Janet favored Jan with an understanding glance. “It’s very ‘expressive,’ I’ve heard Miss Hilliard say, but she corrects us when we use it. Do you want me to call you John or Jan?”
The boy hesitated. “I used to despise that old Dutch name,” he said, “but if you are Jannet, I’ll be Jan while I’m here. I’m trying to get permission to stay on instead of going back to school. Uncle Pieter doesn’t interfere, only about that, but if I can help about the place a little it will be more fun, and you and I could ride everywhere. Wouldn’t you like that?”
“I should think I would!”
“Well, all I ask is that you get Uncle Pieter to liking you a whole lot. I believe he does.”
“He couldn’t. He only knows me a very little, you see.”
“Do you think that a person would have to know you a long while first? I always know whom I’m going to like. They are short of help, the farmer at the tenant house told me, so I’m going to risk it, and ask Uncle Pieter if I can’t turn farmer. There are a lot of things to be done, about the trees in the orchard and the stock, for instance, that a boy can do.”
“You like farming as well as electricity, then.”
“Some of it.”
Jan was not fair like Jannet, for he had the dark hair and gray eyes of his mother in a face more “square,” as Jannet thought of it. They were to be Jan and Jannet, then. That would be fun. Jannet next asked if there were other boys and girls in the neighborhood and was told of Jan’s friends on the neighboring farm, a girl and two boys.
“How old are you, Jannet?” Jan asked frankly.