now on the table by the window. \"Come and\nsit down,\" she said; \"we'll talk while we eat. It's like I told you last\nnight,--there must be a hitch somewhere. Of course, God has a good\nreason for you and Aunt Matilda living together. He doesn't allow\naccidents in His world.\"\n\n\"Perhaps He wasn't thinking. I can't believe that anybody would\ndeliberately put anybody in the house with Matilda--not if they knew\nMatilda. I didn't know what she'd grown into myself when she first came\nto take care of me, because I was a little poorly. It was to save\nspending on a nurse, you know. They're such trying, prying things,\nnurses are.\"\n\n\"I'm a nurse, you know.\"\n\n\"My goodness, I didn't mean your kind; I meant the regular kind.\"\n\nJane was laughing. \"But I mustn't laugh,\" she said, after a minute; \"we\nmust go to work. Let's see if we can find out how it all began. Didn't\nyou and Aunt Matilda get on nicely at first?\"\n\nSusan considered. \"Well, I don't believe we did. She was always so very\nsparing. Husband was sparing, and of course I'd had a good many years of\nit, but when your husband's gone and you've got the property yourself\nand have left it to an only sister who takes care of you, you don't like\nher being even more sparing,--putting you on skim-milk right from the\nfirst and chopping the potato peelings in the hash.\"\n\n\"But there must have been some good in the situation, or it wouldn't\nhave been. When there's a wrong situation, the cure lies in hunting out\nthe good, not in talking over the bad.\"\n\n\"You won't find any good in Matilda and me living together,--not if you\nhunt till Doomsday.\" Susan took a big sip of coffee and then shook her\nhead hard.\n\n\"There's good in everything.\"\n\n\"I don't know what it was here, then. I was all ready to die, and the\ndoctor said I couldn't live, and when I found out how Matilda was\ncounting on it, I just made up my mind to live just to spite her. But\nit's been awful hard work.\"\n\nJane turned and seized her hand. \"Well, maybe that's the reason for the\nsituation, then. You see if she'd been different, you'd have died, but\nbeing a person who made you mad, you stayed alive.\"\n\nSusan laughed a little. \"I've been mad enough, I know,\" she went on;\n\"it's awful to be up-stairs the way I've been and have to prowl\ndown-stairs and run off with your food like a dog in an alley. I was\nalways watching till I saw Matilda over that second fence and then\nracing for something to eat. I've been very hungry often and often,\nJane, very hungry indeed,--and in my own house, too.\"\n\nThe tears came into the girl's eyes. \"Poor Auntie!\" she said. \"Well,\nit's all over now and won't ever come back. You must believe me when I\nsay so. Old conditions never return. The wheel can't turn backward. That\nmustn't be.\"\n\n\"But how'll it help it when Matilda's visit gets over?\"\n\nJane rested her chin on her hands and looked out of the window. \"I'll\nhave to get you on to a plane where you can't live as you did ever\nagain,\" she said.\n\n\"On a plane!--\" Susan stared.\n\n\"A plane is a kind of grade in life. We keep going up them like stairs,\nand the quieter and happier people live, the higher is the plane on\nwhich they are. It's very simple, when you come to understand it. It's\nsort of like a marble staircase built out of a marsh and on up a\nmountain. You can stand down in the mud, or step higher in the reeds, or\nstep higher in the water (generally it's hot water,\" Jane interrupted\nherself to say with a little smile). \"Or out on the dry earth, or higher\nwhere it's flowers, or higher or higher. But every time you get up a\nstep you leave all the mess of all the lower steps behind you forever.\nDo you understand?\"\n\n\"No, I don't.\"\n\n\"Why, don't you see that if you lift yourself higher than your\nsurroundings, of course you'll have other conditions around you and be\nreally living another life? We can't possibly be bound by conditions\nlower than our souls. It's a law. I'll help you to understand it, and\nthen it will help you to not be at all troubled over Aunt Matilda.\nYou'll be above her. Don't you see? One can always get out of a\ndisagreeable life by lifting one's self above it.\"\n\n\"But I did stay up-stairs,\" said Susan, with beautiful literalness. \"I\nthink it's awful to have to keep a plane above any one, when the whole\nhouse is yours.\"\n\n\"I didn't mean that,\" said Jane. \"I meant that mentally you must get\nabove her. It isn't in words or in thoughts,--you must _be_ above her.\nYou must get free. I must help you. You can do it. Anybody can do it.\nAnd as soon as you are free in your spirit, your life will change. Our\ndaily life follows our thoughts. Our thoughts make a pattern, and life\nweaves it. The world of stars that we can't hardly grasp at all is all\nGod's thought. The life in this house was your thought and Aunt\nMatilda's.\"\n\n\"It wasn't mine,\" said Susan quickly; \"it was hers.\"\n\n\"Well, it's mine now,\" said Jane. \"That's the true business of the\nSunshine Nurses. They must get a new thought into a house and get it to\ngrowing well. Then they'll leave the true sunshine there forever after.\"\n\nSusan's eyes were very curious--very bright. \"I declare I don't see how\nyou'll do it here,\" she said. \"I can't look at Matilda any new way, as I\nknow of. Whatever she does, she does just exactly as I don't like it.\"\n\n\"I suppose that you try her, too.\"\n\n\"Well, I didn't die; of course she minded that. But I couldn't die. You\ncan't die just to order.\"\n\n\"No, of course not; I didn't mean that.\" Jane was quite serious. \"I\ndon't blame you at all for not doing that.\"\n\nSusan had finished and rose from the table. \"Let's leave the dishes and\ngo out in the yard,\" she said. \"I'm awfully anxious to keep on at this\ntill we find a way out, if you think that you can; I go about wild when\nI think of her. I'm ready for anything except staying in bed any more.\"\n\n\"Oh, that's all over,\" said Jane. \"You're off the bed-plane now, and\ndon't you see how much higher you've got already? The next step is to\nfix yourself so securely on this happy one that you know that it's yours\nand you can't leave it. You see, you feel able to go back down again,\nand as long as you feel that way, it's possible. One has to bar out the\nwrong kind of life forever, and then of course it's over.\"\n\n\"But she is coming back,\" said Susan, \"and I can't live any more on\ngobbles of milk and cold bits swallowed while I'm getting up-stairs\nthree steps to the jump.\"\n\nJane looked at her. \"I expect that exercise was awfully good for you,\nAuntie,\" she said seriously. \"You've probably gotten a lot of health and\ninterest out of it. Don't forget that.\"\n\n\"Well, maybe; but I don't want any more.\" Susan's tone was terribly\nearnest.\n\n\"It's all over then,\" said Jane, slowly and with emphasis; \"if you truly\nand honestly don't want any more, then it must be all over. The thing to\ndo now is to build a firm connection between ourselves and it's being\nall over.\"\n\n\"I don't quite understand what you mean,\" said Susan, \"but something's\ngot to be done, of course, because otherwise she'll come home, and oh,\nmy, her face when she sees me up and around!\"\n\nJane knit her brows. \"You see, Auntie,\" she said slowly, \"there's only\none thing to do. We've got to change ourselves completely; we've to get\nwhere we want her to come home and where we look forward to it--\"\n\nSusan stopped short and lifted up both hands. \"Gracious, we can't ever\ndo that! It isn't in humanity.\"\n\n\"Yes, we can do it,\" said Jane firmly; \"people can always do anything\nthat they can think out, and if we can think this out straight, we can\ndo it.\"\n\n\"How?\"\n\n\"It isn't easy to see in just the first minute, but I understand the\nprinciple of it and I know that we can work it, for I've seen it done.\nYou do it by getting an entirely new atmosphere into the house.\"\n\n\"But you've done that already,\" interrupted Susan. \"It isn't musty\nanywhere any more, and there's such a kind of a happy smell instead.\"\n\n\"I don't mean that kind of an atmosphere. I mean a change of feeling in\nourselves. We've got to somehow make ourselves all over; we must really\nand truly be different.\"\n\n\"But I am made over, and you were all right, anyhow.\"\n\n\"No, I'm not all right,\" said Jane firmly. \"I'm very wrong. I'm letting\nsilly thoughts with which I've no business torment me dreadfully, and\nI'm not driving them out with any kind of resolution. Then we're both\ndoing wrong about Aunt Matilda. We're making a narrow little black box\nof our opinion and crowding her into it all the time. There's nothing so\ndreadful as the way families just chain one another to their faults.\nOutsiders see all the nice things, and we have lots of courage to always\nlive up to their opinions, but families spend most of their time just\nnailing those they love best into pretty little limits. You and I are so\nhappy together, and we're changing ourselves and one another every day,\nbut we never think that Aunt Matilda's also having experience and\nchanging herself, too. We kind of forbid her to grow better.\"\n\n\"You won't find anything that will change Matilda very quick, Jane.\nShe's a dreadful person to stick to habits; she's drunk out of the blue\ncup and give me the green one for these whole five years.\"\n\n\"The change in the atmosphere of the house,\" said Jane slowly, \"must be\ncomplete. We must never say one more word about her that isn't nice, and\nwe mustn't even think unkind thoughts. We must talk about her lots and\nlook forward to her coming back--\"\n\n\"Oh, heavens, I can't,\" gasped Susan.\n\n\"We'll begin to-day on her room--\"\n\n\"Then you'll make her madder than a hatter, sure; she can't bear to have\nher room touched.\"\n\n\"I'm going to make it the prettiest room in the house,\" said Jane\nresolutely. \"I'm going to brush and clean and mend and fix all those\nclothes she's left hanging up, and I'm going to love her dearly from now\non.\"\n\nSusan sat still, her lips moving slightly, but whether with repressed\nfeeling or trembling sentiment it would be impossible to say. \"She\nlooked awful cute when she was little and wore pantalettes,\" she said\nfinally.\n\n\"Bravo!\" cried Jane, running to her and kissing her. \"There's a fine\nvictory for you, and now,\"--her face brightening suddenly,--\"I've got an\nidea of what we can do to lift us right straight up into a new circle of\nlife. What do you say to our making the little back parlor over into a\nbedroom, and--\"\n\n\"--taking Mr. Rath to board?\" cried Susan joyfully. \"Oh, I am sure that\nhe wanted to come all along.\"\n\nJane laughed outright. \"No, indeed, the very idea! No, what I thought of\nwas inviting that poor old Mrs. Croft here for a week and giving her and\nher daughter-in-law a rest from one another.\"\n\nSusan gave a sharp little yell. \"Why, Jane Grey, I never heard the beat!\nWhy, she can't even feed herself!\"\n\n\"It would be a way to change the atmosphere of the house; it's just the\nkind of thing that would change us all--\"\n\n\"I should think it would change us all,\" interrupted Susan; \"why, she\nthrew a cup of tea at Katie's back last week. Katie said she couldn't\npossibly imagine what had come over her,--she was leaning out to hook\nthe blinds.\"\n\n\"It would be a Bible-lovely thing to do,\" Jane went on slowly. \"You or I\ncould feed her, and I'd take care of her. I'm a nurse, you know!\"\n\n\"Jane! Well, you beat all! Well, I never did! Old Mrs. Croft. Why, they\nsay you might as well be gentle with a hornet.\"\n\n\"Maybe she has her reasons; maybe it's,--Set a hornet to tend a hornet,\nfor all we know. Anyway, it's come to me as some good to do, and when I\nthink of any good that I can do, I have to do it,--else it's a sin.\nThat's my religion.\"\n\n\"That religion of yours'll get you into a lot of hot water along through\nlife.\" Susan's tone was very grave. \"And you've never seen old Mrs.\nCroft, or you'd never speak of her and religion in the same breath.\nThey've got a cat she caresses, and some days she caresses it for all\nshe's worth. I've heard the cat being caressed when it was quiet,\nmyself, many's the time. You can't use that religion of yours on old\nMrs. Croft; she isn't a subject for religion. She's one of that kind\nthat the man in the Bible thanked God he wasn't one of them.\"\n\n\"My religion is what brought me here to you,\" said Jane gently. \"You\naren't really sorry that I learned it, are you, Auntie?\"\n\nSusan's eyes moistened quickly. She gasped, then swallowed, then made up\nher mind. \"Well, Sunshine Jane,\" she said resignedly, \"when shall we get\nher?\"\n\n\"We'll put her room in order to-morrow morning, and I'll go and ask her\nin the afternoon.\"\n\n\"Oh, dear!\" said Susan, with a world of meaning in the two syllables. \"I\nhope she'll enjoy the change.\"\n\nJane laughed. \"Goodness, Auntie, I never saw any one pick up new ideas\nas quick as you do. I was months learning how to make myself over, and\nyou do it in just a few hours. You must have laid a big foundation of\nself-control up there in bed.\"\n\nSusan sighed, uncheered. \"It kept me pretty sharp, I tell you,\" she\nsaid; \"when you're always hungry and have to get your food on the sly\nand be positively sure of never being found out, it does keep you in\ntrim being spry pretty steady.\"\n\n\"May we come in?\" asked voices at the gate. It was Lorenzo Rath and\nMadeleine. \"We wanted to see how you were getting on to-day,\" the latter\ncalled.\n\n\"We've been changing the furniture and the atmosphere,\" said Susan,\ntrying bravely to smile. \"Jane is turning everything around and bringing\nthe bright new side out.\"\n\n\"If you'll come and help me wash the breakfast dishes and then make\nbiscuits,\" Jane said to Madeleine, \"I'll ask you both to lunch.\"\n\n\"I want to learn how to do everything, of course,\" said Madeleine.\n\n\"And why shouldn't we go down to the garden?\" suggested Lorenzo to\nSusan. \"You'll point out the things you want to-day, and I'll pull 'em\nup.\"\n\n\"But there are fences to climb,\" said Jane.\n\n\"Fiddle for fences,\" said her aunt; \"he'll go ahead, and I'll skim over\n'em like a squirrel. I never made anything of fences.\"\n\nSo they divided the labor.\n\n\"The house looks so pretty,\" said Madeleine, as she and Jane went\nthrough to the kitchen. \"How do you ever manage it,--with just the same\nthings, too?\"\n\nJane glanced about. \"Why, there's a right place for everything, and if\nyou just stand back a bit and let the things have time to think, they'll\ntell you where to put them. There was an old blue vase in the\ndining-room that was pretty weak-minded, but I was patient and carried\nit all over the place till finally it was suited on top of the what-not\nin the corner of the hall. The trouble with most things is that we hurry\nthem too much at first, and then we don't help them out of their false\nposition later.\"\n\n\"Oh, Jane, you are so delightfully quaint. You must tell Mr. Rath that.\nIt's the kind of speech that will just charm the soul right out of an\nartist.\"\n\nJane was deep in the flour-bin. \"But I don't want to charm his soul.\nI'll leave that to you.\"\n\n\"To me! Why, he doesn't care a rap about me.\"\n\n\"Well, then, to Emily Mead.\"\n\n\"Emily Mead! Oh, my dear, you have put a lot of new ideas into her head!\nShe says that you told her that any one could get anything that he or\nshe wanted.\"\n\n\"And so they can.\"\n\n\"Suppose she wants Mr. Rath?\"\n\n\"If she wants him in the right way, she'll have him.\"\n\n\"I don't like that way of speaking of men,\" said Madeleine, dipping her\nwhite fingers into the flour and beginning to chip the butter through\nit. \"Don't you think it's horrid how girls speak of men nowadays? I do.\"\n\n\"Of course I do,\" said Jane. \"But one drops into the habit just because\neverybody does it. I'll never be married myself, and it's partly because\nI think it's all being so dragged down. Instead of two people's knowing\none another and liking one another better till finally a big, beautiful,\nholy secret sort of dawns on them and makes the world all over new,\ngirls just go on and act as if men were wild animals to be hunted and\ncaught and talked about, or married and made fun of. I don't think all\nthese new ideas and new ways for women have made women a bit more\nwomanly. When I had to earn my living, I picked out work that a man\ncouldn't do, and that I wouldn't be hurting any man by doing. I'm sorry\nfor men nowadays. And I think women lose a lot the way some of them go\non.\"\n\n\"After all, there can't be anything nicer than to be a woman, can\nthere?\" said Madeleine, stirring as the other poured in ingredients.\n\"I've always been glad that I was a woman. I think that a woman's life\nis so sweet, and it's beautiful to be protected and cared for.\" The pink\nflew over her cheeks at the words.\n\nJane's lashes swept downward for a minute, then rose resolutely. \"Or to\nprotect and care for others. It always seems to me as if a woman was the\nsort of blessed way through which a man's love and strength and care go\nto his children. Men are so helpless with children, but they do such a\nlot for wives, and then the mothers pass it on to the little ones.\"\n\n\"Life's lovely when you think of it rightly, isn't it?\" Madeleine said\nthoughtfully. \"I'm so pleased over having come here. You see Father and\nMother wanted me to spend a few weeks quietly where I could rest and\npick myself up a little, and so they sent me here. I didn't care much\nabout coming, but I'm glad now. You're doing me lots of good, Jane; you\nseem to help me to unlock the doors to everything that's just best in\nme.\"\n\n\"It isn't that I do it,\" said Jane; \"it's that it's been done to me, and\nafter it got through me, it's bound to shine on. It's like light; every\nwindow you clean lets it through into another place, where maybe there's\nsomething else to clean and let it through again.\"\n\n\"I suppose we just live to keep clean and let light through,\" laughed\nMadeleine, cutting out the biscuits.\n\n\"That's all.\"\n\n\"I think that you'd make a good preacher, Jane; you've such nice, plain,\nhomely, understandable ways of putting things.\"\n\nJane laughed and popped the pan into the oven. \"Come and help lay the\ntable,\" she said. \"Oh, you never saw anything as sweet as Aunt Susan's\njoy in her own things. She's like a little child at Christmas. It's a\nkind of coming back to life for her.\"\n\n\"They say that her sister was awfully mean to her.\"\n\n\"But she wasn't at all. She thought that she was sicker than she was,\nand she kept her in bed, and the joke of it was that Aunt Susan didn't\nlike to hurt her feelings by letting her see what mistaken ideas she\nhad, so she hopped up every time the coast was clear and kept lively and\ninterested trying to be about and in bed at once.\"\n\n\"How perfectly delightful! I never heard anything so funny. And then you\ncame and discovered the truth.\"\n\n\"Well, I didn't want her to stay in bed. I'd never encourage any one in\na false belief, but she hadn't the belief,--she had only the false\nappearance. She didn't enjoy being an invalid one bit.\"\n\n\"I think it's too droll,\" said Madeleine. \"Didn't you laugh when it\ndawned on you first?\"\n\n\"It dawned on me rather sadly. But we laugh together now.\"\n\n\"What will she do when her sister comes back?\"\n\n\"Oh, that will all come out nicely. I don't know just how, but I know\nthat it will come out all right.\"\n\n\"Do you always have faith in things coming out rightly?\"\n\n\"Always. I wouldn't dare not to. I'm one of those people who kind of\nfeel the future as it draws near, and so I wouldn't allow myself to feel\nany mean future drawing near, on principle. I always feel that nice\nthings are marching straight towards me as fast as ever the band of\nmusic plays.\"\n\n\"Do you believe that it really makes any difference?\"\n\n\"Of course it makes a difference. It makes all the difference in the\nworld, because hope's a rope by which any good thing can haul you right\nup to it, hand over hand.