Often as he hoed between the long rows of thrifty vegetables, the sorrowing man glanced up at the windows of the room in which he knew his beloved daughter sat. How he wished she would come out and talk with him, even if it were to tell him that she had decided that she wanted to go with her friends to Newport. He had promised to find a way to obtain the $300 she would need, if she wished to go for three months.

He sighed deeply, and, being hidden from the house by a gnarled old apple tree, he stopped his work and took from his pocket an often read letter from an old friend who had offered to loan him any sum, large or small, at any time that it might be needed. “If Jane wants to go, I’ll wire for the money,” he decided. Never before had a morning dragged so slowly for the man who was used to the whirl, confusion and excitement of Wall Street.

And yet, though he hardly realized it, the warm, gentle breeze rustling among the leaves of the trees, the smell of the freshly turned earth in which he was working, the cheerful singing of the birds far and near—brought into his soul a sense of peace. At the end of one row he stood up, very straight as he had stood before it had all happened, and looking up into the radiant blue sky, he seemed to know, deep in the heart of him, that all would be well. It was with a brisker step than he had walked in many a day that he returned to the house, when little Julie appeared at the back door to ring the luncheon bell.

“Surely Jane has decided by now,” he told himself. “And equally surely she will want to go West with the brother who has sacrificed himself, his ease and his health that she might finish her course at Highacres.” So confident was he of his daughter’s real nobility of nature that he found himself planning what he would suggest that she take with her. She would ask him about that at lunch. There was not much time to prepare, but she would need little in that wild mountain country. At last he heard her slowly descending the stairs. His anxiety increased. What would Jane’s decision be?

CHAPTER VI.
JANE’S CHOICE

The father, with his hands clasped behind him, was pacing up and down the long dining room when his daughter entered. He saw at once that she had been crying, although she had endeavored to erase the traces of the tears which had been shed almost continuously through the morning.

In a listless voice she said at once, “Father, I have decided to go with Dan since you feel that it is my duty, but, oh, how I want to go to Newport with Merry and the rest: but of course it would cost $300 and there is no money.”

The father had started eagerly toward his daughter when she had entered, but, upon hearing the concluding part of her speech, he drew back, a hurt expression in his clear gray eyes. He folded his arms and a more alert observer than Jane would have noticed an almost hard tone in his voice. Never before had it been used for the daughter who was so like the mother in looks only. “The matter is decided. Jane,” he informed her. “The $300 that you require will be forthcoming. However, I wish you would plan to leave tomorrow, the same day that your brother goes West. I want to be alone, without worries, that I may decide how best to go about earning what I shall need to finish paying the debt that I still owe to the poor people who trusted me.”

“Oh, father, father!” Jane flung herself into her chair at the table and put her head down on her folded arms. “I didn’t know that you felt that you owe them more than your entire fortune.”

“It was not enough to cover their investments,” the man said, still coldly, for he believed the girl was crying because she would have to give up even more than she had supposed, and be kept in poverty for a longer period of time. She sat up, however, when her father said, “Jane, dry your tears. Since you are to go to Newport, I see nothing for you to cry about, and I do not wish mother and Julie to know how I feel about this whole matter.”