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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Sunshine Jane, by Anne Warner, Illustrated by
+Harriet Roosevelt Richards
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Sunshine Jane
+
+
+Author: Anne Warner
+
+
+
+Release Date: November 10, 2011  [eBook #37972]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SUNSHINE JANE***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Ernest Schaal, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images
+generously made available by Internet Archive/American Libraries
+(http://www.archive.org/details/americana)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
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+      See 37972-h.htm or 37972-h.zip:
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+
+
+      Images of the original pages are available through
+      Internet Archive/American Libraries. See
+      http://www.archive.org/details/sunshinejane00warniala
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+      Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
+
+      Text enclosed by equal signs is in bold face (=bold=).
+
+      Small capital letters were replaced by all capitals
+
+
+
+
+
+SUNSHINE JANE
+
+
+[Illustration: "Auntie Susan, it's Aunt Matilda and Mr. Beamer."
+FRONTISPIECE. _See Page 265._]
+
+
+SUNSHINE JANE
+
+by
+
+ANNE WARNER
+
+Author of "The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary," "Susan
+Clegg and Her Friend, Mrs. Lathrop," etc.
+
+With Frontispiece by Harriet Roosevelt Richards
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Boston
+Little, Brown, and Company
+1914
+
+Copyright, 1913, 1914,
+By Little, Brown, and Company.
+
+All rights reserved
+
+Published, February, 1914
+Reprinted, January, 1914
+
+Set up and electrotyped by J. S. Cushing Co., Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
+Presswork by S. J. Parkhill & Co., Boston, Mass., U.S.A.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+    CHAPTER                                          PAGE
+
+        I. GENERAL IGNORANCE                            1
+
+       II. EVERYBODY GETS THERE                         6
+
+      III. MATILDA TEACHES                             22
+
+       IV. JANE BEGINS SUNSHINING                      37
+
+        V. A CHANGE IN THE FEEL OF THINGS              61
+
+       VI. LORENZO RATH                                84
+
+      VII. A NEW OUTLOOK ON MATILDA                    98
+
+     VIII. SOUL-UPLIFTING                             127
+
+       IX. MADELEINE'S SECRET                         138
+
+        X. OLD MRS. CROFT                             148
+
+       XI. SHE SLEEPS                                 159
+
+      XII. EMILY'S PROJECT                            169
+
+     XIII. EMILY IS HERSELF FREELY                    191
+
+      XIV. JANE'S CONVERTS                            208
+
+       XV. REAL CONVERSATION                          220
+
+      XVI. THE MOST WONDERFUL THING EVER HAPPENED     233
+
+     XVII. WHY JANE SHOULD HAVE BELIEVED              243
+
+    XVIII. IN A PERFECTLY RIGHT WAY                   256
+
+      XIX. THE RESULTS                                277
+
+
+
+
+SUNSHINE JANE
+
+
+
+
+SUNSHINE JANE
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+GENERAL IGNORANCE
+
+
+THERE was something pathetic in the serene unconsciousness of the little
+village as the stage came lumbering down the hillside, bearing its
+freight of portent. So many things were going to be changed forever
+after,--and no one knew it. Such a vast difference was going speedily to
+make itself felt, and not a soul was aware even of what a bigger soul it
+was so soon to be. Old Mrs. Croft, clear at the other end of town and
+paralyzed for twenty years, hadn't the slightest conception of what a
+leading part was being prepared for her to play. Poor Katie Croft, her
+daughter-in-law and slave, whose one prayer was for freedom, dreamed not
+that the answer was now at last coming near. Mrs. Cowmull, sitting on
+her porch awaiting the "artist who had advertised," knew not who or what
+or how old he might be or the interest that would soon be hers. Poor
+Emily Mead, shelling peas on the bench at the back of her mother's
+house, frowned fretfully and, putting back her great lock of rich
+chestnut hair with an impatient gesture, wished that she might see "just
+one real man before she died,"--and the man was even then jolting
+towards her. Miss Debby Vane, putting last touches to the flowers on her
+guest-room table, where Madeleine would soon see them, was also sweetly
+unaware of the approach of momentous events. She thought but of
+Madeleine, the distant cousin whose parents wanted to see if absence
+would break up an obnoxious love affair, and so were sending her to Miss
+Debby, who was "only too pleased."
+
+"A love affair," she whispered rapturously. "A _real_ love affair in
+this town!" And then she pursed her lips delightfully, never guessing
+that she was to see so much besides.
+
+Meanwhile Miss Matilda Drew stood looking sternly out of her sister
+Susan's window, considering if there were any necessary yet up to now
+forgotten point to be impressed upon Jane the instant that she should
+arrive. Miss Matilda was naturally as ignorant as all the rest,--as
+ignorant even as poor Susan, lying primly straight behind her on the
+bed. Susan was a widow and an invalid, not paralyzed like old Mrs.
+Croft, but pretty helpless. Matilda had lived with her for five years
+and tended her assiduously, as she grew more and more feeble. Now
+Matilda was "about give out," and--"just like a answer out of a clear
+sky," as Matilda said--their niece Jane, whom neither had seen since she
+was a mite in curls fifteen years ago, had written to ask if she might
+spend her holiday with them. They had said "Yes," and Matilda was going
+away for a rest while Jane kept house and waited on her poor old aunt.
+Jane was one of the passengers now rattling along in the stage. She
+differed widely from the others and from every one else in the village,
+but all put together, they formed that mass known to literature as "the
+situation." I think myself that it was the rest that formed "the
+situation" and that Jane formed "the key," but I may be prejudiced.
+Anyway, "key" or not, Miss Matilda's niece was a sweet, brown-skinned,
+bright-haired girl, with a happy face, great, beautiful eyes, and a
+heart that beat every second in truer accord with the great working
+principles of the universe. She was the only one among them now who had
+a foot upon the step that led to the path "higher up." And yet because
+she was the only one, she had seen her way to come gladly and teach them
+what they had never known; not only that, but also to learn of them the
+greatest lesson of her own life. So we see that although conscious of
+both hands overflowing with gifts, Jane really was as ignorant, in God's
+eyes, as all the rest. She had gone far enough beyond the majority to
+know that to give is the divinest joy which one may know, but she had
+not gone far enough to realize that in the greatest outpouring of
+generosity which we can ever give vent to, a vacuum is created which
+receives back from those we benefit gifts way beyond the value of our
+own. "I shall bring so much happiness here," ran the undercurrent of her
+thought; she never imagined that Fate had brought her to this simple
+village to fashion herself unto better things.
+
+So all, alike unaware--those in the stage and those awaiting its advent
+with passengers and post--drew long, relieved breaths as it passed with
+rattle and clatter over the bridge and into the main street.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+EVERYBODY GETS THERE
+
+
+JANE sat on the rear seat with old Mr. Cattermole, who was coming home
+to his daughter, Mrs. Mead.
+
+"Ever been here before?" old Mr. Cattermole asked her.
+
+"No, never."
+
+"Hey?"
+
+"No, never."
+
+"Once?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Never!"
+
+"I'll tell you what it is," said Mr. Cattermole, beaming benevolently,
+"it's the jolting. It keeps me from hearing what you say."
+
+Jane nodded, smiling.
+
+But old Mr. Cattermole wasn't long inconvenienced by the jolting.
+
+"Who you going to stop with?" he asked next.
+
+"Mrs. Ralston and Miss Drew."
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Mrs. Ralston and Miss Drew."
+
+"Who? I don't hear you."
+
+"Miss Drew."
+
+"The Crews?--There ain't no such people in town."
+
+"Miss Drew!" Jane became slightly crimson.
+
+"I'll tell you," said Mr. Cattermole, "we'll wait. I can't hear. Really
+I can't."
+
+The next minute they arrived at Mrs. Cowmull's, since she lived in the
+first house on the street. Lorenzo Rath, the artist, who had been
+sitting on the middle seat with Madeleine, now pressed her hand, twisted
+about and shook Jane's, nodded to old Mr. Cattermole, leaned forward and
+dragged his suit-case from under the seat, and then wriggled out, over
+two boxes and under a flapping curtain, and down on to the sidewalk.
+Mrs. Cowmull was standing on the porch, trying to look hospitable and
+unconscious at the same time. "Here," said the stage driver, suddenly
+delivering Lorenzo's trunk on to the top of his head,--"and here's the
+lampshade and the codfish,--they get down here, too."
+
+Lorenzo couldn't help laughing. "Au revoir," he cried, waving the
+lampshade as the steps began to move.
+
+"We'll meet again soon," Madeleine cried, her face full of bright color.
+
+"Yes, of course."
+
+Then they were off.
+
+"Seemed a nice young feller," said old Mr. Cattermole to Jane.
+
+"Yes." She tried to speak loudly.
+
+"Hey!"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I'll tell you," said old Mr. Cattermole benevolently, "you come and see
+my granddaughter Emily, and then we'll talk. My granddaughter's a great
+student. You'll like her. She's full of the new ideas and new books and
+all that. We're very proud of her. Only she don't get married."
+
+Then the stage stopped, and Mrs. Mead came running out. "Oh, Father, did
+you buy the new magazines,--on the train, you know?"
+
+Old Mr. Cattermole was descending backwards with the care of a cat in an
+apple-tree. "It's my daughter," he said to Jane. "I can always hear her
+because she speaks so plain. Yes, Emma, it _was_ dusty, very dusty."
+
+"This lawn-sprinkler is your's, ain't it?" said the stage driver,
+jerking it off the roof into Mrs. Mead's arms. "Here's his bag, too."
+
+And then they went on again. Madeleine now had space to turn about.
+"You'll come and see me?" she asked Jane earnestly; "it'll be so nice.
+We're both strangers here."
+
+"I'll try," Jane answered, "but I shall be closely tied to the house.
+Aunt Susan is an invalid, you see. I'll not only have all the work, but
+if I go out, that poor sick woman will be left helpless and alone
+up-stairs."
+
+"Perhaps I can come and see you, then," said Madeleine. "I'll have the
+time to come, if you'll have the time to see me."
+
+"I don't know anything about what my life will be," said Jane. "As I
+told you on the train, I've only seen my aunts once in my life and that
+was fifteen years ago. But I should think that you could come and see
+us. I should think that a little company would do Aunt Susan a lot of
+good. I'm sure that it would, in fact. But she may not like to see
+strangers. I really don't know a thing about it. I'm all in the dark."
+
+"I'll come and ask if I may come," said Madeleine brightly. "If she sees
+me, maybe she'll like me. Most everybody does." She laughed.
+
+"I'm sure of that," Jane said, laughing, too. Then the stage stopped at
+Miss Debby Vane's, and Miss Debby came flying down to embrace her
+cousin. "Thanks be to God that you're here safe, my dear. These awful
+storms at sea have just about frightened me to death."
+
+"But I was on land, Aunt Deborah." Madeleine, in getting down, had
+gotten into a warm embrace at the same time.
+
+"I know, dear, I know. But one can't remember that all the time--can
+one?" Miss Debby was kissing her over and over.
+
+"Your step-ladder. Look out!" cried the stage driver, and they had
+barely time to jump from under.
+
+Then Madeleine reached up and clasped Jane's hand. "We shall be
+friends," she said earnestly; "I've never met any one whom I've liked
+quite in the same way that I like you. Do let us see all that we can of
+one another."
+
+"_I_ want to, I know," Jane answered.
+
+The stage driver was already remounting his seat.
+
+"Au revoir," Madeleine cried, just as Lorenzo had done.
+
+"Just for a little," Jane called back, and then she was alone in the
+stage, rattling down the long, green-arched street to its furthest end.
+
+"There goes the stage," Katie Croft called out to her mother-in-law in
+the next room. "Now Miss Drew'll have her niece and be able to get away
+for a little rest."
+
+"If it was a daughter-in-law, she couldn't, maybe," said a voice from
+the next room; "the rest is going to be poor, sweet Susan Ralston's,
+anyhow. Oh, my Susan Ralston, my dear, sweet Susan Ralston, my loving
+Susan Ralston, where I used to go and call!"
+
+"Why, Mother, you haven't so much as thought of Mrs. Ralston for years."
+Katie's voice was very sharp.
+
+"Nobody knows what I think of," wailed the voice from the other room.
+"My thoughts is music. They fly and sing all night. They sing Caw, Caw,
+and they fly like feathers."
+
+Katie Croft walked over and shut the door with a bang. Katie was almost
+beside herself.
+
+The stage now drew up before the Ralston house.
+
+Miss Matilda quitted the window, where she had stood watching for an
+hour, and went to the gate. Her emotions were quite tumultuous--for her.
+Single-handed she had tended her sister for five years, and now she was
+going to have a rest. She had had very trying symptoms, and the doctor
+had advised a rest,--three weeks of freedom, night and day. She was
+going away on a real holiday, going back to the place where she had
+taught school before the summons had come to cherish, love, and protect
+her only sister, who was not strong and had property. It seemed like a
+dream,--a wild, lively, and joyful dream. She almost smiled as she
+thought of what was at hand.
+
+Jane descended, her small trunk came bang down beside her in the same
+instant, and the driver was paid and drove off. The aunt and niece then
+turned to go into the house.
+
+"Well, and so it's you!" Matilda's tone and glance were slightly
+inquisitorial, and more than slightly dictatorial. "I'm glad to see
+you're strong. You'll need be. She's an awful care. She ain't up much
+now. Isn't up at all sometimes for weeks. Sleeps considerable. Take off
+your hat and coat and hang them there. That's the place where they
+belong."
+
+Jane obeyed without saying anything. But her smile spoke for her.
+
+"Hungry?" inquired Matilda.
+
+"A little."
+
+"I surmised you would be and waited supper. Thought you'd see how I
+fixed hers then. She's eating very little. Less and less all the time.
+There's a garden to weed, too. Awful inconvenient out there across two
+stiles. But she won't give it up. She pays me to tend it, or I'd let the
+dandelions root it out in short order. But I tend it."
+
+They had gone into the kitchen, where a kettle stewed feebly over a
+half-dead fire. "Sit down," said Matilda. "I'll fix her supper first.
+She takes her tea cold, so I save it from morning and heat it up with a
+little boiling water, _so_. Then there's this bit of fish I saved from
+day before yesterday, and I cut a piece of bread. No butter, because her
+stomach's delicate. You'll see that she'll hardly eat this. Watch now."
+
+Jane sat and watched, still smiling.
+
+"Mr. Rath, the artist, came down in the stage with you, didn't he?" Miss
+Matilda went on. "What kind of a young man was he? Somebody'll tell you,
+so it might as well be me, what's brought him here. Mrs. Cowmull's
+trying to marry off her niece, Emily Mead. There aren't any men in town,
+so she advertised. She gave it out that she wanted a boarder, but
+everybody see through that. That's what marriage has come to these days,
+catching men to board 'em and then marrying them when they're thinking
+of something else. I thank Heaven I ain't had nothing to do with any
+marriage. They're a bad business. There, that's your supper."
+
+Jane started slightly. Her own cold fish and lukewarm tea sat before
+her. "Shan't I take Aunt Susan's up first?" she asked, recollecting that
+she still had some lunch in her bag, and that Matilda would be leaving
+early in the morning.
+
+"No need. She likes things cold. You ought to see her face if she gets
+anything boiling in her mouth. It's no use to give her nothing hot.
+You'd think it was a snake. I give it up the third time she burnt her."
+
+"But I ought to go up and see her, I think; she hasn't seen me since I
+was such a little girl."
+
+"No need. You go ahead and enjoy your supper without bothering over her.
+She knows you're here, and she isn't one that's interested in things.
+She'll read an old shelf paper for hours, but carry her up a new paper
+and like as not when you get to the bed with it, you'll find her asleep.
+She sleeps a lot."
+
+Jane--thus urged--picked the chilled fish with a fork and considered.
+
+"I'll show you about the house after you've done eating," the aunt
+continued presently; "it's easy taken care of, for I keep it all shut
+up. Just Susan's room and mine and the kitchen is open. The neighbors
+won't bother you, for I give them to understand long ago as I wasn't one
+with time to waste. There isn't any one in the place that a woman with
+any sense would want to bother with, anyhow."
+
+"I don't fancy that I'll have time to be lonesome," smiled Jane, bravely
+swallowing some tea.
+
+"You'd have if it wasn't for the garden. I don't know whatever in the
+world makes Susan set such store by that garden. She will have it that
+it shall be kept up in memory of her husband, and you never saw such
+weeds. I've often sat down backwards when one come up--often."
+
+"I can't see it at all," with a glance out of the window.
+
+"You can't from here. And it's got to be watered, and she counts every
+pot full of water from her bed. She can hear me pumping. The birds dig
+up the seeds as fast as I can plant 'em, and I never saw no sense in
+slaving in the sun over what you can buy in the shade any day.--Are you
+done?"
+
+"Yes, I'm done."
+
+"Then come on."
+
+"Can I spread the tray?"
+
+"Tray! She doesn't have a tray. What should I fuss with a tray for, when
+I've got two hands?"
+
+Jane rose and stood by the table in silence, watching the cup filled
+from the standing teapot and the plate ornamented with a lonely bit of
+fish and a slice of bread. "Don't you butter the bread?"
+
+"She's in bed so much she mustn't have rich food," Matilda answered;
+"there, now it's ready. Come on."
+
+"Shan't I carry anything?"
+
+"I can take it, I guess. I've carried it alone for five years; I guess I
+can manage it to-night."
+
+Jane followed up the stairs in silence; Matilda marched ahead with a
+firm, heavy tread.
+
+"Shall I knock for you?"
+
+"I don't know what for. She yells anyway, whenever I come in, whether
+she's knocked or not. Just open the door."
+
+Jane opened the door gently, and they went in together. The room was
+half darkened, and only a little sharp nose showed over the top of the
+bedquilt.
+
+"Here's your supper," said the affectionate sister, "and here's Jane."
+
+A shrill cry was followed by two eyes tipping upward beyond the nose.
+"Oh, are you Jane?" There was a lot of pathos in the tone.
+
+The girl moved quickly to the bedside. "I hope that we're going to be
+very happy," she said; "we must love one another very much, you know."
+
+The invalid hoisted herself on to an elbow and looked towards the plate
+which Matilda was holding forth.
+
+"Oh, my! Fish again!" she wailed.
+
+Later--on their way back to the kitchen fire--Matilda said
+significantly: "Most ungrateful person I ever saw, she is. But just
+don't notice what she says. It's the only way to get on. I keep her room
+tidy and I keep her house clean and I keep her garden weeded. I'm
+careful of her money, and she's well fed. I don't know what more any one
+could ask, but she ain't satisfied and she ain't always polite, but
+you'll only have three weeks of what I've had for five years, so I guess
+it won't kill you."
+
+"Oh, I think that I'll be all right," Jane answered cheerfully.
+
+"The stage is ordered for seven in the morning, and I shall get up at
+half-past four," the aunt continued. "You can sleep till five just as
+well. I'm going to bed now, and you'd better do the same thing."
+
+"Yes, I think so," said Jane cheerfully; "good night."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+MATILDA TEACHES
+
+
+MATILDA seated herself bolt upright on one of the kitchen chairs and
+drew a hard, stiff sigh.
+
+"It'll be a great rest to get away," she said, "more of a rest than any
+one but me will ever know. You see, she's left all she's got to me in
+her will, so I'm bound in honor to keep a pretty sharp watch over
+everything. I can't even take a chance at her sinking suddenly away,
+with the room not picked up or a cobweb in some high corner. I've seen
+her will, and she ain't left you a cent, so you won't have the same
+responsibility. It'll be easier for you."
+
+"I'll do my very best," said Jane.
+
+"The trouble is I'm too conscientious," said Matilda. "I was always
+conscientious, and she was always slack. It's an awful failing. It's a
+warning, too, for now there she lays, snug as a bug in a rug, and me
+with New Asthma in my arm from tending her and the house."
+
+"You'll get over all that very soon," said the niece soothingly.
+
+Matilda glanced at her suspiciously. "No, I shan't. I may get better,
+but I shan't get over it. It's a nerve trouble and can't never be
+completely cured. A doctor can alligator it, but he can't cure it. I'll
+have it till I die."
+
+Jane was silent.
+
+"You wrote that you were some kind of a nurse. What kind did you say you
+were?"
+
+"I'm a Sunshine Nurse."
+
+"A Sunshine Nurse! What's that? Some new idea of never pulling down the
+shades?"
+
+Jane laughed. "Not exactly. It's an Order just founded by a doctor. He
+picked out the girls himself, and he sends them where he chooses for
+training."
+
+"What's the training?"
+
+Jane looked at her and hesitated a little. "I expect you'll laugh," she
+said finally; "it does sound funny to any one who isn't used to such
+ideas. We're to see the sun as always shining, and always shine
+ourselves, and our training consists in going where there isn't any
+brightness and being bright, and going where there isn't any happiness
+and teaching happiness."
+
+"Sounds to me like nonsense," said Matilda, rising abruptly;
+"don't you go letting up the sitting-room shades and fading the
+upholstering,--that's all I've got to say. Come now and I'll show you
+about locking up, and then we'll go to bed."
+
+Jane obeyed with promptness and was most observant and attentive.
+Matilda loaded her with behests and instructions and seemed appreciative
+of the intelligence with which they were received.
+
+"I wouldn't go in for nothing fancy," she said, as they completed their
+task; "the less you stir up her and the house, the easier it'll be for
+me when I come back. You don't want to ever forget that I'm coming back,
+and don't put any fancy ideas into her head. There's plenty to do here
+without going out of your way to upset my ways."
+
+"I'll remember," said Jane.
+
+Then they started up-stairs, and a few minutes later the Sunshine Nurse
+was alone in her own room, free to stand quietly by the window and let
+her outward gaze form a bond between the still beauty of a country night
+and the glad vision of work in plenty, and that of a kind which Miss
+Matilda couldn't prohibit, because she knew not the world in which such
+work is done.
+
+"Not--" said Jane to herself with a little whimsical smile--"not but
+what I'm 'most sure that my teaching will be manifest in a lot of
+material changes, too, but by the time that she comes back, her own
+feelings will be sufficiently 'alligatored' so that she'll see life
+differently also. God's plan is just as much for her good in sending her
+away as it is for mine in sending me here, and I mustn't forget that for
+a minute. I'll be busy and she'll be busy, and we'll both be learning
+and we'll both be teaching and we'll both be being necessary."
+
+She drew a chair close and sat down, full of her own bright and helpful
+thoughts. Much of love and wonder came flooding into her through the
+medium of the sweet, calm night without. "It's like being among angels,"
+she fancied, and felt a close companionship with those who had known the
+Great White Messengers face to face.
+
+Long she sat there, praying the prayer that is just one indrawn breath
+of content and uplifted consciousness. Not many girls of twenty-two
+would have seen so much in that not unusual situation, and yet it was to
+her so brimful of fair possibilities that she could hardly wait for
+morning to begin work.
+
+When she rose to undress, when she climbed into the plain, hard bed that
+received her so kindly, when she slept at last, all was with the same
+sense of responsibility mixed with energetic intention. All that she had
+"asked" in the usual sense of "asking in prayer" had been "to be shown
+exactly how," and because she was one of those who know every prayer to
+be answered, in the hour of its making she knew that to be answered,
+too. "I'll be led along," was her last thought before sleeping, and it
+swept the fringe of her consciousness, leaving her to enter dreamland
+with the happy security of a trusting child.
+
+It really seemed no time at all before Matilda rapped loudly on her
+door, bringing her suddenly to the knowledge that the hour to begin all
+the longed-for work was at hand.
+
+"Five o'clock!" Matilda howled gently through the crack.
+
+"Yes, yes," she cried in response.
+
+The door opened a bit wider. "You'd better get right up or you'll go to
+sleep again," Matilda said, putting her head in, "right this minute."
+
+"Yes, I will."
+
+She sat up in bed to prove it.
+
+"All right," said her aunt--and shut the door.
+
+Jane had unpacked her small trunk the night before, and so was able to
+dress quickly and get down-stairs without a minute wasted. She found
+Matilda in the kitchen, very busy with the stove.
+
+"I do hope you'll remember what I said last night," she said, shoveling
+out ashes with an energy that filled the room with dust. "I can't have
+her habits all upset. It'll be no good giving me this change if you go
+and spoil her. Remember that."
+
+"I won't make any trouble," promised Jane. "I'll always remember that
+you're coming back."
+
+As she spoke, she saw again the thin, hopeless face on the pillow
+up-stairs and knew that Matilda herself was to know a glad surprise over
+the change which should welcome her home-coming. It was the learning to
+instantly realize the better side of those who insisted on exhibiting
+their worst that was the leading force in the training of that beaming
+little Order to which she belonged. The Sunshine Nurses were forbidden
+to consider anything or anybody as fixedly wrong either in kind,
+conception, or working out. It would be a very comfortable way of
+looking at things--even for such mere, ordinary, everyday folk as you
+and me.
+
+Matilda now said, "Ugh, ugh!" over the dust and proceeded to dive into
+the wood-box with one hand and get a sliver in her thumb.
+
+"In the morning she has tea," she said, going to the window to put her
+hand to rights. "One cup. Piece of bread. At noon, whatever is handy.
+Night, cup of tea and whatever she fancies. Bread or a cracker usually.
+She eats very little and less all the time. The cat eats more than she
+does. He's a snooper, that cat,--you'll have to watch out."
+
+Jane didn't seem to understand. "A--a snooper?"
+
+"Steals food. Awful thief. Slap him when you catch him at it; it's all
+you can do. Sometimes I throw water over him. He'll make off with what
+would be a meal for a hired man, and he's sly as any other thief."
+
+"Can't I help you with your hand?"
+
+"No, you can't. I get lots of them. They bother me a little because Mrs.
+Croft's cousin died of blood-poison from one. There, it's out. What was
+I saying? Oh, yes, the cat."
+
+"Where is she now?"
+
+"It's a he. Named Alfred for her husband. He's up in her room now.
+Always sleeps on her bed. She will have him, and I humor her. She's my
+only sister and she can't live long and she's left me all her money, and
+I humor her. It's my plain duty."
+
+"Is it healthy for an invalid to sleep with a cat?"
+
+"No, it ain't. But I promised to do whatever she said about the cat and
+the garden, and I do."
+
+"I'm sure it's very good in you," Jane murmured, looking out of the
+window.
+
+"It is. I'm a good woman. I do my whole duty, and there's not many in a
+town this size can say as much."
+
+"Where is the garden?"
+
+"I'll show you, if you don't mind getting your feet wet. I have my
+rubbers on already, to travel, so I can go right there now while the
+fire is kindling."
+
+"Is it wet?"
+
+"Most grass is wet, at five in the morning."
+
+Jane wanted to laugh. "I mean, isn't there a path?"
+
+"Part way, and then you have to climb two fences."
+
+"Climb! Two!" the niece turned in surprise.
+
+"Climb two fences. You never saw such a place. The strip between is
+rented for a cow-pasture. That's why there's two fences."
+
+"But why not have gates?"
+
+"Don't ask me. Find out if you can. I've lived here five years, and I
+ain't found out. You try and see if you'll do better. She's very
+secretive, and so was he before he died. I've just had to get along the
+best I could. She fails and fails steady, but it don't seem to affect
+her health none, and now at last it's affected mine instead and give me
+neophytes in my left arm."
+
+Jane turned her head and looked some more out of the window.
+
+"We'll go now. Might as well. The kettle will get to boiling while we're
+away, and then we'll have breakfast. It boils slow, because I've got the
+eggs in it for my lunch. Come on."
+
+The question of the wet grass seemed to have faded. They went out the
+kitchen door. It was a clear, bright morning. "Weedy weather," commented
+Matilda, and led the way down the path.
+
+"It's a pretty place," said Jane, her eyes roaming happily.
+
+"Yes, I suppose so. But it takes an artist or some one who hasn't lived
+in it for five years to feel that way." She paused to climb the first
+fence. It was three rails high and very awkward. "I'll go over first,"
+she said. "Think of it; I've done this six times a day for five years."
+
+Jane didn't wonder that she was so agile at it. "But how funny to have a
+garden away off here!" she said.
+
+Matilda was now over on the other side. "Yes, and think of keeping it
+up. Folks about here make no bones of telling me that they were both
+half-witted, only as she's my sister, they try to give me to understand
+as she caught it from him. He was a miser, you know."
+
+Jane was just getting her second leg over. "I don't know a thing about
+him," she said.
+
+"Well, you will, soon enough. The neighbors'll come flocking as soon as
+I'm gone, and you'll soon know all there is to know about us all.
