All the girls—and most of the boys—whom Jan had known since her arrival came often to see her, for to the surprise, not only of herself but her cousins, who did not realize that outsiders had felt modest Janet’s charm, Miss Lochinvar seemed to have won everybody’s affection. “Come and see me in Crescendo,” she said to them all with boundless hospitality, and Gladys felt no dismay at the thought that they might take her at her word; so thoroughly had she learned true values.
Gwen and Gladys grudged a moment spent on visitors; the moments were growing so few in which they should see Jan’s pretty face, and watch it cloud at the thought of parting or break into dimples over something pleasant. Even Cena North and Dorothy Schuyler were in the way, though the latter was the one to whom Gwen looked for consolation when she should be bereft of Jan.
At last the night came when for the last time Jan should lie down in her pretty room, and all the cousins hung around her till the latest possible moment—even Jerry being allowed to sit up until she fell asleep in Jan’s lap.
“We’ll keep a diary and send it to each other twice a week—that’s settled,” said Gwen. “And I want to tell you one thing, Jan. I know now I was a silly to think North & Company would publish my novel, and I was a greater silly to think I could write a novel, and the greatest silly of all to think that it was nicer to be famous than a lovely, homely girl. If you like to know that you turned your cousin from a goose into a girl with a grain of sense, you may have that pleasure.”
“And here’s another,” said Gladys. “You know I’m not quite as bad a goose as I was, and it’s all your doing.”
Sydney said nothing then, but when, later, Jan went up to say good night to Drom, he put out his hand. “I may not get a chance to tell you to-morrow when they’re all around,” he said, “but I’m getting on better at school—working better and all that—and I don’t see much of the wild boys, and I’m getting on fine working with the professor up at college. And father says I may take up civil engineering if I like, so I guess I’ll go to college after all. And if you hadn’t come and made things pleasant here I don’t believe I’d have been anywhere. I thought you might like to know.”
“It’s all because you are so good to me that you fancy I’ve done things. I never did a thing, but just be a humdrum, every-day little girl,” said Jan.
“Nothing but be Janet Howe—Miss Lochinvar, I mean; we know,” said Sydney. And Jan ran down-stairs to cry a little and laugh a little that on the morrow she was to set out for Crescendo, and to be glad and grateful that the clan of Graham rated her so inexplicably high.