“Oh no, but I am so tired,” Jane edged
away from the suspector. “After all I do
believe Judy is sensible, see her slumber.”
“Jane Allen, you are a fraud,” pronounced
the girl in the velveteen robe. “You are
smothering some mystery and I must have stepped on
the spring,” guessed the inquisitive caller.
“Was it the tack hammer or the spindle chair
or the fat girl? Not she, you have had no chance
to do uplift work yet. Land knows that farmer
will need your greatest skill, but dear, don’t
waste it on her. She’s incurable.”
“Bad as all that?” asked Jane colorlessly.
“But what happened? You did not try to
hit her with the hammer I hope?”
“I didn’t try to hit her, I did hit her.
It fell accidentally on her fat head and she tossed
it through the mirror. Now what can a girl do
in a case like that?”
The haunted look, so foreign to the face of Jane,
shaped itself again.
“Is she—did you hurt her?”
“I hope so,” dared Dozia. “It
would be a charity to send her home.
Her name is Shirley Duncan and she’s from some
country town. But
Jane, if she gets really horrid, I mean more horrid
than she is now,
I want you to stand by me. That’s what
I came for.”
“All right Dozia,” said Jane, “but
I hope it won’t have to go as far as that.”
“Me too,” responded the carefree Dozia.
“But there’s no telling what Shirley may
do.”
For some moments after Dozia glided out Jane stood
there, her gray eyes almost misty.
“Of all the tragedies!” she was thinking.
Then with a jerk she pulled herself up. “But
I guess I can handle it,” she declared finally,
and when she succeeded in rousing Judith no one would
have suspected anything new amiss.
Jane Allen might have worries but they could not dominate
her. Sunny Jane, with sunny hair and gray eyes,
was no mope. It would take fight to conquer this
new condition, she realized, but Jane could fight,
and her dreams on this first night back in college
were strangely confused with school-day battles.
More than once she awoke with a start, as if some
danger were impending, and a sense of uneasiness possessed
her. Each time it seemed more difficult to fall
back into slumber, and all this was new, indeed, to
happy Jane.
“Daddy!” she murmured. “It’s
because of daddy’s——”
She was finally sound asleep.
THE MISFIT FRESHMAN
Yes, they were back in college and work was waiting.
This thought invaded confused brains and stood out
like a corporal of the guard, shouting orders into
lazy ears on Wellington campus next morning.
Jane Allen threw first one slipper and then another
at Judith Stearns’ bed across the room from
her own. But still Judith’s hand ignored
the hair brush on the chair at her elbow.
“Judy,” called Jane, “the warning
bell has warned. Turn down the corner on that
dream and wake up.” Each word of this climbed
a note in tone until the last was almost a shout.
Then Judith’s hand moved to Jane’s slipper
on her own (Judith’s) forget-me-nots, the little
floral pieces that adorned a very dainty garment with
the embroidery on Judith’s chest—arms
and neck ignored in the pattern.