+They'll pick me to pieces, too, and tell you I'm starving Susan to
+death, but I don't care. Climbing these fences has hardened me to
+calumny."
+
+They crossed the strip of cow-pasture, and Matilda got over another
+fence, saying as she did so: "Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth,"
+leaving Jane to make the application and follow her at the same time.
+
+Then they found themselves in a trim little garden.
+
+"How sweet," said the niece.
+
+"You can see I've done my duty by it, too," said Matilda; "that's my
+way. I'm hard and I ain't pretty to look at, but I do my duty, which is
+more'n most handsome women do. Every last bean here is clawed around
+like it ought to be, and the whole thing neat as wax. Same with Susan;
+you'd think from her face I'd murdered her, and yet the Recording Angel
+knows she's had a cold sponge and every last snarl combed out of her
+hair every day since I came. I don't boast, but I do work."
+
+"Dear me, it's a long way from the house," said Jane, forgetting her
+higher philosophy for the minute.
+
+"It's a good ten minutes to get here. A picking of peas is a half-hour's
+job. And ten to one, when I get back, the cat's been at the cream."
+
+Jane had had time to remember. "I can see you've been awfully good," she
+said warmly, "and my, but you've worked hard. Everything shows that."
+
+Matilda's face flushed with pleasure, the sudden pathetic flushing of
+unexpected appreciation. "I just have," she declared. "I've worked hard
+all my life and done a lot of good, and nobody's ever bothered to thank
+me. She don't. She just lays there and lets me run up and down stairs
+and climb fences and dig weeds and scamper back and forth with a extra
+hike, when I hear the bell of the door, till it'll be a mercy if I don't
+get neophytes all over, and the New Asthma in both legs, _I_ think."
+
+After a brief tour of the tiny whole, devoted mainly to instructing the
+novice, Matilda led the way back to the house.
+
+"Does it ever need watering?" Jane asked, lapsing again to a lower
+level.
+
+"Sometimes," said Matilda briefly. Jane hadn't the heart to say another
+word until--several steps further on--it occurred to her that the garden
+also could be only a good factor in God's plan, if she wreathed it and
+shrined it and saw it in her world, as He saw all His world on the day
+when it was first manifest and set. "And God saw everything that He had
+made, and behold, it was very good."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+JANE BEGINS SUNSHINING
+
+
+THE stage came for Matilda at eight o'clock. For half an hour before it
+could possibly be due, the traveler sat ready on a chair in the hall,
+with her umbrella tightly gripped in both hands, delivering bits of
+useful information as they occurred to her.
+
+"Be careful to lock up well every night."
+
+"Remember if she dies sudden, I shall want to know at once."
+
+"Don't look to enjoy yourself, but remember you're doin' a act of
+Christian charity."
+
+Jane sat on a small, hard ottoman in the corner by the whatnot and said:
+"I'll try," or "Yes, indeed," every time.
+
+"You're a good girl," the aunt said finally. "I'm glad to know you.
+Those Rainy-day Cooks or whatever you call yourself--"
+
+"Sunshine Nurse."
+
+"Yes, of course,--well, it's a good idea. I feel perfectly sure you'll
+do everything you know how."
+
+"Yes, I will," said Jane, resolving all over fresh that everything was
+going to come out fine, even to the return of Matilda herself.
+
+"There, I hear the stage on the bridge," said her aunt, jumping to her
+feet suddenly. "I must go and say good-by to Susan."
+
+"Isn't she still asleep?"
+
+"It doesn't matter. She's my only living sister, and it's my duty to
+wake her up."
+
+She rushed up-stairs, and a feeble little yell from above soon announced
+her duty done. Then followed a brief hum and jabber, and then she came
+running down again.
+
+"Feels bad to see me go," she said briefly. "That's natural, as she's
+turned over to you body and soul and ain't the least idea what you're
+like. I told her it was no more chances than every child run just being
+born, and a third of them lived, but she never could see reason,--kind
+of clung to my arm,--she's my only sister, and it makes me feel bad."
+With which hasty statement Matilda gave a brief dab to each eye, put up
+her pocket-handkerchief, and opened the front door. Jane had her bag in
+her hand, and they had carried the trunk to the gate before.
+
+The stage was empty, and the driver was tying the trunk-strap with a
+rope.
+
+"Well, good-by," said Matilda; "remember to lock up well every night."
+
+"Yes, I will," said Jane. "I hope you'll have a good time and a splendid
+change."
+
+"I'm sure of the change," said Matilda, swinging herself up with an
+agility bred of her liberal diet on stiles. "Five years,--will you only
+think of it?"
+
+The driver picked up the reins, gave them a slap, and the expedition was
+off.
+
+Matilda Drew was really "gone off on a visit."
+
+"Think of it," said Katie Croft, who, despite her town-name of "Katie,"
+was a gray-haired woman of fifty. "Think of it! A vacation! What luck
+some folks have. I shall never have a vacation in all--" her voice
+ceased, and she continued sweeping down the steps, the stage passing out
+of sight as she did so.
+
+Meanwhile Jane had re-entered the house and carefully closed the door
+after her. She felt curiously freed in spirit, and that subtly supreme
+joy of seeing a helplessly bad situation delivered bound and gagged into
+one's hands to be mended was hers.
+
+"I'll go straight and ask about auntie's breakfast first," she thought,
+mounting the staircase. To her light tap at the door, a feeble "come in"
+responded. She entered then and observed, with a slight start, that the
+invalid had just been up. The blind was drawn, and a pair of kicked-off
+slippers betrayed a hasty jump back into bed. Her eyes sought Susan's in
+explanation. "I didn't know that you could move about," she said, with a
+pleased look.
+
+Susan's little, sharp nose had an apologetic appearance, as it showed
+over the sheet-fold. "I can get about a little, days when I'm strong,"
+she explained, "and I wanted to see her off. I wanted to see if she
+really did go." She paused, gave a sharp choke and gasp, and then
+waited.
+
+Jane leaned over and kissed her forehead. "I will try very hard to make
+you comfortable and happy," she said gently.
+
+Susan rather shrunk together in the bed. "What kind of a girl are you,
+anyhow?" she asked suddenly and sharply. "Are you really religious, or
+do you only just go to church?"
+
+"I try to do what's right," her niece answered simply.
+
+The invalid contemplated her intently. "It can be pretty hard living
+with any one that tries to do right," she said. "My experience is that
+good people is often more trying than bad ones. Maybe it's just that
+I've had more to do with them, though. I suppose Matilda told you about
+everything and the garden and all?"
+
+"Yes, I think I know what to see to."
+
+"And the cat?--and his stealing?"
+
+"Yes, she told me about him."
+
+"The garden must be weeded," Susan pronounced, sinking down deep into
+the bed. "Don't you ever forget that. And that cat has got to be
+fed--and well fed, too--even if he does steal."
+
+Jane watched her disappear beneath the bedclothes.
+
+"Auntie," she said, "I've got lots of funny ideas, and one of them is
+that it's wicked not to be just as happy as possible every minute. Now
+I'm to be here three weeks, and I think that I ought to be able to make
+them a real change for you as well as for Aunt Matilda. We'll begin with
+your breakfast. You tell me what you like best, and I'll fix it for
+you--"
+
+Susan's head came up out of the bed-clothes with the suddenness of a boy
+rising from a dive. "If I can have anything I want," she cried, "I want
+some hot tea--some boiling hot tea, some tea made with water that's
+boiling as hard as it can boil. And I want the pot hot. Burning hot
+before the tea goes in."
+
+Jane started. "I thought you liked your tea cold."
+
+Susan's eyes fairly snapped. "Well, I don't. I don't like nothing cold.
+I like everything hot."
+
+Jane moved towards the door. "I'll go and make some right away," she
+said.
+
+Susan's small, bright eyes looked after her very hard indeed. "I wonder
+if you really mean what you say about my doing what I please."
+
+"Of course I mean what I say."
+
+"Then I want to go back into my own room."
+
+The niece stopped. "Isn't this your room?" she asked in surprise.
+
+"No, this is the nearest room to the top of the stairs. I'll show you
+which is my room." With a quick leap she was out of bed.
+
+"Barefooted!" cried Jane.
+
+"I'll get into slippers quick enough, and I always wear stockings in
+bed. It's one of my peculiar ways. I'm very peculiar." She was running
+out of the room. Jane followed, astonished at the strength and
+steadiness of the bedridden.
+
+"But I thought that--that you were always in bed," she stammered.
+
+Susan stopped short and turned about. "It was the pleasantest way to get
+along," she said briefly. "I guess that you've a really kind heart, so
+I'll trust you and tell you the truth. Matilda wasn't here very long
+before I see that if her patience wasn't to give out, I'd got to begin
+to fail. I went to bed, and I've failed ever since. I've failed steady.
+It's been the only thing to do. It wasn't easy, but it was that or have
+things a lot harder. So I failed."
+
+Jane stared in amazement, and then suddenly the fun of it all overcame
+her, and she burst out laughing. Susan laughed, too. "It was all I could
+do," she repeated over and over.
+
+"And so you failed," said her niece, still laughing.
+
+"Yes, and so I failed."
+
+"Mercy on us, it's the funniest thing I ever heard in all my life,"
+exclaimed the Sunshine Nurse.
+
+"It ain't always been funny for me," said Susan, "but come, now, I want
+to show you my room."
+
+She opened a door as she spoke and led the way into a dark,
+musty-smelling place. It was the work of only a minute to draw the blind
+and throw up the window. "Right after we've had breakfast, we'll clean
+it," the aunt declared, "and then I'll move right back in. Husband and
+me had this room for twenty long years together. He was a saving man,
+and most of what he was intending to save when I wanted to buy things
+was told me in this room. Whatever I wanted he always said I could have,
+and then when it came night, he said I couldn't. The room is full of
+memories for me--sad memories--but after he was mercifully snatched to
+everlasting blessedness, I grew fond of it. It's a nice room."
+
+"I think I'll get your tea," said Jane, "and then I'll clean this room
+and help you move into it. We'll have you all settled before noon."
+
+She turned and ran down to the kitchen. The kettle was singing, and she
+stuffed more wood in under it and began to hunt for a tray and the other
+concomitants of an up-stairs breakfast. Things were not easily found.
+
+"Well, I declare!" a voice at the window behind her exclaimed, as she
+was down on her knees getting a tray-cloth out of a lower drawer. The
+voice gave her a violent start, being a man's. She sprang to her feet
+and faced about.
+
+"I'm sorry; I thought you'd know me." It was the artist of the day
+before, the young man who had come down in the stage.
+
+"It's so early." She went to the window and shook hands. "But I'm glad
+to see you, anyhow."
+
+"I always get up at six and walk five miles before breakfast when I'm in
+the country," he explained.
+
+"Do you really? What enterprise!"
+
+"And so this is where you've come. Why, it's the quaintest old place
+that I ever saw. A regular tangle of picturesque possibilities. Who are
+you visiting?"
+
+"I'm taking care of my invalid aunt while my other aunt has a little
+rest."
+
+"Is she very ill?"
+
+"Oh, no. But this is her tea that I'm making, and I must take it up to
+her now."
+
+"I'll go, then. But may I come again--and sketch?"
+
+"I can't have company. I'll be too busy."
+
+"Can't I help with the work?"
+
+He was so pleasant and jolly that she couldn't help laughing. "I'm
+afraid not," she said, shaking her head.
+
+He stood with his hand on the window-sash. "Do you know my name?" he
+asked.
+
+"No."
+
+"It's Lorenzo, Lorenzo Rath. I've to grow famous with that name. Think
+of it."
+
+She laughed again.
+
+"I can draw the outside of the house, anyhow--can't I?"
+
+"Dear me, I suppose so,"--she picked up the tray,--"you must go now,
+though. Good-by."
+
+"Good-by," he cried after her.
+
+"Oh, see the steam," was Susan's exultant exclamation, as she entered
+her room. "I ain't seen steam coming out of a teapot's nose for upwards
+of three years. Matilda just couldn't seem to stand my taking my tea
+hot, and she's my only sister, and I humor her. Who was you talking to?"
+
+"A man who came down on the stage yesterday. He was out walking and
+didn't know that I lived here."
+
+"Oh, a love affair!" cried Susan, in high-keyed ecstasy. "He's fallen in
+love with you, and like enough was prowling around all night. Oh! How
+interesting! I ain't seen a love affair close to for years." She was so
+genuinely joyful that Jane felt sorry to dampen the enthusiasm.
+
+"I don't believe you'll see one now," she said, smiling good-humoredly.
+"You see, I don't mean to marry, Auntie. I'm a Sunshine Nurse, and they
+have their hands too full for that kind of thing."
+
+"A nurse! I didn't know you were a nurse."
+
+"A Sunshine Nurse is a person who does what doctors can't always
+do,--who makes folk well."
+
+"Are you going to make me well?"
+
+"Yes," said Jane, resolutely.
+
+Susan stopped eating and looked at her with an expression full of
+contradictory feelings. "I shall like it," she said slowly. "But, oh my!
+Matilda won't. Why, she--" she paused. "Oh, I _do_ wonder if I can trust
+you?"
+
+"Anybody can trust me," said Jane. "It's part of my training to be
+honest."
+
+"Dear me, but that's a good idea," said Susan, with sincerest approval.
+"Well, if I can trust you, I don't mind telling you that it's taken
+considerable care for me to live along with Matilda. I don't mean
+anything against her--not rat-poison nor anything like that, you
+know?--but she hasn't just approved of my living; she's looked upon it
+as a waste of her time. And I've had to manage pretty careful in
+consequence. You see, she's my only sister, and she'd have my property
+anyhow, but if I had to have a nurse or a woman to look out for me long,
+there'd be no property to leave. She's real sensible, and we both know
+just how it is, but it's been pleasantest for me to stay more and more
+in bed and kind of catch at things as I walk, and once in a while I
+don't eat all day, and so it keeps up her hope and keeps things
+pleasant."
+
+Jane looked paralyzed. "How can you go without food all day?"
+
+Susan considered a little. Then she took a big drink of hot tea and
+confessed. "I don't really. I watch till she goes to the garden, and
+then I skip down-stairs and make a good meal and lay it all on the cat."
+
+Jane sank down on the foot of the bed and burst out laughing again.
+Again she just couldn't help it. Susan laughed, too; first softly and
+gingerly, then in a way almost as hearty as her niece's.
+
+"Oh me, oh my," the latter declared, after a minute, wiping her eyes.
+"Well, we'll have a very lively three weeks, I see."
+
+"Oh, yes," Susan exclaimed, "and we'll have liver and bacon, and I'll
+see the neighbors when they come in. I give up seeing them because it
+made so much trouble, and the way I'm made is--'Anything for peace.'
+That's what I always used to say to husband, whatever he said. First
+along I used to say real things, but all the last years I just said
+whatever he said; anything for peace."
+
+"You've finished your tea now," said Jane, rising. "I'll take the tray
+down while you dress a bit, and then we'll move you into the other
+room."
+
+"Oh, and _how_ I will enjoy it," cried Susan, clasping her hands in
+ecstasy. "Oh, you Sunshine Jane, you--how glad I am you've come."
+
+"I'm glad, too," said Jane. "We'll have an awfully nice time."
+
+She ran down-stairs with the tray and found Madeleine sitting in the
+kitchen, waiting. "Why, how long have you been here?" she asked.
+
+Madeleine lifted a rather mournful countenance and tried to smile. "Oh,
+Miss Grey. I'm so blue. I can't stand this place at all, I don't
+believe. My situation is going to be unbearable."
+
+"What's the matter with it?"
+
+"It's so small and petty and spiteful. All last evening I had to sit and
+listen to gossip. I hate personalities. Why, whatever I do is going to
+be seen and talked about the minute I do it."
+
+Jane looked grave. "That nice woman who came out to meet you didn't look
+like a gossip."
+
+"She isn't, but she sits and listens, and every once in a while she
+throws oil on the fire by saying, '_I_ never believed the story.'"
+
+"Who did the talking?"
+
+"The neighbors--a woman named Mrs. Mead, who came in with her daughter.
+The mother was old-fashioned in her ideas, and the daughter was new.
+That old man in the stage stopped there, you know."
+
+"My aunt spoke of them last evening," said Jane; "she said that Emily
+Mead was picked out to marry that young man who came down with us."
+
+Madeleine laughed and then blushed. "I'm afraid not," she said. "I know
+him. He won't marry anybody here."
+
+Jane turned and began to put away the breakfast things.
+
+"Don't be bored," she said gently. "Put on this extra apron, and help me
+wash these dishes; and then I'll set the kitchen to rights and get ready
+to move my aunt into another bedroom. She's an invalid, you know."
+
+"What kind of a person is your aunt?"
+
+"Awfully nice," began Jane, but was stopped by the sudden opening of the
+hall door.
+
+There stood Susan, all dressed.
+
+"It seems good to have clothes on again," she remarked calmly; "I ain't
+been dressed for upwards of three years."
+
+Then she saw Madeleine. "How do you do," she said, holding out her hand.
+"I suppose you're the Miss Mar from Deborah's?"
+
+"Yes, I am," Madeleine admitted, smiling.
+
+"My, but you look good to me," said Susan; "it's so nice to see a
+strange face. You see, I've been in bed for a long time, and I give up
+seeing strangers long before that." She sat down on one of the kitchen
+chairs and beamed on them both, turn and turn about. "Husband always
+thought that strangers was pickpockets," she said, "but I like to look
+at 'em. My, but I will enjoy these next weeks. You see, I live with my
+sister," she explained to Madeleine, "and I've had a pretty hard time.
+My sister's got a good heart, but maybe you know how awful hard it is to
+live with that kind of people. It's been pleasanter to stay in bed."
+
+"But you won't do that any more, Auntie," said Jane, moving busily
+about.
+
+"No, indeed I won't. You see," again to Madeleine, "she was my only
+sister, so I humored her. It's the only way to get on with some people.
+But you can even humor folks too much, and she got a disease they call
+the Euphrates all up and down her ear and her elbow, just from being
+humored too much. So she's gone off for a change."
+
+"What are you doing?" Madeleine asked Jane.
+
+"Making waffles. I thought it would be fun to eat them hot right now."
+
+Susan fairly shrieked with joy. "I ain't so much as smelt one since
+husband died. Waffles in the morning, and I'm so awful hungry, too. Oh,
+Jane, the Lord will surely set a crown of glory on your head the minute
+He sees it. Your feet won't be into heaven when the crown goes on. How
+did you ever think of it?"
+
+Jane brought out the iron, laughing as she did so. "Why, Auntie, it's
+part of my training."
+
+"Cooking waffles in the morning?"
+
+"No. Giving joy. If I think of any way to give pleasure and don't do it,
+I count it a sin. To make more happiness is all the work of a Sunshine
+Nurse."
+
+"Isn't that splendid?" Susan appealed to Madeleine.
+
+Madeleine's great, beautiful eyes were lifted towards the other girl's
+face with an expression mysterious in its longing. "Teach me the gift,"
+she said; "I want to make more happiness, too."
+
+"We'll be her class," exclaimed Susan, "just you and me."
+
+"The first lesson is eating waffles," Jane announced solemnly.
+
+"And me, too," cried a voice in the kitchen window, and there was
+Lorenzo Rath back for his second call that day, and it not yet ten
+o'clock. "I've been to Mrs. Cowmull's and eaten breakfast, and I'm as
+hungry as a wolf." He came in through the window as he spoke.
+
+"Oh, a young man!" cried Susan. "I ain't seen a young man since the last
+time the pump broke. Oh, my! Ain't this jolly? Ain't this fun?"
+
+"You show Madeleine where to find plates and forks and knives, Auntie,"
+said Jane. "Here, Mr. Rath, I'll break two more eggs and you can beat
+them. I haven't made enough batter, if there's a man to eat, too."
+
+"I feel as if I'd leave Mrs. Cowmull's to-morrow and come here to
+board," said Lorenzo. "Could I?" His tone was very earnest.
+
+"No, you couldn't," said Jane firmly.
+
+"Oh, let him," exclaimed Susan, from the pantry, where she was getting
+out plates. "It'll make Mrs. Cowmull so mad, and I ain't made any one
+mad for years and years. I'd so revel to be human again. And it would be
+so nice having a man about, too."
+
+"I couldn't think of it," said Jane, getting very crimson.
+
+Madeleine looked at the artist.
+
+"Then I shall leave Mrs. Cowmull's, anyway," said Lorenzo, decidedly; "I
+shall look up another place at once. Why, that woman would drive me mad.
+She says something ridiculous every time she opens her mouth. She asked
+me this morning if I'd ever climbed to the top of the Kreutzer Sonata."
+
+"What did you say?" Madeleine asked.
+
+"I told her no, but I'd been to the bottom of the Campanile and seen
+them getting out coal from the mine there."
+
+"Well, that showed you'd seen some sights, anyhow," said Susan,
+placidly.
+
+"The waffles are done!" Jane announced. They all drew up round the
+table.
+
+"This is living," the invalid exclaimed. "If my sister would only never
+come back!"
+
+"Maybe she won't!" suggested Lorenzo.
+
+"I wouldn't like her to die," said Susan, gravely. "I'm sensitive over
+feeling people better off dead. But if she'd marry, it would be nice."
+
+"For the man?" queried Lorenzo.
+
+"For us all," said Susan, gravely.
+
+"Just exactly the right thing is going to happen to her and everybody,"
+said Jane, firmly--dividing the waffles as she spoke.
+
+"Are you so sure?" the artist asked, looking a little amused.
+
+Susan noticed the look. "She's a Sunshine Nurse," she explained quickly.
+"It's her religion to be like that. She can't help it. She's promised."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+A CHANGE IN THE FEEL OF THINGS
+
+
+IT didn't take long for the town to wake up to the fact that some new
+element had entered into its composition.
+
+"I can't get over it, Susan Ralston's being up and about," Miss Debby
+Vane said distressedly to Mrs. Mead. "Why, she was 'most dead!"
+
+"Matilda ought not to have gone away," Mrs. Mead said sternly. "Sick
+folks in bed can't bear a change. A new face gives them a little spurt
+of strength, and then when they see the old face again, they kind of
+give up hope and drop right off."
+
+"Yes, I know that," said Miss Debby; "my father had a cousin die that
+way. There was a doctor going about in a wagon, pulling teeth and giving
+shocks, and he said he'd give Cousin Hannah a shock and cure her. So
+they took him up-stairs, and there she was dead of heart disease. They
+thought of prosecuting him, but the funeral coming right on they hadn't
+time, and then he was gone to another place, and it seemed too much
+bother."
+
+"That girl is just the same kind, I believe," said Mrs. Mead; "that
+dreadful way of making you feel that after all what she says is pretty
+sensible, maybe. My Emily is awfully took with her, and Father's just
+crazy about her. He come down on the stage with her, and then he went
+out to see her. She knows how to get around men; she was frying
+doughnuts."
+
+"Yes, and Mrs. Cowmull's artist was out there, and they had waffles in
+the middle of the morning. That's a funny kind of new religion."
+
+"Has she got a new religion?" Miss Debby looked frightened. "I hadn't
+heard of it."
+
+"Why, yes; Emily says she's got the funniest religion you ever heard of.
+Whatever she wants to do or don't want to do, she says it's her
+religion."
+
+"Dear me, but I should think that that would be very convenient," said
+Miss Debby, much impressed. "Why, my religion is always just the
+opposite of what I want to do or don't want to do. It says so every
+Sunday, you know,--'we have done those things,' and so forth."
+
+"Hers is different," said Mrs. Mead.
+
+"Well, I declare," repeated Miss Debby; then, suddenly, "I remember now
+that Madeleine said that they had waffles because Jane said that she
+thought waffles would taste good, and it was her religion to do whatever
+you thought of right off. Well, I declare!"
+
+Both ladies stared in solemn amazement at one another.
+
+"This'll be a nice town to live in, if she sets everybody to doing
+whatever you like, because it's right," Mrs. Mead said finally. "Father
+won't put on his coat again this summer."
+
+"It'll make a great difference in the feeling of the town," said Miss
+Debby, mysteriously, "a great difference. Well, I hope it won't change
+Madeleine any way her family won't approve. Madeleine's in love, and I
+suppose it's Mr. Rath. They knew each other before, and her family don't
+want it. I've pieced it all out of scraps."
+
+"Oh, dear!" said Emily Mead's mother, her face falling; "my, I hadn't
+heard but what he was a free man."
+
+"Oh, no," said Miss Debby, "your sister isn't sure. But everybody else
+is. My own view of artists is they're deluders and snares. I give an
+artist a picture and a dollar once to enlarge, and that was the last I
+ever heard of them both--of all three."
+
+"I wonder if Emily knows Mr. Rath's engaged," said Mrs. Mead, sadly.
+"Dear me, I never thought of that."
+
+"Not engaged, but in love," corrected Miss Debby.
+
+"Perhaps he's a real artist and changeable," suggested Mrs. Mead.
+
+"There's no comfort in that for any one, 'cause if he'll change once,
+he'll change right along."
+
+Mrs. Mead sighed very heavily. "Well, I must keep up for Father and
+Emily," she remarked, not tracing any very clear connection between word
+and deed.
+
+"Yes," said Miss Debby, "you must, and we'll all keep a sharp eye on
+these new kind of ways of looking at things, for we don't know where
+they'll end."
+
+The "new way of looking at things" had already been very efficacious in
+the house at the other end of the street. It had assumed an utterly new
+appearance, both outside and in.
+
+"And I never felt nothing like the change in the _feel_ of it," Susan
+exclaimed that afternoon, as she re-arranged her belongings in her own
+room. "Oh, you Sunshine Jane, you, you've just sunshone into every room,
+and I'm so happy turning my things about I don't know what to do.
+Matilda wouldn't never let me turn a china cow other end to, and I've
+lived with some of the ornaments facing wrong for the whole of these
+five long years."
+
+"It isn't me, Auntie," said Jane, washing shelves with the hearty and
+happy energy which she threw into every task in which she engaged; "it's
+the opening of the windows and the letting in of God and His sunshine
+together. I'll soon have time to clean the whole house, and then we'll
+have fun re-arranging every room. You've such pretty things, and they
+must be rubbed up and given a chance to play a part in the world. God
+never meant anything to be idle,--not even a brass andiron. If it can't
+work, it can shine and be cheerful, anyway. What can't smile ought to
+shine, you know."
+
+"I wonder why rubbing things makes 'em bright," said Susan, opening her
+bonnet-box and hitting her bonnet a smart cuff to knock dust out of the
+folds. "I never could understand that."
+
+"It's your individuality that you transfer till the poor dull things get
+enough of it to shine alone, without anybody's help."
+
+"What a good reason," said Susan. "My, to think maybe I'll go to church
+again in this bonnet! Matilda was always wanting to rip it up, but
+something made me cling to it. It's a kind of souvenir. I wore it to
+husband's funeral and my last picnic, and there are lots of other
+pleasant memories inside it."
+
+"I'll freshen it up with a cloth dipped in ammonia," said Jane. "Dear
+me, how I _do_ enjoy washing shelves. I love to sop the soapy water over
+and mop the corners, and dry the whole, and fit a clean newspaper in,
+and then see the closet in perfect order."
+
+"You like to do everything, seems to me," said Susan.
+
+"Yes, I do. I've been led to see that doing things well is about the
+finest way in which one can pass one's time. And I'm crazy over doing
+things _well_. If I fold a towel, I like to fold it just square, and if
+I make a bed, I want the fold in the spread and the fold in the sheet to
+meet even."
+
+"You'll make a fine wife, Jane," said Susan, gravely, "only no man'll
+ever appreciate the folds lying straight."
+
+Jane laughed merrily. "I'm never going to marry; I'm one of the new sex,
+the creatures who are born to live alone and lend a hand anywhere.
+Didn't you know that?"
+
+"That's nonsense," said Susan; "no woman's made so."
+
+"No. It's a big fact. One of the newest facts in the world. The New
+Woman, you know!"
+
+"Mercy on us," said Susan, "don't you go in for any of that nonsense.
+The idea of a girl like you deciding not to marry! I never heard of such
+a thing!"
+
+"It's so, though," said Jane, smiling brightly; "you see, my little
+Order is a kind of Sisterhood. We're taught to want to help in so many
+homes and to never even think of a home of our own. We're taught to love
+all children so dearly that we mustn't limit ourselves to one family of
+little ones. We're trained to be so fond of the best in every man that
+we see more good to be done as sisters to men than as wives."
+
+"I don't believe Mr. Rath will agree with you," said Susan, "nor any
+other real nice fellow."