\"\n\n\"You give me a lot to think about,\" said Madeleine.\n\nJane ran out and picked some ivy leaves to place under the vase of\nflowers in the middle of the table. It made a little green mat. \"There;\nwe're all ready when they come, now,\" she said.\n\nPresently they did come.\n\n\"Oh, what will Mrs. Cowmull say to this!\" said Lorenzo, as he pulled out\nMrs. Ralston's chair. \"She's busy marking passages in _The Seven Lamps\nof Architecture_ to read aloud to me while I eat, and now I shan't show\nup at all.\"\n\n\"Have you seen her niece lately?\" asked Madeleine.\n\n\"Yes, I saw her this morning. She wants to pose for me, only she\nstipulated that she should wear clothes. I told her that my models all\nwore thick wool and only showed a little of their faces. She didn't seem\nto like that.\"\n\n\"But what did you mean? Surely you don't always have them wear thick\nwoolen?\"\n\n\"I just do. If they haven't thick wool on, I won't paint them at all.\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"Why, I paint sheep.\"\n\nThe mild little joke met with great favor.\n\n\"I think you're a very clever young man,\" Susan said with great\nsincerity. \"To think of me having a good time laughing with a sheep\npainter,\" she added. \"Who holds them for you to paint, and do you set\nthem afterwards?\"\n\n\"I paint them right in the fields,\" said Lorenzo.\n\n\"I should think they'd butt you from behind.\"\n\n\"I paint over a fence.\"\n\n\"Well, that's safe,\" said Jane's aunt. \"If you're careful not to be on\nthe side where there's a bull.\"\n\nAfter supper Madeleine helped Jane wash the dishes.\n\n\"What fun you make out of everything,\" she said.\n\n\"It's the only way,\" Jane answered. \"My mission is to make two sunbeams\nshine where only one slanted.\"\n\n\"I'm glad I'm one of the heathen to whom you were sent,\" said Madeleine\naffectionately.\n\nJane put her arm around her. \"So am I, dear, very glad.\"\n\nMadeleine laid her face against the other girl's. \"Some day I want to\ntell you a secret,\" she said; \"a secret that Lorenzo told me yesterday.\"\n\nJane felt her heart sort of skip a beat. \"Do tell me,\" she said in a\nwhisper.\n\n\"I can't now,\" said Madeleine. \"I want to be all alone with you. It's\ntoo--too big a secret to bear to be broken in upon.\"\n\n\"Can you come to-morrow afternoon? Auntie's going to Mrs. Mead's to the\nSewing Society, and I'll be here alone.\"\n\n\"That will be nice,\" said Madeleine; \"yes, I'll come.\"\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII\n\nSOUL-UPLIFTING\n\n\nIT was the next morning about eleven o'clock.\n\n\"You see,\" said Jane, sitting in the Crofts' sitting-room opposite Katie\nCroft who, whatever else she might or might not be, was certainly not\npleasant of expression, \"you see, my aunt has been an invalid so much\nthat she appreciates what a change means to both the sick one and the\none who cares for her, and so we thought that it would be so nice if\nyou'd let me wheel your mother--\"\n\n\"She ain't my mother--she's my mother-in-law,\" broke in Mrs. Katie\nCroft, instantly indignant over so false an imputation. \"Good lands, the\nvery idea! My mother! And never one single stroke of paralysis nor\nnothing in my family, and all reading the Bible without glasses right up\ntill they died.\"\n\n\"You see, it would give you a little rest, too,\" Jane continued, \"and it\nwould do Aunt Susan good to feel that she was helping a weaker--\"\n\n\"She ain't weak,\" broke in Katie Croft, again; \"my lands, she's strong\nas a lady-ox. Anything she makes up her mind to keep she lays hold of\nwith a grip as makes you fairly sick all up and down your back. You\ndon't know perhaps, Miss Grey, as my husband died in our youth, and I\ncome to live with his mother as a sacred duty, and I tell you frankly\nthat I wish I'd never been born or that he'd never been born, forty\ntimes an hour--I do.\"\n\n\"You'll like a week alone, I'm sure,\" said Jane serenely, \"and we'll\nlike to have your mother-in-law. Perhaps she'll get a few new ideas--\"\n\n\"She's stubborn as a mule,\" interrupted the daughter-in-law.\n\n\"But may I see her and ask her? I do so want to help you a little. Life\nmust have been so hard for you these last years.\"\n\n\"Hard!\" said Katie Croft, with emphasis. \"Hard! Well, I'll tell you what\nit is, Miss Grey,--to marry a young man as was meek as Moses and then\nhave him just fade right straight out and get a mother-in-law like that\nold--that old--that old--well, I'll tell you frankly she's a siren and\nnothing else.\" (Young Mrs. Croft probably meant \"vixen,\" but Jane did\nnot notice.) \"My life ain't really worth a shake-up of mustard and\nvinegar some days. What I have suffered!\"\n\n\"I know more than you think,\" said Jane sympathetically; \"nurses take\ncare of so many kinds of people. But do let me ask her. If she likes to\ncome to us, it'll be a great rest to you, and perhaps it'll do her a\nlittle good, too.\"\n\n\"I can't understand you're wanting her,\" said Katie. \"It's all over town\nhow queer you are, but I never thought that anybody could be as queer as\nthat!\"\n\n\"Do let us go to her,\" Jane urged.\n\nKatie rose and forthwith conducted the caller to old Mrs. Croft's room,\na large, square place adorned with no end of black daguerreotypes and\nfaded photographs.\n\n\"Mother, it's Miss Grey. You know?--she's Mrs. Ralston's niece.\"\n\nOld Mrs. Croft received her visitor with acutely suspicious eyes.\n\"Well?\" she said tartly.\n\nJane took her hand, but she jerked it smartly away.\n\n\"Sit down anywhere,\" said Katie; \"she hears well.\"\n\n\"Hear!\" said old Mrs. Croft. \"I should say I did hear. There ain't a pan\nfell in the neighborhood for the last ten years as hasn't woke me out of\na sound sleep, dreaming of my husband--\"\n\n\"Miss Grey's come to see you about something,\" interrupted Katie;\n\"she--\"\n\n\"I had a husband,\" continued old Mrs. Croft, raising her voice from Do\nto Re, \"and such a one! Wednesday he'd go to sleep and Thursdays he'd\nwake, so regular you could tell the days of the week just from his\nhabits. He--\"\n\n\"Miss Grey wants--\" interrupted Katie.\n\n\"I came to--\" said Jane.\n\n\"I had a husband,\" continued old Mrs. Croft, going from Re to Mi now;\n\"oh, my, but I did have a husband. In May I had him and in December I\nhad him, but he was always the same to me. You can see his picture\nthere, Miss Grey; it's all faded out, just from being looked at; but\nI'll tell you where it never fades, Miss Grey--it never so much as turns\na hair in my heart. My heart is engraved--\"\n\n\"You'd better go on and say what you've got to say,\" said Katie to Jane.\n\"I often put her to bed talking, and she talks all the night through.\"\n\n\"I want to ask you--\" Jane began.\n\n\"Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies,\" sang Mrs. Croft. \"Oh, I\nhad--\"\n\n\"--I want you to come and stay with us,\" Jane said, with forceful\naccents.\n\nThere was a sudden tense hush.\n\n\"My aunt and I want you to come and make us a little visit,\" the caller\nadded.\n\nThe hush grew awful.\n\n\"A little change would be so good for you--you've been shut up so long.\"\n\nOld Mrs. Croft lifted her two hands towards the ceiling.\n\n\"What do you want to take me out of my own house for? Going to do\nsomething to it that I wouldn't approve, I expect. Oh, I see it all.\nThere was Macbeth and there was Othello, and now there's my house--What\nare you going to do to it, anyhow?\" The question was pitched so high and\nsharp that Jane jumped.\n\n\"We just want to give you a little change.\"\n\n\"Change! I had a change once. Went to Cuba with my husband and nearly\ndied. I don't want no change of _house_,\" with deep meaning in the\nemphasis; \"the change that I want is another change. Change is a great\nthing to have. My husband never changed. Only his collars. Never no\nother way.\"\n\n\"You and Aunt Susan are old friends--\" suggested Jane.\n\n\"Never nothing special,\" broke in old Mrs. Croft. \"My goodness, I do\nhope your aunt ain't calling me her friend, because if she is, it's a\nthing I can't allow.\"\n\nJane thanked her stars that her powers of mental concentration forbade\nher mind to wander. \"I'm sure if you came to us, you'd enjoy it,\" she\nsaid persuasively; \"we've such a pretty bedroom down-stairs, and I'll\nsleep on the dining-room sofa, so you won't feel lonely.\"\n\n\"Lonely. I never feel lonely. I'd thank Heaven if I could be let alone\nfor a little, once in a while. I don't want to come, and that's a fact.\nIf that be treason, make the most of it.\"\n\n\"Oh, but you must come,\" said Jane; \"you'll like it. We want you, and\nyou must come.\"\n\n\"Well, get me my bonnet then,\" said old Mrs. Croft. \"Run, Katie, I've\nbeen sitting here waiting for it for over an hour.\"\n\nKatie and Jane regarded one another in consternation. They hadn't quite\ncounted on this.\n\n\"I'm going visiting,\" said Mrs. Croft gaily. \"Oh, my, and how I shall\nvisit. Years may come and years may go, and still I shall sit there\nvisiting away, and when I hear the door-bell, I shall know it's time for\nChristmas dinner.\"\n\nKatie took Jane's hand and drew her out of the room. \"I don't believe\nyou'd better take her,\" she said; \"she's so flighty. I know how to\nmanage her, and you don't. Just give it up.\"\n\n\"No, I won't,\" said Jane, smiling. \"I know that it's a kind thing to do\nand that I must do it. I'm going to take her.\"\n\n\"Seems so odd you're wanting to,\" said Katie. \"You're very funny, I\nthink. People are saying that you think that everything's for the best.\nDo you really believe that?\"\n\n\"Of course. We can't get outside of God's plan, whatever we may do. If\nwe do wrong, we have to bear the consequences because it's as easy to\n_see_ the right thing to do as the wrong, but the great Plan never\nwavers.\"\n\n\"Oh, my,\" said Katie. \"I'm glad to know that.\"\n\nJane pressed her hand. \"I'll get things all ready, and we'll bring her\nover tomorrow night,\" she said; \"that'll be best. Then she can go right\nto bed and get rested from the effort.\"\n\nSo it was arranged, and the Sunshine Nurse went home to tell Susan that\nMrs. Croft had consented to come. She felt quite positive that now they\nwould both attain unto a higher plane without any difficulty, if they\nkept such a guest in the house for a week.\n\n\"It isn't going to be easy, Auntie,\" she said, a bit later, \"but it will\nteach you and me a lot, and if one wants to voyage greatly, one must get\nout into the deep water.\"\n\n\"I'll do anything to get hold of some different way of getting on with\nMatilda,\" said Susan, \"and I begin to see what you mean when you say\nthat if I change _me_, I'll change it all. If you could make flour into\nsugar, you'd have cake instead of biscuit, but, oh, my! Old Mrs. Croft!\"\n\n\"It won't be for so very long,\" said Jane, \"and think of Katie Croft\nthrough all these years! She's been splendid, I think.\"\n\n\"Well, she didn't have any other place to live, you know,\" Susan\npromptly reminded her niece.\n\n\"Work's work, no matter why you do it,\" Jane said, \"and all the big laws\nwork greatly. This having old Mrs. Croft is a pretty big step for you\nand me to take, and you'll see that when Aunt Matilda returns, we'll be\nso strongly settled in our new ways that she can't unsettle us. We'll be\nabsolutely different people.\"\n\n\"Y--yes,\" said Susan, confidence fighting doubt stoutly. \"I'm willing to\ntry, although left to myself I should never have thought of old Mrs.\nCroft as a way of getting different.\"\n\n\"Anything that we do with earnest purpose is a way of getting better,\"\nsaid Jane. She looked out of the window for a minute, and her lip almost\nquivered. Susan didn't notice. \"Everything is always for the best, if\nwe're sure of it,\" she then said firmly.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IX\n\nMADELEINE'S SECRET\n\n\nTHE two girls were enjoying a pleasant time in Susan's big, tidy\nkitchen.\n\n\"I never knew that a kitchen could be so perfectly lovely,\" said\nMadeleine, as they took tea by the little table by the window. \"Jane,\nyou are a genius! One opens the gate here with a bubbling feeling that\neverything in the whole world's all right.\"\n\n\"I'm so glad,\" said Jane; \"it's grand to feel that one is a real channel\nof happiness. I always seem to see people as made to form that kind of\nconnection between God and earth, and that happiness is the visible sign\nof success, a good 'getting through,' so to speak.\"\n\n\"Do you know, the English language is awfully indefinite. That sentence\nmight mean good flowing like water through people, or people so made\nthat good can go through them easily. Do you see?\"\n\n\"Yes, I see. But either meaning is all right. It isn't what I say that\nmatters so much, anyway. It's how you take it.\"\n\n\"I took that two ways.\"\n\n\"Yes, and both were good. That's so fine,--to get two good meanings,\nwhere I only meant one.\"\n\nThey smiled together.\n\n\"Mr. Rath and I were talking about that last evening,\" said Madeleine,\nthe color coming into her face a little. \"Do you know, he's really a\nvery dear man. He's awfully nice.\"\n\nJane jumped up to drive a wasp out of the window. \"You know him better\nthan I do,\" she said, very busy.\n\n\"I've known him for several years, but never as well as here.\"\n\nJane came back and sat down. Madeleine was silent, seeming to search for\nwords.\n\n\"You were going to tell me a secret,\" her friend said, after a little.\n\n\"I know, but I--I can't.\"\n\nJane lifted her eyes almost pitifully. \"Why not?\"\n\n\"I don't feel that I have the right, after all. Secrets are such\nprecious things.\"\n\n\"If I can help you--?\"\n\n\"Oh, no, no.--It isn't any trouble. It's something quite different--I--I\nthought that perhaps I could tell you my thoughts, but--I can't.\"\n\nThere was a silence.\n\n\"There are such wonderful feelings in the world,\" Madeleine went on,\nafter a little; \"they don't seem to fit into words at all. One feels\nashamed to have even planned to talk about them. One feels so humble\nwhen--\" she paused--then closed her lips.\n\nJane put out her hand and took the hand upon the other side of the\nlittle table, close. \"Don't mind me, dear; I understand.\"\n\n\"Do you really?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\nMadeleine's eyes were anxious. \"Do you guess? Did you guess?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"And how--what--what do you think?\"\n\n\"I think that it would be lovely, only, of course, I don't quite know it\nall, for I shall never have anything like it.\"\n\nMadeleine started. \"Oh, Jane, don't say that.\"\n\n\"But it's so, dear.\"\n\n\"Oh, _no_.\"\n\n\"No, dear,--I can guess and sympathize. But I shall never have any such\nhappiness. It's--it's quite settled.\"\n\nMadeleine left her seat, went round by the side of the other girl, flung\nherself down on the floor, and looked as if she were about to cry. \"Oh,\nJane, you mustn't feel so. Why shouldn't you marry?\"\n\n\"I can't, dear; I've debts of my father's to pay, and I'm pledged to my\nOrder.\"\n\n\"But they'll get paid after a while.\"\n\n\"It will take all my youth.\"\n\n\"But a way can be found?\"\n\n\"No way can ever be. There is no one in the wide world to help me. I'm\nquite alone.\"\n\n\"Why, Jane,\" said Madeleine, always kneeling and always looking up, \"I\nknow some one who can manage everything, and you do, too.\"\n\nJane stared a little. \"My aunt, do you mean?\"\n\n\"No,--God.\"\n\nJane smiled suddenly. \"Thank you, dear. I hadn't forgotten, but I just\ndidn't think. Still, I think God means me to be brave about my burdens.\nI don't think that He sees them as things from which to be relieved.\"\n\nMadeleine was still looking up. \"But the channel doesn't think; the\nchannel just conveys what pours along it,\" she whispered.\n\nJust at this second the scene altered.\n\n\"Oh, there's my aunt!\" Jane exclaimed. Susan passed the window, and the\nnext minute she came in the door. \"I've had the most bee--youtiful\nafternoon,\" she announced radiantly. \"I did Jane lots of credit, for I\nnever said a word about anybody, but oh, how splendid it was to just be\ngood and silent, and hear all the others talk. They talked about\neverybody, and a good many were of my own opinion, so I had considerable\nsatisfaction without doing a thing wrong.\"\n\nJane couldn't help laughing or Madeleine, either. \"Was young Mrs. Croft\nthere?\"\n\n\"No, and most everybody says that she'll go off to-morrow and never come\nback, and we'll have old Mrs. Croft till she dies. They looked at me\npretty hard, but I stuck to my soul and never said a word.\"\n\n\"It was noble in you, Auntie,\" Jane said warmly.\n\n\"Yes, it was,\" assented Susan. Then she turned to Madeleine, who had\nreturned to her chair. \"Jane's religion's pretty hard on me, but I like\nits results, and I can do anything I set out to do, and I don't mean to\nnot get a future if I can help it. You see, my sister Matilda is a very\npeculiar person. You must know that by this time?\"\n\n\"I have heard a good deal about her,\" Madeleine admitted.\n\n\"Well, I hope it isn't unkind in me to say that I know more than anybody\nelse can possibly imagine.\"\n\n\"But she's coming back all right,\" Jane interrupted firmly; \"we mustn't\nforget that.\"\n\n\"No,\" said Susan, with a quick gasp in her breath; \"no, I'm not\nforgetting a thing. I'm only talking a little. And oh, how Mrs. Cowmull\ndid talk about you, Madeleine. She says Mr. Rath can't put his nose out\nof the door alone.\"\n\n\"That's dreadful,\" said Madeleine, trying not to color, \"especially as\nwe always come straight here.\"\n\n\"Well, I tell you it's pretty hard work being good,\" said Susan, with a\ncheerful sigh; \"it's a relief to get home and take off one's bonnet.\"\n\n\"And don't you want some tea, Auntie? It's all hot under the cozy.\"\n\n\"Yes, I will, you Sunshine Jane, you. I'll never cease to be grateful\nfor good tea again as long as I live. I've had five years of the other\nkind to help me remember.\"\n\nLater, when Madeleine was gone, Susan said: \"Do you know, Jane, Katie\nCroft is certainly going to desert that awful old woman when we get her\nhere? Everybody says so.\"\n\n\"No, she isn't, Auntie; the expected is never what happens.\"\n\n\"Jane, any one with your religion can't rely on proverbs to help them\nout, because the whole thing puts you right outside of common-sense to\nbegin with.\"\n\nJane was sitting looking out upon the pretty garden. \"I know, Auntie; I\nonly quoted that in reference to the Sewing Society gossip. It's never\nthe expected that happens in their world; it's the expected that always\nhappens in my world. And proverbs don't exist in my world; they're every\none of them a human limitation.\"\n\n\"Well, Jane, I don't know; some of them are very pretty, and when I've\nseen Matilda over the fence and run down to get a few scraps, I've taken\nconsiderable comfort in 'No cloud without a silver lining' and 'It never\nrains but it pours.' They were a great help to me.\"\n\nJane kissed her tenderly. \"Bless you, Auntie,--everything's all right\nand all lovely, and Madeleine made me so happy to-day. I'm sure that\nshe's engaged.\"\n\n\"Yes, I've thought that, too.\"\n\n\"Yes, and I'm so glad for her.\"\n\n\"I hope he's good enough for her.\"\n\n\"Oh, I'm sure that he is.\" Jane thought a minute. \"And Madeleine gave me\na big lesson, too,\" she added.\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"She showed me that with all my teaching and preaching, I don't trust\nGod half enough yet.\"\n\n\"Well, Jane,\" said Susan solemnly, \"I s'pose trusting God is like being\ngrateful for the sunshine,--human beings ain't big enough to hold all\nthey ought to feel.\"\n\n\"Perhaps we'd be nothing but trust and gratitude, then,\" said Jane,\nsmiling.\n\n\"They're nice feelings to be made of,\" said Susan serenely, \"but I must\ngo and put my bonnet away. But, oh, heavens, when I think that to-morrow\nold Mrs. Croft is coming!