"By gum!" he exclaimed, going out to Janet on the porch; "I s'pose ye wanted t' go up t' the Hills this mornin', an' peddle yer good looks. I clean forgot yer ambitions, I was that sodden with weariness."
"No, Davy, it's all right. I want to get my breath first. I'm going to Bluff Head this afternoon. I may not have many more chances. I hear Bluff Head is going to be opened, too."
"Yes: Mr. Devant sent word down to Eliza Jane Smith t' have the place ready, bidin' the time he might come. But seems like I heard that Eliza Jane ain't goin' t'-day. She's takin' washin' in fur the boarders an' makin' money out of it. Eliza Jane'll get top lofty if she finds she ain't naturally dependent on James B. It don't do fur some women t' know their wuth."
Janet laughed.
"It helps others!" she answered lightly.
When the dinner dishes were disposed of, Janet took her sunbonnet and started off for Bluff Head. The day was hot and the road dusty. The sunbonnet, as a feminine requisite of old Quinton, was desirable; but Janet swung hers from her arm, thereby satisfying Mrs. Grundy's demands and not interfering with her own rights. At one o'clock, in the Quinton of that day, the city boarders were eating en masse, and the Quintonites, in various capacities, were serving them; so the girl on the highway had the place to herself. The lighthouse rose red and gleaming from Cap'n David's garden spot; the bay, blue and rippling, spread in and out of its tiny sub-bays where the land stretched like five fingers of a hand, with the blue water in between. To the west lay the Hills in their "artistic desolation," and to the north of them The Bluff, with Mr. Devant's long-closed house gracing the summit. It mattered little to Janet whether Eliza Jane Smith was in command of Bluff Head or not. The past would never have been as sweet as Janet knew it, had she depended upon Eliza Jane's movements to govern her ingress and egress to the place.
Going rapidly along, the girl presently came to the grounds of the big house. Years ago attempts at landscape gardening had been indulged in, while the master of the place fancied to pass his summers there, but years of recent neglect had all but obliterated the marks of culture. Wildness was over all, but it was the wildness of former refinement.
Past the sundial ran the girl, and around to the rear of the house. Then she burrowed under a dense rosebush and pushed her way through a basement window, almost hidden by the undergrowth, the sash of which swung inward at the familiar pressure.
It was but a moment's work to scramble through, and then run up the dark, disused stairway. The place had a mouldy smell, but it was neat and orderly, and the weekly airings, given by Eliza Jane, saved it from dampness. The silence and absence of human nearness might well have daunted one; but Janet, the only living thing, apparently, in the deserted house, felt no qualms. She went directly to the library: there was little else of interest in the place to her. For years this spot had been her secret treasure nook. When, as a little child, she had entered the place with Eliza Jane, it was not as other children, but with an inborn yearning to see and touch those wonderful rows of books. She was permitted to dust those she could reach, and her touch was reverent and gentle. The pictures had at first fascinated her; later, the district school teaching had given her power to understand the words; then had dawned the new heaven and the new earth. Like a miser with his gold, she guarded her joy. She discovered the unfastened window and timed her visits when she was sure of privacy; and so she had trod, undirected and like the wild creature she was, the paths of literature.
The Devant library, gathered through generations, was stored in the country house that had originally been built as a family home. But the sons of the race were rovers and often years would slip by without a personal inspection. James B. and Eliza Jane were the guardians, and there was little need of a master's anxiety while those two were in command.