+
+Jane was cutting paper for the shelves. "Yes, he will," she said,
+nodding confidently; "men are so scarce nowadays that they are ready to
+agree with any one."
+
+"Jane, _I_ think he's in love with you already." Susan's tone was very
+solemn.
+
+Jane merely laughed.
+
+Then the door-bell rang, and she had to run. Presently she was back, a
+little breathless. "It's Mrs. Mead and her daughter. Can you come down?"
+
+"Yes, in a minute. You say, in a minute."
+
+Jane ran down again with the message.
+
+"Most remarkable," said Mrs. Mead, now dressed for calling, with her
+black hair put back in three even crinkles on either side, "about your
+aunt, you know, I mean. Why, we looked upon her as 'most dead. You know,
+Emily, we've always been given to understand she was nearing her end."
+
+"It does an invalid a lot of good to have something new to think about,"
+said Jane. "I'm very enlivening. Aunt Susan just couldn't help getting
+up, when she heard me upsetting her house in all directions."
+
+"Yes, I expect it was enough to make her nervous," said Mrs. Mead,
+sincerely. "How long are you going to stay?"
+
+"Until Aunt Matilda comes back."
+
+"I don't believe she'll like these changes," said Mrs. Mead, gravely. "I
+should think that you'd feel a good deal of responsibility. It's no
+light matter to leave a shut-up house and an invalid in bed to a niece
+and come home to find the house open and the invalid all over it."
+
+"And a man coming in and having waffles in the morning," said Emily
+Mead, with a smile meant to be arch.
+
+Jane laughed. "That was dreadful, wasn't it?" she said, twinkling--"it
+was all so impromptu and funny. And everybody had such a good time. It
+just popped into my head, and you see it's my religion to have to do
+anything that you think will make people happy, if you see a chance."
+
+"Yes, we've heard about your religion," said Mrs. Mead; "dear me, I
+should think you'd get into a lot of trouble! Waffles in the morning
+would upset some folks, except on Sunday."
+
+"Perhaps most people haven't enough religion to manage them week-days,"
+Jane suggested.
+
+"My aunt, Mrs. Cowmull, says Mr. Rath could hardly eat any lunch,"
+observed Emily, smiling some more.
+
+"Oh, dear!" said Jane, "but I'm not surprised. Aunt Susan couldn't,
+either."
+
+Mrs. Mead coughed significantly. "Susan Ralston's pretty delicate to
+stand many new ideas, I should think," she began, but stopped suddenly
+as Susan entered, and viewed her with an expression of shocked surprise.
+
+"Why, Mrs. Ralston, I'd no idea you were so well. Where have you kept
+yourself these last years, if you were so well?"
+
+"In my own room," said Susan, with dignity. "I didn't see no special
+call to come down. Matilda knew where everything was, but Jane doesn't,
+so I've changed my ways for a little."
+
+Jane took her hand and pressed it affectionately. The sunshine seeds
+were sprouting finely. "Don't you want to come out into the garden with
+me?" she asked Emily Mead, and Emily rose at once. "I thought auntie
+would enjoy visiting alone with her old friend," she added, as they
+passed through the hall.
+
+"What are you, anyway?" Emily asked curiously. "I've heard you were a
+trained nurse,--are you?"
+
+"I'm one of the brand-new women," said Jane; "not a Suffragette, nor an
+advanced anything, but just a creature who means to give her life up to
+teaching happiness as an art."
+
+"Yes, I heard that. But how do you do it?" asked Emily Mead.
+
+"By being happy and thinking happy thoughts and doing happy things."
+
+Emily considered. "But don't you ever have hard things to do?"
+
+"Never. I enjoy them all--I love to work."
+
+Emily looked at her wonderingly. "But washing dishes?--We don't keep a
+girl, and I hate washing dishes. What would you say to them?"
+
+Jane laughed. "What, those two lovely tin pans and that nice boiling
+kettle? And all the dirty plates sinking under the soap-suds and then
+piling up under the clean hot water. And the shining dryness and the
+putting them on the shelves all in their own piles. And then the knowing
+that God wanted those dishes washed, and that you've done them just
+exactly as He'd like to see them done. Why, I think dish-washing is
+grand!"
+
+Emily opened her eyes widely. "How funny you are! I never heard such
+talk before! But, then, you've lived in a big city and learned to think
+in a big way. You wouldn't see dish-washing so if you'd done it all your
+life and never been told it was nice. You couldn't."
+
+"But you've been told now," said Jane, "and no work need ever seem
+horrid to you again. Just look at it in my way after this."
+
+"But all work seems horrid to me. I'd like to marry an awfully rich man
+and never see this place again. I hate it."
+
+Jane thought a minute; then said in sweet, low, even tones: "You won't
+evolve any man fit to marry out of that spirit, you know."
+
+The other girl stared at her. "Evolve!"
+
+"Yes. Don't you know that every minute in this world is the result of
+all the minutes that have gone before, and that who we marry is part of
+a result--not just an accident?"
+
+"_What?_"
+
+"Don't you know that? Don't you understand?"
+
+"Not a bit. Tell me what you mean?"
+
+"It's too long to explain right this minute, because one can't tell such
+things quickly, and if you've never studied them, you haven't the
+brain-cells to receive them. You see brain-cells are the houses for
+thoughts, and they have to be built and ready before the thoughts can
+move in. That's what they told me, when I was learning."
+
+Emily looked at her in bewilderment.
+
+"It's very interesting," said Jane. "I think that it's the most
+interesting thing in the whole world. You see, I didn't have any life at
+all; I was an orphan and not very bright. And then I happened to get
+hold of a book that said that all the life there was in the world was
+mine, if I'd just take it. So I wrote to the man who wrote the book--"
+
+"How did you ever dare?"
+
+"Why, I knew that the man who wrote that book would help any one--he
+couldn't have written the book if he hadn't been made to help
+people--and I asked him how I could begin."
+
+"What did he answer?"
+
+"He said: 'Seize every chance to prove your mind the master of your own
+body first, and when you are thoroughly master of yourself, you can
+master all else.'"
+
+"What did he mean?"
+
+"Well, I took it that he meant me to do anything that I thought of,
+right off, and that if I got in the habit of sweeping all work out of my
+small way, I'd soon be given a chance at big work in a big way."
+
+"And were you?"
+
+"Yes. I began to get through so quick--I lived with an uncle and helped
+his wife with the sewing and the children--that I had some spare time,
+and I went into the kitchen and learned to cook. Then one of the
+children was ill, and the doctor thought I'd make a good nurse, so he
+got me into a hospital, and I met a woman there who had all the books
+that I wanted to read and who just took hold and helped me right out. I
+saw that I didn't want to be a sick-nurse, because there's such a lot of
+humbug and such a lot that's silly, and my friend said that I was one
+who would evolve opportunities--"
+
+"What does that mean?"
+
+"Evolve means to sort of develop out of the world and yourself together
+at the same time."
+
+"I don't understand."
+
+"Why, if you want anything, you want it because it's there, and you can
+get it if you've got the strength and perseverance to build a road to
+it."
+
+"_What!_"
+
+"I mean just what I say. We can get anything, if we have sufficient
+will-power to build a way right straight to it."
+
+"Suppose I want to marry a millionaire?"
+
+"It would mean a lot of well-directed effort, and the effort would
+slowly train you to want something much better than to live rich and
+idle." Jane paused a minute, and Emily looked at her curiously. "If you
+want to marry a millionaire bad enough to start in and make yourself all
+over new, you'll have such control over your future that I think you'll
+get something much better than a millionaire."
+
+"I never heard any one like you in all my life," said Emily Mead.
+
+"I'd be so glad to help you straight along," Jane said. "I've got two
+books with me, and you can read one and then the other. Then you'll get
+where you can get the meaning out of the Bible, and then you'll begin to
+see the meaning of everything. The world gets so wonderful. You see
+miracles everywhere. You feel so well. The sun shines so bright. Life
+becomes so lovely."
+
+Emily looked at her with real wonder.
+
+"How did you happen to come here?" she asked.
+
+"Oh, that came long after all the rest of the story. One day I
+remembered that my mother had two sisters, and I wrote to them. My
+letter arrived just as Aunt Matilda's arm began to trouble her, and she
+asked me if I could come for a visit. You see that was another
+opportunity I evolved."
+
+Emily seized her hand impulsively. "I'm so glad that you came. I'm going
+to try, and you'll help me?"
+
+"Yes, indeed, I will. Would you like one of the books right now?"
+
+"Oh, I should."
+
+"I'll get it for you, and then I'll tell you some day about the doctor I
+met and his Sunshine Order."
+
+They went towards the house. "You mustn't expect to understand
+everything right off, you know," Jane said to her gently. "You see this
+is all new to you, and that means that you can't any more understand
+right off than you could paint a picture right off. You have to learn
+gradually."
+
+"But I mean to learn," said Emily.
+
+They went in the door, and Jane ran upstairs and fetched the book.
+"There!" she said, "you read it, and I'll help you all I can. You see
+the thing is to learn with your whole heart to do God's will, and then,
+in some strange, subtle way, you get to feel what is coming and to sort
+of shape all. It's so fascinating and thrilling to realize that what you
+want is marching towards you as fast as you can march towards it."
+
+"What do you want?" Emily asked.
+
+"I want to do exactly what I'm doing," said Jane, very quietly. "I've
+passed wanting anything else. I want lots of chances to teach and
+help,--that's all."
+
+"Don't you want to marry?"
+
+"Oh, no,--I want to be able to teach and help everywhere. I don't want
+things for myself, somehow."
+
+"How strange!"
+
+They went into the sitting-room.
+
+"Oh, Jane," Susan cried, "how I have enjoyed hearing about everybody in
+town! Sister never told me about Eddy King's running off with the store
+cash or Mrs. Wilton's daughter going to cooking-school, or one thing."
+
+"We must be going," said Mrs. Mead, rising; "we'll come again, though.
+It's good to see you up, Mrs. Ralston, and I only hope you may stay up.
+You know Katie Croft's mother-in-law got up just as you have and then
+had a stroke that night."
+
+"Oh, is old Mrs. Croft dead?"
+
+"No, she isn't," said Mrs. Mead; "if she was, she wouldn't be such a
+warning as she is."
+
+"Dear, dear," said Susan, "think of all I've missed. Has she got it just
+in her legs or all over? Matilda never told me."
+
+"Legs," said Mrs. Mead, "and it's affected her temper. Katie has an
+awful time with her."
+
+"Dear, dear," said Susan again,--"and, oh, Jane, a boy I've known since
+he was a baby has had his skull japanned and nearly died. Matilda's
+never told me a thing!"
+
+"Well, she didn't know much, you know," said Mrs. Mead; "she kept
+herself about as close as she kept you. We were given to understand
+pretty plainly that we weren't wanted to call."
+
+"Think of that now," said Susan, "and me up-stairs, feeling all my
+friends had forgot me!"
+
+"Everybody'll come now," said Mrs. Mead; "folks will be glad to see you
+so well. We were told you never got up and hardly ate enough to keep a
+cat."
+
+"An ordinary cat," corrected Emily; "Miss Matilda's always told what a
+lot your cat ate."
+
+"He is an eater," said Susan, crinkling a bit about the eyes; "but I
+eat, too, now, I can tell you."
+
+After they were gone, Jane came back into the sitting-room. Her aunt was
+standing by the window. "It's so beautiful to be down-stairs," she said,
+without turning. "My goodness, and to think that only a week ago I laid
+up-stairs wanting to die."
+
+"You can thank Aunt Matilda that you didn't die," said Jane, going and
+putting her arm around her. "If she had kept you thinking of all the
+illnesses in town, you'd have died long ago. Sick thoughts are more
+catching than diseases. But we don't need to talk of that now."
+
+"No, indeed we don't," said Susan, "for there's Mr. Rath coming."
+
+Jane gave a little start. "I wonder what for," she said.
+
+"What for!" Susan's tone was full of deep meaning; "why, he's fallen
+dead in love with you, Jane, that's what it means, and I don't wonder,
+for you're the nicest girl I ever saw."
+
+"Oh, Auntie!" said Jane, quite red. "The very idea!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+LORENZO RATH
+
+
+IT wasn't to be supposed for a minute that Lorenzo Rath, a real live
+young man and an artist, shouldn't take first place in the town talk.
+Jane's remarkable religion might attract the attention of a few who were
+sufficiently religious themselves to be naturally shocked over the
+waffles and depressed over the invalid's recovery, but Lorenzo was of
+interest to every one.
+
+"If he ain't took already, there's a fine chance for Emily," Mr.
+Cattermole said benevolently to his daughter. Being a man, he naturally
+supposed that Mrs. Mead would never have come by such an idea if she
+hadn't had a bright old father to point it out to her.
+
+"Emily doesn't want to marry," said Mrs. Mead, compressing her lips and
+expanding her dignity simultaneously; "she wouldn't marry an artist,
+anyway."
+
+"Maybe he ain't much of an artist," said Mr. Cattermole, with a tendency
+to look on the bright side. "Why don't Emily want to marry? I thought
+girls always wanted to marry. They did when I was young."
+
+"It's different nowadays," said Mrs. Mead, with condescending reserve.
+"You don't understand, Father, but nothing is like it used to be. The
+world is getting all changed. When Emily was an only child, she was
+looked upon as very odd, but most women have an only child nowadays.
+Life is quite different."
+
+"I'd like to see Emily married," said Mr. Cattermole, thoughtfully.
+
+"Emily has had plenty of chances," said her mother, waving the brave,
+tattered mother-lie that seems to cover over such cruel wounds.
+
+"Has she really?" said Mr. Cattermole, in genuine surprise. "I didn't
+know that. And she wouldn't have 'em! Laws sakes! Who, for instance?"
+
+"No one you knew," said his daughter, telling the truth then.
+
+"Sarah knew 'em, I suppose?" (Sarah was Mrs. Cowmull.)
+
+"No, no one Sarah knew."
+
+"Think of that now! Why, I s'posed there wasn't nothing Sarah didn't
+know."
+
+In voicing this opinion Mr. Cattermole voiced the town opinion, too. It
+was popularly supposed that Sarah Cowmull always knew everything. But
+she didn't know the status of Lorenzo Rath's heart, and Lorenzo Rath
+himself puzzled her not a little.
+
+Lorenzo puzzled everybody, mainly because he was so open and simple that
+even a child must have suspected him of keeping something back. Such
+frankness was unthinkable, such innocence incredible.
+
+"Why, he's gallivanting all over with Madeleine, and yet she's gotten
+another man's picture on her table!" said Miss Debby to Katie Croft.
+
+"And he's skipping in Mrs. Ralston's gate at all hours," said Katie
+Croft--"no kind of ceremony to him. The other day he see mother in the
+window, and he waved his hat at her and give her an awful turn. She
+don't see well, and thought he threw a stone at her. She ain't used to
+city ways; she's used to country ways. I had to let her smell camphor
+for a good hour, and while she was smelling, the kitchen fire went out.
+I wish he'd keep his hat on his head another time. My life's hard enough
+without having a artist suddenly set to, to cheer up mother."
+
+"What do you think of Mrs. Ralston's niece? Think she's nice?"
+
+"Nice! With Susan Ralston about as lively as a cricket! I don't think
+much of such new ways. I don't know whatever Matilda will say. She's
+just got life all systematized, and now here's Susan up and out of bed.
+I'm so scared the girl'll come over and go at mother, I don't know what
+to do."
+
+"My, suppose Mrs. Croft was to be up and about!" said Miss Debby,
+opening her eyes widely. "Whatever would you do?"
+
+"Do! I know what I'd do." Young Mrs. Croft looked dark and mysterious.
+"I know just exactly what I'll do. And I'm all ready to do it, and if
+I'm interfered with, I will do it,--good and quick, too."
+
+"How is old Mrs. Croft now?" Miss Debby asked.
+
+"Oh, she's grabbin' as ever. I never see such a disposition. She's
+always catching at me or the cat or something. Seems to consider it a
+way of attracting attention. Crazy folks has such crazy ideas, and she's
+crazy,--crazy as a loon."
+
+Katie Croft took up her market basket and went on up the street. Miss
+Debby stayed behind to wait for the noon mail. "Katie's so bitter," she
+said to herself, shaking her head; "she ought to be more grateful for
+being supported."
+
+Miss Debby forgot that there are few things so irritating in this world
+as being supported. It is a situation which has become especially
+unpopular lately, particularly with women and political motives.
+
+But no old worn-out aphorism held for one minute in the breezy bloom of
+the House Where Jane Lived.
+
+"Oh, I'm so happy," Susan exclaimed many times daily, "I'm so happy. I
+never felt nothing like your sunshining in all my life before, you
+Sunshine Jane, you! I feel like my own cupboards, all unlocked and aired
+and nice and used again."
+
+Jane stopped caroling as she kneaded bread and laughed--which sounded
+equally pleasant.
+
+"I'm as happy as you are, Auntie; it's so nice to be in heaven."
+
+"I used to think maybe I'd die suddenly and find myself there some day,"
+said Susan. "I'm glad I didn't."
+
+"It's better to live suddenly than to die suddenly," said Jane, merrily;
+"when people are awfully bothered sometimes, I've heard their friends
+say: 'But if you died suddenly, it would work out somehow,' and I wanted
+to say: 'Why not live suddenly instead of dying suddenly, and then
+everything's bound to come out splendidly.'"
+
+"Oh, Jane, what a grand idea,--to live suddenly! That's what I've done,
+surely."
+
+"Yes," said Jane, "that's what I did, too. Instead of fading out of
+life, we just bloomed into life. It's just as easy, and a million times
+more fun."
+
+"And it's all so awfully agreeable," said Susan. "My things look so
+nice, all set different, and it's so pleasant having folks coming in,
+and I like it all, and we haven't to fuss with the garden."
+
+"I attend to the garden!" cried a voice outside, and a mysterious hand
+shoved a basket of peas over the window-ledge.
+
+"I know who that is," said Susan; "it's that boy, and he's smelt
+cinnamon rolls and come to lunch. How do you do?"
+
+Lorenzo, brown and merry, was getting in at the window.
+
+"Why, you've really been weeding!" exclaimed Susan.
+
+"Of course! I've tended the garden ever since you gave it up."
+
+"I declare! Well, I never. Jane, we must give him a bite of something."
+
+"Yes, that's what I came for," said Lorenzo, cheerfully, "cookies,
+jelly-roll,--anything simple and handy. Madeleine and I were out
+walking, discussing our affairs, and when I stopped for the garden, she
+went on for her mail. I'm awfully hungry."
+
+"People say you're engaged to her," said Susan. Jane turned to get the
+tin of cookies.
+
+"Yes, naturally. People say so much. She is a pretty girl, isn't
+she?--but then there's Emily Mead. I must look at myself on all sides
+and consider carefully. Old Mr. Cattermole took me to drive yesterday
+and told me that he was healthy and his dead wife was healthy and that,
+except for what killed him, Mr. Mead was healthy, too; and there was
+Emily, perfectly healthy and the only grandchild, and why didn't I come
+over often,--it wasn't but a step."
+
+"Well, you do beat all," said Susan. Jane offered the tin of cookies.
+Lorenzo took six. They were all laughing.
+
+Later, when he'd gone away, Susan said, almost shyly this time: "Jane, I
+don't want to interfere, but he _is_ in love."
+
+"With Madeleine?"
+
+"With you."
+
+"Auntie," Jane came to her side, "you mustn't speak in that way about
+me. I can't marry,--not possibly. I'm a Sunshine Nurse, and I shall be a
+Sunshine Nurse till I die. I'll make homes happy, but I shall never have
+one of my own."
+
+Susan looked frightened and timid. "But why?"
+
+"For many reasons. And all good ones."
+
+There was that in the young girl's tone that ended the subject for the
+time being.
+
+But Susan thought of it a great deal, and alone in her room that night,
+Jane thought, too. She had made herself ready for bed, and then sat down
+by the window, clasping her hands on the sill. Lorenzo Rath was
+buoyantly dear and jolly, and she realized that he was the nicest man
+that she had ever met. It had all been fun, great fun, and she had
+enjoyed it mightily. But with all her learning Jane was not so very much
+farther along the Highway to Happiness than some others. In many cases
+she was only a holder of keys as yet--the distinct knowledge to be
+gained by unlocking secrets with their aid was as yet not hers. To hold
+the keys and look at the doors is to realize what power means,--but to
+unlock is to use it. Jane was still a novice; she left the doors locked
+and was content to hold the keys, and no more.
+
+The next night Lorenzo appeared again. "I'm half-dead," he said. "I've
+tramped twelve miles, sketching."
+
+"Dear, dear," said Susan, "seems like nobody in this world ever wants
+what's close to."
+
+"Sometimes it's no use to want what's close to," said Lorenzo, "or else
+what's close to is like Emily Mead, and you just ache to run."
+
+"Emily Mead is a very nice girl," said Jane, in a tone clearly
+reproachful.
+
+Lorenzo just laughed. But then Susan made some excuse to slip away. "I
+wonder if you'd help me a little," he said then, hesitating a bit.
+
+"Is it something that I can do? Of course I'll help you if I can."
+
+"It's something very necessary."
+
+"Necessary?"
+
+"To my welfare and happiness."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"I think--I'm--falling in love."
+
+"Oh, dear," Jane was carefully tranquil.
+
+"I've never really been in love in my life, so I can't be sure. But I
+think it's that."
+
+Jane said nothing. The room was getting dark.
+
+"I've never seen any one so pretty in all my life as Miss Mar," said the
+young artist, slowly. "You know we're old friends."
+
+"Oh, she's lovely," said Jane, with sudden fervor.
+
+"I thought that we might make up little picnics and walks and things?"
+hesitated the young man.
+
+"Of course," said Jane, heartily. "And you can come here all you like.
+Auntie likes you both so much."
+
+Lorenzo Rath stood by the door. "Were you ever in love?" he asked
+bluntly.
+
+"No," said Jane. "I've never had the least little touch of it."
+
+"Haven't you ever thought about it?"
+
+"No, I've never had time. I've never seen any man that I could or would
+marry."
+
+"Never?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"That's too bad," said Lorenzo Rath slowly. "Seems to me you'd make such
+a splendid wife."
+
+She laughed a little. Then she had to wink quickly to drive back tears
+which leapt suddenly.
+
+"I won't say any more," said Lorenzo. She thought that he did not care
+to speak of Madeleine to her.
+
+Then she went. And later she found herself sitting in her own room
+again, sitting by the same window, thinking. "Poor Emily Mead and her
+illusory millionaire! I'm about as silly as she is," thought Jane. "And
+yet I know it's higher and more beautiful to make life lovely for others
+than to make it lovely for one's self." She sighed because the
+reflection--all altruistic as it was--was not quite the truth, and she
+was true enough herself to feel jarred by the slightest cross-shadow of
+falsehood. Truth plays as widely and freely as the sunbeams themselves
+and goes as straight to the heart of each and all.
+
+Finally she opened a little book and read aloud a few pages to herself
+in a low tone. "I know I'm on the right path," she said, when she had
+closed the book; "the thing is to stick resolutely to keeping on
+straight ahead. And I must be absolutely content with all that comes.
+You have to be content if you're going to grow in goodness, for you have
+to know that you've been trying and been successful." She sat still a
+while longer and then rose with a deep, long breath. "Well, to-day's
+been something, and to-morrow I'll be something better, I know."
+
+The truth did shine then, and she went to bed calmed, but was hardly
+stretched down between the cool sheets when Susan rapped at the door.
+
+"Come in."
+
+"Oh, Jane, I can't sleep. I've got to thinking of when Matilda comes
+back, and I'm scared blue."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+A NEW OUTLOOK ON MATILDA
+
+
+THE next morning Susan looked half-sheepish and half-anxious. "I just
+couldn't help it, Jane. I laid in bed so long, thinking, and then it
+come over me what life was going to be when she was back and you gone
+and--well--I just couldn't help coming. I felt awful."
+
+Jane was busy with breakfast. "I know, Auntie, I know. I ought to have
+thought of Aunt Matilda sooner. Half her stay is over."
+
+"Oh, my, I should say it was," wailed Susan; "that's what scares me so.
+We're so happy, and the time is going so fast. It's about the most awful
+thing I ever knew."
+
+Jane began beating eggs for an omelette.
+
+"We never were one bit alike," Susan intoned mournfully; "we were always
+so different, and then when husband died, there was just nothing to do
+but for us to live together. She's my only sister, and it's right that I
+should humor her, but, oh my, what a scratch-about life she has led me.
+I was getting to feel more like a mouse than a woman--soon as I got a
+bite, I'd begin to tremble and to listen and then how I _did_ run!"
+
+"But it will be all so different when she comes back," Jane said
+cheerily. "She'll be very different, and so will you. It'll be just like
+I told you last night."
+
+"I know,--I know. But somehow I can't see it as you do. I'm all upset.
+And I'm so happy without her. We're so happy. The house looks beautiful.
+You've just made everything over. I declare, Jane, I never saw anything
+like you. All my old things have turned new, and so pretty. I feel like
+a bride. That is, I feel like a bride when I ain't thinking of Matilda."
+
+"It looks very nice, surely," said Jane, smiling. "Your things were so
+pretty, anyhow. But what I was gladdest about was to really get it all
+opened up and fresh. I didn't want any one to come while it was so
+gloomy. The whole town may call now."
+
+"They do, too," said Susan, diverted for the minute; "they certainly do.
+Oh, it is so nice, I so adore to hear all about things again. Matilda
+just shut everybody out. She didn't like company."
+
+"She was pretty busy, you know."
+
+"She hadn't any more to do than you have. She hadn't so much to do as
+you have, because she didn't do a thing you do."
+
+"But you were ill. She was always up and down stairs--"
+
+"No, she wasn't, Jane. No, she wasn't."
+
+"Well, she had your meals to carry upstairs."
+
+"I don't call it meals to run with a teacup. Meals! _Such_ meals! It's a
+wonder I didn't die. She'd turn anything upside down on a plate and
+something else upside down on that, and call it a meal for me. I was
+about sick, just from how she fed me. If I said something was cooked too
+dry, she emptied the tea-kettle into it next time; and if I said
+anything was too wet, she put on fresh coal and left it in the oven over
+night. If I said the room was too light, she shut it up as dark as a
+pickpocket; and if I said it was too dark, she turned the sun into my
+eyes. She's my only sister and I must humor her, but I've had a very
+hard time, Jane, and I don't blame myself for waking up with my teeth
+all of a chatter over the thought of living with her again."
+
+Jane had their breakfast ready now on the table by the window. "Come and
+sit down," she said; "we'll talk while we eat. It's like I told you last
+night,--there must be a hitch somewhere. Of course, God has a good
+reason for you and Aunt Matilda living together. He doesn't allow
+accidents in His world."
+
+"Perhaps He wasn't thinking. I can't believe that anybody would
+deliberately put anybody in the house with Matilda--not if they knew
+Matilda. I didn't know what she'd grown into myself when she first came
+to take care of me, because I was a little poorly. It was to save
+spending on a nurse, you know. They're such trying, prying things,
+nurses are."
+
+"I'm a nurse, you know."
+
+"My goodness, I didn't mean your kind; I meant the regular kind."
+
+Jane was laughing. "But I mustn't laugh," she said, after a minute; "we
+must go to work. Let's see if we can find out how it all began. Didn't
+you and Aunt Matilda get on nicely at first?"
+
+Susan considered. "Well, I don't believe we did. She was always so very
+sparing. Husband was sparing, and of course I'd had a good many years of
+it, but when your husband's gone and you've got the property yourself
+and have left it to an only sister who takes care of you, you don't like
+her being even more sparing,--putting you on skim-milk right from the
+first and chopping the potato peelings in the hash."
+
+"But there must have been some good in the situation, or it wouldn't
+have been. When there's a wrong situation, the cure lies in hunting out
+the good, not in talking over the bad."
+
+"You won't find any good in Matilda and me living together,--not if you
+hunt till Doomsday." Susan took a big sip of coffee and then shook her
+head hard.
+
+"There's good in everything."
+
+"I don't know what it was here, then. I was all ready to die, and the
+doctor said I couldn't live, and when I found out how Matilda was
+counting on it, I just made up my mind to live just to spite her. But
+it's been awful hard work."
+
+Jane turned and seized her hand. "Well, maybe that's the reason for the
+situation, then. You see if she'd been different, you'd have died, but
+being a person who made you mad, you stayed alive."