\"\n\n\"And that lots of good is coming with her; she is coming to bring\nhappiness and happiness only.\"\n\n\"Yes, I know,\" Susan's air was completely submissive. \"I can hardly wait\nfor her to get here. They wondered at the Sewing Society if she'd sing\nCaptain Jinks all night often. She does sometimes, you know. But I'm\nsure we'll like her. She's a nice woman.\"\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER X\n\nOLD MRS. CROFT\n\n\nOLD Mrs. Croft arrived the next afternoon about half after four. She was\nrolled up in her chair, and her small trunk followed on a wheelbarrow.\n\n\"How old you have grown!\" she said to Susan, by way of greeting, as she\ngrated up the gravel. \"My, to think you ever looked young!\"\n\nThey wheeled her into the hall. \"Same hall,\" she said, looking about,\n\"same paper you had thirty years ago. Oh, my, to think of it. I've\npapered and papered and scraped off, and papered and papered and scraped\noff, and then papered again in those same thirty years.\"\n\nThey got her into the room on the ground floor, which had been prepared\nfor her. \"I suppose this was the most convenient place to put me,\" she\nsaid, \"and so you put me in it. Put me where you please, only I do hope\nyou haven't beetles. It makes me very nervous to hear 'em chipping about\nall night, and when I'm nervous, I don't sleep, and when I don't sleep,\nI just can't help lying awake. It's a way I've got. I caught it from my\nhusband when he was a baby. He'd wake up and give it to me.\"\n\nSusan went out with Jane to get her some supper. \"I never thought much\nabout Katie Croft,\" she said, \"but I never doubted she had a hard time.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Jane, \"and one of the nicest things in this world is to be\nable to give some one who's had a hard time a rest.\"\n\n\"Wouldn't it be dreadful if she died, though, while she was here?\"\n\n\"Who? Old Mrs. Croft?\"\n\n\"Oh, no, she won't ever die. I meant Katie. Everybody says she's going\nto run away, but if she don't do that and dies, we'll be just as badly\noff as if she did it.\"\n\n\"Oh, Auntie!\"\n\n\"Well, Jane, we'd have to keep old Mrs. Croft till she died.\"\n\n\"I guess there's not much chance of that,\" Jane said; \"she won't die.\nShe has come here to do us good and to receive good herself, that's\nall.\"\n\nSusan looked appalled. \"Surely you don't expect to sunshine _her_ up, do\nyou?\"\n\n\"Yes, I do.\"\n\nThen Susan looked amazed. \"Well, I never did! I thought she was just\nhere to do us good. I--\"\n\nTheir conversation was suddenly interrupted by a piercing shriek. Jane\nflew.\n\n\"I'm so happy I just had to let it out,\" Mrs. Croft announced. \"I can't\nhold in joy or sorrow. Sorrow I let out in the low of my voice--like a\ncow, you know--but joy I let rise to the skies. You'll hear to-night.\"\n\nJane looked at her and smiled. She looked like a story-book witch in a\nnice, white, modern bed. \"I thought that perhaps you wanted something,\"\nshe said, turning to leave the room again.\n\n\"No, indeed, I never want anything. I ain't by no means so bad off as is\ngive out.\"\n\n\"I guessed as much. You can make a fresh start now, and we shan't remind\nyou of the past.\"\n\n\"Oh, then I'm coming to the table,\" exclaimed Mrs. Croft, \"and I'm going\nto be helped like a Christian and feed myself like a human being. This\nbeing put to bed and just all but tied there with a rope isn't going to\ngo on much longer, I can tell you.\"\n\n\"Don't speak of it at all,\" said Jane; \"you just do what you please\nhere, and we'll let you. I'm going to get you your supper now.\"\n\n\"Stop!\" cried old Mrs. Croft sharply. \"Stop! I won't have it! I won't\nstand it. Oh, I've had such a time,\" she went on, bringing her clenched\nfist down vigorously on her knee under the bedclothes and raising\nher voice very high indeed, \"such a time! I had a beautiful son that\nyou or any girl might have been proud to marry, and then he must go and\nmarry that Katie Croft creature. There ain't many things to cut a\nmother's heart to the quick like seeing her own son marry her own\ndaughter-in-law. Such a nice raised boy as he was, so neat, and she\nkicking her clothes under the bed at night to tidy up the room. Oh!\"\ncried Mrs. Croft, lifting her voice to a still more surprising pitch,\n\"what I have suffered! Nothing ain't been spared me. I lost my son and\nthe use of my legs from the shock and--\"\n\n\"Supper is all ready,\" Jane interrupted sweetly and calmly.\n\n\"What you got?\"\n\n\"Sardines--\"\n\n\"I never eat 'em.\"\n\n\"Toast.\"\n\n\"I hate it.\"\n\n\"Plum preserves.\"\n\n\"Lord have mercy on me, I wouldn't swallow one if you gave it to me.\"\n\nJane stood still at the door.\n\nSusan, having heard the screams, came running in.\n\n\"Oh, Mrs. Ralston,\" cried Mrs. Croft, \"I had\"--Jane rose, approached the\nbed, and laid a firm hand on her arm. \"What do you want for supper?\" she\nasked in a quiet, penetrating tone.\n\n\"I don't want nothing,\" cried Mrs. Croft; \"days I eat and days I don't.\nThis is a day I don't eat, and on such a day I only take a little ham\nand eggs from time to time. Oh, my husband, how I did love you! It's\njust come over me how I loved him, and I love him so I can't hardly\nstand it--\"\n\n\"We'll go out and have supper ourselves, then,\" said Jane.\n\n\"Eat, drink, and be merry while you can,\" fairly yelled Mrs. Croft. \"The\nhandwriting is on the wall and the Medes and Persians is in the chicken\nyard right now. Oh, what a--\"\n\nThey slipped out and shut the door after them. Susan turned a scared\nface Jane's way. \"Why, she's crazy!\" she said. \"Katie always said so,\nand folks thought she was just talking. It's awful.\"\n\n\"She's a little excited with the change,\" said Jane soothingly; \"she'll\nbe calmer soon. It's very bad to shut one's self off from others. It's\nbetter to fuss along with disagreeable people than to live altogether\nalone. She's grown flighty through being left alone. It's a wonder that\nyou didn't get odd yourself.\"\n\nWhen they went back after supper, Mrs. Croft was sound asleep.\n\n\"Don't wake her, for goodness' sake,\" whispered Susan, in the doorway.\nJane left the room quietly, and her aunt took her by the arm and led her\nup-stairs. \"This is pretty serious,\" she said. \"I think Katie Croft\nought to have told us.\"\n\n\"She didn't want her to come; we insisted,\" said Jane.\n\n\"I tell you what,\" said Susan, \"we were too happy.\"\n\nSusan's tone was so solemn that Jane had an odd little qualm. But the\nnext instant she knew that all was right, because all is always right.\n\"Auntie,\" she said, putting her hand on the older woman's shoulder, \"you\nmust try to realize that you've moved out of the world where things go\nwrong into the world where things go right. When you go out of the cold,\ndark winter night into a cosy, warm house, you don't fear that the house\nwill turn dark and cold any minute.\"\n\n\"But old Mrs. Croft isn't a house; she's moved into us, instead.\"\n\nJane smiled her customary smile of tranquil sweetness. \"She has come to\nshow us ourselves,\" she said, \"and to bring us to some kind of better\nthings. I know it.\"\n\nSusan's eyes altered to confidence. \"Well, Sunshine Jane,\" she said,\n\"I'll try to believe that you know. I'll try.\"\n\nThey went to bed early, and Jane slept on the dining-room sofa. In the\nnight Mrs. Croft, calling, woke her. She jumped up and went to her at\nonce.\n\n\"I'm hungry. You didn't ask me here to starve me, did you? Oh, how\nhungry I am. I've never been so hungry before.\"\n\n\"I'll get you anything you like,\" the girl said. \"What shall it be?\"\n\nMrs. Croft shook her head lugubriously. \"Whatever I eat is sure to kill\nme. I wish I was home. You don't know how good dear Katie is to me, Miss\nGrey. Nobody could, unless they lived with her year in and year out as I\ndo. Something told me never to leave my sweet child, and I disobeyed my\nconscience which won't let me sleep for aching like a serpent's tooth.\nOh, my little Katie, my pretty little Katie, my loving little Katie that\nI went and left at home! Take me to her.\"\n\n\"But she isn't at home,\" said Jane. \"She's gone away on a little visit.\nShe went last evening.\"\n\n\"I shall never see her again,\" said Mrs. Croft mournfully. \"I shall\nnever see no one again. Oh, dear; oh, dear. My eyes. My eyes.\"\n\n\"What shall I get you? A glass of milk?\"\n\n\"It doesn't matter. Whatever you like. I was never one to make trouble.\nWhatever you like.\"\n\nWhen Jane returned with the milk and some hastily prepared bread and\nbutter, Mrs. Croft was praying rapidly. \"I think I've got religion,\"\nsaid she, in a bright, chatty tone; \"if you'll sit down, I'll convert\nyou. It's never too late to mend, and so get your darning basket and\ncome right here.\" She began to eat and drink very rapidly. \"It's going\nto kill me,\" she said, between bites, \"but I don't care a mite. What is\nlife after all,--a vain fleeting shadow of vanity,--why, you ain't put\nno jam on this bread!\"\n\n\"Do you like jam? I'll get you some at once.\"\n\n\"Oh, merciful heavens, waking me up in the dead of night to give me\nplain bread and no jam! I shall never see Katie again, and perhaps it's\njust as well, for she'd not stand such doings. Oh, you idle, thriftless\ngirl, take me home, take me home at once.\"\n\n\"In the morning,\" said Jane gently.\n\n\"Oh, my,--why did I ever come! Katie, my Katie, my long-loving Katie; my\ndear little Katie that's gone to New York!\"\n\nThen, having swallowed the milk in great gulps and the bread in great\nbites, she shut her eyes and lay back again in bed.\n\n\"Shan't I bring you anything else?\" Jane asked.\n\n\"No,\" said the invalid, \"not by no means, and I'll trouble you to get\nout and keep out and don't make a noise in the morning, for I want my\nlast hours to be peaceful, and I'm going to take a screw-driver and fix\nmy thoughts firmly to heaven at once.\"\n\nJane went softly out.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XI\n\nSHE SLEEPS\n\n\nTHE next morning Susan felt perturbed. \"She'll take up a whole week of\nour happy visit, and I can't bear to lose a minute. The time's going too\nfast, anyhow.\"\n\nLorenzo Rath came in shortly after. He and Madeleine and Emily Mead were\nin and out daily to suit themselves by this time. \"Do you know, Mrs.\nCroft has gone off, nobody knows where,\" he said gravely; \"she's left no\naddress, and people say she'll never come back.\"\n\nSusan threw up her hands with a wail. \"Oh, Jane, she _has_ left that\ndreadful old woman on us for life; I'll just bet anything folks knew\nexactly that she meant to do it when they talked to me so. What _will_\nMatilda say when she comes back?\"\n\nJane was silent a minute. \"It's no use doubting what one really\nbelieves,\" she said finally. \"I do really believe that I came here for a\ngood purpose, and I know that I had a good purpose in inviting Mrs.\nCroft. I'm taught that to doubt is like pouring ink into the pure water\nof one's good intentions, and I won't doubt. I refuse to.\"\n\n\"But if you go back to where you come from and leave me with Matilda and\nold Mrs. Croft, I'll be dead or I'll wish I was dead,--it all comes to\nthe same thing,\" cried poor Susan.\n\n\"Auntie,\" said Jane firmly, \"I shan't leave you alone with Aunt Matilda\nand Mrs. Croft, you needn't fear.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" said Susan, her face undergoing a lightning transformation, \"if\nyou'll stay here, I'll keep Mrs. Croft or anybody else, with pleasure.\"\n\n\"What, even me?\" laughed Lorenzo.\n\n\"I'd like to keep you,\" said Susan warmly. \"I think you're one of the\nnicest young men I ever knew.\"\n\n\"I'd like to stay,\" said Lorenzo, looking at Jane.\n\nShe lifted up her eyes and they had a peculiar expression.\n\nJust then Emily Mead came in. \"Only think,\" she said, directly greetings\nwere over, \"people say Mrs. Croft drew all their money out of the bank\nbefore she left. Everybody says she's deserted her mother-in-law\ncompletely.\"\n\n\"Jane, it really is so,\" said Susan; \"she really is gone.\"\n\nJane looked steadily into their three faces. \"If I begin worrying and\ndoubting, of course there'll be a chance to worry and trouble, because\nI'm the strongest of you all,\" she said gravely, \"but I won't go down\nand live in the world of worry and trouble under any circumstances. I\nknow that only good can come of Mrs. Croft's being here. I _know_ it!\"\n\n\"I wish that I could learn how you manage such faith,\" said the young\nartist. \"I'd try it on myself,--yes, I would, for a fact.\"\n\n\"It's not so easy,\" said Jane, looking earnestly at him. \"It means just\nthe same mental discipline that physical culture means for the muscles.\nIt takes time.\"\n\n\"But I'd like to learn,\" said Lorenzo.\n\n\"So would I!\" said Emily Mead.\n\n\"I've begun already,\" said Susan; \"every time I think of old Mrs. Croft\nI say: 'She's here for some good purpose, God help us.'\"\n\n\"Tell me,\" said Emily Mead, \"what possessed you to have her, anyway?\nEverybody's wondering.\"\n\n\"Jane thought that it would be a nice thing to do. And so we did it.\"\n\n\"Do you always do things if you think of them?\" Emily asked Jane.\n\n\"I'm taught that I must.\"\n\n\"Taught?\"\n\n\"It's part of my sunshine work.\"\n\n\"That's why she's here,\" interposed Susan; \"she thought of me and came\nright along.\"\n\nEmily looked thoughtful. \"I wonder if I could learn,\" she said.\n\n\"Anybody can learn anything,\" said Lorenzo.\n\n\"Wouldn't it be nice to all learn Jane's religion?\"\n\n\"I've got it most learned,\" said Susan, \"I'm to where I'm most ready to\nstand Matilda, if only we don't have to keep old Mrs. Croft.\"\n\n\"What is old Mrs. Croft doing now?\" Emily asked suddenly.\n\n\"She's still asleep. She says that she sleeps late.\"\n\nThen Emily rose to go. Lorenzo Rath rose and left with her.\n\n\"Jane,\" said Susan solemnly, after they were alone, \"I'm afraid that\nreligion of yours ain't as practical as it might be, after all. It's got\nus old Mrs. Croft, and I ain't saying a word, but now I'm about positive\nit's going to lose you that young man. You could have him if you'd just\nexert yourself a little, and you don't at all.\"\n\n\"I couldn't have him, Auntie.\"\n\n\"Yes, you could. Don't tell me. I know a young man when I see one, and\nMr. Rath's a real young man. He loves you, Jane, just because nobody\ncould help it, and if you weren't always so busy, he'd get on a good\ndeal faster.\"\n\n\"I can't marry, Aunt Susan.\" Jane, with Madeleine's secret high in her\nheart, was very busy setting the kitchen to rights. \"Some people are not\nmeant to have homes of their own. It's the century.\"\n\n\"Fiddle for the century,\" said Susan, with something almost like\nviolence. \"I'm awful tired of all this hash and talk about the century.\nAbout the only thing I've had to think of since Matilda made up her mind\nI was too sick to get up, was what I read in newspapers about the\ntroubles of the century. Centuries is always in hot water till they're\nwell over, and then they get to be called the good old days. I guess\ndays ain't so different nor centuries either nor women neither. Fiddle\nfor all this kind of rubbish,--it's no use except to upset a nice girl\nlike you and keep her from marrying a nice young fellow like Mr. Rath.\nGirls don't know nothing about love no more. Mercy on us, why, it's a\nkind of thing that makes you willing to go right out and hack down trees\nfor the man.\"\n\nJane looked a little smiling and a little wistful. \"I'll tell you what\nit is, Auntie,\" she said; \"when my father died he left a debt that ought\nto be paid, and I promised him I'd pay it. I couldn't marry--it wouldn't\nbe honest.\"\n\nSusan's eyes flew pitifully open. \"Good heavens, mercy on us, no; then\nyou never can't marry, sure and certain. There never was the man yet so\ngood he wouldn't throw a thing like that in a woman's teeth. It's a\nman's way, my dear, and a wife ought not to mind, but one of the\ndifficulties of being a wife is that you always do mind.\"\n\n\"I know that I should mind,\" said Jane quietly, \"and, anyway, I don't\nwant to marry. I'm much happier going about on my sunbeam mission,\ntrying to help others a bit here and a bit there.\" She smiled bravely as\nshe spoke, for all that it takes a deal of training in truth not to\nwaver or quaver in such a minute. She had to think steadily along the\nlines which she had worked so hard to build into every brain-cell and\nspirit-fiber of her make-up. \"Auntie,\" she went on then, after a brief\nreflection that he who works in truth's wool works without fear as to\nthe breaking of one single thread, \"you and I are trying dreadfully\nhard--trying with all our might to do exactly right. We're trying to\nbreak your chains by the only way in which material chains can be\nbroken,--by breaking those of others. We can't go astray. If old Mrs.\nCroft should stay here till she died, and if I should work till I died\nat paying the debts of others, she'd stay for some good purpose, and I'd\nbe working in the same way. Be very sure of that.\"\n\nFor a second Susan looked cheered--but only for a second. Then, \"That's\nall very well for you and me, who want to be uplifted--at least you want\nto be, and I think maybe I'll like it after I get a little used to it.\nBut Matilda doesn't know or care anything about planes, and it's Matilda\nI keep thinking of.\" There was another pause, and then she added: \"And\nit's Matilda I'll have to live with,--along with old Mrs. Croft. Oh,\nJane, I'd be so much happier if you'd marry Mr. Rath and let me come and\nlive with you!\"\n\nJane went and put her arms about her. \"Auntie, it isn't easy to learn my\nway of looking at things, because you have to keep at them till they're\nso firm in you that nothing from outside can ever shake or uproot them.\nBut what I believe is just so firm with me, and I won't give anything\nup,--not even about Mrs. Croft. We're all right and she's all right and\neverything's all right, and I don't need to marry any one.\"\n\nSusan winked mournfully. \"If there was only some way to meet Matilda on\nher way home and kind of get that through her head before she saw Mrs.\nCroft. You see, she always shuts that room up cold winters and keeps\ncold meat in there. I've had many a good meal out of that room.\"\n\n\"You must not cast about for ways and means,\" said Jane firmly. \"Life is\nlike a sunshiny warm day, and our part is to breathe and feel and thank\nGod,--not to look for the sun to surely cease shining.\"\n\n\"But it does stop,\" wailed Susan, \"often.\"\n\n\"Yes, thank Heaven,\" said Jane, \"if it didn't, we'd be burnt up alive by\nour own vitality.\"\n\n\"Oh, dear,\" said Susan briefly, \"you've an answer for everything. Well,\nlet's get dinner.\"\n\nThey went into the kitchen.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XII\n\nEMILY'S PROJECT\n\n\nAFTER dinner that day Emily Mead came with her work. Emily Mead was one\nof those nondescript girls who seem to spring up more and more thickly\nin these troublous, churned-up times of ours.\n\nToo pretty to be plain, too unattractive to be beautiful. Too well-to-do\nto need to work, too poor to attain to anything for which she longed.\nToo clever to belong to her class, not clever enough to rise above it.\nAltogether a very fit subject for Jane to \"sunshine,\" as her aunt put\nit.\n\n\"How do you get along with old Mrs. Croft?\" she asked, directly she was\nseated.\n\n\"She's asleep yet,\" Jane said; \"she was so restless all night.\"\n\n\"She always sleeps days and is awake all night; didn't you know that\nbefore?\" queried Emily, in surprise. \"Some one ought to have told you.\"\n\n\"It doesn't matter,\" said Jane serenely. There was never any bravado in\nher serenity; it was quite sincere.\n\n\"That was what made Katie so mad,\" Emily continued. \"She said it gave\nher her days, to be sure, but, as she couldn't very well sleep, too, all\nday, she never really had any time herself.