Jane shrugged her slender shoulders. “Oh, don’t mind about me. I can endure him, I suppose.”
Dan sighed and stretched out to rest until the dinner hour arrived.
Julie and Gerald joined them, jubilantly declaring that they were to reach their destination the next morning before sun-up.
“Then we must all retire early,” Dan said. This plan was carried out, but for hours Jane sobbed softly into her pillow. It was almost more than she could bear. She had started this journey just on an impulse, and she did want to help Dan, who had broken down trying to work his way through college that there might be money enough to keep her at Highacres. It was their father who had been inconsiderate of them. If he had let the poor people lose the money they had invested rather than give up all he had himself, she, Jane, could have remained at the fashionable seminary and Dan would have been well and strong.
Indeed everything would have been far better.
But the small voice in the girl’s soul which now and then succeeded in making itself heard caused Jane to acknowledge: “Of course Dad is so conscientious, he would never have been happy if he believed that his money really belonged to the poor people who had trusted him.”
It was midnight before Jane fell asleep, and it seemed almost no time at all before she heard a tapping on her door. She sat up and looked out of the window. Although the sky was lightening, the stars were still shining with a wonderful brilliancy in the bit of sky that she could see. Then a voice, which she recognized as that of Mr. Packard, spoke.
“Time to get up, young friends. We’ll be at Redfords in half an hour.”
Gerald leaped to his feet when he heard the summons. Then, when he grasped the fact that they were nearly at their destination, he gave a whoop of joy.
“Hurry up, Julie,” he shook his still sleeping young sister. “We are ’most to Mystery Mountain, and, Oh, boy, what jolly fun we’re going to have.”