+
+Susan laughed a little. "I've been mad enough, I know," she went on;
+"it's awful to be up-stairs the way I've been and have to prowl
+down-stairs and run off with your food like a dog in an alley. I was
+always watching till I saw Matilda over that second fence and then
+racing for something to eat. I've been very hungry often and often,
+Jane, very hungry indeed,--and in my own house, too."
+
+The tears came into the girl's eyes. "Poor Auntie!" she said. "Well,
+it's all over now and won't ever come back. You must believe me when I
+say so. Old conditions never return. The wheel can't turn backward. That
+mustn't be."
+
+"But how'll it help it when Matilda's visit gets over?"
+
+Jane rested her chin on her hands and looked out of the window. "I'll
+have to get you on to a plane where you can't live as you did ever
+again," she said.
+
+"On a plane!--" Susan stared.
+
+"A plane is a kind of grade in life. We keep going up them like stairs,
+and the quieter and happier people live, the higher is the plane on
+which they are. It's very simple, when you come to understand it. It's
+sort of like a marble staircase built out of a marsh and on up a
+mountain. You can stand down in the mud, or step higher in the reeds, or
+step higher in the water (generally it's hot water," Jane interrupted
+herself to say with a little smile). "Or out on the dry earth, or higher
+where it's flowers, or higher or higher. But every time you get up a
+step you leave all the mess of all the lower steps behind you forever.
+Do you understand?"
+
+"No, I don't."
+
+"Why, don't you see that if you lift yourself higher than your
+surroundings, of course you'll have other conditions around you and be
+really living another life? We can't possibly be bound by conditions
+lower than our souls. It's a law. I'll help you to understand it, and
+then it will help you to not be at all troubled over Aunt Matilda.
+You'll be above her. Don't you see? One can always get out of a
+disagreeable life by lifting one's self above it."
+
+"But I did stay up-stairs," said Susan, with beautiful literalness. "I
+think it's awful to have to keep a plane above any one, when the whole
+house is yours."
+
+"I didn't mean that," said Jane. "I meant that mentally you must get
+above her. It isn't in words or in thoughts,--you must _be_ above her.
+You must get free. I must help you. You can do it. Anybody can do it.
+And as soon as you are free in your spirit, your life will change. Our
+daily life follows our thoughts. Our thoughts make a pattern, and life
+weaves it. The world of stars that we can't hardly grasp at all is all
+God's thought. The life in this house was your thought and Aunt
+Matilda's."
+
+"It wasn't mine," said Susan quickly; "it was hers."
+
+"Well, it's mine now," said Jane. "That's the true business of the
+Sunshine Nurses. They must get a new thought into a house and get it to
+growing well. Then they'll leave the true sunshine there forever after."
+
+Susan's eyes were very curious--very bright. "I declare I don't see how
+you'll do it here," she said. "I can't look at Matilda any new way, as I
+know of. Whatever she does, she does just exactly as I don't like it."
+
+"I suppose that you try her, too."
+
+"Well, I didn't die; of course she minded that. But I couldn't die. You
+can't die just to order."
+
+"No, of course not; I didn't mean that." Jane was quite serious. "I
+don't blame you at all for not doing that."
+
+Susan had finished and rose from the table. "Let's leave the dishes and
+go out in the yard," she said. "I'm awfully anxious to keep on at this
+till we find a way out, if you think that you can; I go about wild when
+I think of her. I'm ready for anything except staying in bed any more."
+
+"Oh, that's all over," said Jane. "You're off the bed-plane now, and
+don't you see how much higher you've got already? The next step is to
+fix yourself so securely on this happy one that you know that it's yours
+and you can't leave it. You see, you feel able to go back down again,
+and as long as you feel that way, it's possible. One has to bar out the
+wrong kind of life forever, and then of course it's over."
+
+"But she is coming back," said Susan, "and I can't live any more on
+gobbles of milk and cold bits swallowed while I'm getting up-stairs
+three steps to the jump."
+
+Jane looked at her. "I expect that exercise was awfully good for you,
+Auntie," she said seriously. "You've probably gotten a lot of health and
+interest out of it. Don't forget that."
+
+"Well, maybe; but I don't want any more." Susan's tone was terribly
+earnest.
+
+"It's all over then," said Jane, slowly and with emphasis; "if you truly
+and honestly don't want any more, then it must be all over. The thing to
+do now is to build a firm connection between ourselves and it's being
+all over."
+
+"I don't quite understand what you mean," said Susan, "but something's
+got to be done, of course, because otherwise she'll come home, and oh,
+my, her face when she sees me up and around!"
+
+Jane knit her brows. "You see, Auntie," she said slowly, "there's only
+one thing to do. We've got to change ourselves completely; we've to get
+where we want her to come home and where we look forward to it--"
+
+Susan stopped short and lifted up both hands. "Gracious, we can't ever
+do that! It isn't in humanity."
+
+"Yes, we can do it," said Jane firmly; "people can always do anything
+that they can think out, and if we can think this out straight, we can
+do it."
+
+"How?"
+
+"It isn't easy to see in just the first minute, but I understand the
+principle of it and I know that we can work it, for I've seen it done.
+You do it by getting an entirely new atmosphere into the house."
+
+"But you've done that already," interrupted Susan. "It isn't musty
+anywhere any more, and there's such a kind of a happy smell instead."
+
+"I don't mean that kind of an atmosphere. I mean a change of feeling in
+ourselves. We've got to somehow make ourselves all over; we must really
+and truly be different."
+
+"But I am made over, and you were all right, anyhow."
+
+"No, I'm not all right," said Jane firmly. "I'm very wrong. I'm letting
+silly thoughts with which I've no business torment me dreadfully, and
+I'm not driving them out with any kind of resolution. Then we're both
+doing wrong about Aunt Matilda. We're making a narrow little black box
+of our opinion and crowding her into it all the time. There's nothing so
+dreadful as the way families just chain one another to their faults.
+Outsiders see all the nice things, and we have lots of courage to always
+live up to their opinions, but families spend most of their time just
+nailing those they love best into pretty little limits. You and I are so
+happy together, and we're changing ourselves and one another every day,
+but we never think that Aunt Matilda's also having experience and
+changing herself, too. We kind of forbid her to grow better."
+
+"You won't find anything that will change Matilda very quick, Jane.
+She's a dreadful person to stick to habits; she's drunk out of the blue
+cup and give me the green one for these whole five years."
+
+"The change in the atmosphere of the house," said Jane slowly, "must be
+complete. We must never say one more word about her that isn't nice, and
+we mustn't even think unkind thoughts. We must talk about her lots and
+look forward to her coming back--"
+
+"Oh, heavens, I can't," gasped Susan.
+
+"We'll begin to-day on her room--"
+
+"Then you'll make her madder than a hatter, sure; she can't bear to have
+her room touched."
+
+"I'm going to make it the prettiest room in the house," said Jane
+resolutely. "I'm going to brush and clean and mend and fix all those
+clothes she's left hanging up, and I'm going to love her dearly from now
+on."
+
+Susan sat still, her lips moving slightly, but whether with repressed
+feeling or trembling sentiment it would be impossible to say. "She
+looked awful cute when she was little and wore pantalettes," she said
+finally.
+
+"Bravo!" cried Jane, running to her and kissing her. "There's a fine
+victory for you, and now,"--her face brightening suddenly,--"I've got an
+idea of what we can do to lift us right straight up into a new circle of
+life. What do you say to our making the little back parlor over into a
+bedroom, and--"
+
+"--taking Mr. Rath to board?" cried Susan joyfully. "Oh, I am sure that
+he wanted to come all along."
+
+Jane laughed outright. "No, indeed, the very idea! No, what I thought of
+was inviting that poor old Mrs. Croft here for a week and giving her and
+her daughter-in-law a rest from one another."
+
+Susan gave a sharp little yell. "Why, Jane Grey, I never heard the beat!
+Why, she can't even feed herself!"
+
+"It would be a way to change the atmosphere of the house; it's just the
+kind of thing that would change us all--"
+
+"I should think it would change us all," interrupted Susan; "why, she
+threw a cup of tea at Katie's back last week. Katie said she couldn't
+possibly imagine what had come over her,--she was leaning out to hook
+the blinds."
+
+"It would be a Bible-lovely thing to do," Jane went on slowly. "You or I
+could feed her, and I'd take care of her. I'm a nurse, you know!"
+
+"Jane! Well, you beat all! Well, I never did! Old Mrs. Croft. Why, they
+say you might as well be gentle with a hornet."
+
+"Maybe she has her reasons; maybe it's,--Set a hornet to tend a hornet,
+for all we know. Anyway, it's come to me as some good to do, and when I
+think of any good that I can do, I have to do it,--else it's a sin.
+That's my religion."
+
+"That religion of yours'll get you into a lot of hot water along through
+life." Susan's tone was very grave. "And you've never seen old Mrs.
+Croft, or you'd never speak of her and religion in the same breath.
+They've got a cat she caresses, and some days she caresses it for all
+she's worth. I've heard the cat being caressed when it was quiet,
+myself, many's the time. You can't use that religion of yours on old
+Mrs. Croft; she isn't a subject for religion. She's one of that kind
+that the man in the Bible thanked God he wasn't one of them."
+
+"My religion is what brought me here to you," said Jane gently. "You
+aren't really sorry that I learned it, are you, Auntie?"
+
+Susan's eyes moistened quickly. She gasped, then swallowed, then made up
+her mind. "Well, Sunshine Jane," she said resignedly, "when shall we get
+her?"
+
+"We'll put her room in order to-morrow morning, and I'll go and ask her
+in the afternoon."
+
+"Oh, dear!" said Susan, with a world of meaning in the two syllables. "I
+hope she'll enjoy the change."
+
+Jane laughed. "Goodness, Auntie, I never saw any one pick up new ideas
+as quick as you do. I was months learning how to make myself over, and
+you do it in just a few hours. You must have laid a big foundation of
+self-control up there in bed."
+
+Susan sighed, uncheered. "It kept me pretty sharp, I tell you," she
+said; "when you're always hungry and have to get your food on the sly
+and be positively sure of never being found out, it does keep you in
+trim being spry pretty steady."
+
+"May we come in?" asked voices at the gate. It was Lorenzo Rath and
+Madeleine. "We wanted to see how you were getting on to-day," the latter
+called.
+
+"We've been changing the furniture and the atmosphere," said Susan,
+trying bravely to smile. "Jane is turning everything around and bringing
+the bright new side out."
+
+"If you'll come and help me wash the breakfast dishes and then make
+biscuits," Jane said to Madeleine, "I'll ask you both to lunch."
+
+"I want to learn how to do everything, of course," said Madeleine.
+
+"And why shouldn't we go down to the garden?" suggested Lorenzo to
+Susan. "You'll point out the things you want to-day, and I'll pull 'em
+up."
+
+"But there are fences to climb," said Jane.
+
+"Fiddle for fences," said her aunt; "he'll go ahead, and I'll skim over
+'em like a squirrel. I never made anything of fences."
+
+So they divided the labor.
+
+"The house looks so pretty," said Madeleine, as she and Jane went
+through to the kitchen. "How do you ever manage it,--with just the same
+things, too?"
+
+Jane glanced about. "Why, there's a right place for everything, and if
+you just stand back a bit and let the things have time to think, they'll
+tell you where to put them. There was an old blue vase in the
+dining-room that was pretty weak-minded, but I was patient and carried
+it all over the place till finally it was suited on top of the what-not
+in the corner of the hall. The trouble with most things is that we hurry
+them too much at first, and then we don't help them out of their false
+position later."
+
+"Oh, Jane, you are so delightfully quaint. You must tell Mr. Rath that.
+It's the kind of speech that will just charm the soul right out of an
+artist."
+
+Jane was deep in the flour-bin. "But I don't want to charm his soul.
+I'll leave that to you."
+
+"To me! Why, he doesn't care a rap about me."
+
+"Well, then, to Emily Mead."
+
+"Emily Mead! Oh, my dear, you have put a lot of new ideas into her head!
+She says that you told her that any one could get anything that he or
+she wanted."
+
+"And so they can."
+
+"Suppose she wants Mr. Rath?"
+
+"If she wants him in the right way, she'll have him."
+
+"I don't like that way of speaking of men," said Madeleine, dipping her
+white fingers into the flour and beginning to chip the butter through
+it. "Don't you think it's horrid how girls speak of men nowadays? I do."
+
+"Of course I do," said Jane. "But one drops into the habit just because
+everybody does it. I'll never be married myself, and it's partly because
+I think it's all being so dragged down. Instead of two people's knowing
+one another and liking one another better till finally a big, beautiful,
+holy secret sort of dawns on them and makes the world all over new,
+girls just go on and act as if men were wild animals to be hunted and
+caught and talked about, or married and made fun of. I don't think all
+these new ideas and new ways for women have made women a bit more
+womanly. When I had to earn my living, I picked out work that a man
+couldn't do, and that I wouldn't be hurting any man by doing. I'm sorry
+for men nowadays. And I think women lose a lot the way some of them go
+on."
+
+"After all, there can't be anything nicer than to be a woman, can
+there?" said Madeleine, stirring as the other poured in ingredients.
+"I've always been glad that I was a woman. I think that a woman's life
+is so sweet, and it's beautiful to be protected and cared for." The pink
+flew over her cheeks at the words.
+
+Jane's lashes swept downward for a minute, then rose resolutely. "Or to
+protect and care for others. It always seems to me as if a woman was the
+sort of blessed way through which a man's love and strength and care go
+to his children. Men are so helpless with children, but they do such a
+lot for wives, and then the mothers pass it on to the little ones."
+
+"Life's lovely when you think of it rightly, isn't it?" Madeleine said
+thoughtfully. "I'm so pleased over having come here. You see Father and
+Mother wanted me to spend a few weeks quietly where I could rest and
+pick myself up a little, and so they sent me here. I didn't care much
+about coming, but I'm glad now. You're doing me lots of good, Jane; you
+seem to help me to unlock the doors to everything that's just best in
+me."
+
+"It isn't that I do it," said Jane; "it's that it's been done to me, and
+after it got through me, it's bound to shine on. It's like light; every
+window you clean lets it through into another place, where maybe there's
+something else to clean and let it through again."
+
+"I suppose we just live to keep clean and let light through," laughed
+Madeleine, cutting out the biscuits.
+
+"That's all."
+
+"I think that you'd make a good preacher, Jane; you've such nice, plain,
+homely, understandable ways of putting things."
+
+Jane laughed and popped the pan into the oven. "Come and help lay the
+table," she said. "Oh, you never saw anything as sweet as Aunt Susan's
+joy in her own things. She's like a little child at Christmas. It's a
+kind of coming back to life for her."
+
+"They say that her sister was awfully mean to her."
+
+"But she wasn't at all. She thought that she was sicker than she was,
+and she kept her in bed, and the joke of it was that Aunt Susan didn't
+like to hurt her feelings by letting her see what mistaken ideas she
+had, so she hopped up every time the coast was clear and kept lively and
+interested trying to be about and in bed at once."
+
+"How perfectly delightful! I never heard anything so funny. And then you
+came and discovered the truth."
+
+"Well, I didn't want her to stay in bed. I'd never encourage any one in
+a false belief, but she hadn't the belief,--she had only the false
+appearance. She didn't enjoy being an invalid one bit."
+
+"I think it's too droll," said Madeleine. "Didn't you laugh when it
+dawned on you first?"
+
+"It dawned on me rather sadly. But we laugh together now."
+
+"What will she do when her sister comes back?"
+
+"Oh, that will all come out nicely. I don't know just how, but I know
+that it will come out all right."
+
+"Do you always have faith in things coming out rightly?"
+
+"Always. I wouldn't dare not to. I'm one of those people who kind of
+feel the future as it draws near, and so I wouldn't allow myself to feel
+any mean future drawing near, on principle. I always feel that nice
+things are marching straight towards me as fast as ever the band of
+music plays."
+
+"Do you believe that it really makes any difference?"
+
+"Of course it makes a difference. It makes all the difference in the
+world, because hope's a rope by which any good thing can haul you right
+up to it, hand over hand."
+
+"You give me a lot to think about," said Madeleine.
+
+Jane ran out and picked some ivy leaves to place under the vase of
+flowers in the middle of the table. It made a little green mat. "There;
+we're all ready when they come, now," she said.
+
+Presently they did come.
+
+"Oh, what will Mrs. Cowmull say to this!" said Lorenzo, as he pulled out
+Mrs. Ralston's chair. "She's busy marking passages in _The Seven Lamps
+of Architecture_ to read aloud to me while I eat, and now I shan't show
+up at all."
+
+"Have you seen her niece lately?" asked Madeleine.
+
+"Yes, I saw her this morning. She wants to pose for me, only she
+stipulated that she should wear clothes. I told her that my models all
+wore thick wool and only showed a little of their faces. She didn't seem
+to like that."
+
+"But what did you mean? Surely you don't always have them wear thick
+woolen?"
+
+"I just do. If they haven't thick wool on, I won't paint them at all."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Why, I paint sheep."
+
+The mild little joke met with great favor.
+
+"I think you're a very clever young man," Susan said with great
+sincerity. "To think of me having a good time laughing with a sheep
+painter," she added. "Who holds them for you to paint, and do you set
+them afterwards?"
+
+"I paint them right in the fields," said Lorenzo.
+
+"I should think they'd butt you from behind."
+
+"I paint over a fence."
+
+"Well, that's safe," said Jane's aunt. "If you're careful not to be on
+the side where there's a bull."
+
+After supper Madeleine helped Jane wash the dishes.
+
+"What fun you make out of everything," she said.
+
+"It's the only way," Jane answered. "My mission is to make two sunbeams
+shine where only one slanted."
+
+"I'm glad I'm one of the heathen to whom you were sent," said Madeleine
+affectionately.
+
+Jane put her arm around her. "So am I, dear, very glad."
+
+Madeleine laid her face against the other girl's. "Some day I want to
+tell you a secret," she said; "a secret that Lorenzo told me yesterday."
+
+Jane felt her heart sort of skip a beat. "Do tell me," she said in a
+whisper.
+
+"I can't now," said Madeleine. "I want to be all alone with you. It's
+too--too big a secret to bear to be broken in upon."
+
+"Can you come to-morrow afternoon? Auntie's going to Mrs. Mead's to the
+Sewing Society, and I'll be here alone."
+
+"That will be nice," said Madeleine; "yes, I'll come."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+SOUL-UPLIFTING
+
+
+IT was the next morning about eleven o'clock.
+
+"You see," said Jane, sitting in the Crofts' sitting-room opposite Katie
+Croft who, whatever else she might or might not be, was certainly not
+pleasant of expression, "you see, my aunt has been an invalid so much
+that she appreciates what a change means to both the sick one and the
+one who cares for her, and so we thought that it would be so nice if
+you'd let me wheel your mother--"
+
+"She ain't my mother--she's my mother-in-law," broke in Mrs. Katie
+Croft, instantly indignant over so false an imputation. "Good lands, the
+very idea! My mother! And never one single stroke of paralysis nor
+nothing in my family, and all reading the Bible without glasses right up
+till they died."
+
+"You see, it would give you a little rest, too," Jane continued, "and it
+would do Aunt Susan good to feel that she was helping a weaker--"
+
+"She ain't weak," broke in Katie Croft, again; "my lands, she's strong
+as a lady-ox. Anything she makes up her mind to keep she lays hold of
+with a grip as makes you fairly sick all up and down your back. You
+don't know perhaps, Miss Grey, as my husband died in our youth, and I
+come to live with his mother as a sacred duty, and I tell you frankly
+that I wish I'd never been born or that he'd never been born, forty
+times an hour--I do."
+
+"You'll like a week alone, I'm sure," said Jane serenely, "and we'll
+like to have your mother-in-law. Perhaps she'll get a few new ideas--"
+
+"She's stubborn as a mule," interrupted the daughter-in-law.
+
+"But may I see her and ask her? I do so want to help you a little. Life
+must have been so hard for you these last years."
+
+"Hard!" said Katie Croft, with emphasis. "Hard! Well, I'll tell you what
+it is, Miss Grey,--to marry a young man as was meek as Moses and then
+have him just fade right straight out and get a mother-in-law like that
+old--that old--that old--well, I'll tell you frankly she's a siren and
+nothing else." (Young Mrs. Croft probably meant "vixen," but Jane did
+not notice.) "My life ain't really worth a shake-up of mustard and
+vinegar some days. What I have suffered!"
+
+"I know more than you think," said Jane sympathetically; "nurses take
+care of so many kinds of people. But do let me ask her. If she likes to
+come to us, it'll be a great rest to you, and perhaps it'll do her a
+little good, too."
+
+"I can't understand you're wanting her," said Katie. "It's all over town
+how queer you are, but I never thought that anybody could be as queer as
+that!"
+
+"Do let us go to her," Jane urged.
+
+Katie rose and forthwith conducted the caller to old Mrs. Croft's room,
+a large, square place adorned with no end of black daguerreotypes and
+faded photographs.
+
+"Mother, it's Miss Grey. You know?--she's Mrs. Ralston's niece."
+
+Old Mrs. Croft received her visitor with acutely suspicious eyes.
+"Well?" she said tartly.
+
+Jane took her hand, but she jerked it smartly away.
+
+"Sit down anywhere," said Katie; "she hears well."
+
+"Hear!" said old Mrs. Croft. "I should say I did hear. There ain't a pan
+fell in the neighborhood for the last ten years as hasn't woke me out of
+a sound sleep, dreaming of my husband--"
+
+"Miss Grey's come to see you about something," interrupted Katie;
+"she--"
+
+"I had a husband," continued old Mrs. Croft, raising her voice from Do
+to Re, "and such a one! Wednesday he'd go to sleep and Thursdays he'd
+wake, so regular you could tell the days of the week just from his
+habits. He--"
+
+"Miss Grey wants--" interrupted Katie.
+
+"I came to--" said Jane.
+
+"I had a husband," continued old Mrs. Croft, going from Re to Mi now;
+"oh, my, but I did have a husband. In May I had him and in December I
+had him, but he was always the same to me. You can see his picture
+there, Miss Grey; it's all faded out, just from being looked at; but
+I'll tell you where it never fades, Miss Grey--it never so much as turns
+a hair in my heart. My heart is engraved--"
+
+"You'd better go on and say what you've got to say," said Katie to Jane.
+"I often put her to bed talking, and she talks all the night through."
+
+"I want to ask you--" Jane began.
+
+"Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies," sang Mrs. Croft. "Oh, I
+had--"
+
+"--I want you to come and stay with us," Jane said, with forceful
+accents.
+
+There was a sudden tense hush.
+
+"My aunt and I want you to come and make us a little visit," the caller
+added.
+
+The hush grew awful.
+
+"A little change would be so good for you--you've been shut up so long."
+
+Old Mrs. Croft lifted her two hands towards the ceiling.
+
+"What do you want to take me out of my own house for? Going to do
+something to it that I wouldn't approve, I expect. Oh, I see it all.
+There was Macbeth and there was Othello, and now there's my house--What
+are you going to do to it, anyhow?" The question was pitched so high and
+sharp that Jane jumped.
+
+"We just want to give you a little change."
+
+"Change! I had a change once. Went to Cuba with my husband and nearly
+died. I don't want no change of _house_," with deep meaning in the
+emphasis; "the change that I want is another change. Change is a great
+thing to have. My husband never changed. Only his collars. Never no
+other way."
+
+"You and Aunt Susan are old friends--" suggested Jane.
+
+"Never nothing special," broke in old Mrs. Croft. "My goodness, I do
+hope your aunt ain't calling me her friend, because if she is, it's a
+thing I can't allow."
+
+Jane thanked her stars that her powers of mental concentration forbade
+her mind to wander. "I'm sure if you came to us, you'd enjoy it," she
+said persuasively; "we've such a pretty bedroom down-stairs, and I'll
+sleep on the dining-room sofa, so you won't feel lonely."
+
+"Lonely. I never feel lonely. I'd thank Heaven if I could be let alone
+for a little, once in a while. I don't want to come, and that's a fact.
+If that be treason, make the most of it."
+
+"Oh, but you must come," said Jane; "you'll like it. We want you, and
+you must come."
+
+"Well, get me my bonnet then," said old Mrs. Croft. "Run, Katie, I've
+been sitting here waiting for it for over an hour."
+
+Katie and Jane regarded one another in consternation. They hadn't quite
+counted on this.
+
+"I'm going visiting," said Mrs. Croft gaily. "Oh, my, and how I shall
+visit. Years may come and years may go, and still I shall sit there
+visiting away, and when I hear the door-bell, I shall know it's time for
+Christmas dinner."
+
+Katie took Jane's hand and drew her out of the room. "I don't believe
+you'd better take her," she said; "she's so flighty. I know how to
+manage her, and you don't. Just give it up."
+
+"No, I won't," said Jane, smiling. "I know that it's a kind thing to do
+and that I must do it. I'm going to take her."
+
+"Seems so odd you're wanting to," said Katie. "You're very funny, I
+think. People are saying that you think that everything's for the best.
+Do you really believe that?"
+
+"Of course. We can't get outside of God's plan, whatever we may do. If
+we do wrong, we have to bear the consequences because it's as easy to
+_see_ the right thing to do as the wrong, but the great Plan never
+wavers."
+
+"Oh, my," said Katie. "I'm glad to know that."
+
+Jane pressed her hand. "I'll get things all ready, and we'll bring her
+over tomorrow night," she said; "that'll be best. Then she can go right
+to bed and get rested from the effort."
+
+So it was arranged, and the Sunshine Nurse went home to tell Susan that
+Mrs. Croft had consented to come. She felt quite positive that now they
+would both attain unto a higher plane without any difficulty, if they
+kept such a guest in the house for a week.
+
+"It isn't going to be easy, Auntie," she said, a bit later, "but it will
+teach you and me a lot, and if one wants to voyage greatly, one must get
+out into the deep water."
+
+"I'll do anything to get hold of some different way of getting on with
+Matilda," said Susan, "and I begin to see what you mean when you say
+that if I change _me_, I'll change it all. If you could make flour into
+sugar, you'd have cake instead of biscuit, but, oh, my! Old Mrs. Croft!"
+
+"It won't be for so very long," said Jane, "and think of Katie Croft
+through all these years! She's been splendid, I think."
+
+"Well, she didn't have any other place to live, you know," Susan
+promptly reminded her niece.
+
+"Work's work, no matter why you do it," Jane said, "and all the big laws
+work greatly. This having old Mrs. Croft is a pretty big step for you
+and me to take, and you'll see that when Aunt Matilda returns, we'll be
+so strongly settled in our new ways that she can't unsettle us. We'll be
+absolutely different people."
+
+"Y--yes," said Susan, confidence fighting doubt stoutly. "I'm willing to
+try, although left to myself I should never have thought of old Mrs.
+Croft as a way of getting different."
+
+"Anything that we do with earnest purpose is a way of getting better,"
+said Jane. She looked out of the window for a minute, and her lip almost
+quivered. Susan didn't notice. "Everything is always for the best, if
+we're sure of it," she then said firmly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+MADELEINE'S SECRET
+
+
+THE two girls were enjoying a pleasant time in Susan's big, tidy
+kitchen.
+
+"I never knew that a kitchen could be so perfectly lovely," said
+Madeleine, as they took tea by the little table by the window. "Jane,
+you are a genius! One opens the gate here with a bubbling feeling that
+everything in the whole world's all right."
+
+"I'm so glad," said Jane; "it's grand to feel that one is a real channel
+of happiness. I always seem to see people as made to form that kind of
+connection between God and earth, and that happiness is the visible sign
+of success, a good 'getting through,' so to speak."
+
+"Do you know, the English language is awfully indefinite. That sentence
+might mean good flowing like water through people, or people so made
+that good can go through them easily. Do you see?"
+
+"Yes, I see. But either meaning is all right. It isn't what I say that
+matters so much, anyway. It's how you take it."
+
+"I took that two ways."
+
+"Yes, and both were good. That's so fine,--to get two good meanings,
+where I only meant one."
+
+They smiled together.
+
+"Mr. Rath and I were talking about that last evening," said Madeleine,
+the color coming into her face a little. "Do you know, he's really a
+very dear man. He's awfully nice."
+
+Jane jumped up to drive a wasp out of the window. "You know him better
+than I do," she said, very busy.
+
+"I've known him for several years, but never as well as here."
+
+Jane came back and sat down. Madeleine was silent, seeming to search for
+words.
+
+"You were going to tell me a secret," her friend said, after a little.
+
+"I know, but I--I can't."
+
+Jane lifted her eyes almost pitifully. "Why not?"
