Clasping him to her breast, in spite of bandages, and disregarding possible mud on the white paws, Jan returned, damaged, excited, but, on the whole, happy, from her first party.
CHAPTER VII
“OH, COME YE IN PEACE HERE, OR COME YE IN WAR?”
After the party and Jan’s accident there were seven days of uneventful, shut-in life, which were both pleasant and unpleasant. Jan could not go to school, for her hands were very painful, and holding a book would be quite out of the question.
Gwen was well and out again in a day, but she devoted her afternoons to Jan, going over their lessons with her, that she might keep up with the class, and entertaining her the rest of the time. The girls in school showed a tendency to make a heroine of Jan, who refused to be lionized; Dorothy, Cena, and Helen Watterson came, separately or together, nearly every afternoon to see her, and the teachers sent messages of sympathy and pride in her courage to her, whom they called “their brave little Janet.”
Sydney hailed her on the day after her adventure with a cordial smile and a tone which she had never heard him use to any one. He liked pluck, and it struck him suddenly that the girl whom he had dubbed “Miss Lochinvar” had been showing it, in one form or another, ever since her arrival.
“I hear you have been making a burnt offering of yourself, Miss Jan,” he said. “Don’t do too much of that sort of thing, because it would be a pity to have you burned up altogether.”
Jan was so pleased at this advance from Sydney that she built upon it great hopes of real friendship between them, but though Sydney never relapsed into his perfect indifference of manner toward her, they did not get beyond this slight break in the ice. Gladys alone stood completely aloof. She was a very unhappy Gladys in these days, and heartily wished that she had not taken the attitude toward her cousin which she now felt called upon to maintain. Pride kept her from admitting that she was in the wrong, and stubbornness toward Gwen, and a deep-seated objection to seeming to admit her authority, made her ten times worse than she might have been without these inducements to bad behavior. Gwen found out from Jan how Gladys had treated her at the party. Jan did not mean to tell, but in saying how good Dorothy Schuyler had been to her, she found that she had blundered into betrayal of Gladys’s neglect.
Gwen was very angry. Not only was her sense of justice and liking for Jan in arms, but had not she, Gwendoline, Gladys’s elder and talented sister, warned Gladys that night before setting forth that she must not treat their cousin badly?
“I don’t want to be a tell-tale, Gladys, and I’m not the sort to run to papa with things, any more than he is one to bother with them, but you know what he said about sending you to boarding-school if you dared be rude to Janet when he had invited her here! Now, you just keep it up as you’ve been doing, and I’ll have to go to him, and tell him how perfectly horrid you are to her—and she so sweet and dear, and everybody that is anybody admiring her like everything!” said Gwen sternly.