\"\n\n\"We'll get along all right,\" said Jane quietly; \"old people have ways,\nand then they change and have other ways, and the rest must expect to be\nconsiderate.\"\n\n\"Mercy on us, I wonder what she'll change to next,\" said Susan, with\nfeeling. She had just returned from listening at the invalid's door.\n\n\"Don't worry, Auntie,--just remember!\" Jane's smile was at once bright\nand also a bit admonitory.\n\n\"I'm trying to believe that everything's all right always, too,\" said\nSusan to Emily, \"but, oh, my!\"\n\nThey went out on the shady side of the house to where a little table\nstood, which was made out of a board nailed into a cut-off tree stump.\nJane and Emily carried chairs, and Susan brought her darning basket. It\nwas delightfully pleasant. From time to time Jane or her aunt slipped in\nand listened at the door, but old Mrs. Croft slept on like a baby.\n\n\"I do wonder if Katie Croft has really gone for good!\" Emily said to\nSusan, while Jane was absent on one of these errands.\n\n\"I can't trust myself even with my own opinions,\" said Susan reservedly;\n\"I haven't much time to get changed before Matilda comes, you know, and\nI want to believe in Jane's religion if I can. It's so kind of warm and\ncomforting. I like it.\"\n\n\"Jane,\" Emily said, turning towards her when she returned, \"I've come\nto-day on an awfully serious errand, and I want you to help me.\"\n\n\"I will certainly, if I can. What is it?\"\n\n\"Do you really believe that wanting anything shows that one is going to\nget it? You said something like that the other day.\"\n\n\"I know that one can get anything one wants,\" Jane answered gravely; \"of\ncourse the responsibility of some kinds of wanting is awfully heavy. But\nthe law doesn't alter.\"\n\n\"Can you explain it to me?\"\n\n\"Yes, that's it,\" said Susan, \"you tell us how to manage. I want to get\nsomething myself. Or I mean it's that I want something I've got to go\naway again. Or I guess I'd better not try to say what I mean.\"\n\n\"But you won't either of you understand what I mean, when I tell you,\"\nsaid Jane. \"It's just as I said before, it takes a lot of study to get\nyour brain-cells to where they can hold an idea that's really new to\nyou. Heads are like empty beehives,--you have to have the comb before\nyou can have the honey, and every different kind of study requires a\ndifferent kind of cells just for its use alone. When things don't\ninterest us, it's because the brain-cells in regard to that subject have\nnever been developed. That's all. That's what they taught me.\"\n\n\"I think it's interesting,\" said Susan. \"I always thought that the\ninside of my head was one thing that I didn't need to bother about.\nSeems it isn't, after all. Go on, you Sunshine Jane, you.\"\n\n\"I'm like your aunt. I thought that what I thought was the last thing\nthat mattered,\" said Emily.\n\n\"Everything matters. There's nothing in this world that doesn't matter,\nbecause this world is all matter. Anything that doesn't matter must be\nspirit. Don't you see that when you say and really mean that a thing\ndoesn't matter, you mean that to you it isn't material,--that it's no\npart of your world?\"\n\n\"Dear me, I never thought of that,\" said Susan, \"then I suppose as long\nas things do matter to us, it means we just hang on to them and hold\nthem for all we're worth.\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"But, Jane, thoughts can't matter much? Or we can forget things.\"\n\n\"There isn't anything that we can think of at all that we are ever free\nnot to think about again--that is, if it's a good thought,\" said Jane.\n\"If a thought comes to us at all, it comes with some responsibility\nattached. Either we are meant to gain strength by dismissing it, if it\nseems wrong, or it's our duty to do something with it, if it's right.\nMost people's minds are all littered up with thoughts that they never\neither use or put away. That's what makes them so stupid.\"\n\n\"Goodness!\" exclaimed Susan. \"Why, I never put a thought away in my\nlife,--not as I know of.\"\n\n\"I've never thought anything at all about my thoughts,\" said Emily,\nlooking rather startled.\n\n\"Lots of people don't,\" said Jane; \"they act just as a woman would in\nmaking a dress, if she cut it out a bit now and a bit then without ever\nlaying the pattern back even, and then joined it anywhere any time, and\nthen was surprised when it didn't even prove fit to wear--not to speak\nof looking all witched.\"\n\n\"Is that what ails some lives?\" Emily asked, looking yet more startled.\n\n\"It's what ails almost every life. It's what makes 'I didn't think' the\nworst confession in the world. A man driving a motor with his eyes shut\nwouldn't be a bit worse. Life's a great powerful force always rushing\non, and we swing into the tide and never bother to row or to steer or to\nsee that our boat is water-tight.\"\n\n\"You make me feel awful, Jane. As if I'd been lazy, staying in bed so.\nAnd it was the only way.\"\n\n\"You couldn't do any better, Auntie. At least you weren't doing anything\nwrong. Being moored in a little, quiet cove is better than being adrift\nand slamming into the boats of others.\"\n\n\"I'd really have had to think more about Matilda's thoughts than my own,\nif I'd known. I'd never have had time for much thinking as I pleased in\nthe way you say; I was always jumping up and flopping down.\"\n\n\"Jane,\" said Emily earnestly, \"then every thought matters?\"\n\n\"Yes, or matterates.\" Jane smiled. \"If a thought doesn't produce good,\nit'll surely produce bad,--it's got to do something. You plant your\nthoughts in time just as one plants seed in the ground, and any further\nthoughts of the same kind add to its strength until enough strength\ncauses an appearance in this world.\"\n\n\"You really believe that?\"\n\n\"I know it. I know it so well that I think that every seed that's ever\nfallen was a lesson that we were too stupid to learn. Every time a seed\nfell and germinated, God said: 'There, that's the very plainest teaching\non earth. Can't you see?' Sometimes I think the world's all a book for\nus to learn heaven in, just as our bodies explain our souls to us.\"\n\nSusan looked at Emily in an awed way. \"I guess I can get to believe it\nall,\" she said, in a low tone; \"it sounds so plain when you stop and\nthink of it.\"\n\n\"I'll try to believe it,\" said Emily, \"but what I care most about is to\nlearn how to get what you want?\"\n\nJane considered. \"That comes ever so far along. You have to learn to get\nwhat you want out of yourself before you can be upon the plane where you\nnaturally get what you want, because you are too far on to want what you\ncouldn't get.\"\n\nEmily didn't understand and didn't care. \"Do tell me how it's done,\nanyway,\" she begged eagerly.\n\n\"I don't know whether what I say will have any meaning for you, but I'll\nsay it, anyway. You'll have to know that it's what I believe and live\nby, and if you're to believe it and live by it, it will come to you\nquite easily, and if not it's because it isn't for you yet.\"\n\n\"I mean to believe,\" said Emily firmly. \"I want something, and I'll do\nanything to get it.\"\n\nJane shook her head. \"That's the very hardest road to come by,\" she\nsaid, \"unless it's some overcoming in yourself that you are wanting. You\nsee, the very first step has to be the conquering of ourselves, not the\nasking for material things. You have to open a channel for the spirit,\nand then the material flows through afterwards, as a matter of course.\nBut if you've gone on a good ways, you don't think of getting _things_\nat all; you just want opportunities to grow, and you know that what you\nneed for life will keep coming.\"\n\n\"But it doesn't with lots of people,\" said Emily. \"Just look at the\npoor--and the suffering.\"\n\n\"They aren't living according to this law,\" said Jane. \"They're living\non another plane. There are different planes.\"\n\n\"Don't you see,\" interposed Susan, \"we asked Mrs. Croft because it would\nget me on a plane where, when Matilda came back, she wouldn't mind so\nmany changes.\"\n\nEmily looked inquiring. \"A different plane?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Jane, \"you can lift yourself straight out of any circle of\nconditions by suddenly altering all your own ideas--if you've strength\nto do so.\"\n\n\"I'd never have asked Mrs. Croft alone by myself, you know,\" said Susan;\n\"nobody that looked at things the way other folks do, would. But Jane\nlooks at everything different from everybody else. She said it would be\na quick way of being different. I guess she's right.\"\n\n\"I never heard any ideas like that.\"\n\n\"But they aren't new,\" said Jane; \"they're older than the hills. God\nmade the world and then gave every man dominion over his world. We all\nhave the whole of _our_ world to rule. This way of looking at things is\nnew to you, but there are thousands and thousands of people proving it\ntrue every day. All the old religions teach it, and all the new\nreligions bid you live it or they won't be for you. They don't kill men\nfor not believing now. They just let them live and suffer and go\nblundering on. Why\"--Jane grew suddenly pink with fervor--\"why,\neverywhere I look, almost, I see just lovely chances being let die,\nbecause people won't fuss to tend them. People are too careless and too\nthoughtless. The truth is so plain that the very word 'thoughtless'\nfairly screams what's the matter to every one, but hardly any one\nbothers.\"\n\n\"But the people who believe as you do,--do they all get everything that\nthey want?\" asked Emily.\n\n\"Or else they want what they get,\" said Jane; \"it comes to exactly the\nsame thing when you begin to understand. The beauty of every step nearer\nGod is the new learning of how exactly right his world is managed. All\nmy old puzzles have been cleared up, and it's so wonderful. Why, I used\nto think that when beautiful, dear little children died it was awful;\nbut now I know that they came to help and teach others, and that when\nthey'd spread their lesson to those others, they didn't need lessons\nthemselves and just left the school and went back into the beautiful\nworld of Better Things. It was such a help to me to know why splendid\nmen and women who were needed went so suddenly sometimes; it's because\nthey're needed much more elsewhere and respond to that call of duty at\nonce. I don't think of death as anything dreadful now; I think of it as\na door that will open and close very easily for me.\"\n\n\"It's one door that Matilda liked to keep setting open,\" said\nSusan,--\"oh, dear me, Jane, I'm trying to grow brain-cells and be a\ncredit to you, and I can't think of anything but old Mrs. Croft. Perhaps\nshe's woke up.\"\n\nJane rose and went into the house.\n\n\"Do you think you can take it all in?\" Emily asked, slowly and\nthoughtfully.\n\n\"I'm doing my best,\" said Susan, \"she's so happy and so good I think she\nmust know what she's talking about.\"\n\nJane came back. \"She's still sleeping,\" she said; \"don't you worry, dear\nAuntie.\"\n\n\"I can't help it,\" said Susan. \"I've dodged about for so long and played\nthings were so that weren't so, that I guess I'm pretty much out of\ntune, and it'll be a little while before I can stop worrying.\"\n\n\"No, you aren't out of tune,\" said Jane, smiling at her affectionately,\n\"or if you are, just say you're in tune and you will be, right off.\"\n\n\"Do you believe that?\" Emily asked.\n\n\"Why, of course. I know it absolutely for myself, and I know that it's\nequally true for others if they have the strength to declare it.\"\n\n\"But how?\"\n\n\"How! Why, because every declaration of good is spiritual, and proves\nthat you are one with your soul and master over your body, just as false\ndeclarations make you one with your body and take away all power from\nyour soul. That's how mental cures work. When anybody says 'I am well,'\nshe declares souls can't be ill, and she makes Truth stronger by adding\nher strength to its strength. But when a man says 'I am ill,' he\ndeclares a lie, for souls can't be ill, and so he's claiming not to be\nspiritual, but just to be his own body. It's as if a weaver stopped\nweaving and said: 'I've broken several threads, and _I'm_ going to be\nimperfect, and _I_ won't bring any price, and _I'll_ only be fit to cut\nup into cleaning cloths.' What would you think of him? You'd say: 'Why,\nthat's only an hour's work in cloth and can be put aside without further\nthought. Just go right on and with your skill and judgment make the next\npiece perfect. It was never any of it _you_; it was the stuff you were\nmaking.' Bodies are the stuff we are making.\"\n\nEmily laid down her work. \"Jane, that's wonderful,\" she said solemnly.\n\"You put that so that I really got hold of it. I understand exactly what\nyou mean, and if only everybody else did!\"\n\n\"But nobody else really matters to you,\" said Jane; \"all that matters to\nyou is that you believe. They have their lives--you have yours.\"\n\nEmily was looking very earnest. \"I'm going to try,\" she said, rising.\n\"I'm going to try. I must go now, but I'm going home to go to work in my\nworld.\"\n\nJane walked with her to the gate. \"I'll help you all I can,\" she said,\n\"I'm so glad you're interested. It makes life so splendid.\"\n\nEmily stopped and took her hand.\n\n\"Jane,\" she said, \"I want to tell you something. I want to\nmarry Mr. Rath. I think he's the nicest man I ever saw. Do you\nreally--really--believe that I can, if I learn to think as you do?\"\n\nJane turned white beneath the other's eyes. \"Why, but don't you\nknow--don't you _see_ that he's in love?\"\n\n\"In love! With you?\"\n\n\"With me,--oh, _no_. With Madeleine.\"\n\n\"Oh, no, he's not in love with her,\" said Emily decidedly; \"I know that.\nI know that perfectly well.\"\n\n\"They knew one another before they came here, you know.\"\n\n\"Why, I see them round town together all hours,\" said Emily; \"they're\nlike brother and sister, they're not one bit in love. I thought that\nperhaps it was you.\"\n\n\"Oh, dear, no--I can't marry. I never even think of it.\"\n\n\"Don't you use any of your ideas with him?\"\n\n\"No, indeed! I never ask anything for myself any more. I just ask to\nmanifest God's will,--to help in any of His work that offers.\"\n\n\"You're awfully good, dear. But, honestly, do you think that I could\nsurely get him if I tried?\"\n\n\"Why, the law is certain, but\"--Jane spoke gently--\"you're so far from\nunderstanding it yet. I only told you a little. It takes ever so long to\nget one's mind built to where it will grasp an ideal and hold it without\nwavering once. There's such a lot I didn't tell you; I couldn't in those\nfew minutes. I just showed you the picture, and you have to work hard\ntill you learn how to paint it. You see, a wish is like blowing a\nbubble, and if you add wishes and more wishes, you gradually change the\nbubble into a solid mold, which is a real thing of spirit but empty of\nmaterial; then, if you keep it solid and firm, the fact of it is real\nspiritually, and a vacuum as to matter makes the matter just _have_ to\nfill it, and it is that filling into the mold shaped by our thoughts\nthat makes what we see and live here in this world. The world is all\nmatter circulating in thought-molds. Anything that you carefully and\nsteadily and consistently think out must become manifest. God\nmanifesting His will means that. We are His will. And the nearer we\napproximate to the highest in Him, the more we can manifest ourselves.\nThat's why very good people are seldom rich; they want to manifest in\ndeeds and not in things. That's why they never keep money--it only\nrepresents to them the need of others. If you really and truly love Mr.\nRath, and feel it steadily and steadfastly your mission to make him very\nhappy, of course it will be, even though he loved some one else. But to\nwant a man who loved some one else wouldn't be possible to any one who\nbelieved in this teaching. That's where it is, you see. When you get\npower, you never want to do evil with it. Power from God never manifests\nin evil. When you are where you can get whatever you want, it simply\nmeans that you are living where only good can come, and where you are\nable to see it coming.\"\n\nEmily stood perfectly still, looking downwards. Then suddenly she burst\ninto violent sobs. \"Oh, I feel so small, so mean--so wicked. It isn't as\nyou feel a bit with me. I just want to get out of this stupid town--and\nhe's so good-looking!\"\n\nJane's eyelids fell.\n\n\"I feel so mean and petty,\" Emily went on, pressing her hands over her\nface. \"I could never be good like you. I can't understand. I just want\nto be married. I'm so tired of my life.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Jane, with steady firmness, \"why don't you go to him and\ntalk it all over nicely? As you would with Madeleine or me. Perhaps that\nwould be best.\"\n\n\"Do you really think so?\" said Emily, lifting her eyes; \"do you believe\nthat a girl can go to a man and be honest with him, just as a man can\nwith a woman?\"\n\n\"I couldn't,\" said Jane, \"because I wouldn't want to, but if you want to\ndo it, I don't see why you can't.\"\n\n\"But why wouldn't you?\"\n\n\"Because I get my things that other way,--simply by asking God to guide\nme towards His will and guide me from mistake.\"\n\n\"Did you do that about asking old Mrs. Croft?\"\n\n\"Certainly. I do it about everything. I live by that rule now. I've\nabsolute faith in God's guidance.\"\n\nEmily looked at her. \"It must be beautiful,\" she said, \"and you really\nthink that it would be all right for me to go and talk to him, do you?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Jane slowly. \"I think that it would be best all round.\"\n\n\"After all, this is the woman's century,\" said Emily, with a sudden\nenergy quite unlike her previous interest. \"I don't know why I\nshouldn't.\"\n\n\"I think that the best way to handle all our problems is to let them\nflow naturally to their finish,\" said Jane; \"dammed or choked rivers\nalways make trouble.\"\n\n\"I should like to say just what I felt to a man just once,\" said Emily\nthoughtfully. \"It would do me a world of good.\"\n\n\"Then say it,\" said Jane. \"Only are you really sure that he's not in\nlove with Madeleine?\"\n\n\"Oh, I'm positive as to that.\"\n\n\"Then go ahead.\"\n\nThey parted, and Jane returned to the house. She was not so entirely\nspiritual that she could repress a very human kind of smile over Emily's\nproject.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIII\n\nEMILY IS HERSELF FREELY\n\n\nAS Emily turned from Mrs. Ralston's gate, she felt more buoyant\nhappiness than anything in life had ever hitherto brought her. She felt\nlicensed on high authority to revel in the hitherto forbidden. She\nwanted Lorenzo Rath, and she thought that she understood how to get him.\nWe may follow her thought and then we will follow where it led her, for\nin all the surge of the new teaching there is no lesson greater to learn\nthan this which Emily had failed to grasp,--that the possession of tools\ndoes not make one a carver; that all things spiritual must be learned\nexactly as all things material. One may have so lived previously that\nthe learning is a mere showing how, but without experience nothing,\neither spiritual, mental, or physical, can be efficaciously handled.\nWhen people declare that something is not true because they tried it and\nit failed to work, remember Emily Mead. Emily had acquired just one idea\nout of Jane's exposition: \"That you could get anything that you want.