CHAPTER THREE
“A ROSEBUD SET WITH LITTLE WILFUL THORNS”
Jane was almost always the first of the Garden girls to come down in the morning. She was as full of moods, varying in light and shade, as the surface of a pool overhung with branches. Throughout some of her days she chattered and sang in the wildest of high spirits from dawn till dark. Again she fell into deep wells of silence where nothing could reach her; remote and inaccessible she wrapped herself in her own thoughts, refusing to amuse or to be amused on these days. Whatever her mood, after the spring had come she was faithful to her flower-bed in the garden. Mary worked in hers more steadily, Florimel with greater gusto—when she worked—but Jane gave her bed the place of a beloved volume of poetry, in which she read daily. When the birds and the eastern sky were timing up together, in sound and colour, Jane sped lightly down the stairs and outdoors to look for overnight developments in her flowers and to sing above them.
“You sing to your posies for all the world the way the birds sing to waken the spring flowers!” Mary once said to her.
“If I’m a bird I’m a red-headed woodpecker, Molly darling, and he doesn’t sing,” retorted Jane, rumpling her brilliant locks.
The morning after Mark’s arrival Jane’s custom held good. Before any one else was downstairs she opened the door and went out into the fragrance and music of the late May morning, into the lovely old garden. Had there been any one there to see, they would have noticed that Jane wore her new brown street gown, not one of the simple chambrays in which she ordinarily said good-morning to her seedlings, who waited in bed for her coming—in fact, stayed in bed all day.
In a few moments there was some one to note this variation. Florimel followed Jane into the garden shortly, and instantly was upon her with an accusation.
“You’re dressed up, Jane Garden; where’re you going?” she cried.
“Florimel, don’t speak so loud,” Jane frowned at her. “I don’t want Mary to know, not till I get back; of course I’ll tell her afterward. I won’t tell you where I’m going; then you can truthfully say you don’t know where I am when they ask.”
“They won’t get a chance to ask; I’m going with you,” announced Florimel.