Jane Journeys On

by Ruth Comfort Mitchell

I hear the klip-klup of Lizzie, the postman's horse, so I can't tell you about the Gillespies until next letter.

Dear M.D., I'm growing so nice you wouldn't know me for the frenzied vaude-villain of a fortnight past. Some of the old cells in my brains are coming to life again. Thanks, Michael Daragh! Do you know what M.D. stands for?—Do-er of Miracles. Isn't it pretty much of a miracle to make me turn my back on five orders and bring my soul up here to renovate it?

J. V.

Tuesday.

Michael Daragh, I'm up in my cunning little room with its heaving ceiling and its braided mats and patchwork quilt, and I can look down on the corner of the graveyard and see Dan'l and his dog waiting for Uncle Robert. He is not a real postman but he drives down for his own mail every day and "stops by" with the Gillespies'. (Not that they ever have any!) He's the old man who got down on his rusty black stomach to peek into the culvert and call "Come, pup, come, dear!" He's the sweetest old thing with Dan'l. The child lives in constant hope of a letter, and every day Uncle Robert (he's everybody's uncle) says, "Wall, not to-day, Dan'l!" And then Dan'l and the pup trot home.

Dan'l is the most appealing child! I've always fancied the freckles and splinters and grime and cheek type of little boy, but Dan'l gets into your heart, some way. He makes me think of Andrea del Sarto's young St. John in the Wilderness, for he has, in addition to the unearthly sweetness in his eyes, a warmth of coloring at variance with the drained fairness of these islanders. His Canadian mother explains that,—"her that was Angerleek Larrydoo," as the neighbors say, and that just expresses it. She was—but she isn't any more. She's just the Deacon's "woman." (That is his own gallant phrase: "I guess likely my woman'll cal'late she c'n do fer y'u," he said when I asked for board.)

She has a sort of petrified prettiness, the ghost of girlhood in a face furrowed and sagging with fretted years. Age and unhappiness have hardened about the sweetness of long ago—like a rose imbedded in ice at a country fair.

And the Deacon! I didn't know it gave his like, in these lax days. He has a beautifully chiseled old face with an eagle beak and ice-blue eyes, and he looks as if his favorite winter sport were Turning Erring Daughters Out into the Snow.

Dan'l is the only child at home now and they both adore him,—the mother with timid tenderness and the old man with fierce repression. Even the pup takes on character from the family. I call it Sweet-Alice-Ben-Bolt, because it very nearly weeps with delight when you give it a smile and trembles with fear at your frown. The Deacon is of that large and austere order of persons who "like dogs, in their place"; S.A.B.B. wears his stumpy, little tail at half mast whenever the head of the house is near.

There is some mystery about Dan'l's watching for a letter. His mother yearns over him and says,—"But, maybe to-morrow, Dannie!" but his father sneers, and then the child seems to shrivel before my eyes.