\"\nIt is the idea that hosts of people find most attractive in this world,\nquite irrespective of its correlative esotericism,--that the soul\ngrowing towards infinite power learns every upward step by resolutely\nliking what it gets. No man can climb a stair by hacking down every step\npassed; he climbs by being so firm upon each step that he can poise his\nwhole weight thereon as he mounts. It is part of the supremely beautiful\nlogic of the highest teaching that the same effort which Jesus\nmade--every great teacher has made--is sure to make, too. We must see\nthe Divine embodied in the Present and the Weak and the Humble, before\nin our own spirit we may deal, for the good of all, with the Future and\nStrength and Power. When one seizes upon anything God-given as a means\nof acquiring earth-gifts, one has but seized the empty air; the idea and\nthen ideal have never been in the possession of such an one. There is\nnothing shut away from those who really make God's teaching a vital part\nof themselves, but such men and women are no longer keen to selfishly\npossess, and the good which they reach out for flows easily in for their\nfurther distribution; in other words, they become what we were all\ndesigned to be,--the outward manifestations of God's purpose, the living\nbreathing, blessed servants of His will.\n\nHow far this interpretation lay from poor Emily's comprehension the\nreader knows.\n\nShe hurried along, her whole being bounding with joy over the simplicity\nof the new lesson. It all seemed almost too story-book-like to be\nhappening in her stupid, commonplace life. She had spent so many long\nhours in thinking over how things would never happen for her, that she\nhad entirely lost faith in their ever changing their ways and now, all\nof a sudden, here was a complete reversal. Bonds were turned into wings;\nthat unattainable being, a live man, was not only at hand, but\navailable; she felt herself bidden not to doubt her power; she judged\nherself advised to say frankly all the things that girls may never say.\nThis was the day of feminine freedom. To wish was to have. What one\nwanted was the thing that was best for one. Emily--with all of Jane's\nideas swimming upside down in her head--felt superbly joyous and\nconfident. After all, being alive was a pretty good thing.\n\nShe turned a corner into the lane that led in a roundabout way to her\nmother's back garden gate and walked swiftly. She was a fine, straight\ngirl with a lithe, springy walk. Perhaps Lorenzo Rath could not have\ndone better, from most standpoints, than to marry such an one. Many men\ndo worse. And there was old Mr. Cattermole's money, too. Some of these\nviews float in all human atmosphere to-day--float there securely,\nbecause the world is a practical world, and an automobile is obvious,\nwhile love and trust are absolutely unknown to many. \"Ye cannot serve\nGod and Mammon too,\" and Mammon is very plain and practical, rolling on\nrubber tires to the best restaurant. Emily could not have reduced her\nroseate visions to any such sordid reasoning, but love to her meant\nleaving town and having a good-looking and lively young man to take her\nabout. This was not really love, any more than the means by which she\nexpected to acquire it were the religion taught by Jane. We hear much of\nthe downfall of love and the downfall of religion in these days, but no\none even stops to realize that religion and love cannot possibly even\nshake on their thrones. Their counterfeits may crumble and tumble, but\nreal truth can never fail. It was the counterfeits at which Emily, like\nmany another, grasped eagerly.\n\nSo now she was tripping lightly along and, turning the twist by the\ngreat chestnut tree, her heart gave a sudden flop, for just ahead she\nsaw her quarry. He was propped against the fence, using his knees for an\neasel, while he made a rapid water-color sketch. He was good at those\nlittle impressions of an artistic bit, that nearly always show forth in\nyouth a great artist struggling to grow.\n\nEmily started, for she was very close to him before she saw him, and her\nrampant thoughts led her to blush, apologize, and stammer precisely as\nshe might have done, had her sex never advanced at all but merely\nremained the dominant note that they have always been.\n\n\"Why, Mr. Rath,\" and then she paused.\n\nLorenzo--who wanted to finish his sketch--nodded pleasantly without\nlooking up. \"Grand day for walking,\" he said, as a supremely polite\nhint, and continued to work rapidly.\n\nEmily went close beside him and looked downward upon the canvas. \"How\npretty! I wish I knew more about pictures. What is that brown hill? You\ncan't see a hill from here.\"\n\n\"That's a cow,\" said Lorenzo, painting very fast indeed, \"but don't ask\nme to explain things, for I can't work and talk at the same time.\"\n\nEmily sank down beside him with a pleasant sense of proprietorship now\nthat she could get him by will power alone. \"I've just come from Mrs.\nRalston's. They're in such distress over old Mrs. Croft.\"\n\n\"Is she worse?\" The artist forgot to paint all of a sudden, and turned\nquickly towards her.\n\n\"Oh, no,--she was asleep when I left. Jane didn't seem a bit troubled,\nbut Mrs. Ralston is almost wild over not knowing what to say to her\nsister when she comes back and finds that awful old woman there. It's a\nterrible situation. Everybody knows that young Mrs. Croft has run away.\nShe just hated to stay and now she's gone. Isn't it awful?\"\n\n\"Oh, I don't know,\" said Lorenzo, suddenly regaining his deep interest\nin work, \"I have a distinct feeling that Miss Grey will bring things out\nall right for most people always. It's her way.\"\n\n\"Yes, she's a dear girl,\" said Emily, and paused to have time to\nconsider things a little while, feeling that the conversation should be\ncontinued by the man. The man didn't continue the conversation, however,\nmerely wielding his brush and looking completely absorbed.\n\nThen she remembered her mission. \"Mr. Rath, do you believe in frankness\nalways?\"\n\n\"I wish that I did.\"\n\n\"But don't you?\"\n\n\"Civilization wouldn't stand for it.\"\n\n\"Perhaps not every one could bear it, but some could. I could, I'm\nsure.\"\n\n\"Are you so sure?\"\n\n\"Yes, I am sure. I was talking with Jane alone just at the gate before I\nleft, and she believes that frankness is best always.\"\n\n\"It's easiest, certainly.\" Lorenzo raised his eyebrows a little\nimpatiently, but she paid no attention.\n\n\"Do you think so?\"\n\n\"Why, of course. When one wants to be let alone and blurts out, 'Let me\nalone,' why, one gets let alone.\"\n\n\"Oh, but that would be impolite,\" said Emily, feeling that for an artist\nhe used very crude metaphor. \"Of course, Jane and I were not talking\nabout that kind of people, or that kind of ways. We were talking of\npeople like you and me--nice people, you know. Jane advised me to be\nquite frank with you.\"\n\nLorenzo opened his eyes widely. \"About what, please?\"\n\n\"Oh, about all things. You see I meet so few men, and men are so\ninteresting, and I enjoy talking with them. I've read a good deal, and I\ndon't care for the life in this place. I want to leave it dreadfully.\"\n\n\"So do I,\" said the artist. \"I quite agree with you there.\"\n\n\"You see, Jane has been teaching me to understand life, and I am getting\nthe feeling that I am meant for something else than just helping my\nmother, wandering about town, and going to church. I'm very tired and\nrestless.\"\n\nLorenzo painted fast.\n\n\"Mr. Rath, if you--a man--felt as I do, what would you do?\"\n\n\"Get out.\"\n\n\"But where?\"\n\n\"Everybody can find a way, if they really want to.\"\n\n\"It isn't as if I had talent, you see.\"\n\n\"A good many people haven't talent and yet do very well, indeed.\"\n\n\"But I don't want to be a shop-girl or anything like that.\"\n\n\"Naturally not.\"\n\nThere was a pause.\n\n\"I'm very much interested in the progress women are making,\" said Emily.\n\"I read all I can get hold of about it. Don't you think it remarkable?\"\n\n\"I don't think much about it, and I skip everything on the subject.\"\n\n\"Oh, Mr. Rath!\"\n\n\"I'm a jealous brute. I don't like to realize that a woman can do\neverything that is a man's work, even to the verge of driving him to\nstarvation, while he can't do any of her work under any circumstances.\"\n\n\"He could wash and cook and sweep.\"\n\n\"Oh, he's invented machines to save her that.\"\n\n\"I see you've no sympathy with the advanced woman.\"\n\n\"Yes, I have. I'm very sorry for her. A nice mess the next generation\nwill be.\"\n\n\"Oh, dear.\"\n\n\"My one comfort is that boys take after their mothers, and I'm looking\nto see a future generation of men so strong-minded that they smash\nladies back to where they belong--in the rear with the tents.\"\n\n\"Goodness, Mr. Rath, then you don't like any of the ways things are\ngoing?\"\n\n\"Of course I don't. Once upon a time a busy man's time was sacred; now\nany woman who feels like taking it, appropriates it mercilessly.\"\n\n\"I should lock the door, if I felt that way. But now really, don't you\nthink that we might speak quite openly and frankly?\"\n\nLorenzo began to put up his paints.\n\n\"I want to get to the bottom of a lot of things.\"\n\n\"Well?\"\n\n\"You're the first man that I've ever known that I felt could understand\nwhat I meant, and I do want to know the man's side of things.\"\n\n\"A man hasn't got any side nowadays. He's not allowed one.\"\n\nEmily looked a little surprised. \"You speak bitterly.\"\n\n\"I think I've a right. Men are still observing the rules of the game and\nsuffering bitter consequences.\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"Women with homes have gone into the world to earn some extra pocket\nmoney until they've knocked the bottom out of all wage systems, and you\nnever can make the wildest among them see that women can't expect men's\npay unless they do men's work. A man's work is only half of it in\nbusiness, the other half is supporting a family. Women want equal pay\nand to spend the result as they please. The man's wages go usually on\nbread and the woman's on bonnets, to speak broadly. He goes to his own\nhome at night and has every single bill for four to ten people. She goes\nto somebody else's house and has only her own needs to face, with\nperhaps some contribution towards those off somewhere.\"\n\n\"Dear me,\" said Emily, \"I never thought of that.\"\n\n\"No,\" said Lorenzo, snapping the lid of his color box shut, \"women don't\nthink of that. But men do.\"\n\n\"But surely there are loads and loads of women who do support families.\"\n\n\"Yes, and who are dragged down by the injustice of what economists call\n'The Law of Supplemented Earnings'!\"\n\nEmily felt that the experience of conversing frankly with a live man was\nnot exactly what she had anticipated. It certainly was in no way\nromantic. She felt baffled and a good deal chilled. The conversation had\ntaken a horrid twist away from what she had intended.\n\n\"You think that women have no right to go out in the world then?\" she\nsaid. \"You don't sympathize with the modern trend?\"\n\n\"I sympathize with nature and human nature,\" said Lorenzo, \"but not with\ncivilization.\" He rose to his feet.\n\n\"Oh, Mr. Rath!\" she looked upward, expecting to be assisted to rise.\n\n\"I believe in life, lived by live things in the way God meant. I loathe\nthis modern institution limping along with its burden of carefully fed\nand tended idiots and invalids and babies, better dead. I wish that I\nwere a Zulu.\"\n\n\"Good Heavens!\"\n\n\"Come,\" said the man, picking up his load, \"we can go now.\"\n\n\"Had you finished?\" She scrambled to her feet.\n\n\"I'd done all that I could under the circumstances.\"\n\n\"I suppose the light changes so fast at this time....\" Emily was quite\nunsuspicious and content. The intuition that used to reign supreme in\nwomen was especially lacking in her. She had not the least idea of what\nher presence meant to the unhappy artist.\n\n\"Come, come,\" he repeated impatiently.\n\nThey walked away then through the pretty winding lane.\n\n\"It seems to me so awful that we are all so hopeless,\" Emily went on\npresently. \"We are all put here and often see just what should be done\nand can't do it possibly.\"\n\n\"I do exactly what I choose,\" said Lorenzo,--then he added: \"as a usual\nthing.\"\n\n\"You must be very happy.\" She paused. \"I suppose that you have plenty of\nmoney to live as you please.\"\n\n\"I'm fortunate enough not to have any.\"\n\n\"Goodness!\" the exclamation was sincere. The shock to Emily was\ndreadful. \"Why do you call that fortunate?\" she asked, after a little\nhasty agony of downfall as to rich and generous travel, spaced off by\ngoing to the theater.\n\n\"Because it makes me know that I shall do something in the world. A very\nlittle money is enough to swamp a man nowadays, when the idea of later\nbeing supported by a woman is always a possibility. Oh,\" said Lorenzo,\nwith sudden irritation, \"if there weren't so many perfectly splendid\nwomen and girls in the world, I'd go off and become a Trappist.\nEverything's being knocked into a cocked hat. I've had girls practically\nmake love to me. Disgusting.\"\n\nEmily felt her heart hammer hard. \"You're very old-fashioned in your\nviews,\" she said, a little faintly.\n\nThey came out by her mother's back gate as she spoke.\n\n\"Yes, I am,\" said Lorenzo, \"I admit it.\"\n\nMrs. Mead came running out of the back door. \"Oh, Emily,\" she cried,\n\"old Mrs. Croft is dead. Jane sent for the doctor--she sent a boy\nrunning--but she's dead. Wherever have you been for so long?\"\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIV\n\nJANE'S CONVERTS\n\n\nTHE feelings which revolved around the dead body of old Mrs. Croft can\nbe better imagined than described; everybody had wondered as to every\ncontingency except this. In the midst of the confusion Jane moved\nquietly, a little white and with lips truly saddened. \"And I meant to do\nsuch a lot for her,--I meant to help her so much,\" she murmured from\ntime to time.\n\nThe doctor, a ponderous gentleman of great weight in all ways, was very\ngrave. The doctor said that he had warned the daughter of such a\npossible ending twenty years before. \"Heart failure was _always_\nimminent,\" he declared severely, looking upon Jane, Susan, and Mrs.\nCowmull, who had driven out with him and thus become instantly a\nprivileged person. \"She never ought to have been left alone a minute\nduring these last forty years. Even if she had lived to be a hundred,\nthe danger was always there. Such neglect is awful.\" He stopped and\nshook his head vigorously. \"Awful,\" he declared again with emphasis,\n\"awful!\"\n\n\"I didn't know that she had heart disease,\" said Jane.\n\n\"No blame attaches to you,\" said the doctor, veering suddenly about as\nto the point in discussion; \"nobody can blame you. I shall exonerate you\ncompletely. Of course, if you were not aware of the state of the case,\nyou couldn't be expected to consider its vital necessities.\"\n\n\"Oh, and it was so vital,\" sobbed Mrs. Cowmull. \"Dear, sweet, old Mrs.\nCroft. Our sunbeam. And to go off like that. What good is life when\npeople can die any minute. Oh! Oh!\"\n\nThere was a brief pause for silent sorrow.\n\n\"I never looked for her to die,\" Mrs. Cowmull went on, shaking her head.\n\"I always told Emily she'd outlive even Brother Cattermole. So many\npeople will, you know. Dear, kind, loving friend! And now to think she's\ngone. I can't make it seem true. She's been alive so long. Seems only\nyesterday that I was up to see Katie about making a pie for the social,\nand our dear, sweet friend was singing her favorite song, _Captain Jinks\nof the Horse Marines_, all the time. What spirits she did have\neverywhere, except in her legs.\"\n\nSusan sat perfectly quiet. The doctor took Jane's arm and led her into\nthe hall, there to speak of the first few necessary steps to be taken.\nThen he returned to the sitting-room, gathered up Mrs. Cowmull and\ndeparted, saying that he would send \"some practical person at once.\"\nMrs. Cowmull, who was widely known as having practical designs on him,\ndid not resent the implied slur at her own abilities at all.\n\nAfter they were gone, there was a slight further pause, and then Susan\nrose slowly and went and laid her hands upon her niece's shoulders. \"Oh,\nJane, that religion of yours is a wonderful thing. I'm converted.\"\n\nJane started. \"Converted, Auntie?\"\n\n\"Yes. You were sure that it would come out all right and now see.\"\n\nThen a little white smile had to cross the young girl's face. \"The poor\nold woman,\" she said gently, \"to think of her lying there all alone all\nthat day. I thought that she was sleeping so quietly.\"\n\n\"Well, she was,\" said Susan.\n\n\"Yes, of course she was. It's just our little petty way of thinking that\nmasks all of what is truly sacred and splendid behind a veil of wrong\nthinking. Of course she was sleeping quietly.\"\n\n\"It'll be sort of awful if they can't find Katie, though,\" Susan said\nnext; \"she left no address, and I think it's almost silly to try to hunt\nher up. I'm only too pleased to pay for the funeral, I'm sure, and there\nwon't be any real reason for her returning.\"\n\n\"No,\" said Jane thoughtfully.\n\n\"And I really can look forward to Matilda's coming back now,\" pursued\nSusan. \"I shan't mind a bit. Old Mrs. Croft has done that much good,\nanyway,--she's made me feel that Matilda's coming back is just nothing\nat all. You see you knew that everything was coming out all right, but\nI'd never had any experience with that kind of doings up till now, and\nit was all new to me. I was only thinking of when you and me would have\nto face Matilda. Matilda would have looked pretty queer if she'd come\nhome to old Mrs. Croft to tend, and me up and lively.\"\n\nJane didn't seem to hear. \"I never once thought of her dying,\" she said\nagain; \"oh, dear, she had so much to learn. I expected to do her such a\nlot of good.\"\n\n\"I wouldn't complain, Jane. I wouldn't find fault with a thing.\nGoodness, think if she'd begun singing _Captain Jinks_ last night. I've\nheard that sometimes she'd sing it six hours at a stretch.\"\n\nJane shook her head. \"Who is to go down and pack up that house?\" she\nwondered.\n\n\"Oh, the house can be rented furnished. It's a nice home for anybody,\"\nsaid Susan, \"and the rent'll buy her a lovely monument.\"\n\nThe funeral was fixed for the third day, and some effort made to trace\nthe daughter-in-law. But that lady evidently didn't care to be found.\n\n\"It's hardly any use going to a great deal of expense to hunt her up,\"\nLorenzo said to Jane, \"because the house is all there is, and a thorough\nsearch with detectives would just about eat it up alive.\"\n\nHe probably was not wholly disinterested in his outlook, for the next\nbit of news that shook the community was that Lorenzo Rath had taken\nMrs. Croft's house and moved in! Naturally Mrs. Cowmull was far from\npleased. \"Of course it means he's going to get married,\" she said to\nMiss Vane, \"but what folly to take a house so soon. Who's to cook for\nhim? And who's he going to marry? Not Emily, I know. She wouldn't have\nhim.\"\n\nMiss Vane didn't know and didn't care. \"Not my Madeleine,\" she said\npromptly, for her part; \"she gets a letter every day. She'll marry that\nman.\"\n\n\"Then it's Jane Grey,\" said Mrs. Cowmull. The town was greatly\nexercised, and not as positive as to Emily's state of mind as her aunt.\n\n\"It'll be one of those two,\" Mrs. Ball said to Miss Crining (both very\nsuperior women and much given to meeting at the grocery store). \"They're\nboth after him. Emily chases him wherever he's posing woods and cows,\nand the little appetite that Mrs. Cowmull says he has, after going to\nMrs. Ralston's, shows what they're thinking of.\"\n\nMiss Crining shook her head. \"Once on a time girls were so sweet and\nwomanly,\" she said.\n\n\"My,\" said Mrs. Ball, \"I remember when my husband asked me. I almost\nfell flat. I'd never so much as thought of him. I was engaged to a boy\nnamed Richie Kendall, and Mr. Ball was bald, and had all those children\nolder than I was. There was some romance about life then.\"\n\n\"And me,\" said Miss Crining, with a gentle sigh, \"I never told a soul I\nwas in love till months after he was drowned. I didn't know I was in\nlove myself. Girls used to be like that, modest, timid.