1 by Gay street, so Jane always thought, did not live up to its name. Read Free Book Online Page B

she could not ask mother to explain the mystery of the picture. For some reason she could not guess at, Kenneth Howard meant suffering to mother. And somehow that fact stained and spoiled all her beautiful memories of communion with the picture.
    “No sulks now. Go to your room and stay there till I send for you,” said grandmother, not altogether liking Jane’s expression. “And remember that people who belong here do not read Saturday Evening.”
    Jane had to say it. It really said itself.
    “I don’t belong here,” said Jane. Then she went to her room, which was huge and lonely again, with no Kenneth Howard smiling at her from under the handkerchiefs.
    And this was another thing she could not talk over with mother. She felt just like one big ache as she stood at her window for a long time. It was a cruel world … with the very stars laughing at you … twinkling mockingly at you.
    “I wonder,” said Jane slowly, “if any one was ever happy in this house.”
    Then she saw the moon … the new moon, but not the thin silver crescent the new moon usually was. This was just on the point of sinking into a dark cloud on the horizon and it was large and dull red. If ever a moon needed polishing up this one did. In a moment Jane had slipped away from all her sorrows … two hundred and thirty thousand miles away. Luckily grandmother had no power over the moon.

8
    Then there was the affair of the recitation.
    They were getting up a school programme at St Agatha’s to which only the families of the girls were invited. There were to be a short play, some music and a reading or two. Jane had secretly hoped to be given a part in the play, even if it were only one of the many angels who came and went in it, with wings and trailing white robes and home-made haloes. But no such good luck. She suspected that it was because she was rather bony and awkward for an angel.
    Then Miss Semple asked her if she would recite.
    Jane jumped at the idea. She knew she could recite rather well. Here was a chance to make mother proud of her and show grandmother that all the money she was spending on Jane’s education was not being wholly wasted.
    Jane picked a poem she had long liked in spite, or perhaps because, of its habitant English, “The Little Baby of Mathieu,” and plunged enthusiastically into learning it. She practised it in her room … she murmured lines of it everywhere until grandmother asked her sharply what she was muttering about all the time. Then Jane shut up like a clam. Nobody must suspect … it was to be a “surprise” to them all. A proud and glad surprise for mother. And perhaps even grandmother might feel a little pleased with her if she did well. Jane knew she would meet with no mercy if she didn’t do well.
    Grandmother took Jane down to a room in Marlborough’s big department store … a room that had panelled walls, velvety carpets and muted voices … a room that Jane didn’t like, somehow. She always felt smothered in it. And grandmother got her a new dress for the concert. It was a very pretty dress … you had to admit grandmother had a taste in dresses. A dull green silk that brought out the russet glow of Jane’s hair and the gold-brown of her eyes. Jane liked herself in it and was more anxious than ever to please grandmother with her recitation.
    She was terribly worried the night before the concert. Wasn’t she a little hoarse? Suppose it got worse? It did not … it was all gone the next day. But when Jane found herself on the concert platform facing an audience for the first time, a nasty little quiver ran down her spine. She had never supposed there would be so many people. For one dreadful moment she thought she was not going to be able to utter a word. Then she seemed to see Kenneth Howard’s eyes, crinkling with laughter at her. “Never mind them. Do your stuff for ME,” he seemed to be saying. Jane got her mouth open.
    The St Agatha staff were quite amazed. Who could have supposed that