But Jane Granite stood irresolute upon the bare, steep stairs, with the stone-china teacup in her hand.
The minister had never concentrated his mind on Jane. He was a busy man. She was a modest, quiet girl; she helped her mother “do” his rooms, and never slammed the door when she went out. He felt a certain gratitude to her, for the two women took trouble for him far beyond the merits of the meagre sum allowed them for his bread and codfish. But for the life of him, if he had been required to, he could not have told anybody how Jane Granite looked.
When her timid knock struck the panel of his door, he started impatiently, put down his pen, and patiently bade her enter.
“I thought perhaps, sir—you would drink your tea?” pleaded Jane. “You haven’t eaten a morsel, and mother will mind it when she comes home.”
Bayard looked at her in a dazed way; trying to see the connection between forty-cent Japan tea and that beautiful thing said of Whitefield, that he “forgot all else about the men before him, but their immortality and their misery.”
“It’s getting cold,” said Jane, with quivering lip. “I stood on the stairs so long before I could make up my mind to disturb you. Let me get a hot cup, now, sir—do!”
“Why, I’ll come down!” said Bayard. “I must not make myself as troublesome as this.”
He pushed away his books, and followed her to the sitting-room, where, in default of a dining-room, and in vague deference to the antecedents of a guest popularly reported not to be used to eating in the kitchen, the meals of the family were served.
“Maybe you’d eat the fish-hash—a mouthful, sir?” asked Jane, brightening, “and there’s the stewed prunes.”
Bayard looked at her, as she ran to and fro, flushed and happy at her little victory over his supperless intentions. Jane was a trig, neat body; small, as the coast girls often are—I wonder why? whether because the mother was under-fed or over-anxious when the fleets were out? Jane Granite wore a blue gingham dress, closely fitted to a pleasant figure. She had a pleasant face, too; she had no beauty, but that certain something more attractive than beauty to many men,—a kind of compactness of feature, and an ease of outline which haunts the retina; it is not easy to describe, but we all know it. Her mother had told the minister that Jane was keeping company—that is the Windover phrase—with some one; the details had escaped his memory.