One of these he read with a lengthening face, and, when his eyes had traveled down to the foot of the last page, looked over at Jan so gravely that her heart gave an apprehensive bound, and Gwen exclaimed: “There’s nothing wrong, is there, papa?”
“No—at least, yes, I think there is.—Nothing wrong at your home, Jan, so don’t look so startled, child,” said Mr. Graham, smiling at Jan, who was waiting his answer with wide, frightened eyes. “Your mother has not been well, but she’s recovered now; this letter is from your father.”
“Mamma ill? What was it? Do you suppose she really is well again, Uncle Howard? What does papa say?” cried Jan.
“He says—let me see. ‘Tell Jan not to feel the slightest anxiety; I am not concealing anything from her; her mother is quite herself again, except for a remnant of weakness. But—’ and the rest is what I do not like to tell you, and still less to tell my own children.” And Mr. Graham stopped, frowning hard at Jan.
“He wants Jan!” guessed Gwen, jumping at the thing she most dreaded.
“That’s precisely what he does want,” assented her father. “He says it is now April, and the brief time left in school will not be serious loss, and Jan’s mother is so hungry for a glimpse of her that he wants us to send her back to Crescendo. He doesn’t say what he expects us to do without her.”
A dead silence fell on the entire table. Gwen and Gladys stared aghast, Viva turned crimson and began to cry soundlessly, while Jack looked as though he would like to follow her example. Sydney and his mother both pushed back their plates with a simultaneous movement, and Jan herself seemed uncertain whether to be glad or sorry.
Jerry looked from one to the other; then suddenly her voice pierced the stillness shrilly: “She’s my Jan, she’s my Jan! She san’t go away f’ ever’ n’ ever, amen,” she fairly shrieked, and was borne from the room in a violent fit of coughing by the patient Susan.
“We can’t express our feelings in precisely the same way as Jerry,” said Mrs. Graham, “but they are quite as much ours. You are our Jan, and we really can not let you go.”
“O Jan! you won’t go, will you?” said Gladys reproachfully.