\"\n\n\"Mr. Rath's very severe on girls nowadays, Mrs. Cowmull says,\" said Mrs.\nBall; \"but he's blind like all men are and will get hooked when he ain't\nlooking, like they all do.\"\n\nBut Lorenzo Rath didn't care about any of the gossip; he was so happy\nover his home. \"I'll have a woman come and cook occasionally,\" he\nexplained blithely to Jane and Susan, \"and I'll get all my illustrating\noff my hands in short order.\"\n\n\"Do you illustrate?\" Jane asked.\n\n\"Yes, that's my bread-and-butter job.\"\n\n\"It'll be nice to have you in the neighborhood,\" said Susan placidly;\n\"to think how it's all come about, too. I'm in heaven, no matter what\nI'm doing. I just sit about and pray to understand more of Jane's\nreligion. I'm gasping it down in big swallows. I think it's so beautiful\nhow she does right, without having to take the consequences.\"\n\nJane laughed a little at that and went out to get supper.\n\n\"She's a nice girl,\" Lorenzo said, looking after her; \"when she leaves\nhere, what shall we do?\"\n\n\"Oh, heavens, I don't know,\" said Susan. \"I try never to think of it.\"\n\n\"And what is she going to do?\"\n\n\"Oh, she's going back to her nursing, and I want to cry when I think\nthat other people will have her around and I shan't. I'll be here alone\nwith Matilda. Not but what I'm a good deal more reconciled than I was,\nwhen I thought I'd be alone with Matilda and old Mrs. Croft, too.\"\n\n\"Yes, that would have been bad,\" said Lorenzo soberly. \"Well, I must be\nrunning along. I've got a lot of work to do and a lot of thinking, too.\"\n\nSusan contemplated him earnestly. \"Well,\" she said, with fervor, \"when\nJane goes, I'll still have you, anyway.\"\n\nLorenzo, who had just risen, stopped short at that. \"Do you know an idea\nthat I'm just beginning to hold?\" he asked suddenly.\n\n\"No; how should I?\"\n\n\"It's this. Why shouldn't you and I try working Jane's Rule of Life a\nlittle? I'm dreadfully impressed with a lot she says. Suppose you and I\npulled together and made up our minds that she was going to stay here in\nsome perfectly right and pleasant and proper way. How, then? Don't you\nbelieve maybe we could manage it?\"\n\nSusan stared. \"But there couldn't be any perfectly right, pleasant,\nproper way,\" she said sadly, \"because she wants to go.\"\n\n\"I'd like to try.\"\n\nThe aunt shook her head, sighing heavily. \"It's no use. There isn't a\nway. Nothing could keep her. You see, she's got some family debts to\npay, and she can't rest till she's paid 'em. I've begged and prayed her\nto stay; I've told her that her own flesh and blood has first claim, but\nshe won't hear to any kind of sense.\"\n\n\"I wish that we might try,\" Lorenzo insisted. \"I've listened to her till\nI just about believe she really does know what she's talking about. It\nseems as if it's all so logical and after all, it's the way God made the\nworld, surely.\"\n\n\"Yes, I know, but you and I ain't equal to making worlds and won't be\nyet awhile.\"\n\n\"I don't care,\" said the young man, turning towards the door, \"I'm going\nat it alone, then. I don't believe that any one in the world needs her\nas much as I do, and I'm going to have her, and that by her own methods,\ntoo.\"\n\nSusan's mouth opened in widest amazement. \"Mercy on us, you ain't\nproposing to her by way of me, are you? You don't mean that you really\ndo want to marry her, do you?\"\n\n\"No, I don't mean that I want to marry her. I mean that I'm going to\nmarry her.\"\n\n\"Oh! Oh!\" the aunt cried faintly. \"Oh, goodness me! But I don't know why\nI'm surprised, for I said you was in love with her right from the start.\nI couldn't see how you could help but be.\"\n\n\"Of course I couldn't help but be. Who could? She's one of the few real\ngirls that are left in the world these days. The regular girls with\nlectures and diplomas and stiff collars have spoiled the sweetest things\nGod ever made. Men don't thank Heaven for any of these late innovations\nwrought in womankind.\"\n\n\"Oh, I know,\" said Susan; \"my husband was old-fashioned, too. I\"--she\nstopped short, because just then the door opened, and Jane came in.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XV\n\nREAL CONVERSATION\n\n\nBOTH Susan and lover jumped rather guiltily, but Jane didn't notice. Or\nif she did notice, it did not impress her as anything worthy\nconsideration. Among the little weeds in the rose-garden of life, did\nyou ever think of what a common one is that bother over how people act\nwhen you \"come in suddenly\"? It is one of the petty tortures of everyday\nexistence. \"They stopped talking the instant they saw me!\" \"They both\nturned red, when I opened the door!\" Well, what if they did? Is it a\nhappening of the slightest moment? Unless one is guilty and in dread of\ndiscovery, what can it matter who chatters or of what? Stop and realize\nthe real, separate, distinct meaning of the phrase \"He was above\nsuspicion,\" and see how it applies equally to being safe from the evil\nthoughts _of_ others as well as being safe from the holding of evil\nthoughts _towards_ others. If people change color at your approach and\nit makes you uncomfortable, you are not above suspicion either of or\nfrom others. Then look to it well that henceforth you manage to root out\nthe double evil. There are a whole lot of very uncomfortable family\nhappenings founded on the absolutely natural crossings of family\nintercourse, and the only possible way to go smoothly through such\nrapids is--as the Irishman said--to pick up your canoe and port around\nthem. Don't go down to the level of anything beneath your own standard,\nbecause when you go down anywhere for any reason, your standard goes\ndown with you. There is that peculiarity about standards that we keep\nthem right with us, whether we go up or whether we go down.\n\n\"Oh, Jane,\" said Susan, \"we're having such an interesting time talking\nabout your religion.\"\n\nJane smiled. \"I'm glad,\" she said simply. \"Did you decide to absorb some\nof it?\"\n\n\"Oh, I'm converted, anyhow,\" said the aunt; \"nobody could live in the\nhouse with you and not be, and Mr. Rath is going to try it for a while,\ntoo.\"\n\nJane looked at Lorenzo a little roguishly. \"It's a contagion in the\ntown,\" she said; \"I feel like an ancient missionary.\"\n\n\"I know,\" said Susan, \"holding up a cross. I've seen them in pictures.\"\n\n\"Yes, and I hold up the cross, too,\" said Jane, \"only most people\nwouldn't know it. Do you know what the cross meant in the long-ago\ntimes,--before the Christian era?\" she asked Lorenzo quickly.\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"It's the sunbeam transfixing and vivifying the earth-surface. It was\nthe holiest symbol of the power of God. It embodied divine life\ndescending straight from heaven and making itself a part of earth.\"\n\n\"My!\" exclaimed Susan, really amazed.\n\nJane smiled and laid her hand upon her aunt's affectionately. \"I love my\ncross,\" she said; \"it's the greatest emblem that humanity can know, and,\njust because we are human, it will always keep coming back into our\nlives. Only it shouldn't be preached as a burden, it should be preached\nas an opportunity.\"\n\nLorenzo sat watching her. A curious white look passed over his face. He\nfelt for the moment that he hardly ought to dare hope that this girl who\nwas so full of help for all should narrow her field of labor to just\nhim.\n\n\"You'll end by being like Dinah in _Adam Bede_,\" he said, trying to\nlaugh; \"you like to teach and preach, don't you?\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" said Jane; \"it's always there, right on my heart and\nlips. I feel as if the personal 'I' was only its voice.\"\n\n\"I don't think she's exactly human,\" said Susan meditatively; \"she\ndoesn't strike me so.\"\n\n\"Don't say that, Auntie,\" said the young girl quickly; \"I want to be\nhuman more than anything else. I don't want to make you or anybody feel\nthat I'm not. It would be as dreadfully lonely to be looked upon as\nunhuman as to be looked upon as inhuman. I want to work and love and be\nloved.\"\n\n\"But you're so different from everybody else,\" said her aunt.\n\n\"But I don't want to be different. I want to just be a woman--or a\ngirl.\"\n\nSome kindly intuition prompted Susan to change the subject. \"Mr. Rath\nand I were talking about girls just now; we both thought what a pity it\nis that there are so few in these days.\"\n\n\"I guess there are just as many girls as ever, only they aren't so\nconspicuous,\" Jane said, laughing at Lorenzo.\n\n\"I think they're more conspicuous,\" said Lorenzo, \"only they're the\nwrong kind.\"\n\n\"I liked the old kind,\" said Susan, \"the kind that stayed at home and\nwasn't wild to get away and be going into business.\"\n\nJane laughed again. \"You ought not to blame the girls, Auntie. Lots of\nthem feel dreadfully over leaving home. But they have to go out and\nwork. I had to, I know. It's some kind of big world-change that's\npushing us all on into different places.\"\n\n\"I wasn't thinking of girls who do something nice and quiet like you. I\nwas thinking of the others.\"\n\n\"They have to go, too,\" said Jane. \"There's a fearful pressure that we\ndon't understand behind it all. A restlessness and discontent that no\none can alter.\"\n\n\"Yes, that's true,\" said Lorenzo; \"I never thought of it, but I can see\nthat it is so now that you've put it into my head.\"\n\n\"I've seen a lot of it. It's curious that it seems to come equally to\nwomen who want to work and to women who don't. I'm sure I never wanted\nto earn my living, but I was forced to it. And ever so many others are,\ntoo. It's rather an awful feeling that you're in the grip of a power\nthat sweeps your life beyond your guidance. I'm trying hard to be big\nenough to live in this century, but I'd have liked the last better.\"\n\n\"Don't you consider that there's anything voluntary in the way women are\nacting now?\" Lorenzo asked, with real interest.\n\n\"No, I'm afraid not. I think that there's something we don't understand,\nor grasp, or--or quite see rightly. I believe that everything is ordered\nand ordered ultimately for the best, and I see the problems of to-day as\nsurely here by God's will and to be worked out by learning the conduct\nof the current instead of opposing it. But still I really don't\nunderstand it all as I wish that I did.\"\n\n\"You really do feel God as a friend,\" said Lorenzo, watching her\nilluminated face. \"He isn't just a religion to you, then?\"\n\n\"He's _everything_ to me,\" said Jane reverently, \"Help and Sunlight and\nStrength and Daily Bread. That part of Him that is energy manifests in\nus in one way, and that part of Him that is divine right and justice\nmanifests in us in another way. My part in this life is to learn to use\nthem together, but they and all else are all God.\"\n\nSusan rose from her seat and stood contemplating her niece and Lorenzo\nby turns. \"To think of talking like this in my house,\" she said; \"this\nis what I call real conversation. I tell you, Jane, you certainly did\nlift me into another life when you invited old Mrs. Croft here. Every\nkind of religion sinks right into me now, and I can believe without the\nleast bother. It's wonderful, but I'm going to have a short-cake for\ntea, so I'll have to go.\"\n\nShe went away, and Lorenzo turned to the window.\n\nThere was a little pause while he wondered about many things. Finally he\nheld out his hand abruptly. \"You've gone a long way, Jane,\" he said,\n\"you've got a big grip on life and its meaning, and you make me\nunderstand as I never did before how hopeless it is to wish that the\nwheels of time will turn backward. But whatever you may preach, you only\nprove what I said and what I feel, that the old-fashioned, sweet,\nhome-keeping, winning and winnable girl is gone, only she's gone in a\ndifferent way from what most people understand. When she still exists,\nshe exists for herself--not for a man.\"\n\nJane felt her eyes fill suddenly. \"Why do you say that?\"\n\n\"Because you prove it. A man might adore you, but he couldn't hope to\nget you. Could he?\"\n\nHer eyes dropped. \"Do you think that it's all any harder on the man than\nit is on the girl?\" she asked. \"If men feel bad nowadays over the\nchanges, how do you suppose it is with the woman, unfitted to fight and\nforced into the battle. A woman isn't built as a man is; she's created\nfor another kind of work, much harder and lasting, much longer than any\nman's labor. And she has to leave that work of her own either undone or\nonly half-done and do things unsuited to her. Of course there are some\ngirls and women who like it,--but most of them don't. Most of them feel\ndreadfully and would give anything to be able to stay in a home and live\nthe life God meant to be woman's. There's always a pitiful story behind\nnine out of every ten bread-winning women, whether they go out washing\nor are artists like you. A woman never leaves her home until she's\nforced to do so.\"\n\n\"Are you sure that you know what you're talking about? Aren't you an\nidealist? Look at Emily Mead--\" he smiled in spite of his earnestness.\n\"If she had a rag of a chance, she'd fly off to-morrow. It wouldn't take\nforce.\"\n\nJane remained carefully grave. \"That's more her mother's fault than\nhers. Her mother has taught her that girls only live to marry.\"\n\n\"And quite right, too. Don't you believe it?\"\n\n\"It used to be true, but it isn't now. A girl can't marry without a man,\nand the world's all disjointed. It's a part of that strange new leaven\nwhich causes civilization to drive men and women both to become homeless\nby separating them widely on earth.\"\n\n\"Of course it's a governmental crime to send men by the hundreds of\nthousands to fight it out alone in Canada and leave their sisters to be\nold maids in England, but governments are pretty stupid, nowadays.\"\n\n\"We are all pretty stupid. We build all our difficulties and then hang\nto them and their consequences for dear life. It's too bad in us.\"\n\n\"Do you mean woman?\"\n\n\"No, I mean everybody.\"\n\n\"It's depressing, isn't it?\"\n\n\"I don't think so. I think it's grand.\"\n\n\"Grand!\"\n\n\"Yes, because I like to struggle in a big way. And then, too, if I'm a\nwoman forced to work because I'm one part of the problem, I'm also\ngloriously happy in being part of the new upburst of comprehension\nthat's balancing and will soon overbalance such a lot of the troubles.\"\n\n\"You mean? Oh, you mean your way of looking at things.\"\n\n\"Of course I do. I'm so blessedly glad of every circumstance in my life,\nbecause each one led to my getting hold of just what I have got hold of.\nI'm perfectly happy and perfectly content. It's so beautiful to be\nguided by a rule that never fails.\"\n\nLorenzo couldn't but laugh. \"I tell you what,\" he said gayly, \"I'll let\nyou into a little secret. I've made up my mind to go to work and learn\nhow to work that game of yours myself. I want to be blessedly glad and\ngloriously happy, too.\"\n\n\"You've got to be in earnest, you know,\" Jane said. \"It's handling live\nwires to amuse oneself with any force of God, and will-power is more of\na force than electricity.\"\n\n\"Oh, I'm in earnest,\" said the artist. \"I've made my picture--as you\nsay--and I hang to it for grim death. Only I can't see, if you feel as\nyou do about home and marriage, and all that, why you don't make one,\ntoo.\"\n\n\"I'm making ever so many homes,\" said Jane. \"I'm teaching home-making.\nThat's a Sunshine Nurse's business, and it would be selfish in me to\ndesert my task. Besides--\" she paused.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XVI\n\nTHE MOST WONDERFUL THING EVER HAPPENED\n\n\nSHE stopped and hesitated.\n\n\"Yes,\" he said impatiently, \"besides--?\"\n\n\"I wonder if it would be right to be quite frank with you?\"\n\n\"Nothing sincere is ever wrong. Of course you ought to be quite frank\nwith me,--aren't you that with every one?\"\n\nStill she considered.\n\n\"What stops you?\" he asked. \"Go on. Tell me everything. It's my right.\"\n\n\"Why is it your right?\"\n\n\"Because I love you, and you know it.\"\n\nShe started violently, then turned very white. \"Don't say that. I've\nalways thought of you as engaged to Madeleine. She was talking to me,\nand I thought--I--\" She stopped, quite shaken.\n\n\"You misunderstand her. She's always been in love with one fellow--the\none that her parents are against. He's even poorer than I am.\"\n\nThen Jane pressed her lips together and interlocked her fingers. \"I can\nnever marry. I never think of it. There's money to be paid, nobody to\npay it but me, and no way to get it except to earn it.\"\n\nLorenzo looked almost sternly at her. \"What about the book you lent me;\nit would say that that was setting limits. It says that we've not to\nconcern ourselves with ways and means. I've only to concern myself with\nloving you. The rest will come along of its own accord.\"\n\nShe shook her head. \"No, it won't. This world is all learning, and it's\npart of my lesson not to be able to apply it in absolute faith to\nmyself. So many teachers have wisdom to give away which they can't quite\ntake unto themselves, you know.\" She smiled a little tremulously.\n\n\"But you ought to take it unto yourself. It ought to be easy and simple\nfor you to realize that if conditions are false, they don't exist; that\nif you want a home, it's because you are going to have one; that if I\nlove you, it's because it's right that you should be loved.\"\n\nShe put her hands down helplessly on each side of the chair-seat. \"I\nnever even think of such things,\" she said, almost in a whisper.\n\n\"But why not?\"\n\n\"I've always been so necessary to others. I've no rights in my own\nlife.\"\n\n\"But if life is a thing to guide, why not guide your beneficence as well\nfrom a basis of home as from one of homelessness?\"\n\n\"Nothing has ever seemed to be for me, myself. Everything has always\npointed to me for others.\"\n\nLorenzo paced back and forth. \"But it is the women like you who should\nshow the way out of the wilderness and back to the right, instead of\nattempting to order the chaos while sweeping on with it. If there be a\nreal truth in this new teaching which lays hold of all those who are in\nearnest so easily and so quickly, its first care should be to\ndemonstrate happiness in the lives of its believers,--not the negative\nhappiness of wide-spread devotion to others, but the positive lessons of\njoy in the center from which springs--must spring--the next generation\nof better, wiser men and women, those among whom I expect to live as an\nold man.\"\n\nJane turned her face away, her eyes filled with tears. \"You make me feel\nvery small and petty,\" she said; \"you show me a way beyond what I had\nguessed. But I can't grasp at it; I'm too used to asking nothing for\nmyself. I'm always so sure that God is managing for me. And I have so\nmuch to do.\"\n\n\"Perhaps realization that God is managing is all that you need to set\nright. Perhaps that confidence will bring you all things. Even me.\" He\nlaughed a little.\n\n\"It has brought me all that I needed. Daily bread, daily possibilities\nof helpfulness,--I don't ask more, except 'more light.'\"\n\n\"It sounds a little presumptuous coming from me, but perhaps I can help\nyou towards your end, even as to 'more light.' At any rate, I'll try if\nyou'll let me.\"\n\nShe sat quite still. Finally she lifted up her eyes--and they were\nbeautiful eyes, big and true--and said, the words coming softly forth:\n\"It would be so wonderful.\"\n\nLorenzo didn't speak. He felt choked and gasping. To him it was also \"so\nwonderful,\" as wonderful as if he hadn't lived with it night and day\never since the first minute of knowing her. \"I think I'd better go,\" he\nsaid very gently, realizing keenly that he must not press her in this\nfirst blush of the new spring-time. \"I've 'made my picture' you know,\nand I won't let it fade, you may be sure. And you must believe in\nhappiness for yourself,--you tell us that the first step is all that\ncounts. Get the seed into the ground then. I'll do the rest.