Part 7

"It starts on the 5th of May. I have to go up on the 4th. It's such a long way."

"And this is the 29th of April. No, certainly you won't. You won't be fit for school for another fortnight, if then. Are you sorry?"

"No," said Jane-Anne candidly, "_I_'m not sorry, but Aunt Martha'll be very sorry."

The doctor laughed. "Well, you must do your best to get well, that's all; but it's no use your going anywhere till that lung has ceased crackling."

Miss Morecraft was far too busy to attend to Jane-Anne herself, and Mrs. Dew, recklessly extravagant if there was real cause for anxiety where her sister's child was concerned, sent in a trained nurse.

The nurse did her duty by Jane-Anne, but considered the post rather beneath her dignity, and was not interested in the fidgetty little girl with the large eyes who sent up her temperature in an aggravating way by getting excited over trifles.

One evening, when the temperature was once more normal, Mrs. Dew informed Jane-Anne of her arrangement with Mr. Wycherly.

"Shall we really live there? Will it be our very own home--not shared?" the child demanded with incredulous delight.

"If there's any sharing it's Mr. Wycherly what shares his house with us," said Mrs. Dew. "I'm to have the cottage for myself, and we get the housekeeper's room for a sitting-room."

"And I shall live in the house with those nice boys?" Jane-Anne went on--"right in the same house."

"Yes," Mrs. Dew said; "but you must remember that you belong to the kitchen part and there must be no trespassin'. It would never do for you to be playin' with the young gentlemen like you was one of theirselves. You must understand that from the very first. Not but what they're very kind young gentlemen, and have ast after you over and over again, an' Mr. Wycherly likewise. Master Edmund, he wants to come and see you before he goes back to school."

"Oh, Aunt Martha, do let him. I should love it so. I promise I won't go up, I'll stay normal, I truly will."

"That I don't believe for one minute, Jane-Anne; why, if I was to take your temperature now--only I'm not going to--I know it'd be over a hundred, with you so pink and all. No, I don't hold with Master Edmund coming to see you here. I've never been really wrop up in this place--too many threads and snippets about for my fancy an' a smell like a draper's shop all day long. I've no wish as Master Edmund should see you here--. Now don't you go cryin' out before you're hurt. Wait till I can tell you----"

"Oh, aunt, what--do be quick."

"The doctor says that seein' the weather's so good, you can be moved any time now provided you go straight to bed when you get there----"

"And you're going to move me--oh, Aunt Martha, how lovelly--to-day?"

"No, not to-day, but to-morrow, nurse'll bring you in a fly. And you must promise to keep calm and not go bouncin' and exclaimin' and runnin' up to a hundred over nothing at all."

"Aunt Martha, I'll behave like a stucky-image," Jane-Anne protested.

"You're more like a Jack-in-the-box than any image I've ever come across, but I do think it'll be better for me to have you where I can see to your food my own self. I don't seem to have no faith in that nurse's beef-tea nor 'er arraroot--lumpy stuff what I saw. An' if you're to be got strong enough to go back to the Bainbridge in the next three weeks (I don't know how they 'll take this fresh worriment) you must be fed up. So now you know. You're to get up for your tea and go back to bed directly after, and you're to keep quiet and not get into a fantique nor go makin' a palladum all about nothin'. Do you hear me, Jane-Anne?"

"Yes, Aunt Martha, but I think fantiques and palladums must be lovelly things; they sound so, and I long to make them, only I don't know how."

"It strikes me it's little else you'll ever make. Now lie down in bed for I must run. Most considerate the master's been, letting me come off at all times to see you, and I hope you'll remember it and try and make yourself useful when you get about again. Good-bye, child, and we shan't be separated much longer for which I thank the Lord as made us both."

It marked a change in Mrs. Dew's attitude towards the household in Holywell that she spoke of Mr. Wycherly as "the master." It suggested a permanence in their relations which would have been very reassuring to him had he heard it. Jane-Anne, too, noticed the phrase, and when her aunt was gone gleefully repeated to herself:

"See-saw Margery Daw, Jenny shall have a new master, She shall have but a penny a day Because she can work no faster."

"It's not Jenny really, it's Johnny, but Jenny does as well, and I'll work without the penny," thought Jane-Anne, "if only that beautiful old gentleman will be my master too."