+
+"I don't feel that I have the right, after all. Secrets are such
+precious things."
+
+"If I can help you--?"
+
+"Oh, no, no.--It isn't any trouble. It's something quite different--I--I
+thought that perhaps I could tell you my thoughts, but--I can't."
+
+There was a silence.
+
+"There are such wonderful feelings in the world," Madeleine went on,
+after a little; "they don't seem to fit into words at all. One feels
+ashamed to have even planned to talk about them. One feels so humble
+when--" she paused--then closed her lips.
+
+Jane put out her hand and took the hand upon the other side of the
+little table, close. "Don't mind me, dear; I understand."
+
+"Do you really?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Madeleine's eyes were anxious. "Do you guess? Did you guess?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And how--what--what do you think?"
+
+"I think that it would be lovely, only, of course, I don't quite know it
+all, for I shall never have anything like it."
+
+Madeleine started. "Oh, Jane, don't say that."
+
+"But it's so, dear."
+
+"Oh, _no_."
+
+"No, dear,--I can guess and sympathize. But I shall never have any such
+happiness. It's--it's quite settled."
+
+Madeleine left her seat, went round by the side of the other girl, flung
+herself down on the floor, and looked as if she were about to cry. "Oh,
+Jane, you mustn't feel so. Why shouldn't you marry?"
+
+"I can't, dear; I've debts of my father's to pay, and I'm pledged to my
+Order."
+
+"But they'll get paid after a while."
+
+"It will take all my youth."
+
+"But a way can be found?"
+
+"No way can ever be. There is no one in the wide world to help me. I'm
+quite alone."
+
+"Why, Jane," said Madeleine, always kneeling and always looking up, "I
+know some one who can manage everything, and you do, too."
+
+Jane stared a little. "My aunt, do you mean?"
+
+"No,--God."
+
+Jane smiled suddenly. "Thank you, dear. I hadn't forgotten, but I just
+didn't think. Still, I think God means me to be brave about my burdens.
+I don't think that He sees them as things from which to be relieved."
+
+Madeleine was still looking up. "But the channel doesn't think; the
+channel just conveys what pours along it," she whispered.
+
+Just at this second the scene altered.
+
+"Oh, there's my aunt!" Jane exclaimed. Susan passed the window, and the
+next minute she came in the door. "I've had the most bee--youtiful
+afternoon," she announced radiantly. "I did Jane lots of credit, for I
+never said a word about anybody, but oh, how splendid it was to just be
+good and silent, and hear all the others talk. They talked about
+everybody, and a good many were of my own opinion, so I had considerable
+satisfaction without doing a thing wrong."
+
+Jane couldn't help laughing or Madeleine, either. "Was young Mrs. Croft
+there?"
+
+"No, and most everybody says that she'll go off to-morrow and never come
+back, and we'll have old Mrs. Croft till she dies. They looked at me
+pretty hard, but I stuck to my soul and never said a word."
+
+"It was noble in you, Auntie," Jane said warmly.
+
+"Yes, it was," assented Susan. Then she turned to Madeleine, who had
+returned to her chair. "Jane's religion's pretty hard on me, but I like
+its results, and I can do anything I set out to do, and I don't mean to
+not get a future if I can help it. You see, my sister Matilda is a very
+peculiar person. You must know that by this time?"
+
+"I have heard a good deal about her," Madeleine admitted.
+
+"Well, I hope it isn't unkind in me to say that I know more than anybody
+else can possibly imagine."
+
+"But she's coming back all right," Jane interrupted firmly; "we mustn't
+forget that."
+
+"No," said Susan, with a quick gasp in her breath; "no, I'm not
+forgetting a thing. I'm only talking a little. And oh, how Mrs. Cowmull
+did talk about you, Madeleine. She says Mr. Rath can't put his nose out
+of the door alone."
+
+"That's dreadful," said Madeleine, trying not to color, "especially as
+we always come straight here."
+
+"Well, I tell you it's pretty hard work being good," said Susan, with a
+cheerful sigh; "it's a relief to get home and take off one's bonnet."
+
+"And don't you want some tea, Auntie? It's all hot under the cozy."
+
+"Yes, I will, you Sunshine Jane, you. I'll never cease to be grateful
+for good tea again as long as I live. I've had five years of the other
+kind to help me remember."
+
+Later, when Madeleine was gone, Susan said: "Do you know, Jane, Katie
+Croft is certainly going to desert that awful old woman when we get her
+here? Everybody says so."
+
+"No, she isn't, Auntie; the expected is never what happens."
+
+"Jane, any one with your religion can't rely on proverbs to help them
+out, because the whole thing puts you right outside of common-sense to
+begin with."
+
+Jane was sitting looking out upon the pretty garden. "I know, Auntie; I
+only quoted that in reference to the Sewing Society gossip. It's never
+the expected that happens in their world; it's the expected that always
+happens in my world. And proverbs don't exist in my world; they're every
+one of them a human limitation."
+
+"Well, Jane, I don't know; some of them are very pretty, and when I've
+seen Matilda over the fence and run down to get a few scraps, I've taken
+considerable comfort in 'No cloud without a silver lining' and 'It never
+rains but it pours.' They were a great help to me."
+
+Jane kissed her tenderly. "Bless you, Auntie,--everything's all right
+and all lovely, and Madeleine made me so happy to-day. I'm sure that
+she's engaged."
+
+"Yes, I've thought that, too."
+
+"Yes, and I'm so glad for her."
+
+"I hope he's good enough for her."
+
+"Oh, I'm sure that he is." Jane thought a minute. "And Madeleine gave me
+a big lesson, too," she added.
+
+"What?"
+
+"She showed me that with all my teaching and preaching, I don't trust
+God half enough yet."
+
+"Well, Jane," said Susan solemnly, "I s'pose trusting God is like being
+grateful for the sunshine,--human beings ain't big enough to hold all
+they ought to feel."
+
+"Perhaps we'd be nothing but trust and gratitude, then," said Jane,
+smiling.
+
+"They're nice feelings to be made of," said Susan serenely, "but I must
+go and put my bonnet away. But, oh, heavens, when I think that to-morrow
+old Mrs. Croft is coming!"
+
+"And that lots of good is coming with her; she is coming to bring
+happiness and happiness only."
+
+"Yes, I know," Susan's air was completely submissive. "I can hardly wait
+for her to get here. They wondered at the Sewing Society if she'd sing
+Captain Jinks all night often. She does sometimes, you know. But I'm
+sure we'll like her. She's a nice woman."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+OLD MRS. CROFT
+
+
+OLD Mrs. Croft arrived the next afternoon about half after four. She was
+rolled up in her chair, and her small trunk followed on a wheelbarrow.
+
+"How old you have grown!" she said to Susan, by way of greeting, as she
+grated up the gravel. "My, to think you ever looked young!"
+
+They wheeled her into the hall. "Same hall," she said, looking about,
+"same paper you had thirty years ago. Oh, my, to think of it. I've
+papered and papered and scraped off, and papered and papered and scraped
+off, and then papered again in those same thirty years."
+
+They got her into the room on the ground floor, which had been prepared
+for her. "I suppose this was the most convenient place to put me," she
+said, "and so you put me in it. Put me where you please, only I do hope
+you haven't beetles. It makes me very nervous to hear 'em chipping about
+all night, and when I'm nervous, I don't sleep, and when I don't sleep,
+I just can't help lying awake. It's a way I've got. I caught it from my
+husband when he was a baby. He'd wake up and give it to me."
+
+Susan went out with Jane to get her some supper. "I never thought much
+about Katie Croft," she said, "but I never doubted she had a hard time."
+
+"Yes," said Jane, "and one of the nicest things in this world is to be
+able to give some one who's had a hard time a rest."
+
+"Wouldn't it be dreadful if she died, though, while she was here?"
+
+"Who? Old Mrs. Croft?"
+
+"Oh, no, she won't ever die. I meant Katie. Everybody says she's going
+to run away, but if she don't do that and dies, we'll be just as badly
+off as if she did it."
+
+"Oh, Auntie!"
+
+"Well, Jane, we'd have to keep old Mrs. Croft till she died."
+
+"I guess there's not much chance of that," Jane said; "she won't die.
+She has come here to do us good and to receive good herself, that's
+all."
+
+Susan looked appalled. "Surely you don't expect to sunshine _her_ up, do
+you?"
+
+"Yes, I do."
+
+Then Susan looked amazed. "Well, I never did! I thought she was just
+here to do us good. I--"
+
+Their conversation was suddenly interrupted by a piercing shriek. Jane
+flew.
+
+"I'm so happy I just had to let it out," Mrs. Croft announced. "I can't
+hold in joy or sorrow. Sorrow I let out in the low of my voice--like a
+cow, you know--but joy I let rise to the skies. You'll hear to-night."
+
+Jane looked at her and smiled. She looked like a story-book witch in a
+nice, white, modern bed. "I thought that perhaps you wanted something,"
+she said, turning to leave the room again.
+
+"No, indeed, I never want anything. I ain't by no means so bad off as is
+give out."
+
+"I guessed as much. You can make a fresh start now, and we shan't remind
+you of the past."
+
+"Oh, then I'm coming to the table," exclaimed Mrs. Croft, "and I'm going
+to be helped like a Christian and feed myself like a human being. This
+being put to bed and just all but tied there with a rope isn't going to
+go on much longer, I can tell you."
+
+"Don't speak of it at all," said Jane; "you just do what you please
+here, and we'll let you. I'm going to get you your supper now."
+
+"Stop!" cried old Mrs. Croft sharply. "Stop! I won't have it! I won't
+stand it. Oh, I've had such a time," she went on, bringing her clenched
+fist down vigorously on her knee under the bedclothes and raising
+her voice very high indeed, "such a time! I had a beautiful son that
+you or any girl might have been proud to marry, and then he must go and
+marry that Katie Croft creature. There ain't many things to cut a
+mother's heart to the quick like seeing her own son marry her own
+daughter-in-law. Such a nice raised boy as he was, so neat, and she
+kicking her clothes under the bed at night to tidy up the room. Oh!"
+cried Mrs. Croft, lifting her voice to a still more surprising pitch,
+"what I have suffered! Nothing ain't been spared me. I lost my son and
+the use of my legs from the shock and--"
+
+"Supper is all ready," Jane interrupted sweetly and calmly.
+
+"What you got?"
+
+"Sardines--"
+
+"I never eat 'em."
+
+"Toast."
+
+"I hate it."
+
+"Plum preserves."
+
+"Lord have mercy on me, I wouldn't swallow one if you gave it to me."
+
+Jane stood still at the door.
+
+Susan, having heard the screams, came running in.
+
+"Oh, Mrs. Ralston," cried Mrs. Croft, "I had"--Jane rose, approached the
+bed, and laid a firm hand on her arm. "What do you want for supper?" she
+asked in a quiet, penetrating tone.
+
+"I don't want nothing," cried Mrs. Croft; "days I eat and days I don't.
+This is a day I don't eat, and on such a day I only take a little ham
+and eggs from time to time. Oh, my husband, how I did love you! It's
+just come over me how I loved him, and I love him so I can't hardly
+stand it--"
+
+"We'll go out and have supper ourselves, then," said Jane.
+
+"Eat, drink, and be merry while you can," fairly yelled Mrs. Croft. "The
+handwriting is on the wall and the Medes and Persians is in the chicken
+yard right now. Oh, what a--"
+
+They slipped out and shut the door after them. Susan turned a scared
+face Jane's way. "Why, she's crazy!" she said. "Katie always said so,
+and folks thought she was just talking. It's awful."
+
+"She's a little excited with the change," said Jane soothingly; "she'll
+be calmer soon. It's very bad to shut one's self off from others. It's
+better to fuss along with disagreeable people than to live altogether
+alone. She's grown flighty through being left alone. It's a wonder that
+you didn't get odd yourself."
+
+When they went back after supper, Mrs. Croft was sound asleep.
+
+"Don't wake her, for goodness' sake," whispered Susan, in the doorway.
+Jane left the room quietly, and her aunt took her by the arm and led her
+up-stairs. "This is pretty serious," she said. "I think Katie Croft
+ought to have told us."
+
+"She didn't want her to come; we insisted," said Jane.
+
+"I tell you what," said Susan, "we were too happy."
+
+Susan's tone was so solemn that Jane had an odd little qualm. But the
+next instant she knew that all was right, because all is always right.
+"Auntie," she said, putting her hand on the older woman's shoulder, "you
+must try to realize that you've moved out of the world where things go
+wrong into the world where things go right. When you go out of the cold,
+dark winter night into a cosy, warm house, you don't fear that the house
+will turn dark and cold any minute."
+
+"But old Mrs. Croft isn't a house; she's moved into us, instead."
+
+Jane smiled her customary smile of tranquil sweetness. "She has come to
+show us ourselves," she said, "and to bring us to some kind of better
+things. I know it."
+
+Susan's eyes altered to confidence. "Well, Sunshine Jane," she said,
+"I'll try to believe that you know. I'll try."
+
+They went to bed early, and Jane slept on the dining-room sofa. In the
+night Mrs. Croft, calling, woke her. She jumped up and went to her at
+once.
+
+"I'm hungry. You didn't ask me here to starve me, did you? Oh, how
+hungry I am. I've never been so hungry before."
+
+"I'll get you anything you like," the girl said. "What shall it be?"
+
+Mrs. Croft shook her head lugubriously. "Whatever I eat is sure to kill
+me. I wish I was home. You don't know how good dear Katie is to me, Miss
+Grey. Nobody could, unless they lived with her year in and year out as I
+do. Something told me never to leave my sweet child, and I disobeyed my
+conscience which won't let me sleep for aching like a serpent's tooth.
+Oh, my little Katie, my pretty little Katie, my loving little Katie that
+I went and left at home! Take me to her."
+
+"But she isn't at home," said Jane. "She's gone away on a little visit.
+She went last evening."
+
+"I shall never see her again," said Mrs. Croft mournfully. "I shall
+never see no one again. Oh, dear; oh, dear. My eyes. My eyes."
+
+"What shall I get you? A glass of milk?"
+
+"It doesn't matter. Whatever you like. I was never one to make trouble.
+Whatever you like."
+
+When Jane returned with the milk and some hastily prepared bread and
+butter, Mrs. Croft was praying rapidly. "I think I've got religion,"
+said she, in a bright, chatty tone; "if you'll sit down, I'll convert
+you. It's never too late to mend, and so get your darning basket and
+come right here." She began to eat and drink very rapidly. "It's going
+to kill me," she said, between bites, "but I don't care a mite. What is
+life after all,--a vain fleeting shadow of vanity,--why, you ain't put
+no jam on this bread!"
+
+"Do you like jam? I'll get you some at once."
+
+"Oh, merciful heavens, waking me up in the dead of night to give me
+plain bread and no jam! I shall never see Katie again, and perhaps it's
+just as well, for she'd not stand such doings. Oh, you idle, thriftless
+girl, take me home, take me home at once."
+
+"In the morning," said Jane gently.
+
+"Oh, my,--why did I ever come! Katie, my Katie, my long-loving Katie; my
+dear little Katie that's gone to New York!"
+
+Then, having swallowed the milk in great gulps and the bread in great
+bites, she shut her eyes and lay back again in bed.
+
+"Shan't I bring you anything else?" Jane asked.
+
+"No," said the invalid, "not by no means, and I'll trouble you to get
+out and keep out and don't make a noise in the morning, for I want my
+last hours to be peaceful, and I'm going to take a screw-driver and fix
+my thoughts firmly to heaven at once."
+
+Jane went softly out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+SHE SLEEPS
+
+
+THE next morning Susan felt perturbed. "She'll take up a whole week of
+our happy visit, and I can't bear to lose a minute. The time's going too
+fast, anyhow."
+
+Lorenzo Rath came in shortly after. He and Madeleine and Emily Mead were
+in and out daily to suit themselves by this time. "Do you know, Mrs.
+Croft has gone off, nobody knows where," he said gravely; "she's left no
+address, and people say she'll never come back."
+
+Susan threw up her hands with a wail. "Oh, Jane, she _has_ left that
+dreadful old woman on us for life; I'll just bet anything folks knew
+exactly that she meant to do it when they talked to me so. What _will_
+Matilda say when she comes back?"
+
+Jane was silent a minute. "It's no use doubting what one really
+believes," she said finally. "I do really believe that I came here for a
+good purpose, and I know that I had a good purpose in inviting Mrs.
+Croft. I'm taught that to doubt is like pouring ink into the pure water
+of one's good intentions, and I won't doubt. I refuse to."
+
+"But if you go back to where you come from and leave me with Matilda and
+old Mrs. Croft, I'll be dead or I'll wish I was dead,--it all comes to
+the same thing," cried poor Susan.
+
+"Auntie," said Jane firmly, "I shan't leave you alone with Aunt Matilda
+and Mrs. Croft, you needn't fear."
+
+"Oh," said Susan, her face undergoing a lightning transformation, "if
+you'll stay here, I'll keep Mrs. Croft or anybody else, with pleasure."
+
+"What, even me?" laughed Lorenzo.
+
+"I'd like to keep you," said Susan warmly. "I think you're one of the
+nicest young men I ever knew."
+
+"I'd like to stay," said Lorenzo, looking at Jane.
+
+She lifted up her eyes and they had a peculiar expression.
+
+Just then Emily Mead came in. "Only think," she said, directly greetings
+were over, "people say Mrs. Croft drew all their money out of the bank
+before she left. Everybody says she's deserted her mother-in-law
+completely."
+
+"Jane, it really is so," said Susan; "she really is gone."
+
+Jane looked steadily into their three faces. "If I begin worrying and
+doubting, of course there'll be a chance to worry and trouble, because
+I'm the strongest of you all," she said gravely, "but I won't go down
+and live in the world of worry and trouble under any circumstances. I
+know that only good can come of Mrs. Croft's being here. I _know_ it!"
+
+"I wish that I could learn how you manage such faith," said the young
+artist. "I'd try it on myself,--yes, I would, for a fact."
+
+"It's not so easy," said Jane, looking earnestly at him. "It means just
+the same mental discipline that physical culture means for the muscles.
+It takes time."
+
+"But I'd like to learn," said Lorenzo.
+
+"So would I!" said Emily Mead.
+
+"I've begun already," said Susan; "every time I think of old Mrs. Croft
+I say: 'She's here for some good purpose, God help us.'"
+
+"Tell me," said Emily Mead, "what possessed you to have her, anyway?
+Everybody's wondering."
+
+"Jane thought that it would be a nice thing to do. And so we did it."
+
+"Do you always do things if you think of them?" Emily asked Jane.
+
+"I'm taught that I must."
+
+"Taught?"
+
+"It's part of my sunshine work."
+
+"That's why she's here," interposed Susan; "she thought of me and came
+right along."
+
+Emily looked thoughtful. "I wonder if I could learn," she said.
+
+"Anybody can learn anything," said Lorenzo.
+
+"Wouldn't it be nice to all learn Jane's religion?"
+
+"I've got it most learned," said Susan, "I'm to where I'm most ready to
+stand Matilda, if only we don't have to keep old Mrs. Croft."
+
+"What is old Mrs. Croft doing now?" Emily asked suddenly.
+
+"She's still asleep. She says that she sleeps late."
+
+Then Emily rose to go. Lorenzo Rath rose and left with her.
+
+"Jane," said Susan solemnly, after they were alone, "I'm afraid that
+religion of yours ain't as practical as it might be, after all. It's got
+us old Mrs. Croft, and I ain't saying a word, but now I'm about positive
+it's going to lose you that young man. You could have him if you'd just
+exert yourself a little, and you don't at all."
+
+"I couldn't have him, Auntie."
+
+"Yes, you could. Don't tell me. I know a young man when I see one, and
+Mr. Rath's a real young man. He loves you, Jane, just because nobody
+could help it, and if you weren't always so busy, he'd get on a good
+deal faster."
+
+"I can't marry, Aunt Susan." Jane, with Madeleine's secret high in her
+heart, was very busy setting the kitchen to rights. "Some people are not
+meant to have homes of their own. It's the century."
+
+"Fiddle for the century," said Susan, with something almost like
+violence. "I'm awful tired of all this hash and talk about the century.
+About the only thing I've had to think of since Matilda made up her mind
+I was too sick to get up, was what I read in newspapers about the
+troubles of the century. Centuries is always in hot water till they're
+well over, and then they get to be called the good old days. I guess
+days ain't so different nor centuries either nor women neither. Fiddle
+for all this kind of rubbish,--it's no use except to upset a nice girl
+like you and keep her from marrying a nice young fellow like Mr. Rath.
+Girls don't know nothing about love no more. Mercy on us, why, it's a
+kind of thing that makes you willing to go right out and hack down trees
+for the man."
+
+Jane looked a little smiling and a little wistful. "I'll tell you what
+it is, Auntie," she said; "when my father died he left a debt that ought
+to be paid, and I promised him I'd pay it. I couldn't marry--it wouldn't
+be honest."
+
+Susan's eyes flew pitifully open. "Good heavens, mercy on us, no; then
+you never can't marry, sure and certain. There never was the man yet so
+good he wouldn't throw a thing like that in a woman's teeth. It's a
+man's way, my dear, and a wife ought not to mind, but one of the
+difficulties of being a wife is that you always do mind."
+
+"I know that I should mind," said Jane quietly, "and, anyway, I don't
+want to marry. I'm much happier going about on my sunbeam mission,
+trying to help others a bit here and a bit there." She smiled bravely as
+she spoke, for all that it takes a deal of training in truth not to
+waver or quaver in such a minute. She had to think steadily along the
+lines which she had worked so hard to build into every brain-cell and
+spirit-fiber of her make-up. "Auntie," she went on then, after a brief
+reflection that he who works in truth's wool works without fear as to
+the breaking of one single thread, "you and I are trying dreadfully
+hard--trying with all our might to do exactly right. We're trying to
+break your chains by the only way in which material chains can be
+broken,--by breaking those of others. We can't go astray. If old Mrs.
+Croft should stay here till she died, and if I should work till I died
+at paying the debts of others, she'd stay for some good purpose, and I'd
+be working in the same way. Be very sure of that."
+
+For a second Susan looked cheered--but only for a second. Then, "That's
+all very well for you and me, who want to be uplifted--at least you want
+to be, and I think maybe I'll like it after I get a little used to it.
+But Matilda doesn't know or care anything about planes, and it's Matilda
+I keep thinking of." There was another pause, and then she added: "And
+it's Matilda I'll have to live with,--along with old Mrs. Croft. Oh,
+Jane, I'd be so much happier if you'd marry Mr. Rath and let me come and
+live with you!"
+
+Jane went and put her arms about her. "Auntie, it isn't easy to learn my
+way of looking at things, because you have to keep at them till they're
+so firm in you that nothing from outside can ever shake or uproot them.
+But what I believe is just so firm with me, and I won't give anything
+up,--not even about Mrs. Croft. We're all right and she's all right and
+everything's all right, and I don't need to marry any one."
+
+Susan winked mournfully. "If there was only some way to meet Matilda on
+her way home and kind of get that through her head before she saw Mrs.
+Croft. You see, she always shuts that room up cold winters and keeps
+cold meat in there. I've had many a good meal out of that room."
+
+"You must not cast about for ways and means," said Jane firmly. "Life is
+like a sunshiny warm day, and our part is to breathe and feel and thank
+God,--not to look for the sun to surely cease shining."
+
+"But it does stop," wailed Susan, "often."
+
+"Yes, thank Heaven," said Jane, "if it didn't, we'd be burnt up alive by
+our own vitality."
+
+"Oh, dear," said Susan briefly, "you've an answer for everything. Well,
+let's get dinner."
+
+They went into the kitchen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+EMILY'S PROJECT
+
+
+AFTER dinner that day Emily Mead came with her work. Emily Mead was one
+of those nondescript girls who seem to spring up more and more thickly
+in these troublous, churned-up times of ours.
+
+Too pretty to be plain, too unattractive to be beautiful. Too well-to-do
+to need to work, too poor to attain to anything for which she longed.
+Too clever to belong to her class, not clever enough to rise above it.
+Altogether a very fit subject for Jane to "sunshine," as her aunt put
+it.
+
+"How do you get along with old Mrs. Croft?" she asked, directly she was
+seated.
+
+"She's asleep yet," Jane said; "she was so restless all night."
+
+"She always sleeps days and is awake all night; didn't you know that
+before?" queried Emily, in surprise. "Some one ought to have told you."
+
+"It doesn't matter," said Jane serenely. There was never any bravado in
+her serenity; it was quite sincere.
+
+"That was what made Katie so mad," Emily continued. "She said it gave
+her her days, to be sure, but, as she couldn't very well sleep, too, all
+day, she never really had any time herself."
+
+"We'll get along all right," said Jane quietly; "old people have ways,
+and then they change and have other ways, and the rest must expect to be
+considerate."
+
+"Mercy on us, I wonder what she'll change to next," said Susan, with
+feeling. She had just returned from listening at the invalid's door.
+
+"Don't worry, Auntie,--just remember!" Jane's smile was at once bright
+and also a bit admonitory.
+
+"I'm trying to believe that everything's all right always, too," said
+Susan to Emily, "but, oh, my!"
+
+They went out on the shady side of the house to where a little table
+stood, which was made out of a board nailed into a cut-off tree stump.
+Jane and Emily carried chairs, and Susan brought her darning basket. It
+was delightfully pleasant. From time to time Jane or her aunt slipped in
+and listened at the door, but old Mrs. Croft slept on like a baby.
+
+"I do wonder if Katie Croft has really gone for good!" Emily said to
+Susan, while Jane was absent on one of these errands.
+
+"I can't trust myself even with my own opinions," said Susan reservedly;
+"I haven't much time to get changed before Matilda comes, you know, and
+I want to believe in Jane's religion if I can. It's so kind of warm and
+comforting. I like it."
+
+"Jane," Emily said, turning towards her when she returned, "I've come
+to-day on an awfully serious errand, and I want you to help me."
+
+"I will certainly, if I can. What is it?"
+
+"Do you really believe that wanting anything shows that one is going to
+get it? You said something like that the other day."
+
+"I know that one can get anything one wants," Jane answered gravely; "of
+course the responsibility of some kinds of wanting is awfully heavy. But
+the law doesn't alter."
+
+"Can you explain it to me?"
+
+"Yes, that's it," said Susan, "you tell us how to manage. I want to get
+something myself. Or I mean it's that I want something I've got to go
+away again. Or I guess I'd better not try to say what I mean."
+
+"But you won't either of you understand what I mean, when I tell you,"
+said Jane. "It's just as I said before, it takes a lot of study to get
+your brain-cells to where they can hold an idea that's really new to
+you. Heads are like empty beehives,--you have to have the comb before
+you can have the honey, and every different kind of study requires a
+different kind of cells just for its use alone. When things don't
+interest us, it's because the brain-cells in regard to that subject have
+never been developed. That's all. That's what they taught me."
+
+"I think it's interesting," said Susan. "I always thought that the
+inside of my head was one thing that I didn't need to bother about.
+Seems it isn't, after all. Go on, you Sunshine Jane, you."
+
+"I'm like your aunt. I thought that what I thought was the last thing
+that mattered," said Emily.
+
+"Everything matters. There's nothing in this world that doesn't matter,
+because this world is all matter. Anything that doesn't matter must be
+spirit. Don't you see that when you say and really mean that a thing
+doesn't matter, you mean that to you it isn't material,--that it's no
+part of your world?"
+
+"Dear me, I never thought of that," said Susan, "then I suppose as long
+as things do matter to us, it means we just hang on to them and hold
+them for all we're worth."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"But, Jane, thoughts can't matter much? Or we can forget things."
+
+"There isn't anything that we can think of at all that we are ever free
+not to think about again--that is, if it's a good thought," said Jane.
+"If a thought comes to us at all, it comes with some responsibility
+attached. Either we are meant to gain strength by dismissing it, if it
+seems wrong, or it's our duty to do something with it, if it's right.
+Most people's minds are all littered up with thoughts that they never
+either use or put away. That's what makes them so stupid."
+
+"Goodness!" exclaimed Susan. "Why, I never put a thought away in my
+life,--not as I know of."
+
+"I've never thought anything at all about my thoughts," said Emily,
+looking rather startled.
+
+"Lots of people don't," said Jane; "they act just as a woman would in
+making a dress, if she cut it out a bit now and a bit then without ever
+laying the pattern back even, and then joined it anywhere any time, and
+then was surprised when it didn't even prove fit to wear--not to speak
+of looking all witched."
+
+"Is that what ails some lives?" Emily asked, looking yet more startled.
