“I should love to.”
“Then do, my dear. It will be such a help if she consents to do so, for Jack needs little attentions, and will need them for several days. She barely escaped pneumonia. What a blessing you found her when you did. You are having a rather eventful career for a first year girl,” she added, “but perhaps you have guessed that even Altmount has been more generous in admitting pupils since our many war lessons have liberated us socially. We have with us now girls who have longed for just the chance we are giving them. They have always had means but——” She paused and smiled, Gloria thought, like a picture of the modern mother, for Miss Alton was a fine looking woman, and her simplicity of style more directly marked her personal distinction.
What girls besides Jack, Gloria wondered, could be among those referred to as coming under the extended social scale? Some one else must be in the school, was she “In Cog”? Some one other than Jack must have owned the trunk, the lost and found red stones and the necklace. But who could that be?
“I’ll run right back and ask Jane about staying,” Gloria said, this new thought almost banishing the essay’s disappointment. “It would seem so like home to have Jane near,” she added. “You know, Miss Alton, she is really my near-mother,” and there was no pretense in Gloria’s sincerity.
Imagine Jane, the demure, installed in Jack’s room, garbed in a great, white over-all apron, and armed with authority equal to that of any professional nurse!
She was delighted to stay, her one germ of unhappiness resulted from an enforced idleness, for since Gloria’s home had been disrupted, by Mr. Doane’s foreign commission and Gloria’s boarding school plans, Jane Morgan found little to do that really satisfied her natural energy. She had visited her sister’s home, did all she could to mend, patch and darn for the children there, but the confusion was so different from the quietude of Gloria’s home, that she soon found it disquieting.
“And she adores nursing,” Gloria told Trixy. “Don’t you remember how she took charge when Aunt Harriet was sick?”
“And don’t you remember how she took charge when Marty’s mother was sick? The time you and I became Red Cross nurses and used our best car for an ambulance?”
This recalled an interesting incident of the previous year and both girls now chatted and laughed merrily over the recollection.
“There goes the mail bag,” said Trixy innocently, when it was almost evening and the eventful day was nearing a close.