Edmund had elected to take his guardian for a walk before tea, and led him over Magdalen bridge, out into the Cowley Road, and finally into Jeune Street.

"Why are you taking me this way?" Mr. Wycherly asked. "It does not appear to me to be a particularly agreeable neighbourhood."

"It isn't," Edmund frankly agreed, "but now we're here we may as well look in and see Jane-Anne; she's to sit up a bit this afternoon, Mrs. Dew said so, and she said I needn't trouble to go and see her because she's coming to us to-morrow, but I think we ought to go, you know, especially as we're here. You haven't seen her, and she'll like coming better if she's seen you."

"Edmund," said Mr. Wycherly, stopping in the middle of the road, "acknowledge that you have brought me here with the deliberate intention of visiting Mrs. Dew's niece."

"Well, Guardie, I _did_ think of it. Don't you think it's the proper thing to do?"

By this time they had reached the door, whereupon Edmund knocked loudly without waiting for further discussion.

Miss Morecraft was much flustered.

"Yes, they could see the little girl if they didn't mind coming upstairs. She had just been got up and the nurse had gone out for a breath of fresh air. Very warm for the time of year wasn't it."

Miss Morecraft opened the bedroom door, and without any announcement squeezed herself against the outer wall that Mr. Wycherly might enter.

Jane-Anne was seated in an armchair at the window looking frail as a sigh. She wore a bright pink flannelette dressing-gown which accentuated her pallor. She loved this garment dearly, for dressing growns were not included in the uniform of "The Bainbridge." Most of the girls were far too strong and healthy to need them, and Mrs. Dew had made this for Jane-Anne during one of her many illnesses.

Mr. Wycherly stood in the narrow doorway and the afternoon sun shone in on him, on his silvery hair and gentle, high-bred face.

"May we come in, my dear?" he asked. "Do you feel well enough to see us?"

Poor Jane-Anne was too weak to stand up and curtsey. She flushed and paled, and paled and flushed as she turned her thin, sensitive little face towards Mr. Wycherly, but there was no mistaking the welcome in her great eyes, as she whispered: "Please do, sir, I'm so sorry I mayn't get up and put a chair for you."

"I'll get him a chair," said Edmund, pushing in under his guardian's arm, for the door was very narrow. "I thought I'd show him to you before you came to-morrow, then you won't feel strange with any of us."

There wasn't much room in that bedroom. The bed took up most of the floor and there was only one other chair besides Jane-Anne's, so Edmund sat on the end of the bed.

"You must make haste and get strong," Mr. Wycherly said kindly, "and if this fine weather goes on you'll be able to sit in the garden and get plenty of fresh air that way! And when you are able we must see about a little drive. That ought to be good for you."

"Oh!" exclaimed Jane-Anne. "Oh! I don't know how I shall wait till to-morrow, I want to come so much."

"Let's get a cab and take her now," Edmund suggested; "it would be a lark, and such a surprise for Mrs. Dew."

Jane-Anne looked from Edmund to Mr. Wycherly, but saw that the enchanting proposition found no favour in his eyes.

"We mustn't do that," he said, "we haven't got the doctor's permission, and I don't think Mrs. Dew has got her room ready yet."

"This bed's coming for me to-morrow," Jane-Anne said shyly. "The things in this room are Aunt's."

"You won't be such a squash in the room you're going to have," Edmund remarked. "It's not a big room but you'll be able to get round the furniture better."

"It will be so lovelly to have a little room of my own," Jane-Anne said softly.

"I hope you will sleep well in it, and get strong," said Mr. Wycherly. "And I am sure Mrs. Dew will make it as pretty for you as possible. And now, my child, we must go. I don't think you are very fit for visitors as yet, and we mustn't tire you. We just looked in to tell you how welcome you will be to-morrow."

"We've got a bathroom, you know," Edmund said proudly, anxious to do the honours of their house. "Hot and cold and a squirty thing for washing your head, you can use it for the rest of you, too, if you like, but it makes rather a mess. It's in the basin really, and we do each other sometimes. I do like a bathroom, don't you?"

Jane-Anne murmured her appreciation of that luxury, and Mr. Wycherly held out his hand to her, and she gave him hers; such a nervous little hand, so thin and hectic and fluttering: yet it grew still as it lay in his, and there seemed some subtle contact in its gentle clasp.

