“Doesn’t know what?”
“Let me tell him! Let me tell him! It’s your picture, Paul—”
“What picture?” asked Paul, with a puzzled frown, looking down at her eager little face.
“It won, Paul! Don’t you understand—it won! And we’re all so proud of you—and it was in the papers—only we didn’t know where you were, and—”
“What are you talking about, Janey?” demanded Paul, cutting short this rush of breathless words. “My picture won? What picture? Won what?”
“The other one—the one that wasn’t burnt—oh, don’t anybody interrupt me! I want to tell him every bit. And they said that ‘in spite of many something-or-other faults it showed’—I’ve forgotten what—they said it was awfully, awfully good—oh, I don’t know where to begin!”
“Begin at the beginning, darling. No one will interrupt your story,” said Aunt Gertrude, drawing Jane to her. “And Paul’s not going to run away.”
So Janey took a deep breath and commenced afresh; while Paul listened, first growing pale, and then blushing a deep red. He felt the glow rushing all over him, and when she had finished, he could not say a word. They were all looking at him with eyes full of that warm pride that only a family can feel, and it seemed to him that his triumph had brought more happiness to them even than to himself. He could not think of anything to say to them all, and presently he got up, and walked over to the window, where he stood looking out into the cold little garden. But what he saw was only the reflection of the group around the fire—that very group which he had so often pictured to himself with such homesick longing during his months of exile. He thought of his lonely father, and his aimless wanderings, and then he knew that he was glad to have come home again. The world could teach him no more than he could learn by working and growing and thinking among his own people, and the world could not give him any praise half so sweet, or half so inspiring as their simple pride.
Suddenly he felt a warm little hand slip into his. It was Janey.
She looked up at him timidly—his serious profile seemed quite stern to her.