+
+"It's what ails almost every life. It's what makes 'I didn't think' the
+worst confession in the world. A man driving a motor with his eyes shut
+wouldn't be a bit worse. Life's a great powerful force always rushing
+on, and we swing into the tide and never bother to row or to steer or to
+see that our boat is water-tight."
+
+"You make me feel awful, Jane. As if I'd been lazy, staying in bed so.
+And it was the only way."
+
+"You couldn't do any better, Auntie. At least you weren't doing anything
+wrong. Being moored in a little, quiet cove is better than being adrift
+and slamming into the boats of others."
+
+"I'd really have had to think more about Matilda's thoughts than my own,
+if I'd known. I'd never have had time for much thinking as I pleased in
+the way you say; I was always jumping up and flopping down."
+
+"Jane," said Emily earnestly, "then every thought matters?"
+
+"Yes, or matterates." Jane smiled. "If a thought doesn't produce good,
+it'll surely produce bad,--it's got to do something. You plant your
+thoughts in time just as one plants seed in the ground, and any further
+thoughts of the same kind add to its strength until enough strength
+causes an appearance in this world."
+
+"You really believe that?"
+
+"I know it. I know it so well that I think that every seed that's ever
+fallen was a lesson that we were too stupid to learn. Every time a seed
+fell and germinated, God said: 'There, that's the very plainest teaching
+on earth. Can't you see?' Sometimes I think the world's all a book for
+us to learn heaven in, just as our bodies explain our souls to us."
+
+Susan looked at Emily in an awed way. "I guess I can get to believe it
+all," she said, in a low tone; "it sounds so plain when you stop and
+think of it."
+
+"I'll try to believe it," said Emily, "but what I care most about is to
+learn how to get what you want?"
+
+Jane considered. "That comes ever so far along. You have to learn to get
+what you want out of yourself before you can be upon the plane where you
+naturally get what you want, because you are too far on to want what you
+couldn't get."
+
+Emily didn't understand and didn't care. "Do tell me how it's done,
+anyway," she begged eagerly.
+
+"I don't know whether what I say will have any meaning for you, but I'll
+say it, anyway. You'll have to know that it's what I believe and live
+by, and if you're to believe it and live by it, it will come to you
+quite easily, and if not it's because it isn't for you yet."
+
+"I mean to believe," said Emily firmly. "I want something, and I'll do
+anything to get it."
+
+Jane shook her head. "That's the very hardest road to come by," she
+said, "unless it's some overcoming in yourself that you are wanting. You
+see, the very first step has to be the conquering of ourselves, not the
+asking for material things. You have to open a channel for the spirit,
+and then the material flows through afterwards, as a matter of course.
+But if you've gone on a good ways, you don't think of getting _things_
+at all; you just want opportunities to grow, and you know that what you
+need for life will keep coming."
+
+"But it doesn't with lots of people," said Emily. "Just look at the
+poor--and the suffering."
+
+"They aren't living according to this law," said Jane. "They're living
+on another plane. There are different planes."
+
+"Don't you see," interposed Susan, "we asked Mrs. Croft because it would
+get me on a plane where, when Matilda came back, she wouldn't mind so
+many changes."
+
+Emily looked inquiring. "A different plane?"
+
+"Yes," said Jane, "you can lift yourself straight out of any circle of
+conditions by suddenly altering all your own ideas--if you've strength
+to do so."
+
+"I'd never have asked Mrs. Croft alone by myself, you know," said Susan;
+"nobody that looked at things the way other folks do, would. But Jane
+looks at everything different from everybody else. She said it would be
+a quick way of being different. I guess she's right."
+
+"I never heard any ideas like that."
+
+"But they aren't new," said Jane; "they're older than the hills. God
+made the world and then gave every man dominion over his world. We all
+have the whole of _our_ world to rule. This way of looking at things is
+new to you, but there are thousands and thousands of people proving it
+true every day. All the old religions teach it, and all the new
+religions bid you live it or they won't be for you. They don't kill men
+for not believing now. They just let them live and suffer and go
+blundering on. Why"--Jane grew suddenly pink with fervor--"why,
+everywhere I look, almost, I see just lovely chances being let die,
+because people won't fuss to tend them. People are too careless and too
+thoughtless. The truth is so plain that the very word 'thoughtless'
+fairly screams what's the matter to every one, but hardly any one
+bothers."
+
+"But the people who believe as you do,--do they all get everything that
+they want?" asked Emily.
+
+"Or else they want what they get," said Jane; "it comes to exactly the
+same thing when you begin to understand. The beauty of every step nearer
+God is the new learning of how exactly right his world is managed. All
+my old puzzles have been cleared up, and it's so wonderful. Why, I used
+to think that when beautiful, dear little children died it was awful;
+but now I know that they came to help and teach others, and that when
+they'd spread their lesson to those others, they didn't need lessons
+themselves and just left the school and went back into the beautiful
+world of Better Things. It was such a help to me to know why splendid
+men and women who were needed went so suddenly sometimes; it's because
+they're needed much more elsewhere and respond to that call of duty at
+once. I don't think of death as anything dreadful now; I think of it as
+a door that will open and close very easily for me."
+
+"It's one door that Matilda liked to keep setting open," said
+Susan,--"oh, dear me, Jane, I'm trying to grow brain-cells and be a
+credit to you, and I can't think of anything but old Mrs. Croft. Perhaps
+she's woke up."
+
+Jane rose and went into the house.
+
+"Do you think you can take it all in?" Emily asked, slowly and
+thoughtfully.
+
+"I'm doing my best," said Susan, "she's so happy and so good I think she
+must know what she's talking about."
+
+Jane came back. "She's still sleeping," she said; "don't you worry, dear
+Auntie."
+
+"I can't help it," said Susan. "I've dodged about for so long and played
+things were so that weren't so, that I guess I'm pretty much out of
+tune, and it'll be a little while before I can stop worrying."
+
+"No, you aren't out of tune," said Jane, smiling at her affectionately,
+"or if you are, just say you're in tune and you will be, right off."
+
+"Do you believe that?" Emily asked.
+
+"Why, of course. I know it absolutely for myself, and I know that it's
+equally true for others if they have the strength to declare it."
+
+"But how?"
+
+"How! Why, because every declaration of good is spiritual, and proves
+that you are one with your soul and master over your body, just as false
+declarations make you one with your body and take away all power from
+your soul. That's how mental cures work. When anybody says 'I am well,'
+she declares souls can't be ill, and she makes Truth stronger by adding
+her strength to its strength. But when a man says 'I am ill,' he
+declares a lie, for souls can't be ill, and so he's claiming not to be
+spiritual, but just to be his own body. It's as if a weaver stopped
+weaving and said: 'I've broken several threads, and _I'm_ going to be
+imperfect, and _I_ won't bring any price, and _I'll_ only be fit to cut
+up into cleaning cloths.' What would you think of him? You'd say: 'Why,
+that's only an hour's work in cloth and can be put aside without further
+thought. Just go right on and with your skill and judgment make the next
+piece perfect. It was never any of it _you_; it was the stuff you were
+making.' Bodies are the stuff we are making."
+
+Emily laid down her work. "Jane, that's wonderful," she said solemnly.
+"You put that so that I really got hold of it. I understand exactly what
+you mean, and if only everybody else did!"
+
+"But nobody else really matters to you," said Jane; "all that matters to
+you is that you believe. They have their lives--you have yours."
+
+Emily was looking very earnest. "I'm going to try," she said, rising.
+"I'm going to try. I must go now, but I'm going home to go to work in my
+world."
+
+Jane walked with her to the gate. "I'll help you all I can," she said,
+"I'm so glad you're interested. It makes life so splendid."
+
+Emily stopped and took her hand.
+
+"Jane," she said, "I want to tell you something. I want to
+marry Mr. Rath. I think he's the nicest man I ever saw. Do you
+really--really--believe that I can, if I learn to think as you do?"
+
+Jane turned white beneath the other's eyes. "Why, but don't you
+know--don't you _see_ that he's in love?"
+
+"In love! With you?"
+
+"With me,--oh, _no_. With Madeleine."
+
+"Oh, no, he's not in love with her," said Emily decidedly; "I know that.
+I know that perfectly well."
+
+"They knew one another before they came here, you know."
+
+"Why, I see them round town together all hours," said Emily; "they're
+like brother and sister, they're not one bit in love. I thought that
+perhaps it was you."
+
+"Oh, dear, no--I can't marry. I never even think of it."
+
+"Don't you use any of your ideas with him?"
+
+"No, indeed! I never ask anything for myself any more. I just ask to
+manifest God's will,--to help in any of His work that offers."
+
+"You're awfully good, dear. But, honestly, do you think that I could
+surely get him if I tried?"
+
+"Why, the law is certain, but"--Jane spoke gently--"you're so far from
+understanding it yet. I only told you a little. It takes ever so long to
+get one's mind built to where it will grasp an ideal and hold it without
+wavering once. There's such a lot I didn't tell you; I couldn't in those
+few minutes. I just showed you the picture, and you have to work hard
+till you learn how to paint it. You see, a wish is like blowing a
+bubble, and if you add wishes and more wishes, you gradually change the
+bubble into a solid mold, which is a real thing of spirit but empty of
+material; then, if you keep it solid and firm, the fact of it is real
+spiritually, and a vacuum as to matter makes the matter just _have_ to
+fill it, and it is that filling into the mold shaped by our thoughts
+that makes what we see and live here in this world. The world is all
+matter circulating in thought-molds. Anything that you carefully and
+steadily and consistently think out must become manifest. God
+manifesting His will means that. We are His will. And the nearer we
+approximate to the highest in Him, the more we can manifest ourselves.
+That's why very good people are seldom rich; they want to manifest in
+deeds and not in things. That's why they never keep money--it only
+represents to them the need of others. If you really and truly love Mr.
+Rath, and feel it steadily and steadfastly your mission to make him very
+happy, of course it will be, even though he loved some one else. But to
+want a man who loved some one else wouldn't be possible to any one who
+believed in this teaching. That's where it is, you see. When you get
+power, you never want to do evil with it. Power from God never manifests
+in evil. When you are where you can get whatever you want, it simply
+means that you are living where only good can come, and where you are
+able to see it coming."
+
+Emily stood perfectly still, looking downwards. Then suddenly she burst
+into violent sobs. "Oh, I feel so small, so mean--so wicked. It isn't as
+you feel a bit with me. I just want to get out of this stupid town--and
+he's so good-looking!"
+
+Jane's eyelids fell.
+
+"I feel so mean and petty," Emily went on, pressing her hands over her
+face. "I could never be good like you. I can't understand. I just want
+to be married. I'm so tired of my life."
+
+"Well," said Jane, with steady firmness, "why don't you go to him and
+talk it all over nicely? As you would with Madeleine or me. Perhaps that
+would be best."
+
+"Do you really think so?" said Emily, lifting her eyes; "do you believe
+that a girl can go to a man and be honest with him, just as a man can
+with a woman?"
+
+"I couldn't," said Jane, "because I wouldn't want to, but if you want to
+do it, I don't see why you can't."
+
+"But why wouldn't you?"
+
+"Because I get my things that other way,--simply by asking God to guide
+me towards His will and guide me from mistake."
+
+"Did you do that about asking old Mrs. Croft?"
+
+"Certainly. I do it about everything. I live by that rule now. I've
+absolute faith in God's guidance."
+
+Emily looked at her. "It must be beautiful," she said, "and you really
+think that it would be all right for me to go and talk to him, do you?"
+
+"Yes," said Jane slowly. "I think that it would be best all round."
+
+"After all, this is the woman's century," said Emily, with a sudden
+energy quite unlike her previous interest. "I don't know why I
+shouldn't."
+
+"I think that the best way to handle all our problems is to let them
+flow naturally to their finish," said Jane; "dammed or choked rivers
+always make trouble."
+
+"I should like to say just what I felt to a man just once," said Emily
+thoughtfully. "It would do me a world of good."
+
+"Then say it," said Jane. "Only are you really sure that he's not in
+love with Madeleine?"
+
+"Oh, I'm positive as to that."
+
+"Then go ahead."
+
+They parted, and Jane returned to the house. She was not so entirely
+spiritual that she could repress a very human kind of smile over Emily's
+project.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+EMILY IS HERSELF FREELY
+
+
+AS Emily turned from Mrs. Ralston's gate, she felt more buoyant
+happiness than anything in life had ever hitherto brought her. She felt
+licensed on high authority to revel in the hitherto forbidden. She
+wanted Lorenzo Rath, and she thought that she understood how to get him.
+We may follow her thought and then we will follow where it led her, for
+in all the surge of the new teaching there is no lesson greater to learn
+than this which Emily had failed to grasp,--that the possession of tools
+does not make one a carver; that all things spiritual must be learned
+exactly as all things material. One may have so lived previously that
+the learning is a mere showing how, but without experience nothing,
+either spiritual, mental, or physical, can be efficaciously handled.
+When people declare that something is not true because they tried it and
+it failed to work, remember Emily Mead. Emily had acquired just one idea
+out of Jane's exposition: "That you could get anything that you want."
+It is the idea that hosts of people find most attractive in this world,
+quite irrespective of its correlative esotericism,--that the soul
+growing towards infinite power learns every upward step by resolutely
+liking what it gets. No man can climb a stair by hacking down every step
+passed; he climbs by being so firm upon each step that he can poise his
+whole weight thereon as he mounts. It is part of the supremely beautiful
+logic of the highest teaching that the same effort which Jesus
+made--every great teacher has made--is sure to make, too. We must see
+the Divine embodied in the Present and the Weak and the Humble, before
+in our own spirit we may deal, for the good of all, with the Future and
+Strength and Power. When one seizes upon anything God-given as a means
+of acquiring earth-gifts, one has but seized the empty air; the idea and
+then ideal have never been in the possession of such an one. There is
+nothing shut away from those who really make God's teaching a vital part
+of themselves, but such men and women are no longer keen to selfishly
+possess, and the good which they reach out for flows easily in for their
+further distribution; in other words, they become what we were all
+designed to be,--the outward manifestations of God's purpose, the living
+breathing, blessed servants of His will.
+
+How far this interpretation lay from poor Emily's comprehension the
+reader knows.
+
+She hurried along, her whole being bounding with joy over the simplicity
+of the new lesson. It all seemed almost too story-book-like to be
+happening in her stupid, commonplace life. She had spent so many long
+hours in thinking over how things would never happen for her, that she
+had entirely lost faith in their ever changing their ways and now, all
+of a sudden, here was a complete reversal. Bonds were turned into wings;
+that unattainable being, a live man, was not only at hand, but
+available; she felt herself bidden not to doubt her power; she judged
+herself advised to say frankly all the things that girls may never say.
+This was the day of feminine freedom. To wish was to have. What one
+wanted was the thing that was best for one. Emily--with all of Jane's
+ideas swimming upside down in her head--felt superbly joyous and
+confident. After all, being alive was a pretty good thing.
+
+She turned a corner into the lane that led in a roundabout way to her
+mother's back garden gate and walked swiftly. She was a fine, straight
+girl with a lithe, springy walk. Perhaps Lorenzo Rath could not have
+done better, from most standpoints, than to marry such an one. Many men
+do worse. And there was old Mr. Cattermole's money, too. Some of these
+views float in all human atmosphere to-day--float there securely,
+because the world is a practical world, and an automobile is obvious,
+while love and trust are absolutely unknown to many. "Ye cannot serve
+God and Mammon too," and Mammon is very plain and practical, rolling on
+rubber tires to the best restaurant. Emily could not have reduced her
+roseate visions to any such sordid reasoning, but love to her meant
+leaving town and having a good-looking and lively young man to take her
+about. This was not really love, any more than the means by which she
+expected to acquire it were the religion taught by Jane. We hear much of
+the downfall of love and the downfall of religion in these days, but no
+one even stops to realize that religion and love cannot possibly even
+shake on their thrones. Their counterfeits may crumble and tumble, but
+real truth can never fail. It was the counterfeits at which Emily, like
+many another, grasped eagerly.
+
+So now she was tripping lightly along and, turning the twist by the
+great chestnut tree, her heart gave a sudden flop, for just ahead she
+saw her quarry. He was propped against the fence, using his knees for an
+easel, while he made a rapid water-color sketch. He was good at those
+little impressions of an artistic bit, that nearly always show forth in
+youth a great artist struggling to grow.
+
+Emily started, for she was very close to him before she saw him, and her
+rampant thoughts led her to blush, apologize, and stammer precisely as
+she might have done, had her sex never advanced at all but merely
+remained the dominant note that they have always been.
+
+"Why, Mr. Rath," and then she paused.
+
+Lorenzo--who wanted to finish his sketch--nodded pleasantly without
+looking up. "Grand day for walking," he said, as a supremely polite
+hint, and continued to work rapidly.
+
+Emily went close beside him and looked downward upon the canvas. "How
+pretty! I wish I knew more about pictures. What is that brown hill? You
+can't see a hill from here."
+
+"That's a cow," said Lorenzo, painting very fast indeed, "but don't ask
+me to explain things, for I can't work and talk at the same time."
+
+Emily sank down beside him with a pleasant sense of proprietorship now
+that she could get him by will power alone. "I've just come from Mrs.
+Ralston's. They're in such distress over old Mrs. Croft."
+
+"Is she worse?" The artist forgot to paint all of a sudden, and turned
+quickly towards her.
+
+"Oh, no,--she was asleep when I left. Jane didn't seem a bit troubled,
+but Mrs. Ralston is almost wild over not knowing what to say to her
+sister when she comes back and finds that awful old woman there. It's a
+terrible situation. Everybody knows that young Mrs. Croft has run away.
+She just hated to stay and now she's gone. Isn't it awful?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know," said Lorenzo, suddenly regaining his deep interest
+in work, "I have a distinct feeling that Miss Grey will bring things out
+all right for most people always. It's her way."
+
+"Yes, she's a dear girl," said Emily, and paused to have time to
+consider things a little while, feeling that the conversation should be
+continued by the man. The man didn't continue the conversation, however,
+merely wielding his brush and looking completely absorbed.
+
+Then she remembered her mission. "Mr. Rath, do you believe in frankness
+always?"
+
+"I wish that I did."
+
+"But don't you?"
+
+"Civilization wouldn't stand for it."
+
+"Perhaps not every one could bear it, but some could. I could, I'm
+sure."
+
+"Are you so sure?"
+
+"Yes, I am sure. I was talking with Jane alone just at the gate before I
+left, and she believes that frankness is best always."
+
+"It's easiest, certainly." Lorenzo raised his eyebrows a little
+impatiently, but she paid no attention.
+
+"Do you think so?"
+
+"Why, of course. When one wants to be let alone and blurts out, 'Let me
+alone,' why, one gets let alone."
+
+"Oh, but that would be impolite," said Emily, feeling that for an artist
+he used very crude metaphor. "Of course, Jane and I were not talking
+about that kind of people, or that kind of ways. We were talking of
+people like you and me--nice people, you know. Jane advised me to be
+quite frank with you."
+
+Lorenzo opened his eyes widely. "About what, please?"
+
+"Oh, about all things. You see I meet so few men, and men are so
+interesting, and I enjoy talking with them. I've read a good deal, and I
+don't care for the life in this place. I want to leave it dreadfully."
+
+"So do I," said the artist. "I quite agree with you there."
+
+"You see, Jane has been teaching me to understand life, and I am getting
+the feeling that I am meant for something else than just helping my
+mother, wandering about town, and going to church. I'm very tired and
+restless."
+
+Lorenzo painted fast.
+
+"Mr. Rath, if you--a man--felt as I do, what would you do?"
+
+"Get out."
+
+"But where?"
+
+"Everybody can find a way, if they really want to."
+
+"It isn't as if I had talent, you see."
+
+"A good many people haven't talent and yet do very well, indeed."
+
+"But I don't want to be a shop-girl or anything like that."
+
+"Naturally not."
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"I'm very much interested in the progress women are making," said Emily.
+"I read all I can get hold of about it. Don't you think it remarkable?"
+
+"I don't think much about it, and I skip everything on the subject."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Rath!"
+
+"I'm a jealous brute. I don't like to realize that a woman can do
+everything that is a man's work, even to the verge of driving him to
+starvation, while he can't do any of her work under any circumstances."
+
+"He could wash and cook and sweep."
+
+"Oh, he's invented machines to save her that."
+
+"I see you've no sympathy with the advanced woman."
+
+"Yes, I have. I'm very sorry for her. A nice mess the next generation
+will be."
+
+"Oh, dear."
+
+"My one comfort is that boys take after their mothers, and I'm looking
+to see a future generation of men so strong-minded that they smash
+ladies back to where they belong--in the rear with the tents."
+
+"Goodness, Mr. Rath, then you don't like any of the ways things are
+going?"
+
+"Of course I don't. Once upon a time a busy man's time was sacred; now
+any woman who feels like taking it, appropriates it mercilessly."
+
+"I should lock the door, if I felt that way. But now really, don't you
+think that we might speak quite openly and frankly?"
+
+Lorenzo began to put up his paints.
+
+"I want to get to the bottom of a lot of things."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"You're the first man that I've ever known that I felt could understand
+what I meant, and I do want to know the man's side of things."
+
+"A man hasn't got any side nowadays. He's not allowed one."
+
+Emily looked a little surprised. "You speak bitterly."
+
+"I think I've a right. Men are still observing the rules of the game and
+suffering bitter consequences."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Women with homes have gone into the world to earn some extra pocket
+money until they've knocked the bottom out of all wage systems, and you
+never can make the wildest among them see that women can't expect men's
+pay unless they do men's work. A man's work is only half of it in
+business, the other half is supporting a family. Women want equal pay
+and to spend the result as they please. The man's wages go usually on
+bread and the woman's on bonnets, to speak broadly. He goes to his own
+home at night and has every single bill for four to ten people. She goes
+to somebody else's house and has only her own needs to face, with
+perhaps some contribution towards those off somewhere."
+
+"Dear me," said Emily, "I never thought of that."
+
+"No," said Lorenzo, snapping the lid of his color box shut, "women don't
+think of that. But men do."
+
+"But surely there are loads and loads of women who do support families."
+
+"Yes, and who are dragged down by the injustice of what economists call
+'The Law of Supplemented Earnings'!"
+
+Emily felt that the experience of conversing frankly with a live man was
+not exactly what she had anticipated. It certainly was in no way
+romantic. She felt baffled and a good deal chilled. The conversation had
+taken a horrid twist away from what she had intended.
+
+"You think that women have no right to go out in the world then?" she
+said. "You don't sympathize with the modern trend?"
+
+"I sympathize with nature and human nature," said Lorenzo, "but not with
+civilization." He rose to his feet.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Rath!" she looked upward, expecting to be assisted to rise.
+
+"I believe in life, lived by live things in the way God meant. I loathe
+this modern institution limping along with its burden of carefully fed
+and tended idiots and invalids and babies, better dead. I wish that I
+were a Zulu."
+
+"Good Heavens!"
+
+"Come," said the man, picking up his load, "we can go now."
+
+"Had you finished?" She scrambled to her feet.
+
+"I'd done all that I could under the circumstances."
+
+"I suppose the light changes so fast at this time...." Emily was quite
+unsuspicious and content. The intuition that used to reign supreme in
+women was especially lacking in her. She had not the least idea of what
+her presence meant to the unhappy artist.
+
+"Come, come," he repeated impatiently.
+
+They walked away then through the pretty winding lane.
+
+"It seems to me so awful that we are all so hopeless," Emily went on
+presently. "We are all put here and often see just what should be done
+and can't do it possibly."
+
+"I do exactly what I choose," said Lorenzo,--then he added: "as a usual
+thing."
+
+"You must be very happy." She paused. "I suppose that you have plenty of
+money to live as you please."
+
+"I'm fortunate enough not to have any."
+
+"Goodness!" the exclamation was sincere. The shock to Emily was
+dreadful. "Why do you call that fortunate?" she asked, after a little
+hasty agony of downfall as to rich and generous travel, spaced off by
+going to the theater.
+
+"Because it makes me know that I shall do something in the world. A very
+little money is enough to swamp a man nowadays, when the idea of later
+being supported by a woman is always a possibility. Oh," said Lorenzo,
+with sudden irritation, "if there weren't so many perfectly splendid
+women and girls in the world, I'd go off and become a Trappist.
+Everything's being knocked into a cocked hat. I've had girls practically
+make love to me. Disgusting."
+
+Emily felt her heart hammer hard. "You're very old-fashioned in your
+views," she said, a little faintly.
+
+They came out by her mother's back gate as she spoke.
+
+"Yes, I am," said Lorenzo, "I admit it."
+
+Mrs. Mead came running out of the back door. "Oh, Emily," she cried,
+"old Mrs. Croft is dead. Jane sent for the doctor--she sent a boy
+running--but she's dead. Wherever have you been for so long?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+JANE'S CONVERTS
+
+
+THE feelings which revolved around the dead body of old Mrs. Croft can
+be better imagined than described; everybody had wondered as to every
+contingency except this. In the midst of the confusion Jane moved
+quietly, a little white and with lips truly saddened. "And I meant to do
+such a lot for her,--I meant to help her so much," she murmured from
+time to time.
+
+The doctor, a ponderous gentleman of great weight in all ways, was very
+grave. The doctor said that he had warned the daughter of such a
+possible ending twenty years before. "Heart failure was _always_
+imminent," he declared severely, looking upon Jane, Susan, and Mrs.
+Cowmull, who had driven out with him and thus become instantly a
+privileged person. "She never ought to have been left alone a minute
+during these last forty years. Even if she had lived to be a hundred,
+the danger was always there. Such neglect is awful." He stopped and
+shook his head vigorously. "Awful," he declared again with emphasis,
+"awful!"
+
+"I didn't know that she had heart disease," said Jane.
+
+"No blame attaches to you," said the doctor, veering suddenly about as
+to the point in discussion; "nobody can blame you. I shall exonerate you
+completely. Of course, if you were not aware of the state of the case,
+you couldn't be expected to consider its vital necessities."
+
+"Oh, and it was so vital," sobbed Mrs. Cowmull. "Dear, sweet, old Mrs.
+Croft. Our sunbeam. And to go off like that. What good is life when
+people can die any minute. Oh! Oh!"
+
+There was a brief pause for silent sorrow.
+
+"I never looked for her to die," Mrs. Cowmull went on, shaking her head.
+"I always told Emily she'd outlive even Brother Cattermole. So many
+people will, you know. Dear, kind, loving friend! And now to think she's
+gone. I can't make it seem true. She's been alive so long. Seems only
+yesterday that I was up to see Katie about making a pie for the social,
+and our dear, sweet friend was singing her favorite song, _Captain Jinks
+of the Horse Marines_, all the time. What spirits she did have
+everywhere, except in her legs."
+
+Susan sat perfectly quiet. The doctor took Jane's arm and led her into
+the hall, there to speak of the first few necessary steps to be taken.
+Then he returned to the sitting-room, gathered up Mrs. Cowmull and
+departed, saying that he would send "some practical person at once."
+Mrs. Cowmull, who was widely known as having practical designs on him,
+did not resent the implied slur at her own abilities at all.
+
+After they were gone, there was a slight further pause, and then Susan
+rose slowly and went and laid her hands upon her niece's shoulders. "Oh,
+Jane, that religion of yours is a wonderful thing. I'm converted."
+
+Jane started. "Converted, Auntie?"
+
+"Yes. You were sure that it would come out all right and now see."
+
+Then a little white smile had to cross the young girl's face. "The poor
+old woman," she said gently, "to think of her lying there all alone all
+that day. I thought that she was sleeping so quietly."
+
+"Well, she was," said Susan.
+
+"Yes, of course she was. It's just our little petty way of thinking that
+masks all of what is truly sacred and splendid behind a veil of wrong
+thinking. Of course she was sleeping quietly."
+
+"It'll be sort of awful if they can't find Katie, though," Susan said
+next; "she left no address, and I think it's almost silly to try to hunt
+her up. I'm only too pleased to pay for the funeral, I'm sure, and there
+won't be any real reason for her returning."
+
+"No," said Jane thoughtfully.
+
+"And I really can look forward to Matilda's coming back now," pursued
+Susan. "I shan't mind a bit. Old Mrs. Croft has done that much good,
+anyway,--she's made me feel that Matilda's coming back is just nothing
+at all. You see you knew that everything was coming out all right, but
+I'd never had any experience with that kind of doings up till now, and
+it was all new to me. I was only thinking of when you and me would have
+to face Matilda. Matilda would have looked pretty queer if she'd come
+home to old Mrs. Croft to tend, and me up and lively."
