CHAPTER XIII

Mr. Towle gave no sign of a continued interest in Jane's affairs; and because he did not, that imprudent young person felt herself to be lonely and neglected beyond her deserts. At night, in the stuffy seclusion of the trunkroom, she wept large tears into her thin pillow, and prayed with truly feminine inconsistency and fervor for numbers of things which she as resolutely thrust aside by day.

Twice she sought solace and advice from Bertha Forbes, and as often spurned both, when both were urged upon her.

"You remind me," said Miss Forbes at last, "of a horse we used to have out in the country. My brothers were burning the stumps out of a ten-acre wood lot one summer, and that animal _would_ jump over the fence and go and roll in the hot coals and ashes whenever he got a chance till his hide was burned into holes. The creature must have suffered frightfully, but he persisted in doing it just the same. We had to tie him up after a bit."

"Oh, thanks!" cried Jane angrily, "perhaps you think I need tying up."

"I do, indeed," agreed Bertha Forbes cheerfully. She studied the pretty, wilful face in silence for a few moments. "You are much too fond of having your own way," she added sententiously, "and one's own way is so seldom the path of pleasantness that the Bible tells about. I know, for I've tried it."

She swallowed hard once or twice, then she went on in her gruffest voice. "Look here, Jane, I don't want to see you make the fool of yourself that I did. I somehow got the notion that a woman was just as able as a man to make her way in the world, and that I wasn't going to depend upon 'petticoat push' for my living. I despised the idea of being dependent upon anybody, and so I--I-- Well, to cut a long story short, I told the only man who ever cared enough about me to want to take care of me, that I could take care of myself. I told him so three times in all, I remember. The third time he said, 'All right, Bertha; I reckon you'll have to try.' A year later he married one of those soft pink-and-white little things that I had always looked down upon as being too insignificant to despise. Yesterday----"

Bertha Forbes paused to gulp painfully once or twice. "Yesterday that woman passed me in her carriage. There was a child on either side of her, and she was dressed like a flower; which means, you know, a bit more magnificently than Solomon in all his glory. She didn't know me, of course. And I tramped on down to my office. You know what my work is, Jane."

"Yes, I know," and Jane blushed painfully. "I--I don't really like taking care of myself," she murmured, after a little, "but I can't see how I am going to help myself for a while. Anyway, you may be happier in your horrid office than that woman in her carriage, unless she--loves the man who gives it to her." The girl finished with a soft, far-away look in her brown eyes.

"Right you are!" cried Bertha Forbes, bringing down her capable-looking hand upon her knee with a businesslike whack. "I'm not envying the woman; not I. Fancy me with a ridiculous feather bobbing over one eye, and diamonds and folderols of all sorts disposed upon my person. Wouldn't I be a holy show?"

"You're really very good looking, when one looks at you carefully, Bertha," said the girl seriously, "but you need handsome clothes to bring out your good points."

"Guess my points good or bad will have to remain in innocuous desuetude then," Miss Forbes said gruffly. "'Nough said about B. F., my dear. And if you're set on staying on in your servile position, and allowing that absurdly pretentious little matron and her infant to walk all over you, I've nothing to say, of course. Do the men treat you properly, child?"

Jane stared at her friend resentfully. "I don't know what you mean," she said. "Mrs. Belknap's husband and brother are both gentlemen, and I--am her servant."

"That's all right, child; but mind you keep that good-looking chap--what's his name? Oh, Everett--yes; mind you keep him at his distance, whatever you do."

"_Bertha!_" cried Jane.

"You needn't 'Bertha' me," said Miss Forbes severely. "I'm an old maid all right; but I know a thing or two if I am forty, and now that Mr. Towle has gone back to England----"

"Has he gone back?"

"Well; why not? You didn't want him to stay on in America, did you?"

"N-o," faltered Jane, "I-I'm glad he's gone." Nevertheless she felt a more poignant throb of loneliness than usual as she stepped down from the trolley car in the gathering twilight at the close of her "afternoon out." Had it fallen to the lot of the Hon. Wipplinger Towle to present himself at that moment Fortune might have been genuinely kind instead of amusedly scornful in view of his aspirations.

That same evening Mrs. Belknap shut her chamber door safely after a careful reconnaissance of the hall. "Jimmy, dear, I'm _almost_ distracted," she confided to her husband.

"Why, what's the matter, dear girl?" he asked, "has Buster been up to his tricks again? Or is Mary's cousin's wife's mother's brother 'tuk bad wid cramps'?"

Mrs. Belknap heaved a deep sigh as she shook her head; her pretty white forehead was puckered into unbecoming folds of deep anxiety. "_It's Jane_," she said in a sepulchral whisper.

"If you don't like the girl, get rid of her," advised Mr. Belknap strongly. "I've thought all along this two-maid business is a mistake for us. It's too--er--complicated, somehow."

"Oh, Jimmy Belknap!" exclaimed his wife reproachfully; "it was you who advised me to get another girl. You simply made me do it; you know you