There was no fending off the boy’s well meant embraces, and Jane emerged from them with decidedly ruffled feelings.
“I certainly don’t like to have you call me old Jane,” she scolded. “I think it is very lacking in respect. Father, I wish you would tell Gerald to call me Sister Jane.”
Mr. Abbott reprimanded the crestfallen lad, then he told the girl that the boy had not meant to be disrespectful. “You know, Jane, that children use certain phrases until they are worn ragged, and just now ‘old’ is applied to everything of which Gerald is especially fond. It is with him a term of endearment.” Then, with a smile of loving encouragement for the boy, their father added: “Why, that youngster even calls me ‘old Dad’ and I confess I rather like it.”
The boy did not again address his sister, but going to the other side of his father, he clung affectionately to his arm and hopped along on one foot and then on the other as though he had quite forgotten the rebuff, but he had not. They entered a side door and Jane went upstairs to her own pleasant room with its wide bow windows that opened out over the tops of the apple trees and toward the sloping green hills for which New Jersey is famous. Grandmother was in the kitchen preparing a supper such as Jane had liked two years before when she had visited the Vermont farm, and Julie was setting the table, when Gerald appeared. Straddling a chair he blurted out, “Say, isn’t Jane a spoil-joy? I’m awful sorry her school’s let out, and ’tisn’t only for vacation that she’ll be home. Dan says it’s forever ’n ever ’n ever. She’ll be trying to tell us where to head in. We’ll have about as much fun as—as—(the boy was trying hard to think of a suitable simile)—as—a——” Then as he was still floundering, Julie, holding a handful of silver knives and forks, whirled and said brightly, “as a rat in a dog kennel. You know last week how awful unhappy that rat was that puppy had in his kennel, till you held his collar and let the poor thing get away.” Then as the small girl continued on her way around the long table placing the silver by each plate, she said hopefully, “Don’t let’s mope about it yet. Jane always goes a-visitin’ her school friends every summer and like’s not she will this.”
“Humph! She must be heaps nicer other places than she is here, or folks wouldn’t want her.” Their mutual commiserating came to an abrupt end, for Grandma appeared from the kitchen with a covered dish, out of which a delicious aroma was escaping. Then in from the other door came Dad, one arm about Jane and the other about Dan. Grandma glanced anxiously at her big son. His expression was hard to read, but he seemed happier. How she hoped Jane had proved herself a worthy daughter of her mother.
It is well, perhaps, that we cannot read the thoughts of those nearest us, for all that evening Jane was wondering how she could make over her last summer’s wardrobe that it might appear new even in a fashionable cottage-hotel.
On Thursday, directly after breakfast, Jane went up to her room without having offered to help with the morning work. She had never even made her own bed in all the eighteen years of her life and the thought did not suggest itself to her that she might be useful. Or, if it did, she assured herself that Julie was far more willing and much more capable as a helper for their grandmother than she, Jane, could possibly be. The truth was that bright-eyed, eager, light-footed little Julie was far more welcome than the older girl, bored, sulky, and selfish, would have been.
Dan left early for the city, where he wished to purchase a few things he would need while “roughing it” in the Colorado mountains. Gerald went with him as far as the cross-roads, then the older boy tramped on to the depot while the younger one, whistling gaily and even turning a handspring now and then, proceeded to his place of business, and was soon nearly hidden in an apron much too big for him, while he swept out the store.
Mr. Abbott had watched his older daughter closely during that morning meal. He had said little to her, but had conversed cheerily with Dan, telling him just what khaki garments he would need, and, at Gerald’s urging, he had retold exciting adventures that he had had in that old log cabin in the long ago days, when he had first purchased it. How the boy wished that he, also, could go to that wonderful Mystery Mountain, but not for one moment would he let Dad know of this yearning. He was needed at home to earn what he could by working at the Peterson grocery. His big brother was not well, so he, Gerald, must take his place as father’s helper. He was a little boy, only twelve, and it took courage to whistle and turn handsprings when he would far rather have crept away into some hidden fence corner and sobbed out his longing for travel and adventure.
All that sunny July morning Mr. Abbott worked in his garden back of the apple orchard.