The child's eyes and the old man's met in a long gaze that asked and promised much.

The eager, hungry little face grew a thought dim to Mr. Wycherly, it was so wistful and so wan. Instead of good-bye, he said, "God bless you, my child, God bless you," and went out of the room rather quickly.

Edmund's farewells were longer, and Mr. Wycherly waited patiently for him in the sunny street. He had gone out so quietly that Miss Morecraft never heard him.

She heard Edmund, though, and hastened to the door to speed the parting guest.

Jane-Anne, faint with rapture, lay crumpled up in her chair.

"He looked at me," she whispered, "he looked at me just like he looked at him that night when I peeped through the window--just every bit as kind.

"See-saw Margery Daw, Jenny has got a new master."

*CHAPTER VIII*

*JANE-ANNE ASSISTS PROVIDENCE*

"To be sick is to enjoy monarchial Prerogatives." _Elia_.

The doctor was Mrs. Methuen's doctor, and she had told him something of Mrs. Dew and his little patient; of how that worthy woman had given up place after place in the last five years that she might keep "an 'ome" for her orphaned niece; of how Jane-Anne was born in Athens and brought to London when she was a baby; of the modest, beautiful lady's maid, her mother, and the brilliant irresponsible young journalist, her father, so that he felt a kindly interest in his excitable little patient, and was sympathetically glad that "an 'ome" had been found for aunt and niece that seemed to promise rooted comfort and stability for both of them.

Therefore, when, on the morning fixed for Jane-Anne's removal to Holywell, he came to sanction or forbid that removal, he refrained from taking her temperature and said that the child could go.

Whereupon Jane-Anne's strength was increased tenfold, so that when she was dressed she walked across the room by herself, and sat in a chair by the window while the nurse packed her yellow tin trunk.

Then came the great, the tremendous moment when the fly stood before the door, and the strong young nurse carried her downstairs and placed her in it, with a cushion for her back and a rug sent by Mr. Wycherly over her knees.

The drive passed like a brilliant dream. The men were up and the busy streets were full of bustling life and youthful jollity. Jane-Anne sat forward in her seat, the wavering colour vivid in her cheeks, and even the inverted pie-dish could not wholly shadow the bright gaiety of her eyes. All too soon it was over and they stopped before the archway in Holywell where Mrs. Dew was waiting to help her niece in at the side-door.

It seemed a little hard to be hustled up to her aunt's room and there and then undressed and put to bed--a tame ending to so thrilling an experience; but once between the sheets Jane-Anne discovered that she was unaccountably and extraordinarily tired. She meekly drank the egg beaten up in warm milk that her aunt brought her, lay back on the pillow, and at once fell fast asleep.

Since term began Edmund had been exceedingly busy. Never before had he seen so many young men gathered together.

Hitherto his acquaintance had lain almost exclusively among elderly persons or boys of his own age. To be sure there were two youngish masters at his preparatory school, but the mere fact that they were masters set them on a distant and undesirable plane for Edmund.

But now young men, young men were all around him: in the houses opposite, on the pavements, in the hitherto so stately and silent quadrangles, on the river, in the playing fields.

One night as he lay in bed Edmund had heard a great many cabs plying up and down Holywell, and in the morning this transformation had come to pass. The tide of youthful life flooded every corner. Even the grave grey buildings seemed to open sleepy eyes and laugh and wink at one another in enjoyment of this resistless torrent, and all the inherent sociability in Edmund's nature gushed forth to join and mingle in the jocund stream.

Before three days had passed he had friends in half a dozen colleges. His method of procedure was quite simple. He sallied forth without Montagu, who was shy and exclusive and would have died rather than address a stranger without legitimate cause, and selecting an apparently amiable and manifestly idle youth, asked him the way somewhere in broadest Doric. On two occasions he happened to hit upon a fellow-countryman, and directly he discovered this he spoke in an ordinary way, and they were friends at once. He generally explained exhaustively who he was and whence he came, where he lived and the resources of the establishment in Holywell, and his new-found friends evidently found his conversation amusing, for they neither snubbed nor checked his garrulity.