\"\n\nShe sat quite still. \"If I could only try,\" she whispered. He turned\nquickly away and was gone.\n\nAfter a dizzy little while she rose and went into the kitchen. Susan was\nmoving briskly about.\n\n\"Two cups flour, four teaspoonfuls baking powder, one of sugar, one of\nsalt, two of butter, two of lard, cup half water, half milk, pour in pan\ngreased and bake in hot oven. Scotch scone-bread for lunch,\" she said,\nalmost suiting the deed to the word. \"Is Mr. Rath still here?\"\n\n\"No, he's gone.\"\n\n\"You know, Jane, he's caught your religion. I never heard anything like\nit. He's got the whole thing pat. I'd be almost scared to go round\nteaching a thing like that. Why, folks'll be doing anything they please\nsoon. I've been wondering if I could get strong enough to kind of\ndispose of Matilda, in some perfectly right way, you know. I wouldn't\nthink of anything that wasn't perfectly right, you know.\"\n\nJane seemed a little numb and stood watching the buttering of the\nscone-pan without speaking.\n\n\"I keep saying: 'Matilda doesn't want to come back. Matilda's disposed\nof in a perfectly pleasant way.' I've been saying it ever since I began\non those scones. I guess I've said it twenty times, and I'm beginning to\nmake a real impression on myself. I'm beginning to feel sure God is\nfixing things up. It's too beautiful to feel God taking an interest in\nyour affairs. Matilda doesn't want to come home. Matilda is completely\ndisposed of in a perfectly pleasant way.\" Susan's accents were very\nemphatic.\n\n\"Auntie,\" said Jane, turning her eyes towards her and rallying her\nattention by a strong effort, \"you know your perfect faith is because\nAunt Matilda really isn't anxious to come home. It's only if you're\ndoubting that there's any doubt about it. One doesn't alter Destiny, one\nonly apprehends it. Oh, dear,\" she said though, sitting down suddenly,\nand hiding her face in her hands, \"the thing about light is that it\nalways keeps bursting over you with a new light, and my own teaching has\nsuddenly come to me as if I'd never known what any of it meant before.\nI'm too stunned at seeing how I've limited myself. I'm really too\nstupid.\"\n\nSusan glanced at her as she poured the batter into the pan, and then\nkept glancing. Her face grew softened, \"I wouldn't worry, dear,\" she\nsaid finally, \"don't you bother over anything. God's taking care of\neverything and everybody. It's every bit of it all right. You must know\nthat yourself, or you never could have taught it to me.\"\n\n\"Yes, I do know it,--but in spite of myself I can't see--I can't dare\nthink--\"\n\n\"You told me not to worry over old Mrs. Croft,\" said Susan, coming\naround by her side and putting her arm about her; \"you said worry\nspoiled everything. And I did try so hard.\"\n\n\"Yes, I know, I'll try. I really will--But--\" suddenly she turned deep\ncrimson, \"it seems too awful for me to take one minute to work on myself\nor my life. I need all my time for others.\"\n\n\"But you don't have to,\" said Susan, \"all you've got to do is to know\nthings are right. You know they're right because they are right.\nEverything's coming along fine, and you just feel it coming; that's your\npart. My goodness, Jane, isn't this funny? There isn't a blessed thing\nyou've preached to me that I ain't having to preach back to you now. You\ndon't seem to have sensed hardly any of your own meaning. Talk about\nbeing a channel; you'd better choke up a little and hold back some for\nyourself.\"\n\nJane threw her arms around her and kissed her. \"Auntie, you're right,\nyou're right. I won't doubt a mite more. I'll try to know as much as I\nseem to have taught.\"\n\n\"Just be yourself, you Sunshine Jane, you,\" Susan was clinging close to\nthe girl she loved so well, \"just be yourself. Nothing else is needed.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Jane whispered, \"I will.\"\n\n\"That's the thing,\" said Susan; \"'cause you've certainly taught us a\nlot. I'll lay the table now,\" she moved towards the door, \"Matilda\ndoesn't want to come home. Matilda wants to stay away in some perfectly\npleasant way,\" she added with heavy emphasis, passed through, and let\nthe door close.\n\nJane was left alone in the kitchen.\n\n\"He said he loved me!\" she thought over and over. \"It seems so\nwonderful--the most wonderful thing that has ever happened since the\nworld was made. He said he loved me!\"\n\nShe went up-stairs to her own room and shut the door softly. \"Of course\nI can never marry him,\" she whispered aloud, \"but he did say he loved\nme. Oh, I know that nothing so wonderful ever was in this world before!\"\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XVII\n\nWHY JANE SHOULD HAVE BELIEVED\n\n\nTHE Sunshine Nurse was long in seeking sleep that night and early to\nrise the next morning. She found herself suddenly metamorphosed--facing\na new world--two worlds in fact. There was the world of Lorenzo's\nactually loving her, which was a dream from which she would surely\nawaken, and then there was that second world of wonder, the world of her\nown teaching, a world in which she started, big-eyed, at all in which\nshe had trusted, and wondered if it could be possible that what she\nbelieved firmly and preached so ardently was really true. \"It isn't\nsetting limits to face what must be,\" she said over and over to herself,\n\"and I _must_ pay poor father's debts, and there is no possible way for\nme to get the money except to earn it bit by bit.\" The statement had\ngone to bed with her, and it rose with her when she rose; it looked\nindisputable, incontrovertible, as all fixed statements have a way of\nlooking--and yet each time that she made it she felt hot with guilt.\n\"It's setting limits,\" cried her soul, \"it's saying that God can't\npossibly do what He pleases,\" and, as she listened to the strong,\nheaven-sent cry of rebellion against petty earthly laws, she struggled\nin the meshes of her own old earlier learning, the \"old garment\" which\nclings so close about us all, and which we simply must discard before we\ncan don the new robe of Infinite Hope and Radiant Belief in God's law of\nOnly Good for Each and Every One.\n\nJane always rose an hour before her aunt. The hour was spent in opening\nwindows, brushing up and building the kitchen fire. It was always a\npleasant hour, for she usually filled it to the brim with work well done\nand thoughts sent strongly and happily out over the coming time. But\nto-day all this was changed; new thoughts rioted forth on every side,\nand a sort of chaos took the place of her usually sunny calm. This riot\nand chaos is the common, logical outcome of all who feel sure that they\nare wiser than God. You cannot possibly set any border to His Kingdom\nand then be happy in that outer darkness which you have deliberately\nchosen for your own part. As well ask a cow to shut herself out of her\npasture and rest happy in the waste beyond. \"I mustn't think, because it\nis none of it for me--\" she repeated over and over, much as if the\naforesaid cow declared, \"I am barred out--I can never get back--I must\nstarve contentedly.\" Jane--who would have laughed at my illustration\nquite as you have laughed yourself--saw only distress in her own, and\nhad to wink away so many tears that finally in maddest self-defense she\nrushed out doors and fled to the little garden that had, through so many\nyears, been Susan's refuge in such a droll way.\n\nAnd Lorenzo was there!\n\nHe looked very blithe and happy. \"Well,\" he said, \"have you thought it\nover and decided that you're right, after all?\"\n\nShe was panting, and surprise flooded her face with color. \"Oh--\" she\ngasped, \"oh!\" and then: \"Right--of course I'm right!\"\n\nHe approached, his hand extended. \"Right in believing, or right in\nmistrusting?\"\n\nShe gave him her hand, and he took it. \"Don't put it that way,\" she\nsaid; \"it isn't that way.\"\n\n\"But, dear Jane, that's the only way to put it. It's the way you've been\nteaching us. Either we can look up and ahead confidently, or you're all\nwrong. I can't believe that you're ever even a little bit wrong, so I'm\ngoing to believe that it's all true.\"\n\n\"No, no--it isn't--I mean--Oh, in my case, it can't be so. Everything\nthat I said was true, only I myself am meant to--to work--not to--to\nmarry. It's a kind of pledge I've taken to myself. It doesn't change the\nteaching.\" Then she dragged her hand free.\n\nLorenzo smiled. \"You can't tell me any of that. I know. I'm the happiest\nman in the world.\" Then he went on, taking up the rake and scratching a\nlittle here and there: \"Like other pupils, I've surpassed my teacher.\nYou've preached, and I practice; you can describe God's thoughts, and I\nthink them. You're sure that He can do anything, and I know what He's\ngoing to do. I've been let straight into one of His secrets. It's been\nrevealed to me how the world is run.\"\n\nJane stared. \"How can you talk so?\"\n\n\"I talk so because I know so. Everything's coming right for you.\"\n\n\"You're crazy,\" she tried to laugh.\n\n\"I've heard people say that of you. Not that it matters.\"\n\nShe stood watching him and considering his words. \"I wouldn't let you\ngive me the money to straighten out my father's affairs, even if you\nwere ever so rich, you know,\" she said slowly. \"I couldn't.\"\n\n\"I know it.\"\n\n\"And I wouldn't let Auntie pay the debts.\"\n\n\"I know. God doesn't require either your aunt's help or mine in this\nmatter.\"\n\nJane's eyes moistened slightly. \"Please don't make a joke of anything so\nhard and sad.\"\n\n\"I'm not joking; I'm a veritable apostle of joy. I'm as happy as I can\nbe.\"\n\nShe looked at him with real wonder because his appearance certainly bore\nout his words. \"I wish that I knew what you meant.\"\n\nHe dropped the rake, came to her side, and caught her hand. \"Can't you\ntrust God--can't you trust me?--won't you try?\"\n\nShe looked up into his face. \"I wish that I could, but how can I?\"\n\n\"You ought to know. So deep and big and true a nature. Surely you ought\nto be able to understand your own teaching!\"\n\n\"But I can't see any way.\"\n\n\"Your book says that one must not think of ways; one must just look\nstraight to the good end.\"\n\n\"Oh, but there isn't any such end possible for me.\"\n\nLorenzo dropped her hand and laughed out loud. And then he caught her in\nhis arms and kissed her.\n\nShe screamed. To her it was the greatest shock of her life, for no man\nhad ever kissed her before. \"Oh--oh, mercy!\"\n\nMatters were not helped much by Susan's looking over the fence just then\nand crying out abruptly: \"Well, I declare!\"\n\n\"Mrs. Ralston,\" said Lorenzo, not even blushing, \"you're the very person\nwe need this minute. I want to marry Jane, and she won't hear to it\nbecause of her father's debts. The debts are all right and everything's\nall right, only she won't believe it. I wish you'd climb the fence and\nhelp me persuade her, for although I _know_ she'll end by marrying me,\nI've just set my heart on converting her to her own religion first.\"\n\nSusan swung easily over the fence. \"You're just right, Mr. Rath, you\nought to marry her. She's the nicest person to have around the house\nthat I ever saw; she's far too good to be a nurse. How much did your\nfather owe, you Sunshine Jane, you? Maybe I can pay it. I will if I\ncan.\"\n\n\"There,\" said Lorenzo; \"see how easy it is to evolve money if you'd only\ntrust a little?\"\n\nJane looked at him and then at Susan. \"I couldn't take your money,\nAuntie,\" said she, quite gently, but quite firmly. \"And then, too,\" she\nadded, with her roguish smile, \"you've left it to Aunt Matilda.\"\n\n\"Yes, but dear,\" Susan's face became suddenly radiant, \"you know I've\nbeen working your religion on her; maybe she isn't coming back at all;\nmaybe something will happen; maybe she's going to be drowned or\nsomething like that in some perfectly right way.\"\n\n\"No,\" said Lorenzo soberly. \"It isn't necessary to plan as to God's\nbusiness at all. He knows. I don't think that Jane ought to take\nanybody's money; she ought to pay the debts with her own money, but I\ncan't see why she can't trust and know it's coming.\"\n\n\"Because there's no place for it to come from,\" said Jane firmly.\n\n\"Unless Matilda--\" Susan interposed.\n\n\"I believe I'm better at her religion than she is herself,\" said\nLorenzo. \"I declare, I believe that there's nothing that I can't get\nnow. I wanted a house, and I worked just as the book said! I saw myself\nliving cosily alone, and in less than a week I was living cosily alone.\nNow I want Jane with me in the house, and I mean to have her, and I\nshall have her, and there's no doubt about that; but I do wish--with all\nmy heart--that she could rise to a higher plane.\"\n\n\"If that's all, I know how to manage that easily enough,\" said Susan.\n\"We could get old Mr. Cattermole in for a week and raise Jane's plane\nwith him, just like she raised mine with Mrs. Croft.\"\n\n\"Oh, she'll rise,\" said her lover quietly. \"We must give her time and\nhelp her, that's all.\"\n\nJane stood doubting between them. Her aunt regarded her wistfully. \"Dear\nme,\" she said, \"I wonder if I could screw myself up to believing she'll\ncome in for a fortune. I want to help, but I'm a little like her--I\ncan't for the life of me see where it's to come from.\"\n\n\"But that isn't the question at all,\" said Lorenzo, \"the question isn't\nhow--the question is just the faith. Why, it's the corner-stone of the\nwhole thing! It's the moving into God's world where nothing but good can\nbe, and you know you're there because you see only good coming in all\ndirections! Just good--nothing but good! I don't see why Jane holds back\nso. I know that she can get that money and get every other thing she\nwants in life, including me, and I'm one of the nicest fellows alive--\"\n\n\"That's so--\" interposed Susan.\n\n\"If she'll only put out her hand with confidence. I've studied that book\ntill I'm full of it, and I know that I'm going to have her for my wife,\nand I know it absolutely, and I want her to know it, too.\"\n\nSusan began to get back over the fence. \"I'm going in about breakfast,\"\nshe said; \"the trouble with us is we all need hot coffee to brace up our\nsouls.\"\n\n\"Keep on declaring the truth,\" Lorenzo reminded her, as she walked off\nupon the other side.\n\n\"I will. I'll say 'Jane is going to get some money' and 'Matilda doesn't\nwant to come home to live,' alternately.\"\n\nWhen she was out of hearing the two young people remained silent for a\nfew seconds. Then the man spoke.\n\n\"Dear,\" his voice was very gentle, \"I want to tell you something. I've\nhad a very great experience in the last twenty-four hours. It isn't\nloving you--it's that I've been allowed to see a little bit of life from\nGod's standpoint. Don't you want to know the real truth about all this?\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"I'm going to tell you, because you'll see the lesson and learn it with\nme. We don't doubt that God knows all that has been or is to be, do\nwe?--or that in our minutes of fiercest pain or trouble He looks calmly\nto the end beyond?\"\n\nShe shook her head. \"No, of course not.\"\n\n\"Well, dearest girl, I was allowed last night to put myself in the\nDeity's place and see one corner of the universe as He must see the\nwhole.\"\n\nHer eyes grew big. \"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"I mean this. I want you, and I understand perfectly about the money. I\nsat down last night and I labored with myself until I made myself _know_\nthat it was yours. I can't tell you just how it came to me, but I knew\nit. It is yours and yours absolutely, and now I want you to realize it\nand believe in it without question, before I give it to you. Will you do\nthat? I'm asking of you the faith that Jesus preached. Can you believe?\"\n\nJane looked at him wonderingly. \"You mean--\"\n\n\"I mean just what I say.\"\n\n\"I can't receive money from you.\"\n\n\"It isn't my money.\"\n\n\"I don't understand. I only know that there is no way that I can get the\nmoney.\"\n\nLorenzo looked at her a minute, and then said slowly and very gently:\n\"I've found Mrs. Croft's will. She left all that she had to whoever took\ncare of her the night she died. It appears that she had a good deal more\nthan any one supposed. It's all yours, dear. Now you see why you should\nhave trusted.\"\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XVIII\n\nIN A PERFECTLY RIGHT WAY\n\n\nWHEN Susan, looking out of the window, saw the two whom she had left\nbehind coming across the grass, she knew instantly.\n\n\"They've settled it somehow,\" she exclaimed in supremest joy, and\nwhirled to whisk the bacon off the stove.\n\n\"Auntie,\" said Jane, from outside the window, the minute after, \"I am\njust dumb. I don't believe I'll ever be able to lift up my head in life\nagain.\"\n\n\"Auntie,\" said Lorenzo, over her shoulder, \"she's inherited her\nfortune.\"\n\nSusan gave a scream. \"Oh, good mercy!\"\n\n\"Yes, dear,\" said her niece, now in the doorway, \"only I can't believe\nit. I think that it's a dream.\"\n\n\"You see she still isn't able to rise to the proper heights of trust,\"\nlaughed her lover, also now in the doorway, \"but I have hopes of yet\nteaching her to believe what she believes.\"\n\n\"Come straight in and help me set all this on the table, so that I can\nlisten with a free mind.\" Susan's appeal was pathetic in the extreme.\n\"Where _did_ she get it, anyhow?\"\n\n\"Oh, Auntie, it's the most wonderful thing you ever heard of.\" Jane took\nup the coffee-pot and led the way.\n\n\"I did it all, except I didn't provide the money,\" said Lorenzo, and the\nnext minute they were all seated, and he could tell the whole story.\n\nSusan didn't scream. She sat still, a bit of toast in her hand,\nlistening breathlessly. When Lorenzo had finished, \"Oh, that new\nreligion!\" she murmured in an awed voice, and then, \"Nothing like this\never happened in this town before, I know.\"\n\n\"I'm more bewildered over it's being there for me and my not being able\nto believe than I am by the money,\" said Jane. \"Oh, Auntie, what a\nlesson, what a lesson!\"\n\n\"You would limit yourself, you see,\" said Lorenzo; \"you wouldn't\nbelieve.\"\n\n\"How could I ever imagine such a thing?\"\n\n\"You didn't have to imagine,--you only had to expect.\"\n\n\"You laid limits, you see,\" said Susan, suddenly beginning to pour out\nthe coffee, and pouring with a glad dash that swept over cup and saucer\ntogether. \"I expect if God hadn't been patient--like Mr. Rath--He could\nhave very well hid that will forever. There may be a lot of such goings\non in the world, for all we know. My goodness, suppose I'd been like\nMatilda and not have had old Mrs. Croft around for one minute,--it makes\nme ill to think of it! It's a lesson for me, too.\"\n\n\"Life is all lessons,\" said Jane. \"Dear me, think of Aunt Matilda's\nsurprise!\"\n\n\"Think of it! Good mercy, how can I wait to tell her!\" Susan's whole\nface beamed. \"I don't mind a bit her coming back now. That shows the\ngood of making that declaration about her. Those declarations are a\ngreat thing. I've told myself Matilda was coming back in a perfectly\nright way so many times that now, however she came back, I'd be positive\nit was perfectly right.\"\n\n\"Ah, Auntie,\" said Jane, \"you've got hold of another great truth. Every\none seems quicker than me.\"\n\n\"Well, you started us at it, anyhow,\" said Susan kindly. \"Oh my, but I'm\nhappy! Why, I believe I'm really in a hurry now for Matilda to come\nback, just so I can tell her. Think of that--me really and truly anxious\nto see Matilda again! My, you Sunshine Jane, you--what a lot of\ndifference you've made in me.\"\n\n\"When is your aunt coming?\" Lorenzo asked Jane.\n\n\"She went for three weeks,\" said Jane; \"it will be three weeks next\nThursday.\"\n\n\"Goodness, only three weeks, and it seems like three years?