+
+Jane didn't seem to hear. "I never once thought of her dying," she said
+again; "oh, dear, she had so much to learn. I expected to do her such a
+lot of good."
+
+"I wouldn't complain, Jane. I wouldn't find fault with a thing.
+Goodness, think if she'd begun singing _Captain Jinks_ last night. I've
+heard that sometimes she'd sing it six hours at a stretch."
+
+Jane shook her head. "Who is to go down and pack up that house?" she
+wondered.
+
+"Oh, the house can be rented furnished. It's a nice home for anybody,"
+said Susan, "and the rent'll buy her a lovely monument."
+
+The funeral was fixed for the third day, and some effort made to trace
+the daughter-in-law. But that lady evidently didn't care to be found.
+
+"It's hardly any use going to a great deal of expense to hunt her up,"
+Lorenzo said to Jane, "because the house is all there is, and a thorough
+search with detectives would just about eat it up alive."
+
+He probably was not wholly disinterested in his outlook, for the next
+bit of news that shook the community was that Lorenzo Rath had taken
+Mrs. Croft's house and moved in! Naturally Mrs. Cowmull was far from
+pleased. "Of course it means he's going to get married," she said to
+Miss Vane, "but what folly to take a house so soon. Who's to cook for
+him? And who's he going to marry? Not Emily, I know. She wouldn't have
+him."
+
+Miss Vane didn't know and didn't care. "Not my Madeleine," she said
+promptly, for her part; "she gets a letter every day. She'll marry that
+man."
+
+"Then it's Jane Grey," said Mrs. Cowmull. The town was greatly
+exercised, and not as positive as to Emily's state of mind as her aunt.
+
+"It'll be one of those two," Mrs. Ball said to Miss Crining (both very
+superior women and much given to meeting at the grocery store). "They're
+both after him. Emily chases him wherever he's posing woods and cows,
+and the little appetite that Mrs. Cowmull says he has, after going to
+Mrs. Ralston's, shows what they're thinking of."
+
+Miss Crining shook her head. "Once on a time girls were so sweet and
+womanly," she said.
+
+"My," said Mrs. Ball, "I remember when my husband asked me. I almost
+fell flat. I'd never so much as thought of him. I was engaged to a boy
+named Richie Kendall, and Mr. Ball was bald, and had all those children
+older than I was. There was some romance about life then."
+
+"And me," said Miss Crining, with a gentle sigh, "I never told a soul I
+was in love till months after he was drowned. I didn't know I was in
+love myself. Girls used to be like that, modest, timid."
+
+"Mr. Rath's very severe on girls nowadays, Mrs. Cowmull says," said Mrs.
+Ball; "but he's blind like all men are and will get hooked when he ain't
+looking, like they all do."
+
+But Lorenzo Rath didn't care about any of the gossip; he was so happy
+over his home. "I'll have a woman come and cook occasionally," he
+explained blithely to Jane and Susan, "and I'll get all my illustrating
+off my hands in short order."
+
+"Do you illustrate?" Jane asked.
+
+"Yes, that's my bread-and-butter job."
+
+"It'll be nice to have you in the neighborhood," said Susan placidly;
+"to think how it's all come about, too. I'm in heaven, no matter what
+I'm doing. I just sit about and pray to understand more of Jane's
+religion. I'm gasping it down in big swallows. I think it's so beautiful
+how she does right, without having to take the consequences."
+
+Jane laughed a little at that and went out to get supper.
+
+"She's a nice girl," Lorenzo said, looking after her; "when she leaves
+here, what shall we do?"
+
+"Oh, heavens, I don't know," said Susan. "I try never to think of it."
+
+"And what is she going to do?"
+
+"Oh, she's going back to her nursing, and I want to cry when I think
+that other people will have her around and I shan't. I'll be here alone
+with Matilda. Not but what I'm a good deal more reconciled than I was,
+when I thought I'd be alone with Matilda and old Mrs. Croft, too."
+
+"Yes, that would have been bad," said Lorenzo soberly. "Well, I must be
+running along. I've got a lot of work to do and a lot of thinking, too."
+
+Susan contemplated him earnestly. "Well," she said, with fervor, "when
+Jane goes, I'll still have you, anyway."
+
+Lorenzo, who had just risen, stopped short at that. "Do you know an idea
+that I'm just beginning to hold?" he asked suddenly.
+
+"No; how should I?"
+
+"It's this. Why shouldn't you and I try working Jane's Rule of Life a
+little? I'm dreadfully impressed with a lot she says. Suppose you and I
+pulled together and made up our minds that she was going to stay here in
+some perfectly right and pleasant and proper way. How, then? Don't you
+believe maybe we could manage it?"
+
+Susan stared. "But there couldn't be any perfectly right, pleasant,
+proper way," she said sadly, "because she wants to go."
+
+"I'd like to try."
+
+The aunt shook her head, sighing heavily. "It's no use. There isn't a
+way. Nothing could keep her. You see, she's got some family debts to
+pay, and she can't rest till she's paid 'em. I've begged and prayed her
+to stay; I've told her that her own flesh and blood has first claim, but
+she won't hear to any kind of sense."
+
+"I wish that we might try," Lorenzo insisted. "I've listened to her till
+I just about believe she really does know what she's talking about. It
+seems as if it's all so logical and after all, it's the way God made the
+world, surely."
+
+"Yes, I know, but you and I ain't equal to making worlds and won't be
+yet awhile."
+
+"I don't care," said the young man, turning towards the door, "I'm going
+at it alone, then. I don't believe that any one in the world needs her
+as much as I do, and I'm going to have her, and that by her own methods,
+too."
+
+Susan's mouth opened in widest amazement. "Mercy on us, you ain't
+proposing to her by way of me, are you? You don't mean that you really
+do want to marry her, do you?"
+
+"No, I don't mean that I want to marry her. I mean that I'm going to
+marry her."
+
+"Oh! Oh!" the aunt cried faintly. "Oh, goodness me! But I don't know why
+I'm surprised, for I said you was in love with her right from the start.
+I couldn't see how you could help but be."
+
+"Of course I couldn't help but be. Who could? She's one of the few real
+girls that are left in the world these days. The regular girls with
+lectures and diplomas and stiff collars have spoiled the sweetest things
+God ever made. Men don't thank Heaven for any of these late innovations
+wrought in womankind."
+
+"Oh, I know," said Susan; "my husband was old-fashioned, too. I"--she
+stopped short, because just then the door opened, and Jane came in.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+REAL CONVERSATION
+
+
+BOTH Susan and lover jumped rather guiltily, but Jane didn't notice. Or
+if she did notice, it did not impress her as anything worthy
+consideration. Among the little weeds in the rose-garden of life, did
+you ever think of what a common one is that bother over how people act
+when you "come in suddenly"? It is one of the petty tortures of everyday
+existence. "They stopped talking the instant they saw me!" "They both
+turned red, when I opened the door!" Well, what if they did? Is it a
+happening of the slightest moment? Unless one is guilty and in dread of
+discovery, what can it matter who chatters or of what? Stop and realize
+the real, separate, distinct meaning of the phrase "He was above
+suspicion," and see how it applies equally to being safe from the evil
+thoughts _of_ others as well as being safe from the holding of evil
+thoughts _towards_ others. If people change color at your approach and
+it makes you uncomfortable, you are not above suspicion either of or
+from others. Then look to it well that henceforth you manage to root out
+the double evil. There are a whole lot of very uncomfortable family
+happenings founded on the absolutely natural crossings of family
+intercourse, and the only possible way to go smoothly through such
+rapids is--as the Irishman said--to pick up your canoe and port around
+them. Don't go down to the level of anything beneath your own standard,
+because when you go down anywhere for any reason, your standard goes
+down with you. There is that peculiarity about standards that we keep
+them right with us, whether we go up or whether we go down.
+
+"Oh, Jane," said Susan, "we're having such an interesting time talking
+about your religion."
+
+Jane smiled. "I'm glad," she said simply. "Did you decide to absorb some
+of it?"
+
+"Oh, I'm converted, anyhow," said the aunt; "nobody could live in the
+house with you and not be, and Mr. Rath is going to try it for a while,
+too."
+
+Jane looked at Lorenzo a little roguishly. "It's a contagion in the
+town," she said; "I feel like an ancient missionary."
+
+"I know," said Susan, "holding up a cross. I've seen them in pictures."
+
+"Yes, and I hold up the cross, too," said Jane, "only most people
+wouldn't know it. Do you know what the cross meant in the long-ago
+times,--before the Christian era?" she asked Lorenzo quickly.
+
+"No."
+
+"It's the sunbeam transfixing and vivifying the earth-surface. It was
+the holiest symbol of the power of God. It embodied divine life
+descending straight from heaven and making itself a part of earth."
+
+"My!" exclaimed Susan, really amazed.
+
+Jane smiled and laid her hand upon her aunt's affectionately. "I love my
+cross," she said; "it's the greatest emblem that humanity can know, and,
+just because we are human, it will always keep coming back into our
+lives. Only it shouldn't be preached as a burden, it should be preached
+as an opportunity."
+
+Lorenzo sat watching her. A curious white look passed over his face. He
+felt for the moment that he hardly ought to dare hope that this girl who
+was so full of help for all should narrow her field of labor to just
+him.
+
+"You'll end by being like Dinah in _Adam Bede_," he said, trying to
+laugh; "you like to teach and preach, don't you?"
+
+"I don't know," said Jane; "it's always there, right on my heart and
+lips. I feel as if the personal 'I' was only its voice."
+
+"I don't think she's exactly human," said Susan meditatively; "she
+doesn't strike me so."
+
+"Don't say that, Auntie," said the young girl quickly; "I want to be
+human more than anything else. I don't want to make you or anybody feel
+that I'm not. It would be as dreadfully lonely to be looked upon as
+unhuman as to be looked upon as inhuman. I want to work and love and be
+loved."
+
+"But you're so different from everybody else," said her aunt.
+
+"But I don't want to be different. I want to just be a woman--or a
+girl."
+
+Some kindly intuition prompted Susan to change the subject. "Mr. Rath
+and I were talking about girls just now; we both thought what a pity it
+is that there are so few in these days."
+
+"I guess there are just as many girls as ever, only they aren't so
+conspicuous," Jane said, laughing at Lorenzo.
+
+"I think they're more conspicuous," said Lorenzo, "only they're the
+wrong kind."
+
+"I liked the old kind," said Susan, "the kind that stayed at home and
+wasn't wild to get away and be going into business."
+
+Jane laughed again. "You ought not to blame the girls, Auntie. Lots of
+them feel dreadfully over leaving home. But they have to go out and
+work. I had to, I know. It's some kind of big world-change that's
+pushing us all on into different places."
+
+"I wasn't thinking of girls who do something nice and quiet like you. I
+was thinking of the others."
+
+"They have to go, too," said Jane. "There's a fearful pressure that we
+don't understand behind it all. A restlessness and discontent that no
+one can alter."
+
+"Yes, that's true," said Lorenzo; "I never thought of it, but I can see
+that it is so now that you've put it into my head."
+
+"I've seen a lot of it. It's curious that it seems to come equally to
+women who want to work and to women who don't. I'm sure I never wanted
+to earn my living, but I was forced to it. And ever so many others are,
+too. It's rather an awful feeling that you're in the grip of a power
+that sweeps your life beyond your guidance. I'm trying hard to be big
+enough to live in this century, but I'd have liked the last better."
+
+"Don't you consider that there's anything voluntary in the way women are
+acting now?" Lorenzo asked, with real interest.
+
+"No, I'm afraid not. I think that there's something we don't understand,
+or grasp, or--or quite see rightly. I believe that everything is ordered
+and ordered ultimately for the best, and I see the problems of to-day as
+surely here by God's will and to be worked out by learning the conduct
+of the current instead of opposing it. But still I really don't
+understand it all as I wish that I did."
+
+"You really do feel God as a friend," said Lorenzo, watching her
+illuminated face. "He isn't just a religion to you, then?"
+
+"He's _everything_ to me," said Jane reverently, "Help and Sunlight and
+Strength and Daily Bread. That part of Him that is energy manifests in
+us in one way, and that part of Him that is divine right and justice
+manifests in us in another way. My part in this life is to learn to use
+them together, but they and all else are all God."
+
+Susan rose from her seat and stood contemplating her niece and Lorenzo
+by turns. "To think of talking like this in my house," she said; "this
+is what I call real conversation. I tell you, Jane, you certainly did
+lift me into another life when you invited old Mrs. Croft here. Every
+kind of religion sinks right into me now, and I can believe without the
+least bother. It's wonderful, but I'm going to have a short-cake for
+tea, so I'll have to go."
+
+She went away, and Lorenzo turned to the window.
+
+There was a little pause while he wondered about many things. Finally he
+held out his hand abruptly. "You've gone a long way, Jane," he said,
+"you've got a big grip on life and its meaning, and you make me
+understand as I never did before how hopeless it is to wish that the
+wheels of time will turn backward. But whatever you may preach, you only
+prove what I said and what I feel, that the old-fashioned, sweet,
+home-keeping, winning and winnable girl is gone, only she's gone in a
+different way from what most people understand. When she still exists,
+she exists for herself--not for a man."
+
+Jane felt her eyes fill suddenly. "Why do you say that?"
+
+"Because you prove it. A man might adore you, but he couldn't hope to
+get you. Could he?"
+
+Her eyes dropped. "Do you think that it's all any harder on the man than
+it is on the girl?" she asked. "If men feel bad nowadays over the
+changes, how do you suppose it is with the woman, unfitted to fight and
+forced into the battle. A woman isn't built as a man is; she's created
+for another kind of work, much harder and lasting, much longer than any
+man's labor. And she has to leave that work of her own either undone or
+only half-done and do things unsuited to her. Of course there are some
+girls and women who like it,--but most of them don't. Most of them feel
+dreadfully and would give anything to be able to stay in a home and live
+the life God meant to be woman's. There's always a pitiful story behind
+nine out of every ten bread-winning women, whether they go out washing
+or are artists like you. A woman never leaves her home until she's
+forced to do so."
+
+"Are you sure that you know what you're talking about? Aren't you an
+idealist? Look at Emily Mead--" he smiled in spite of his earnestness.
+"If she had a rag of a chance, she'd fly off to-morrow. It wouldn't take
+force."
+
+Jane remained carefully grave. "That's more her mother's fault than
+hers. Her mother has taught her that girls only live to marry."
+
+"And quite right, too. Don't you believe it?"
+
+"It used to be true, but it isn't now. A girl can't marry without a man,
+and the world's all disjointed. It's a part of that strange new leaven
+which causes civilization to drive men and women both to become homeless
+by separating them widely on earth."
+
+"Of course it's a governmental crime to send men by the hundreds of
+thousands to fight it out alone in Canada and leave their sisters to be
+old maids in England, but governments are pretty stupid, nowadays."
+
+"We are all pretty stupid. We build all our difficulties and then hang
+to them and their consequences for dear life. It's too bad in us."
+
+"Do you mean woman?"
+
+"No, I mean everybody."
+
+"It's depressing, isn't it?"
+
+"I don't think so. I think it's grand."
+
+"Grand!"
+
+"Yes, because I like to struggle in a big way. And then, too, if I'm a
+woman forced to work because I'm one part of the problem, I'm also
+gloriously happy in being part of the new upburst of comprehension
+that's balancing and will soon overbalance such a lot of the troubles."
+
+"You mean? Oh, you mean your way of looking at things."
+
+"Of course I do. I'm so blessedly glad of every circumstance in my life,
+because each one led to my getting hold of just what I have got hold of.
+I'm perfectly happy and perfectly content. It's so beautiful to be
+guided by a rule that never fails."
+
+Lorenzo couldn't but laugh. "I tell you what," he said gayly, "I'll let
+you into a little secret. I've made up my mind to go to work and learn
+how to work that game of yours myself. I want to be blessedly glad and
+gloriously happy, too."
+
+"You've got to be in earnest, you know," Jane said. "It's handling live
+wires to amuse oneself with any force of God, and will-power is more of
+a force than electricity."
+
+"Oh, I'm in earnest," said the artist. "I've made my picture--as you
+say--and I hang to it for grim death. Only I can't see, if you feel as
+you do about home and marriage, and all that, why you don't make one,
+too."
+
+"I'm making ever so many homes," said Jane. "I'm teaching home-making.
+That's a Sunshine Nurse's business, and it would be selfish in me to
+desert my task. Besides--" she paused.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE MOST WONDERFUL THING EVER HAPPENED
+
+
+SHE stopped and hesitated.
+
+"Yes," he said impatiently, "besides--?"
+
+"I wonder if it would be right to be quite frank with you?"
+
+"Nothing sincere is ever wrong. Of course you ought to be quite frank
+with me,--aren't you that with every one?"
+
+Still she considered.
+
+"What stops you?" he asked. "Go on. Tell me everything. It's my right."
+
+"Why is it your right?"
+
+"Because I love you, and you know it."
+
+She started violently, then turned very white. "Don't say that. I've
+always thought of you as engaged to Madeleine. She was talking to me,
+and I thought--I--" She stopped, quite shaken.
+
+"You misunderstand her. She's always been in love with one fellow--the
+one that her parents are against. He's even poorer than I am."
+
+Then Jane pressed her lips together and interlocked her fingers. "I can
+never marry. I never think of it. There's money to be paid, nobody to
+pay it but me, and no way to get it except to earn it."
+
+Lorenzo looked almost sternly at her. "What about the book you lent me;
+it would say that that was setting limits. It says that we've not to
+concern ourselves with ways and means. I've only to concern myself with
+loving you. The rest will come along of its own accord."
+
+She shook her head. "No, it won't. This world is all learning, and it's
+part of my lesson not to be able to apply it in absolute faith to
+myself. So many teachers have wisdom to give away which they can't quite
+take unto themselves, you know." She smiled a little tremulously.
+
+"But you ought to take it unto yourself. It ought to be easy and simple
+for you to realize that if conditions are false, they don't exist; that
+if you want a home, it's because you are going to have one; that if I
+love you, it's because it's right that you should be loved."
+
+She put her hands down helplessly on each side of the chair-seat. "I
+never even think of such things," she said, almost in a whisper.
+
+"But why not?"
+
+"I've always been so necessary to others. I've no rights in my own
+life."
+
+"But if life is a thing to guide, why not guide your beneficence as well
+from a basis of home as from one of homelessness?"
+
+"Nothing has ever seemed to be for me, myself. Everything has always
+pointed to me for others."
+
+Lorenzo paced back and forth. "But it is the women like you who should
+show the way out of the wilderness and back to the right, instead of
+attempting to order the chaos while sweeping on with it. If there be a
+real truth in this new teaching which lays hold of all those who are in
+earnest so easily and so quickly, its first care should be to
+demonstrate happiness in the lives of its believers,--not the negative
+happiness of wide-spread devotion to others, but the positive lessons of
+joy in the center from which springs--must spring--the next generation
+of better, wiser men and women, those among whom I expect to live as an
+old man."
+
+Jane turned her face away, her eyes filled with tears. "You make me feel
+very small and petty," she said; "you show me a way beyond what I had
+guessed. But I can't grasp at it; I'm too used to asking nothing for
+myself. I'm always so sure that God is managing for me. And I have so
+much to do."
+
+"Perhaps realization that God is managing is all that you need to set
+right. Perhaps that confidence will bring you all things. Even me." He
+laughed a little.
+
+"It has brought me all that I needed. Daily bread, daily possibilities
+of helpfulness,--I don't ask more, except 'more light.'"
+
+"It sounds a little presumptuous coming from me, but perhaps I can help
+you towards your end, even as to 'more light.' At any rate, I'll try if
+you'll let me."
+
+She sat quite still. Finally she lifted up her eyes--and they were
+beautiful eyes, big and true--and said, the words coming softly forth:
+"It would be so wonderful."
+
+Lorenzo didn't speak. He felt choked and gasping. To him it was also "so
+wonderful," as wonderful as if he hadn't lived with it night and day
+ever since the first minute of knowing her. "I think I'd better go," he
+said very gently, realizing keenly that he must not press her in this
+first blush of the new spring-time. "I've 'made my picture' you know,
+and I won't let it fade, you may be sure. And you must believe in
+happiness for yourself,--you tell us that the first step is all that
+counts. Get the seed into the ground then. I'll do the rest."
+
+She sat quite still. "If I could only try," she whispered. He turned
+quickly away and was gone.
+
+After a dizzy little while she rose and went into the kitchen. Susan was
+moving briskly about.
+
+"Two cups flour, four teaspoonfuls baking powder, one of sugar, one of
+salt, two of butter, two of lard, cup half water, half milk, pour in pan
+greased and bake in hot oven. Scotch scone-bread for lunch," she said,
+almost suiting the deed to the word. "Is Mr. Rath still here?"
+
+"No, he's gone."
+
+"You know, Jane, he's caught your religion. I never heard anything like
+it. He's got the whole thing pat. I'd be almost scared to go round
+teaching a thing like that. Why, folks'll be doing anything they please
+soon. I've been wondering if I could get strong enough to kind of
+dispose of Matilda, in some perfectly right way, you know. I wouldn't
+think of anything that wasn't perfectly right, you know."
+
+Jane seemed a little numb and stood watching the buttering of the
+scone-pan without speaking.
+
+"I keep saying: 'Matilda doesn't want to come back. Matilda's disposed
+of in a perfectly pleasant way.' I've been saying it ever since I began
+on those scones. I guess I've said it twenty times, and I'm beginning to
+make a real impression on myself. I'm beginning to feel sure God is
+fixing things up. It's too beautiful to feel God taking an interest in
+your affairs. Matilda doesn't want to come home. Matilda is completely
+disposed of in a perfectly pleasant way." Susan's accents were very
+emphatic.
+
+"Auntie," said Jane, turning her eyes towards her and rallying her
+attention by a strong effort, "you know your perfect faith is because
+Aunt Matilda really isn't anxious to come home. It's only if you're
+doubting that there's any doubt about it. One doesn't alter Destiny, one
+only apprehends it. Oh, dear," she said though, sitting down suddenly,
+and hiding her face in her hands, "the thing about light is that it
+always keeps bursting over you with a new light, and my own teaching has
+suddenly come to me as if I'd never known what any of it meant before.
+I'm too stunned at seeing how I've limited myself. I'm really too
+stupid."
+
+Susan glanced at her as she poured the batter into the pan, and then
+kept glancing. Her face grew softened, "I wouldn't worry, dear," she
+said finally, "don't you bother over anything. God's taking care of
+everything and everybody. It's every bit of it all right. You must know
+that yourself, or you never could have taught it to me."
+
+"Yes, I do know it,--but in spite of myself I can't see--I can't dare
+think--"
+
+"You told me not to worry over old Mrs. Croft," said Susan, coming
+around by her side and putting her arm about her; "you said worry
+spoiled everything. And I did try so hard."
+
+"Yes, I know, I'll try. I really will--But--" suddenly she turned deep
+crimson, "it seems too awful for me to take one minute to work on myself
+or my life. I need all my time for others."
+
+"But you don't have to," said Susan, "all you've got to do is to know
+things are right. You know they're right because they are right.
+Everything's coming along fine, and you just feel it coming; that's your
+part. My goodness, Jane, isn't this funny? There isn't a blessed thing
+you've preached to me that I ain't having to preach back to you now. You
+don't seem to have sensed hardly any of your own meaning. Talk about
+being a channel; you'd better choke up a little and hold back some for
+yourself."
+
+Jane threw her arms around her and kissed her. "Auntie, you're right,
+you're right. I won't doubt a mite more. I'll try to know as much as I
+seem to have taught."
+
+"Just be yourself, you Sunshine Jane, you," Susan was clinging close to
+the girl she loved so well, "just be yourself. Nothing else is needed."
+
+"Yes," Jane whispered, "I will."
+
+"That's the thing," said Susan; "'cause you've certainly taught us a
+lot. I'll lay the table now," she moved towards the door, "Matilda
+doesn't want to come home. Matilda wants to stay away in some perfectly
+pleasant way," she added with heavy emphasis, passed through, and let
+the door close.
+
+Jane was left alone in the kitchen.
+
+"He said he loved me!" she thought over and over. "It seems so
+wonderful--the most wonderful thing that has ever happened since the
+world was made. He said he loved me!"
+
+She went up-stairs to her own room and shut the door softly. "Of course
+I can never marry him," she whispered aloud, "but he did say he loved
+me. Oh, I know that nothing so wonderful ever was in this world before!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+WHY JANE SHOULD HAVE BELIEVED
+
+
+THE Sunshine Nurse was long in seeking sleep that night and early to
+rise the next morning. She found herself suddenly metamorphosed--facing
+a new world--two worlds in fact. There was the world of Lorenzo's
+actually loving her, which was a dream from which she would surely
+awaken, and then there was that second world of wonder, the world of her
+own teaching, a world in which she started, big-eyed, at all in which
+she had trusted, and wondered if it could be possible that what she
+believed firmly and preached so ardently was really true. "It isn't
+setting limits to face what must be," she said over and over to herself,
+"and I _must_ pay poor father's debts, and there is no possible way for
+me to get the money except to earn it bit by bit." The statement had
+gone to bed with her, and it rose with her when she rose; it looked
+indisputable, incontrovertible, as all fixed statements have a way of
+looking--and yet each time that she made it she felt hot with guilt.
+"It's setting limits," cried her soul, "it's saying that God can't
+possibly do what He pleases," and, as she listened to the strong,
+heaven-sent cry of rebellion against petty earthly laws, she struggled
+in the meshes of her own old earlier learning, the "old garment" which
+clings so close about us all, and which we simply must discard before we
+can don the new robe of Infinite Hope and Radiant Belief in God's law of
+Only Good for Each and Every One.
+
+Jane always rose an hour before her aunt. The hour was spent in opening
+windows, brushing up and building the kitchen fire. It was always a
+pleasant hour, for she usually filled it to the brim with work well done
+and thoughts sent strongly and happily out over the coming time. But
+to-day all this was changed; new thoughts rioted forth on every side,
+and a sort of chaos took the place of her usually sunny calm. This riot
+and chaos is the common, logical outcome of all who feel sure that they
+are wiser than God. You cannot possibly set any border to His Kingdom
+and then be happy in that outer darkness which you have deliberately
+chosen for your own part. As well ask a cow to shut herself out of her
+pasture and rest happy in the waste beyond. "I mustn't think, because it
+is none of it for me--" she repeated over and over, much as if the
+aforesaid cow declared, "I am barred out--I can never get back--I must
+starve contentedly." Jane--who would have laughed at my illustration
+quite as you have laughed yourself--saw only distress in her own, and
+had to wink away so many tears that finally in maddest self-defense she
+rushed out doors and fled to the little garden that had, through so many
+years, been Susan's refuge in such a droll way.
+
+And Lorenzo was there!
+
+He looked very blithe and happy. "Well," he said, "have you thought it
+over and decided that you're right, after all?"
+
+She was panting, and surprise flooded her face with color. "Oh--" she
+gasped, "oh!" and then: "Right--of course I'm right!"
+
+He approached, his hand extended. "Right in believing, or right in
+mistrusting?"
+
+She gave him her hand, and he took it. "Don't put it that way," she
+said; "it isn't that way."
+
+"But, dear Jane, that's the only way to put it. It's the way you've been
+teaching us. Either we can look up and ahead confidently, or you're all
+wrong. I can't believe that you're ever even a little bit wrong, so I'm
+going to believe that it's all true."
+
+"No, no--it isn't--I mean--Oh, in my case, it can't be so. Everything
+that I said was true, only I myself am meant to--to work--not to--to
+marry. It's a kind of pledge I've taken to myself. It doesn't change the
+teaching." Then she dragged her hand free.
+
+Lorenzo smiled. "You can't tell me any of that. I know. I'm the happiest
+man in the world." Then he went on, taking up the rake and scratching a
+little here and there: "Like other pupils, I've surpassed my teacher.
+You've preached, and I practice; you can describe God's thoughts, and I
+think them. You're sure that He can do anything, and I know what He's
+going to do. I've been let straight into one of His secrets. It's been
+revealed to me how the world is run."
+
+Jane stared. "How can you talk so?"
+
+"I talk so because I know so. Everything's coming right for you."
+
+"You're crazy," she tried to laugh.
+
+"I've heard people say that of you. Not that it matters."
+
+She stood watching him and considering his words. "I wouldn't let you
+give me the money to straighten out my father's affairs, even if you
+were ever so rich, you know," she said slowly. "I couldn't."