On the day of Jane-Anne's arrival he had been out all the morning finding his way about Oxford by the means indicated, and only returned just as Mrs. Dew was laying luncheon.

"Is Jane-Anne not coming till afternoon?" he asked.

"Jane-Anne's here, Master Edmund, been here these two hours."

"Here! and we've never been told nor seen her. Where is she?"

"Sound asleep in my bed, she's that weak--but I don't believe moving her's done her a bit of harm, she's sleeping like a baby and looks that contented----"

"Can we go and look at her?" asked Montagu.

"No, sir, please, sir, I'd rather she slep' as long as she can. She's not slep' much this last week an' I shall let her be till she wakes."

"Will you tell us whenever she wakes?" Edmund persisted. "You see, we go back to school in two days now so we shan't see very much of her, 'specially if we don't begin at once."

"You young gentlemen had better keep on with your own doin's and never mind Jane-Anne. She's got to go to school, too--soon as she's well enough," said Mrs. Dew primly. She set the last spoon and fork symmetrically in their places and went back to the kitchen to dish up lunch.

Edmund looked across at Montagu. "I shall stop in this afternoon, and I'm going to see Jane-Anne," he whispered obstinately; "she's in our house."

"So'm I," said Montagu with brief decision.

The bed and "bits of furniture" came from Jeune Street in the afternoon, and the noise of the men carrying things up the uncarpeted stairs woke Jane-Anne, who lay for a minute staring at the unfamiliar room and wondering where she was.

It was a fairly large room with a wide latticed window that overlooked the stone-cutter's yard, for the cottage was to the side of the house and its three windows looked that way. Clean muslin curtains hung at the window, so that Jane-Anne couldn't see out except when they moved with the breeze. The ceiling was low and an oak beam crossed it. Most of the rooms in the main part of the house were panelled, but here they were papered, and the paper was of a cheerful chintzy pattern with garlands of little pink roses.

The furniture was all of brightly polished mahogany that had been in Elsa's room at Remote, and it had that characteristic individual look only to be found in old furniture well tended by careful hands through many years.

The Chippendale Talboys had a scroll top with a pedestal in the centre, and on that pedestal was a little brass owl. The handles had lost their lacquer with time, but the warm red wood was mirror-like in its brightness, and in the great "press"--a cupboard in two divisions with deep sliding shelves--Jane-Anne watched the reflection of the fluttering curtain with sleepy satisfaction.

She had no idea why she liked these things so much better than the painted wood that furnished the bedroom in Jeune Street, but she did like them amazingly, and their presence filled her with such satisfaction as caused her for a little while to forget how exceedingly hungry she was.

Presently the door was opened a little way and a fair curly head was poked through cautiously. Jane-Anne was lying with her back to the door, and all that was visible of her was a night of black hair streaming over the quilt and a long slender mound in the bed where her body lay. She was so still that Edmund thought she was asleep, and was going away again when something, some tiny sound, caused her to turn round, and she saw him.

Edmund vanished like a flash and she heard his stentorian voice proclaiming: "She's awake, Mrs. Dew; you can bring that chicken."

Then he returned, and nodding at her in most friendly fashion seated himself at the end of the bed, remarking:

"What an awful lot of hair you've got; isn't it frightfully hot?"

"I can never keep the ribbons on it in bed. I don't mind it. I rather like to be hot."

The two stared at each other, and Edmund decided that Jane-Anne looked nicer in bed than when she was up. The soft, shadowy masses of her hair were infinitely more becoming than the pie-dish. Her forehead was smooth and placid. There was no deep wrinkle between her black eyebrows.

"I'm glad you're here," said Edmund genially; "but it's a pity you're in bed. You might have done some more fielding if you'd been up."

"I'm very sorry I can't run after balls for you, sir," Jane-Anne said meekly, "but I can't be sorry I'm in bed, for if I wasn't I'd be going back to the Bainbridge almost at once, and now doctor says I can't go for another fortnight."

"And you're glad not to go? Why?"

"Because----" said Jane-Anne; but at this moment Mrs. Dew appeared with a tray. She swept Edmund out of the room, plumped up the invalid's pillows, got her into a bed-jacket, and then stood over her while, with the best will in the world, Jane-Anne did full justice to her dinner.