\" observed\nSusan. \"What a lot has happened! There's Jane--and her religion--and me\nup and well--and old Mrs. Croft here and gone--and you, Mr. Rath,--and\nthen you and Jane--and now this money.\"\n\n\"I can't believe any of it,\" said Jane; \"I try, but I just can't. I\nguess I'm hopelessly limited. I'm too bewildered, I--\"\n\n\"I'll tell you what ails you,\" said her aunt warmly. \"It's that you've\nspread yourself too much; you've given such a lot away everywhere that\nyou've got to just stop and let the tide run backwards into you yourself\nfor a while. It's nature. Nature and the new religion combined.\"\n\n\"I feel overwhelmed by the coming-back tide then,\" said Jane; \"I don't\ndeserve it all.\"\n\nHer aunt started to reply, but was stopped by a sudden loud bang\noutside.\n\n\"Goodness, what's that?\" she exclaimed.\n\n\"Auto tire burst, I think. I'll go and see,\" said Lorenzo, jumping up\nand going out.\n\n\"Jane,\" said Susan solemnly, \"that's a young man in a million. Think of\nhis finding that will. My, but he'll make a good husband!\"\n\n\"I just can't realize any of it,\" said her niece. She seemed to be\ntotally unequal to any other view of her present situation.\n\n\"Well, you'd better realize it,\" said her aunt, \"because it's coming\nright along. What will Mrs. Mead say, I wonder! Dear me, how every one\nwill wish they'd tried to get up a plane or two by having old Mrs. Croft\nto visit them. If that poor old thing could only come back, the whole\ntown would just adore to have her on a visit now, and every one would\nsit up all night and listen to _Captain Jinks_ so cheerfully. She used\nto sing _Rally round the flag, boys_ too,--I forgot that. She used to\nsing it when she heard the roosters begin to crow. But nobody would have\nminded, whatever she sang now.\"\n\n\"Oh, there's--\" Jane hesitated and blushed.\n\nLorenzo stood in the door. \"It wasn't a burst tire,\" he explained\nbriefly; \"it's a new kind of siren they're using. It's friends from out\nof town, Mr. and Mrs. Beamer.\"\n\n\"They've got the wrong house,\" said Susan. \"I don't know any Beamers.\"\n\n\"They asked for Mrs. Ralston.\"\n\n\"Then they're selling something, grape-wine or hand-knit lace, or\nsomething. I don't want to see 'em.\"\n\n\"I'll go,\" said Jane. And went at once. In the pretty, changed\nsitting-room she found the visitors--Mrs. Beamer tall and of large\nbuild, with a handsome motor-costume. Mr. Beamer also large, very wiry,\nand with rampant gray hair. Mrs. Beamer was Matilda.\n\nBut what a changed Matilda! \"Well, Jane,\" coming forward and holding out\nboth hands, \"did you and Susan feel it?\"\n\nJane staggered and laid hold of a chair. \"Feel--\" she stammered--\"feel\nwhat? Oh, Aunt Matilda!\"\n\n\"Did you feel the good I've been doing you? How's my sister?\"\n\n\"She--oh, she's all right.\"\n\n\"Up and dressed?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"There, you see!\" Matilda turned to Mr. Beamer, triumph radiating her\nwhole figure. \"It worked,--oh, Matthew, it worked.\" Then she turned back\nto Jane. \"Get up right off, didn't she? Same day I left?\"\n\n\"Y--yes.\" Jane clung more tightly to the chair. She began to doubt the\nground beneath her feet.\n\n\"Perfectly well, strong, able-bodied,--isn't she?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"You see?--\" to Mr. Beamer. Then, \"Oh, it's too splendid! I s'pose the\ncat's stopped snooping, too, hasn't he?\"\n\n\"Y--yes.\"\n\n\"House all clean? Garden growing fine?\"--\n\n\"Yes, indeed.\"\n\n\"And you, Jane, how are you?\"\n\n\"Oh, I'm all right. I--I've become engaged.\"\n\n\"You hear that, Matthew? And the town?\"\n\n\"Everybody's well.\"\n\n\"Did you ever in all your life!\"\n\n\"Oh, old Mrs. Croft died!\"\n\n\"Did she indeed. Katie happy?--\"\n\n\"Katie was away. She died here.\"\n\n\"How nice! I expect she enjoyed every minute of it. Oh, Jane, you don't\nknow how happy your every word is making me!\"\n\n\"Shan't I call auntie?\"\n\n\"No, we'll go out and have breakfast with you. We had one breakfast so\nas to make it easy for you to have us have it with you.\"\n\n\"Do come right out to the table.\" Jane led the way. \"I can't think what\nAunt Susan will say!\"\n\n\"Never mind what she says--it'll be just right. Everything always is.\nCome, Matthew;\" then Mrs. Matilda Beamer led off, and Mr. Matthew Beamer\nfollowed, smiling cheerfully. He seemed to be a very cheerful man.\n\n\"Perhaps I'd better go first and just prepare auntie,\" Jane suggested\nhastily.\n\n\"No need. She always yelled when she saw me suddenly, and this time it\nwill be for joy. Life is going to be all joy for Susan now.\"\n\nJane turned the button of the dining-room door. \"Auntie Susan, it's Aunt\nMatilda and Mr. Beamer.\"\n\nSusan justified her sister's views by forthwith giving the yell of her\nwhole life. \"Ma--tilda!--And Mr. Beamer!--\"\n\nMatilda went up to her, seized her, gave her a good hug and a real kiss.\n\"I've made lots of mistakes,\" she said, with a big tear in each eye,\n\"but somehow it was written that I should be allowed to make them right.\nSusan, this is Matthew. Sit down, Matthew. Sit down, every one.\"\n\nLorenzo hastily pushed up chairs, and they all sat down.\n\n\"I'll get some more dishes,\" Jane exclaimed, hurrying into the pantry.\n\n\"Matilda!\" Susan looked almost ready to faint. \"Are you--are you--\"\n\n\"I'm married,\" said Matilda. \"I don't know what I've ever done to\ndeserve it, but I'm married. It's the most beautiful romance that ever\nwas in the world, and we've come to tell you all about it.\"\n\n\"Oh, do!\" Susan exclaimed. \"Jane, come back! Think of another romance,\nand Matilda, too! Well, what next!\"\n\nMatilda smiled quite radiantly. \"We met on the train the day I left\nhere,\" she began; \"it was right off. He took me out on the back platform\nof the car and opened my eyes to life, and we just suited, didn't we,\nMatthew?\"\n\n\"Tell it all,\" said Mr. Beamer; \"tell the beginning.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said his wife, \"I will, I'll tell it all. It's so splendid it\nwould be a pity to skip anything. You see, he looked at me and--well,\nreally, Matthew, I think you'd better tell the first part.\"\n\n\"No, you tell,\" said Mr. Beamer.\n\n\"No, Matthew, you tell it, and I'll help anywhere I can.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said her husband, \"then I'll begin with saying, Sister Susan,\nNiece Jane, and young man, that I'd better tell you what I am, first of\nall, because I'm the only one of the kind in the world so far as I know.\nYou see, one of those Bible miracles, that no one can seem to lay hold\nof any more, got into me, and I'm the result.\"\n\n\"That is all true,\" interposed Matilda, her plain face quite\nmetamorphosed, as she looked at her husband and then at them. \"Every\nword he says is true, and it's all miracles.\"\n\n\"You see I was just a plain, ordinary man, with a nice business and a\ngood disposition,\" Mr. Beamer went on, \"and I did get so awful tired of\nthings as they were going, and I used to wish everything was different,\nand then one day, all of a God-blessed sudden, it came over me, with a\nshock like lightning, that wanting things different is the first step to\ngetting 'em different, and that if you've got the brain to see what's\nlacking, you've got the body to turn to and help fill up the hole. I\ndidn't get religion out of a book; I got it just like that. I was\nsitting in a rocking-chair with a palm-leaf fan, and I got up and put\nthe fan on the shelf and knew I was all made new. The very next day I\nread about a doctor as set up some nurses--\"\n\n\"Oh, my goodness,\" Susan cried, \"hear that, Jane!\"\n\n\"--as was to spread sunshine, and I thought that was a good idea, only I\ncouldn't see a place in it for me, 'cause I wasn't young and wasn't no\ngirl to go 'round spreading nothing. I looked upon it that being a man,\nmy business wasn't to spread things--a man's business is to get the\nstuff to spread; so I figured out that being as I was a man, I could\nmaybe help make the sunshine, and then any one could slather it on that\npleased. So I began to look about for some sunshine to make, and the\nhandiest field I see was folks with hard lines around their mouths;\nthere's a powerful lot of them around, you know,--ain't nothin' so hard\nto break up in life as hard lines around mouths. So I set out to plow\nfields of hard lines.\" He paused. It was a picture, a picture painted in\nheavenly colors to see his face at the moment, full of its own\nheartfelt, tried, and true enthusiasm, and the faces of those of his\nfour listeners, each touched with the spiritual light shed by recent\nevents over his or her own individual path.\n\n\"Do go on,\" Jane whispered softly.\n\n\"Well, whenever I'd see a hard man sitting alone, I'd go up to him and\nhold out my hand and say, 'Well, I ain't laid eyes on you, I don't know\nwhen!' That wasn't no lie, and 'most always we'd get a-talking. Then I'd\nsay, 'I'm a harmless crank that likes to go round making friends, and I\ntook a fancy to you right off.' It was wonderful all I come up against.\nWhy, the hardest folks was just aching to sit down and explain that they\nwasn't hard at all. It was the most interesting thing I ever got hold\nof. I got arrested once for a gold-brick man, and it give me a fine\nchance at the jailers and some of the men in prison. Pretty soon\neverything that turned up seemed to just come along to give me a chance\nto make a little sunshine. Pretty soon life was all nothing but sunshine\nchances. I got hold of some books that showed me that lots of others\nwere trying some similar games, and all working hard, and I picked out\none book that 'most anybody could understand, and I used to carry it to\nread from. Would you believe that I wore out that book about a hundred\ntimes and sold it more'n five hundred times and give it away 'most a\nthousand times. I got where hard lines was just play to me. I've now got\nwhere they're flowers in my garden. I just fly at 'em. If they don't\ngive up to one course, they do to another. I travel about looking for\n'em. I was on my last trip when I see Matilda sittin' across the aisle\nfrom me, and I said to myself right off, 'What fine lines!' So I went\nright over and shook hands with her--\"\n\n\"He said he feared maybe he'd made a mistake,\" interrupted his wife,\n\"and I said--God forgive me!--'If you speak to me again, I'll call out\nto the conductors!'\"\n\n\"And I said: 'Madam, excuse me, I'm only a harmless crank as is trying\nto help folks as is sick or in trouble, and you look like a woman as\ncould tell me of some I could help, maybe!'\"\n\n\"Then I thought of you, Susan,\" said the sister; \"you see, I'd been\nlooking out of the window, and the view was so pretty, and it kind of\ncome over me how awful hard it was to lie in bed--and--and I felt kind\nof bad, and his face looked kind, and I said: 'Well, sit down. I do know\nsomebody sick.'\"\n\n\"So I set down,\" went on Mr. Beamer, \"and in just a little while she let\nup like everybody does and told me the whole story, and then I took her\nout on the back platform and we was swinging 'round curves of mighty\nlovely scenery, and I got out my book and I begin to read aloud to her.\"\n\n\"And I got hold of the idea like mad,\" said Matilda. \"I said right off:\n'Then Susan's really all well now?' an' he said: 'She's been well\nalways,' and I says: 'And my arm's well,' and he said: 'Nothin' ain't\never ailed your arm except your own innard feelings, and they're gone\nnow,' and then I just put my hands over my face and says: 'Oh, God,\nforgive me for lots and lots and lots of things.'\"\n\nThere was another little pause, and then Susan said very low: \"And God\ndid it.\"\n\n\"And then,\" said Mr. Beamer, \"I says to her: 'Now, if you want to see\nhow true everything I've been saying is, we'll just put this to a\npractical proof.' I'd noticed a woman with lines back there in the car\nslapping two sleepy children, and I told Matilda we'd each take a child\nfor an hour and give her lines a chance to smooth out a little, and then\nwe'd come back on the platform and talk it over.\"\n\n\"So we did it,\" said Matilda, \"and when I took the baby back to the\nwoman, she burst out crying and said she'd tried to hold in all day and\njust couldn't any longer, cause her mother was sick and had been sick so\nlong, and she couldn't leave the children to go to her 'cause the\nchildren was the neighbor's and left with her to board, and she'd never\nliked children and only took 'em 'cause her mother needed the money.\"\n\n\"Showing,\" interrupted Mr. Beamer, \"how we'd misjudged her and her hard\nlines, which is another feature of my crusade, as lots don't think\nenough about.\"\n\n\"But what come next was just like a story, too,\" Matilda said. \"When I\ngot to Mrs. Camp's at last, I found Mrs. Camp so changed that if I\nhadn't met Matthew on the train and got something to hold on to, I\ncouldn't have stayed in the house an hour.\"\n\n\"Why, what was the matter with Mrs. Camp?\" Susan asked anxiously.\n\n\"Why, all Mrs. Camp's family is married now, and it seems she was so\nlonely she's turned into a social settler or some such thing, and her\nnice, quiet house where I'd looked to rest was one swarm of Italians\nlearning English and girls learning sewing and women asking advice and\nsuch a chaos of Bedlam you never dreamed. If it hadn't been for my just\nhaving got religion that way, I'd have turned around and come straight\nback home. But as it was, I didn't have time to do anything but get into\nmy blue print and take hold right with her and get some order into\nthings in general.\"\n\n\"Oh, Aunt Matilda!\" Jane's face was radiant.\n\n\"Afternoons Matthew came with an auto, and he'd take me off with the\nback seat full of children, and we'd hunt hard lines anywhere they\nlooked likely.\"\n\n\"And then, of course, we soon got married,\" said Mr. Beamer.\n\n\"Yes, and that's all,\" said Matilda. \"_Now did you ever?_\"\n\nThere was a sudden hush, until finally Susan said, through tears: \"Oh,\nMatilda,--it's like something in heaven's got loose and fell right down\nover us, isn't it?\"\n\n\"I think it's all too wonderful,\" said Jane.\n\n\"Of course there really is something out of heaven spread over earth\nevery day,\" said Lorenzo, low, and very reverently; \"only people don't\nsee it.\"\n\n\"But nowadays, everybody's beginning to recognize it,\" Jane murmured.\n\n\"It's like it says in one of my books,\" said Mr. Beamer. \"God's a\nreservoir and we're all pipes, just as soon as we're willing to be\npipes, and then He pours through us according to how willing we are,\nbecause you're big or little just according to how willing you are.\"\n\n\"Let us all be very willing,\" said Jane.\n\n\"Oh, Jane,\" said Susan, \"that sounds like a blessing to ask at the\ntable. Let's ask a blessing after this and just say: 'Let us all be very\nwilling!'\"\n\n\"Amen,\" said Lorenzo.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIX\n\nTHE RESULTS\n\n\nJANE was married in the early autumn.\n\nShe didn't have any trousseau or any wedding presents or any bridal\ntrip. It was a new kind of wedding, because so much about her and her\nway of looking at life was new to those about her, that even her\nmarriage had to match it. \"My clothes are always in nice order,\" she\nsaid to Susan, slightly appalled over the non-existing preparations,\n\"and I love to sew and will make what I need as I need it.\"\n\n\"I don't want any presents,\" Lorenzo had said decidedly. \"I don't want\nany one on earth to groan because I'm marrying Jane.\"\n\n\"I don't think much of bridal trips; Matthew and I didn't have one, so I\nknow all about them,\" said Matilda, who now had her standard and never\nlowered it for one instant; \"those bothers are just about over for\nsensible people.\"\n\nSo it all fell out in this way. One lovely bright September day, Mr. and\nMrs. Beamer and Mrs. Susan Ralston walked quietly into the village\nchurch and sat down in the front pew. Shortly after the clergyman and\nthe bride and the groom came in, and the clergyman married the bride to\nthe groom. Then they all went out together, and the clergyman left them\nto go home together. A nice cold luncheon was spread at Susan's, and the\ncat was waiting, scratching hard at his white bow while he did so.\n\nAfter luncheon Mr. Beamer, his wife, and his wife's sister went off for\na journey.\n\n\"Think of me traveling!\" Susan cried ecstatically. \"Oh, Jane, may you\nenjoy going abroad this winter as much as I shall going off now.\"\n\nJane smiled her pretty smile, and then, after the last wave of adieu,\nshe and Lorenzo went back into the house.\n\n\"This is really very funny, you know,\" said Lorenzo; \"first we will wash\nall the dishes, and then we will plan our future.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Jane said.\n\nBut they failed to do either.\n\nInstead, they left the dishes and the future to care for themselves.\nGoing straight down into the garden, climbing the two fences, safely\nsecluded in the little, growing, blooming inclosure, Lorenzo took his\nwife in his arms, and said: \"Oh, my dearest dear, how rightest right\neverything is!\"\n\n\nTHE END\n\n\n\n\n                          Books by Anne Warner\n\n\n=The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary=\n\n    Players' Edition, with illustrations reproduced from photographs\n    of scenes in the play. =$1.50=\n\nAlways amusing and ends in a burst of sunshine.--_Philadelphia\nLedger._\n\n\n=Just Between Themselves=\n\n    Frontispiece in color by Will Grefe. =$1.50=\n\nIt is full of apt, pert little take-offs on human nature that provokes\nfrequent chuckles.--_Philadelphia Item._\n\n\n=In A Mysterious Way=\n\n    Illustrated by J. V. McFall. =$1.50=\n\nA story of love and sacrifice that teems with the author's original\nhumor.--_Baltimore American._\n\n\n=Your Child and Mine=\n\n    Illustrated. =$1.50=\n\nThe child-heart, strange and sweet and tender, lies open to this\nsympathetic writer.--_Chicago Record-Herald._\n\n\n=An Original Gentleman=\n\n    Frontispiece by Alice Barber Stephens. =$1.50=\n\nExhibits her cleverness and sense of humor.--_New York Times._\n\n\n=Susan Clegg, Her Friend and Her Neighbors=\n\n    Illustrated. =$1.50=\n\nCombining all the Susan Clegg stories originally published in \"Susan\nClegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop\" and \"Susan Clegg and Her\nNeighbors' Affairs.\"\n\nOne of the most genuinely humorous books ever written.--_St.\nLouis Globe-Democrat._\n\n\n=Susan Clegg And a Man in the House=\n\n    Illustrated by Alice Barber Stephens. =$1.50=\n\nSusan is a positive joy, and the reading world owes Anne Warner a\nvote of thanks for her contribution to the list of American humor.--_New\nYork Times._\n\n\n=When Woman Proposes=\n\n    Illustrated in color. =$1.25 _net_=\n\nDainty in form and content. It is printed, bound, and illustrated\ncharmingly, and the story, style, and atmosphere correspond.--_New\nYork Herald_\n\n\n=A Woman's Will=\n\n    Illustrated. =$1.50=\n\nA deliciously funny book.--_Chicago Tribune._\n\n\n=How Leslie Loved=\n\n    Illustrations in color by A. B. Wenzell. =$1.25 _net_=\n\nThe sprightly romance of a young and charming American widow.\n\n\nLITTLE, BROWN, & CO., _Publishers_\n34 BEACON STREET, BOSTON\n\n\n\n\n      *      *      *      *      *      *\n\n\n\n\nTranscriber's note:\n\nThroughout the dialogues, there were words used to mimic accents of\nthe speakers. Those words were retained as-is.\n\nErrors in punctuations and inconsistent hyphenation were not corrected\nunless noted below:\n\nOn page 228, \"winable\" was replaced with \"winnable\".\n\nOn page 242, the comma after \"softly\" was replaced with a period.\n\nOn page 245, the period after \"cow declared\" was replaced with a comma.\n\nOn page 278, \"Mr Beamer\" was replaced with \"Mr. Beamer\".\n\nIn the advertisements at the end of the book, the duplicate header on\nthe last page was removed.","title":"Sunshine Jane","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":44256}