+
+"I know it."
+
+"And I wouldn't let Auntie pay the debts."
+
+"I know. God doesn't require either your aunt's help or mine in this
+matter."
+
+Jane's eyes moistened slightly. "Please don't make a joke of anything so
+hard and sad."
+
+"I'm not joking; I'm a veritable apostle of joy. I'm as happy as I can
+be."
+
+She looked at him with real wonder because his appearance certainly bore
+out his words. "I wish that I knew what you meant."
+
+He dropped the rake, came to her side, and caught her hand. "Can't you
+trust God--can't you trust me?--won't you try?"
+
+She looked up into his face. "I wish that I could, but how can I?"
+
+"You ought to know. So deep and big and true a nature. Surely you ought
+to be able to understand your own teaching!"
+
+"But I can't see any way."
+
+"Your book says that one must not think of ways; one must just look
+straight to the good end."
+
+"Oh, but there isn't any such end possible for me."
+
+Lorenzo dropped her hand and laughed out loud. And then he caught her in
+his arms and kissed her.
+
+She screamed. To her it was the greatest shock of her life, for no man
+had ever kissed her before. "Oh--oh, mercy!"
+
+Matters were not helped much by Susan's looking over the fence just then
+and crying out abruptly: "Well, I declare!"
+
+"Mrs. Ralston," said Lorenzo, not even blushing, "you're the very person
+we need this minute. I want to marry Jane, and she won't hear to it
+because of her father's debts. The debts are all right and everything's
+all right, only she won't believe it. I wish you'd climb the fence and
+help me persuade her, for although I _know_ she'll end by marrying me,
+I've just set my heart on converting her to her own religion first."
+
+Susan swung easily over the fence. "You're just right, Mr. Rath, you
+ought to marry her. She's the nicest person to have around the house
+that I ever saw; she's far too good to be a nurse. How much did your
+father owe, you Sunshine Jane, you? Maybe I can pay it. I will if I
+can."
+
+"There," said Lorenzo; "see how easy it is to evolve money if you'd only
+trust a little?"
+
+Jane looked at him and then at Susan. "I couldn't take your money,
+Auntie," said she, quite gently, but quite firmly. "And then, too," she
+added, with her roguish smile, "you've left it to Aunt Matilda."
+
+"Yes, but dear," Susan's face became suddenly radiant, "you know I've
+been working your religion on her; maybe she isn't coming back at all;
+maybe something will happen; maybe she's going to be drowned or
+something like that in some perfectly right way."
+
+"No," said Lorenzo soberly. "It isn't necessary to plan as to God's
+business at all. He knows. I don't think that Jane ought to take
+anybody's money; she ought to pay the debts with her own money, but I
+can't see why she can't trust and know it's coming."
+
+"Because there's no place for it to come from," said Jane firmly.
+
+"Unless Matilda--" Susan interposed.
+
+"I believe I'm better at her religion than she is herself," said
+Lorenzo. "I declare, I believe that there's nothing that I can't get
+now. I wanted a house, and I worked just as the book said! I saw myself
+living cosily alone, and in less than a week I was living cosily alone.
+Now I want Jane with me in the house, and I mean to have her, and I
+shall have her, and there's no doubt about that; but I do wish--with all
+my heart--that she could rise to a higher plane."
+
+"If that's all, I know how to manage that easily enough," said Susan.
+"We could get old Mr. Cattermole in for a week and raise Jane's plane
+with him, just like she raised mine with Mrs. Croft."
+
+"Oh, she'll rise," said her lover quietly. "We must give her time and
+help her, that's all."
+
+Jane stood doubting between them. Her aunt regarded her wistfully. "Dear
+me," she said, "I wonder if I could screw myself up to believing she'll
+come in for a fortune. I want to help, but I'm a little like her--I
+can't for the life of me see where it's to come from."
+
+"But that isn't the question at all," said Lorenzo, "the question isn't
+how--the question is just the faith. Why, it's the corner-stone of the
+whole thing! It's the moving into God's world where nothing but good can
+be, and you know you're there because you see only good coming in all
+directions! Just good--nothing but good! I don't see why Jane holds back
+so. I know that she can get that money and get every other thing she
+wants in life, including me, and I'm one of the nicest fellows alive--"
+
+"That's so--" interposed Susan.
+
+"If she'll only put out her hand with confidence. I've studied that book
+till I'm full of it, and I know that I'm going to have her for my wife,
+and I know it absolutely, and I want her to know it, too."
+
+Susan began to get back over the fence. "I'm going in about breakfast,"
+she said; "the trouble with us is we all need hot coffee to brace up our
+souls."
+
+"Keep on declaring the truth," Lorenzo reminded her, as she walked off
+upon the other side.
+
+"I will. I'll say 'Jane is going to get some money' and 'Matilda doesn't
+want to come home to live,' alternately."
+
+When she was out of hearing the two young people remained silent for a
+few seconds. Then the man spoke.
+
+"Dear," his voice was very gentle, "I want to tell you something. I've
+had a very great experience in the last twenty-four hours. It isn't
+loving you--it's that I've been allowed to see a little bit of life from
+God's standpoint. Don't you want to know the real truth about all this?"
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I'm going to tell you, because you'll see the lesson and learn it with
+me. We don't doubt that God knows all that has been or is to be, do
+we?--or that in our minutes of fiercest pain or trouble He looks calmly
+to the end beyond?"
+
+She shook her head. "No, of course not."
+
+"Well, dearest girl, I was allowed last night to put myself in the
+Deity's place and see one corner of the universe as He must see the
+whole."
+
+Her eyes grew big. "What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean this. I want you, and I understand perfectly about the money. I
+sat down last night and I labored with myself until I made myself _know_
+that it was yours. I can't tell you just how it came to me, but I knew
+it. It is yours and yours absolutely, and now I want you to realize it
+and believe in it without question, before I give it to you. Will you do
+that? I'm asking of you the faith that Jesus preached. Can you believe?"
+
+Jane looked at him wonderingly. "You mean--"
+
+"I mean just what I say."
+
+"I can't receive money from you."
+
+"It isn't my money."
+
+"I don't understand. I only know that there is no way that I can get the
+money."
+
+Lorenzo looked at her a minute, and then said slowly and very gently:
+"I've found Mrs. Croft's will. She left all that she had to whoever took
+care of her the night she died. It appears that she had a good deal more
+than any one supposed. It's all yours, dear. Now you see why you should
+have trusted."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+IN A PERFECTLY RIGHT WAY
+
+
+WHEN Susan, looking out of the window, saw the two whom she had left
+behind coming across the grass, she knew instantly.
+
+"They've settled it somehow," she exclaimed in supremest joy, and
+whirled to whisk the bacon off the stove.
+
+"Auntie," said Jane, from outside the window, the minute after, "I am
+just dumb. I don't believe I'll ever be able to lift up my head in life
+again."
+
+"Auntie," said Lorenzo, over her shoulder, "she's inherited her
+fortune."
+
+Susan gave a scream. "Oh, good mercy!"
+
+"Yes, dear," said her niece, now in the doorway, "only I can't believe
+it. I think that it's a dream."
+
+"You see she still isn't able to rise to the proper heights of trust,"
+laughed her lover, also now in the doorway, "but I have hopes of yet
+teaching her to believe what she believes."
+
+"Come straight in and help me set all this on the table, so that I can
+listen with a free mind." Susan's appeal was pathetic in the extreme.
+"Where _did_ she get it, anyhow?"
+
+"Oh, Auntie, it's the most wonderful thing you ever heard of." Jane took
+up the coffee-pot and led the way.
+
+"I did it all, except I didn't provide the money," said Lorenzo, and the
+next minute they were all seated, and he could tell the whole story.
+
+Susan didn't scream. She sat still, a bit of toast in her hand,
+listening breathlessly. When Lorenzo had finished, "Oh, that new
+religion!" she murmured in an awed voice, and then, "Nothing like this
+ever happened in this town before, I know."
+
+"I'm more bewildered over it's being there for me and my not being able
+to believe than I am by the money," said Jane. "Oh, Auntie, what a
+lesson, what a lesson!"
+
+"You would limit yourself, you see," said Lorenzo; "you wouldn't
+believe."
+
+"How could I ever imagine such a thing?"
+
+"You didn't have to imagine,--you only had to expect."
+
+"You laid limits, you see," said Susan, suddenly beginning to pour out
+the coffee, and pouring with a glad dash that swept over cup and saucer
+together. "I expect if God hadn't been patient--like Mr. Rath--He could
+have very well hid that will forever. There may be a lot of such goings
+on in the world, for all we know. My goodness, suppose I'd been like
+Matilda and not have had old Mrs. Croft around for one minute,--it makes
+me ill to think of it! It's a lesson for me, too."
+
+"Life is all lessons," said Jane. "Dear me, think of Aunt Matilda's
+surprise!"
+
+"Think of it! Good mercy, how can I wait to tell her!" Susan's whole
+face beamed. "I don't mind a bit her coming back now. That shows the
+good of making that declaration about her. Those declarations are a
+great thing. I've told myself Matilda was coming back in a perfectly
+right way so many times that now, however she came back, I'd be positive
+it was perfectly right."
+
+"Ah, Auntie," said Jane, "you've got hold of another great truth. Every
+one seems quicker than me."
+
+"Well, you started us at it, anyhow," said Susan kindly. "Oh my, but I'm
+happy! Why, I believe I'm really in a hurry now for Matilda to come
+back, just so I can tell her. Think of that--me really and truly anxious
+to see Matilda again! My, you Sunshine Jane, you--what a lot of
+difference you've made in me."
+
+"When is your aunt coming?" Lorenzo asked Jane.
+
+"She went for three weeks," said Jane; "it will be three weeks next
+Thursday."
+
+"Goodness, only three weeks, and it seems like three years?" observed
+Susan. "What a lot has happened! There's Jane--and her religion--and me
+up and well--and old Mrs. Croft here and gone--and you, Mr. Rath,--and
+then you and Jane--and now this money."
+
+"I can't believe any of it," said Jane; "I try, but I just can't. I
+guess I'm hopelessly limited. I'm too bewildered, I--"
+
+"I'll tell you what ails you," said her aunt warmly. "It's that you've
+spread yourself too much; you've given such a lot away everywhere that
+you've got to just stop and let the tide run backwards into you yourself
+for a while. It's nature. Nature and the new religion combined."
+
+"I feel overwhelmed by the coming-back tide then," said Jane; "I don't
+deserve it all."
+
+Her aunt started to reply, but was stopped by a sudden loud bang
+outside.
+
+"Goodness, what's that?" she exclaimed.
+
+"Auto tire burst, I think. I'll go and see," said Lorenzo, jumping up
+and going out.
+
+"Jane," said Susan solemnly, "that's a young man in a million. Think of
+his finding that will. My, but he'll make a good husband!"
+
+"I just can't realize any of it," said her niece. She seemed to be
+totally unequal to any other view of her present situation.
+
+"Well, you'd better realize it," said her aunt, "because it's coming
+right along. What will Mrs. Mead say, I wonder! Dear me, how every one
+will wish they'd tried to get up a plane or two by having old Mrs. Croft
+to visit them. If that poor old thing could only come back, the whole
+town would just adore to have her on a visit now, and every one would
+sit up all night and listen to _Captain Jinks_ so cheerfully. She used
+to sing _Rally round the flag, boys_ too,--I forgot that. She used to
+sing it when she heard the roosters begin to crow. But nobody would have
+minded, whatever she sang now."
+
+"Oh, there's--" Jane hesitated and blushed.
+
+Lorenzo stood in the door. "It wasn't a burst tire," he explained
+briefly; "it's a new kind of siren they're using. It's friends from out
+of town, Mr. and Mrs. Beamer."
+
+"They've got the wrong house," said Susan. "I don't know any Beamers."
+
+"They asked for Mrs. Ralston."
+
+"Then they're selling something, grape-wine or hand-knit lace, or
+something. I don't want to see 'em."
+
+"I'll go," said Jane. And went at once. In the pretty, changed
+sitting-room she found the visitors--Mrs. Beamer tall and of large
+build, with a handsome motor-costume. Mr. Beamer also large, very wiry,
+and with rampant gray hair. Mrs. Beamer was Matilda.
+
+But what a changed Matilda! "Well, Jane," coming forward and holding out
+both hands, "did you and Susan feel it?"
+
+Jane staggered and laid hold of a chair. "Feel--" she stammered--"feel
+what? Oh, Aunt Matilda!"
+
+"Did you feel the good I've been doing you? How's my sister?"
+
+"She--oh, she's all right."
+
+"Up and dressed?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"There, you see!" Matilda turned to Mr. Beamer, triumph radiating her
+whole figure. "It worked,--oh, Matthew, it worked." Then she turned back
+to Jane. "Get up right off, didn't she? Same day I left?"
+
+"Y--yes." Jane clung more tightly to the chair. She began to doubt the
+ground beneath her feet.
+
+"Perfectly well, strong, able-bodied,--isn't she?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You see?--" to Mr. Beamer. Then, "Oh, it's too splendid! I s'pose the
+cat's stopped snooping, too, hasn't he?"
+
+"Y--yes."
+
+"House all clean? Garden growing fine?"--
+
+"Yes, indeed."
+
+"And you, Jane, how are you?"
+
+"Oh, I'm all right. I--I've become engaged."
+
+"You hear that, Matthew? And the town?"
+
+"Everybody's well."
+
+"Did you ever in all your life!"
+
+"Oh, old Mrs. Croft died!"
+
+"Did she indeed. Katie happy?--"
+
+"Katie was away. She died here."
+
+"How nice! I expect she enjoyed every minute of it. Oh, Jane, you don't
+know how happy your every word is making me!"
+
+"Shan't I call auntie?"
+
+"No, we'll go out and have breakfast with you. We had one breakfast so
+as to make it easy for you to have us have it with you."
+
+"Do come right out to the table." Jane led the way. "I can't think what
+Aunt Susan will say!"
+
+"Never mind what she says--it'll be just right. Everything always is.
+Come, Matthew;" then Mrs. Matilda Beamer led off, and Mr. Matthew Beamer
+followed, smiling cheerfully. He seemed to be a very cheerful man.
+
+"Perhaps I'd better go first and just prepare auntie," Jane suggested
+hastily.
+
+"No need. She always yelled when she saw me suddenly, and this time it
+will be for joy. Life is going to be all joy for Susan now."
+
+Jane turned the button of the dining-room door. "Auntie Susan, it's Aunt
+Matilda and Mr. Beamer."
+
+Susan justified her sister's views by forthwith giving the yell of her
+whole life. "Ma--tilda!--And Mr. Beamer!--"
+
+Matilda went up to her, seized her, gave her a good hug and a real kiss.
+"I've made lots of mistakes," she said, with a big tear in each eye,
+"but somehow it was written that I should be allowed to make them right.
+Susan, this is Matthew. Sit down, Matthew. Sit down, every one."
+
+Lorenzo hastily pushed up chairs, and they all sat down.
+
+"I'll get some more dishes," Jane exclaimed, hurrying into the pantry.
+
+"Matilda!" Susan looked almost ready to faint. "Are you--are you--"
+
+"I'm married," said Matilda. "I don't know what I've ever done to
+deserve it, but I'm married. It's the most beautiful romance that ever
+was in the world, and we've come to tell you all about it."
+
+"Oh, do!" Susan exclaimed. "Jane, come back! Think of another romance,
+and Matilda, too! Well, what next!"
+
+Matilda smiled quite radiantly. "We met on the train the day I left
+here," she began; "it was right off. He took me out on the back platform
+of the car and opened my eyes to life, and we just suited, didn't we,
+Matthew?"
+
+"Tell it all," said Mr. Beamer; "tell the beginning."
+
+"Yes," said his wife, "I will, I'll tell it all. It's so splendid it
+would be a pity to skip anything. You see, he looked at me and--well,
+really, Matthew, I think you'd better tell the first part."
+
+"No, you tell," said Mr. Beamer.
+
+"No, Matthew, you tell it, and I'll help anywhere I can."
+
+"Well," said her husband, "then I'll begin with saying, Sister Susan,
+Niece Jane, and young man, that I'd better tell you what I am, first of
+all, because I'm the only one of the kind in the world so far as I know.
+You see, one of those Bible miracles, that no one can seem to lay hold
+of any more, got into me, and I'm the result."
+
+"That is all true," interposed Matilda, her plain face quite
+metamorphosed, as she looked at her husband and then at them. "Every
+word he says is true, and it's all miracles."
+
+"You see I was just a plain, ordinary man, with a nice business and a
+good disposition," Mr. Beamer went on, "and I did get so awful tired of
+things as they were going, and I used to wish everything was different,
+and then one day, all of a God-blessed sudden, it came over me, with a
+shock like lightning, that wanting things different is the first step to
+getting 'em different, and that if you've got the brain to see what's
+lacking, you've got the body to turn to and help fill up the hole. I
+didn't get religion out of a book; I got it just like that. I was
+sitting in a rocking-chair with a palm-leaf fan, and I got up and put
+the fan on the shelf and knew I was all made new. The very next day I
+read about a doctor as set up some nurses--"
+
+"Oh, my goodness," Susan cried, "hear that, Jane!"
+
+"--as was to spread sunshine, and I thought that was a good idea, only I
+couldn't see a place in it for me, 'cause I wasn't young and wasn't no
+girl to go 'round spreading nothing. I looked upon it that being a man,
+my business wasn't to spread things--a man's business is to get the
+stuff to spread; so I figured out that being as I was a man, I could
+maybe help make the sunshine, and then any one could slather it on that
+pleased. So I began to look about for some sunshine to make, and the
+handiest field I see was folks with hard lines around their mouths;
+there's a powerful lot of them around, you know,--ain't nothin' so hard
+to break up in life as hard lines around mouths. So I set out to plow
+fields of hard lines." He paused. It was a picture, a picture painted in
+heavenly colors to see his face at the moment, full of its own
+heartfelt, tried, and true enthusiasm, and the faces of those of his
+four listeners, each touched with the spiritual light shed by recent
+events over his or her own individual path.
+
+"Do go on," Jane whispered softly.
+
+"Well, whenever I'd see a hard man sitting alone, I'd go up to him and
+hold out my hand and say, 'Well, I ain't laid eyes on you, I don't know
+when!' That wasn't no lie, and 'most always we'd get a-talking. Then I'd
+say, 'I'm a harmless crank that likes to go round making friends, and I
+took a fancy to you right off.' It was wonderful all I come up against.
+Why, the hardest folks was just aching to sit down and explain that they
+wasn't hard at all. It was the most interesting thing I ever got hold
+of. I got arrested once for a gold-brick man, and it give me a fine
+chance at the jailers and some of the men in prison. Pretty soon
+everything that turned up seemed to just come along to give me a chance
+to make a little sunshine. Pretty soon life was all nothing but sunshine
+chances. I got hold of some books that showed me that lots of others
+were trying some similar games, and all working hard, and I picked out
+one book that 'most anybody could understand, and I used to carry it to
+read from. Would you believe that I wore out that book about a hundred
+times and sold it more'n five hundred times and give it away 'most a
+thousand times. I got where hard lines was just play to me. I've now got
+where they're flowers in my garden. I just fly at 'em. If they don't
+give up to one course, they do to another. I travel about looking for
+'em. I was on my last trip when I see Matilda sittin' across the aisle
+from me, and I said to myself right off, 'What fine lines!' So I went
+right over and shook hands with her--"
+
+"He said he feared maybe he'd made a mistake," interrupted his wife,
+"and I said--God forgive me!--'If you speak to me again, I'll call out
+to the conductors!'"
+
+"And I said: 'Madam, excuse me, I'm only a harmless crank as is trying
+to help folks as is sick or in trouble, and you look like a woman as
+could tell me of some I could help, maybe!'"
+
+"Then I thought of you, Susan," said the sister; "you see, I'd been
+looking out of the window, and the view was so pretty, and it kind of
+come over me how awful hard it was to lie in bed--and--and I felt kind
+of bad, and his face looked kind, and I said: 'Well, sit down. I do know
+somebody sick.'"
+
+"So I set down," went on Mr. Beamer, "and in just a little while she let
+up like everybody does and told me the whole story, and then I took her
+out on the back platform and we was swinging 'round curves of mighty
+lovely scenery, and I got out my book and I begin to read aloud to her."
+
+"And I got hold of the idea like mad," said Matilda. "I said right off:
+'Then Susan's really all well now?' an' he said: 'She's been well
+always,' and I says: 'And my arm's well,' and he said: 'Nothin' ain't
+ever ailed your arm except your own innard feelings, and they're gone
+now,' and then I just put my hands over my face and says: 'Oh, God,
+forgive me for lots and lots and lots of things.'"
+
+There was another little pause, and then Susan said very low: "And God
+did it."
+
+"And then," said Mr. Beamer, "I says to her: 'Now, if you want to see
+how true everything I've been saying is, we'll just put this to a
+practical proof.' I'd noticed a woman with lines back there in the car
+slapping two sleepy children, and I told Matilda we'd each take a child
+for an hour and give her lines a chance to smooth out a little, and then
+we'd come back on the platform and talk it over."
+
+"So we did it," said Matilda, "and when I took the baby back to the
+woman, she burst out crying and said she'd tried to hold in all day and
+just couldn't any longer, cause her mother was sick and had been sick so
+long, and she couldn't leave the children to go to her 'cause the
+children was the neighbor's and left with her to board, and she'd never
+liked children and only took 'em 'cause her mother needed the money."
+
+"Showing," interrupted Mr. Beamer, "how we'd misjudged her and her hard
+lines, which is another feature of my crusade, as lots don't think
+enough about."
+
+"But what come next was just like a story, too," Matilda said. "When I
+got to Mrs. Camp's at last, I found Mrs. Camp so changed that if I
+hadn't met Matthew on the train and got something to hold on to, I
+couldn't have stayed in the house an hour."
+
+"Why, what was the matter with Mrs. Camp?" Susan asked anxiously.
+
+"Why, all Mrs. Camp's family is married now, and it seems she was so
+lonely she's turned into a social settler or some such thing, and her
+nice, quiet house where I'd looked to rest was one swarm of Italians
+learning English and girls learning sewing and women asking advice and
+such a chaos of Bedlam you never dreamed. If it hadn't been for my just
+having got religion that way, I'd have turned around and come straight
+back home. But as it was, I didn't have time to do anything but get into
+my blue print and take hold right with her and get some order into
+things in general."
+
+"Oh, Aunt Matilda!" Jane's face was radiant.
+
+"Afternoons Matthew came with an auto, and he'd take me off with the
+back seat full of children, and we'd hunt hard lines anywhere they
+looked likely."
+
+"And then, of course, we soon got married," said Mr. Beamer.
+
+"Yes, and that's all," said Matilda. "_Now did you ever?_"
+
+There was a sudden hush, until finally Susan said, through tears: "Oh,
+Matilda,--it's like something in heaven's got loose and fell right down
+over us, isn't it?"
+
+"I think it's all too wonderful," said Jane.
+
+"Of course there really is something out of heaven spread over earth
+every day," said Lorenzo, low, and very reverently; "only people don't
+see it."
+
+"But nowadays, everybody's beginning to recognize it," Jane murmured.
+
+"It's like it says in one of my books," said Mr. Beamer. "God's a
+reservoir and we're all pipes, just as soon as we're willing to be
+pipes, and then He pours through us according to how willing we are,
+because you're big or little just according to how willing you are."
+
+"Let us all be very willing," said Jane.
+
+"Oh, Jane," said Susan, "that sounds like a blessing to ask at the
+table. Let's ask a blessing after this and just say: 'Let us all be very
+willing!'"
+
+"Amen," said Lorenzo.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+THE RESULTS
+
+
+JANE was married in the early autumn.
+
+She didn't have any trousseau or any wedding presents or any bridal
+trip. It was a new kind of wedding, because so much about her and her
+way of looking at life was new to those about her, that even her
+marriage had to match it. "My clothes are always in nice order," she
+said to Susan, slightly appalled over the non-existing preparations,
+"and I love to sew and will make what I need as I need it."
+
+"I don't want any presents," Lorenzo had said decidedly. "I don't want
+any one on earth to groan because I'm marrying Jane."
+
+"I don't think much of bridal trips; Matthew and I didn't have one, so I
+know all about them," said Matilda, who now had her standard and never
+lowered it for one instant; "those bothers are just about over for
+sensible people."
+
+So it all fell out in this way. One lovely bright September day, Mr. and
+Mrs. Beamer and Mrs. Susan Ralston walked quietly into the village
+church and sat down in the front pew. Shortly after the clergyman and
+the bride and the groom came in, and the clergyman married the bride to
+the groom. Then they all went out together, and the clergyman left them
+to go home together. A nice cold luncheon was spread at Susan's, and the
+cat was waiting, scratching hard at his white bow while he did so.
+
+After luncheon Mr. Beamer, his wife, and his wife's sister went off for
+a journey.
+
+"Think of me traveling!" Susan cried ecstatically. "Oh, Jane, may you
+enjoy going abroad this winter as much as I shall going off now."
+
+Jane smiled her pretty smile, and then, after the last wave of adieu,
+she and Lorenzo went back into the house.
+
+"This is really very funny, you know," said Lorenzo; "first we will wash
+all the dishes, and then we will plan our future."
+
+"Yes," Jane said.
+
+But they failed to do either.
+
+Instead, they left the dishes and the future to care for themselves.
+Going straight down into the garden, climbing the two fences, safely
+secluded in the little, growing, blooming inclosure, Lorenzo took his
+wife in his arms, and said: "Oh, my dearest dear, how rightest right
+everything is!"
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+                          Books by Anne Warner
+
+
+=The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary=
+
+    Players' Edition, with illustrations reproduced from photographs
+    of scenes in the play. =$1.50=
+
+Always amusing and ends in a burst of sunshine.--_Philadelphia
+Ledger._
+
+
+=Just Between Themselves=
+
+    Frontispiece in color by Will Grefe. =$1.50=
+
+It is full of apt, pert little take-offs on human nature that provokes
+frequent chuckles.--_Philadelphia Item._
+
+
+=In A Mysterious Way=
+
+    Illustrated by J. V. McFall. =$1.50=
+
+A story of love and sacrifice that teems with the author's original
+humor.--_Baltimore American._
+
+
+=Your Child and Mine=
+
+    Illustrated. =$1.50=
+
+The child-heart, strange and sweet and tender, lies open to this
+sympathetic writer.--_Chicago Record-Herald._
+
+
+=An Original Gentleman=
+
+    Frontispiece by Alice Barber Stephens. =$1.50=
+
+Exhibits her cleverness and sense of humor.--_New York Times._
+
+
+=Susan Clegg, Her Friend and Her Neighbors=
+
+    Illustrated. =$1.50=
+
+Combining all the Susan Clegg stories originally published in "Susan
+Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop" and "Susan Clegg and Her
+Neighbors' Affairs."
+
+One of the most genuinely humorous books ever written.--_St.
+Louis Globe-Democrat._
+
+
+=Susan Clegg And a Man in the House=
+
+    Illustrated by Alice Barber Stephens. =$1.50=
+
+Susan is a positive joy, and the reading world owes Anne Warner a
+vote of thanks for her contribution to the list of American humor.--_New
+York Times._
+
+
+=When Woman Proposes=
+
+    Illustrated in color. =$1.25 _net_=
+
+Dainty in form and content. It is printed, bound, and illustrated
+charmingly, and the story, style, and atmosphere correspond.--_New
+York Herald_
+
+
+=A Woman's Will=
+
+    Illustrated. =$1.50=
+
+A deliciously funny book.--_Chicago Tribune._
+
+
+=How Leslie Loved=
+
+    Illustrations in color by A. B. Wenzell. =$1.25 _net_=
+
+The sprightly romance of a young and charming American widow.
+
+
+LITTLE, BROWN, & CO., _Publishers_
+34 BEACON STREET, BOSTON
+
+
+
+
+      *      *      *      *      *      *
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+Throughout the dialogues, there were words used to mimic accents of
+the speakers. Those words were retained as-is.
+
+Errors in punctuations and inconsistent hyphenation were not corrected
+unless noted below:
+
+On page 228, "winable" was replaced with "winnable".
+
+On page 242, the comma after "softly" was replaced with a period.
+
+On page 245, the period after "cow declared" was replaced with a comma.
+
+On page 278, "Mr Beamer" was replaced with "Mr. Beamer".
+
+In the advertisements at the end of the book, the duplicate header on
+the last page was removed.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SUNSHINE JANE***
+
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