"Hens? Yes, and but for the whim of renting this tumble-down house with its great gardens out on the suburb, we could have had snug rooms in some business street, where I could have earned our bread and butter."
"It was your whim, captain. Why, she has kept up the table out of the garden, and you know it. Don't interfere with the child. She can turn a penny to the best advantage. Her ability is of the most practical kind."
The captain did not like her tone. He glanced uneasily at Jane, who ate her cherries in calm unconsciousness.
"I might as well stick pins in the divine cow Audhumbla!" Miss Fleming said to herself every day. This child, as she called her, irritated her, just as a machine did, or an animal, or any other creature whose motive-power she could by no means comprehend. She was herself a mass of vitalized nerves, all of which centred in that secret I, Cornelia Fleming, over whose hopes, nature and chances she brooded night and day. This other woman, who simply grew in her place, concerning herself no more about her own mind, body or future than the larch yonder did about its roots or leaves, and who took praise and blame as indifferently as the tree, the sun or rain, roused in her a feeling of active dislike. She called Jane stolid to other people, but she was by no means satisfied that she was stolid. She was often sorry that she had brought herself measurably under the protection of Captain Swendon and his daughter by renting two of the rooms in their house, though she had planned and manœuvred a long time to accomplish that end. When Miss Fleming came up to town to join the art-class at the Academy, she was exceedingly careful not to join also the emancipated lonely sisterhood, who set social laws at defiance. She might live alone, but it must be under the roof of conventionally correct people. She abjured the whole tribe of literary and artistic adventurers who haunted the studios and lecture-halls. She wrote home to her old mother that the Swendons, descended from the leaders of the first Swedish settlers, that family of Svens from whom Penn bought the land for his village of Philadelphia, had possessed culture and social rank, if no money, for centuries. Miss Fleming found for herself a lodging-place under their roof, with very much the motive of the low-born blackbird burrowing in the high, bare nest of the osprey.
She was on her way to the Academy now, and touched her hat jauntily and shook loose her flowing-sleeve as she said good-bye with a lingering look at the captain, to which he did not reply.
The cold ague of despair was on him: he combed his grizzled beard with his fingers, stared at the carpet and saw nobody. "Yes, I ought to have rented two small rooms up town, and found work that would pay. I'll do it now," he grumbled.
Jane had uncovered a long table heaped with tools, glue-pots, drawing-materials, models in wood, in paper, in clay, with others finely draughted on large sheets of Bristol board. The captain preserved his failures as sacredly as a Chinese the dead bodies of his ancestors. She took up one of these models and studied it thoughtfully: "Very well, father. I could go on with the business, I suppose."
The captain burst into a laugh: "Absurd! Though," relapsing into anxiety, "this is, as you say, really my business. But I could easily find a place as professor of Latin and Greek in some Western college which would support us."
"Now, I don't quite understand the action of this screw, A, B," meditatively. "It interferes with the force of the piston, in my judgment."
"Impossible!" hurrying over to the table. "I'll explain that in a moment, Jane. Why, that screw is the finest idea in the machine. It's the meaning, in fact. It all hinges on that."