As she sat there, thinking, in the midst of the books that lined the walls or stood out in their cases, she remembered what Miss Hilliard had once said in warning the girls: “Most of us are talked about from the cradle to the grave. Some of what ‘they’ say is true and a good part of it is not.”
It was a quarter past ten when her uncle hurried into the library and hung his hat on a small rack. He was in riding costume and looked very nice, Jannet thought, a little like Andy. “I’m late, Jannet. Do not follow my example. I was detained, on an errand to the next farm. Now, let me see, what were we going to talk about?”
“I have ever so many things to talk to you about,” soberly said Jannet, “but you had something, you said, about plans and things.”
“Then we’ll talk about ‘plans and things’ first,” said her uncle smiling a little. He sat down by his desk, leaning back comfortably in a large chair there and motioning Jannet to a seat near him. For a moment he drummed on the desk with the fingers of his right hand, looking down thoughtfully.
“You may have wondered why I have not talked to you before,” he said at last, “but it takes some time to gather up the history of fifteen years or so, and I have hoped that you might find out some things gradually and form the rest. I am not much of a talker.
“The particular thing that I want to ask you is whether you like it here enough to make it your home, whether you will consent to give up your school to be tutored, with some travel, and a few advantages that I think I can give you, or whether you would prefer to go back to the other mode of life. It may be too soon to ask you this. If so, we can put it off.” Jannet was surprised, and more at her own feeling.
“No, Uncle Pieter, it is not too soon. I felt as soon as I reached my mother’s room that here was home. But you would not mean to cut me off from the people that have been so good to me, would you?”
“No, but I’d like to get you away from the eternal atmosphere of a school. I feel a responsibility, now that I know you are on earth.”
“Why, do you?” Jannet’s face lit up. Perhaps Uncle Pieter really liked her a little, too. “That is nice, but I had vacations, you know,—only I have never really belonged anywhere.”
Her uncle nodded. “I thought as much,” he said. “Understand that I find no fault with a school. But when I found that you had practically lived in one all your life, I thought it was time for something else.”