“She will some time. Now do you know everything you came to ask?”
“Yes, Paulina, and I beg your pardon if you do not like it. But I had a talk with Uncle Pieter this morning and,—oh, yes, I forgot one thing. I found out that a letter and a telegram came for Uncle Pieter from my mother long ago, after he had gone to Europe, after my grandmother’s death. Do you remember anything about it? He did not know about them, of course, at the time. Who was here, then?”
“All the rest of us; Andy, though, was on a visit. He never stayed with his stepmother if he could help it. Vittoria was here. Mrs. Van Meter had her since she was fifteen or sixteen. Vittoria isn’t as young as she looks.” Paulina thought a moment, her stolid face looking more intelligent than usual. “I can’t remember any letter, but I do remember answering a telegram for Mrs. Van Meter when she was beginning one of her conniption fits over nothing that I could see. Vittoria brought her the telegram and she read it. Her face got all red and she stamped her foot. ‘The idea! The idea!’ She said, ‘what do we care? Oh, I’m going to faint, Vittoria. Help me to the davenport, Paulina!’
“I told her that I guessed she could get there by herself, with Vittoria there, and I ran for the stuff we used when she went into hysterics. When I came back, Vittoria took it from me and told me to attend to the man that brought the telegram out from the village. Something was wrong with the telephone. He was impatient and pretty soon I went to the door to ask Vittoria if Mrs. Van Meter wanted to send a reply back.
“But Mrs. Van Meter sat up, then, all wild, and still mad. Then she told me to write an answer. ‘Say “No use,” Paulina, “No use,” and sign it “Van Meter”!’ Then she went off into her hysterics again. I sent the answer, of course; and when the man asked where to, I told him I didn’t know, but to fill it out to wherever the telegram came from, and he said he would. He told me how much it would be and I paid him.”
Paulina stopped and Jannet sat quite still for a moment. Then she rose. “Thank you, Paulina, so much, for all that you have told me. I have told Uncle Pieter that I will make my home with him and not go back to school next winter, so I hope that you will like me at least as much as you do Jan. I’ll try to be as good as possible myself, but I have a lot to learn, I suppose. Did you like my mother, Paulina?”
“Yes,” bluntly replied Paulina, looking uncomfortable.
Jannet was only too thankful to have escaped anything unpleasant. She did not mind Paulina’s lack of sentiment, though she rather felt that she had shown a little too much. She really was not silly, she told herself, as she walked away from Paulina’s door.
Paulina’s surprise and interest could not have been feigned. She did not know about the lights, then. She had not staged the performance. And now she had the answer that had been sent, she felt, to some telegram which had preceded the one which her uncle had found. But Jannet scarcely knew how she would tell him this story, about his wife. Perhaps she could write it to him,—no, that would not do at all! Perhaps he would ask Paulina, then, at her suggestion. That was it.
A telephone call to Nell elicited the information that the company had gone and that Nell could spend the afternoon any time that Jannet wanted her. When Mrs. Holt was later consulted, she suggested that Jannet ask Nell to come to spend the day and night with her. “Your uncle, Andy and I are invited to a grown-up affair to-morrow night, Jannet, and we’ll be home very late, it is likely. I don’t want Andy to miss it, for it will do him good to get out as much as possible, instead of thinking too much. I am going to get his sweetheart here this summer, Jannet, and now that he is so much better perhaps he will be reasonable, especially when he finds that she still cares for him.