Meg’s answer was: “I am loaning you twenty-five dollars from my savings, but don’t hope too much. It will be very hard for me to make Scarsburg by five o’clock, but for Julie’s sake I’ll do my best.”
“For Julie’s sake!” The words drifted back to Jane as she stood watching the pony hurtling itself down the mountain road until the cloud of dust hid it from view. She, Jane, had never done anything for Julie’s sake, and why, pray, should this mountain girl loan her own money to strangers who might never repay her, and risk her life and that of her pony, as it was evident she was doing?
Jane looked out into the heat-shimmering valley. Many times the mountain road reappeared to her as it zigzagged down to Redfords. Again and again a rushing cloud of dust assured her that Meg was still racing with time.
Returning to the porch, Jane sank down in the deep chair, keenly conscious of her own uselessness.
“Oh, what a vain, worthless creature I am! I don’t see why Dan cares for me so much; why he risked his health that I might finish my course in that seminary where everyone, everything, conspired to make me more proud and helpless.”
Then before her arose a mental picture. Meg, clear-eyed, eager to be of service in an hour of need, and more than that, capable of being, and she, Jane, had snubbed her, but for Julie’s sake the mountain girl had persevered in her desire to be neighborly.
Unable to sit still, Jane went again to the brook to call, but the children, with Dan, had climbed higher than usual and had found so much to interest them that they had failed to note the passage of time.
As there was no answer to her calling, Jane went back to the house, and, because she had to do something (she had entirely lost interest in her book), she wandered out into the kitchen. She saw on the table a pan of potatoes with the paring knife near.
Hardly knowing what she was about, Jane took the pan to the porch, and, seating herself on the step, she began most awkwardly to pare. She had heard her grandmother say that the peeling should be as thin as possible as the goodness was next to the skin. It took a very long time for Jane to pare the half dozen potatoes and she had almost resolved not to tell Dan about the taxes until she knew the worst or the best, when she heard him hallooing from the brook. Placing the pan on the step, she ran to meet him. One glance at her white, startled face assured him more than words could have done that something of an unusual nature had occurred during their absence. Catching her in his arms, he felt her body tremble. He led her back to the porch before he asked, “Jane, tell me. What has happened? Has that Slinking Coyote frightened you?”
Julie and Gerald, wide-eyed and wondering, crowded near. “Dan,” Jane clung to him as she had not since the long ago childhood, when she had so often been frightened and had turned to him for protection, “please send the children away. I want to tell you alone.”