"What a pretty room this is, Aunt Martha," she said when she had eaten the last spoonful of pudding. "What is it makes it so pretty?"

"The things in it is all good," Mrs. Dew replied, "all old and good; not at all what's suited to a servant's bedroom, if you ask me. But they was here when I came, an', of course, it isn't for me to find fault. The other things has come, and I've got them arranged, but the carpet couldn't be nailed down for fear of waking you. They look very different in a good-sized room to what they did in Jeune Street, I can tell you. I'm very pleased to see my own things what I'm used to. You shall have this room, Jane-Anne, while you're here. I'll move my clothes to-morrow and put yours in. If it isn't Master Edmund again, and Master Montagu with 'im--I never knew such perseverin' young varmints, an' the times I've sent them away. One'd think you was some sort of a exhibition, that one would. Yes, sirs, you may come in, but you mustn't stop long. One'd think as you'd never seen a sick person before, an' me not had time so much as to wash her face before you was back again. What! Mr. Wycherly wants to come and see her after tea? Well, it's a great honour, and very kind on his part after going yesterday and all."

This time the interview was brief and unsatisfactory, for Mrs. Dew remained in the room and Montagu, in consequence, was absolutely dumb, while Jane-Anne was too nervous to do more than mumble negatives or affirmatives to the innumerable questions asked by the quite unembarrassed Edmund.

After five minutes of it the boys departed of their own accord.

Jane-Anne slept again from lunch till tea time, and after tea Mr. Wycherly came to see her.

This time Mrs. Dew did not remain. She set a chair for him and left them. Jane-Anne was sitting up in bed, arrayed in a white dimity jacket of Mrs. Dew's. This garment was voluminous and much too large for its wearer, so that Jane-Anne's face and hair seemed to emerge from amidst a billowy sea of dimity. Her hair was still loose and streamed over the bed. Mrs. Dew had wanted to plait it up, but Jane-Anne said the thick plaits hurt her head when she lay down, so her aunt gave way.

"You are looking better, my child," said Mr. Wycherly.

"I am better, sir; I'm nearly well, I'm afraid."

"Afraid! but surely you want to be well?"

"I should if I was going to stay here," Jane-Anne said earnestly. "Sir, do you think you could stop me going back to the Bainbridge?"

"Stop you," Mr. Wycherly repeated, much perplexed. "But I thought----"

"I'm sure," Jane-Anne interrupted eagerly, "if it's to learn to be a servant that I've got to go back, Aunt could teach me just as well--better, I think. She can do everything they do there, and do it nicer than the people that teaches us. She is a good servant, isn't she, sir?"

"Your aunt is a quite admirable person," Mr. Wycherly said gravely, "and most accomplished in every household art; but from what she told me I gathered that this school is a very good one, and that it was a great help to her to have got you into it."

Jane-Anne's eager face blanched. "Please, sir," she whispered, "if I promise to eat very little and work very hard would you let me stay with you and aunt?" She clasped her hands and leant forward, devouring Mr. Wycherly's face with her great tragic eyes. "Aunt would be very angry if she knew I'd spoken to you; but you could stop me going if you liked, and if I go back, I shall die, I know I shall."

"What is it you dislike so much?" Mr. Wycherly asked.

"All of it, except the lessons, they are lovelly. I can't seem to do it; my back aches so, and it's so cold."

"But it won't be cold this time. Summer is almost here."

"It isn't the weather, it's my heart," cried Jane-Anne; "it's that that's so cold. Nobody cares much about me, they think me odd and funny. Do you think me odd and funny, sir?"

Mr. Wycherly certainly did, but he laid one of his beautiful old hands on Jane-Anne's, saying gently, "I think that as yet you are not very strong, and I am quite sure that it is bad for you to worry about going back. You can't possibly go back for another fortnight, your aunt said so, and--who knows----?"

Mr. Wycherly had not intended to say this last at all. It was most unwise and misleading, but the brown eyes held his and compelled him to give them comfort. He tried to patch up his mistake by saying, in a matter of fact tone: "Suppose Montagu or Edmund begged me not to send him back to school, what should I do? Because, you see, I know that school is the best place for them--though for me the sun sets and never rises till they come back. We all have to do things we don't like."

"But they like school--they told me so."

"You probably would like it, too, if you made up your mind to do so."