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Every one brought her a farewell gift. The Snowbeams clubbed together and brought her a white plaster of Paris plaque to hang on her bedroom wall. It cost twenty-five cents and had a picture of Moses and Aaron on it in blue turbans and red gowns … and Jane saw grandmother looking at it! Little Aunt Em could not come but she sent word to Jane Stuart that she would save some hollyhock seeds for her. They had a very gay evening, although all the girls cried after they had sung, “For she’s a jolly good fellow.” Shingle Snowbeam cried so much into the tea towel with which she was helping Polly to dry the dishes that Jane had to get a dry one out.

Jane did not cry but she was thinking, “It’s the last good time I’ll have for ages. And everybody has been so lovely to me.”

“You don’t know how much I’m feeling this, Jane, right here in my heart,” said Step-a-yard patting his stomach.

Dad and Jane sat up a little while after the folks had gone.

“They love you here, Jane.”

“Polly and Shingle and Min are going to write to me every week,” said Jane.

“You’ll get the news of the Hill and the Corners then,” said dad gently. “You know I can’t write to you, Jane … not while you’re living in that house.”

“And grandmother won’t let me write to you,” said Jane sadly.

“But as long as you know there’s a dad and I know there’s a Jane, it won’t matter too much, will it? I’ll keep a diary, Jane, and you can read it when you come next summer. It will be like getting a bundle of letters all at once. And while we’ll think of each other in general quite often, let’s arrange one particular time for it. Seven o’clock in the evening here is six in Toronto. At seven o’clock every Saturday night I’ll think of you and at six you think of me.”

It was like dad to plan something like that.

“And, dad, will you sow some flower seeds for me next spring? I won’t be here in time to do it. Nasturtiums and cosmos and phlox and marigolds … oh, Mrs Jimmy John will tell you what to get, and I’d like a little patch of vegetables, too.”

“Consider it done, Queen Jane.”

“And can I have a few hens next summer, dad?”

“Those hens are hatched already,” said dad.

He squeezed her hand.

“We’ve had a good time, haven’t we, Jane?”

“We’ve LAUGHED so much together,” said Jane, thinking of 60 Gay where there was no laughter. “You won’t forget to send for me next spring, will you, dad?”

“No,” was all dad said. “No” is sometimes a horrible word but there are times when it is beautiful.

They had to get up early the next morning because dad was going to drive Jane to town to catch the boat train and meet a certain Mrs Wesley who was going to Toronto. Jane thought she could travel very well by herself, but for once dad was adamant.

The morning sky was red with trees growing black against it. The old moon was visible, like a new moon turned the wrong way, above the birches on Big Donald’s hill. It was still misty in the hollows. Jane bade every room farewell and just before they left dad stopped the clock.

“We’ll start it again when you come back, Janekin. My watch will do me for the winter.”

The purring Peters had to be said goodbye to but Happy went to town with them. Aunt Irene was at the station and so was Lilian Morrow, the latter all perfume and waved hair. Dad seemed glad to see her; he walked up and down the platform with her. She called him “‘Drew.” You could hear the apostrophe before it like a coo or a kiss. Jane could have done very well without Miss Morrow to see her off.

Aunt Irene kissed her twice and cried.

“Remember you always have a friend in ME, lovey” … as if she thought Jane had no other.

“Don’t look so woebegone, dear,” smiled Lilian Morrow. “Remember you’re going home.”

Home! “Home is where the heart is.” Jane had heard or read that. And she knew she was leaving her heart on the Island with dad, to whom she presently said goodbye with all the anguish of all the goodbyes that have ever been said in her voice.

Jane watched the red shores of the Island from the boat until they were only a dim blue line against the sky. And now to be Victoria again!

When Jane went through the gates of the Toronto station, she heard a laugh she would have known anywhere. There was only one such laugh in the world. And there was mother, in a lovely new crimson velvet wrap with a white fur collar and underneath a dress of white chiffon embroidered with brilliants. Jane knew this meant that mother was going out to dinner … and she knew grandmother had not allowed mother to break her engagement for the sake of spending Jane’s first evening home with her. But mother, smelling of violets, was holding her tight, laughing and crying.

“My dearest … my very own little girl. You’re home again. Oh, darling, I’ve missed you so… . I’ve missed you so.”

Jane hugged mother fiercely … mother as beautiful as ever, her eyes as blue as ever, though, as Jane saw instantly, a little thinner than she had been in June.

“Are you glad to be back, darling?”

“So glad to be with you again, mummy,” said Jane.

“You’ve grown … why, darling, you’re up to my shoulder … and such a lovely tan. But I can never let you go away again … never.”

Jane kept her own counsel about that. She felt curiously changed and grown-uppish as she went through the big lighted station with mother. Frank was waiting with the limousine and they went home through the busy, crowded streets to 60 Gay. 60 Gay was neither busy nor crowded. The clang of the iron gates behind her seemed a knell of doom. She was re-entering prison. The great, cold, still house struck a chill to her spirit. Mother had gone on to the dinner and grandmother and Aunt Gertrude were meeting her. She kissed Aunt Gertrude’s narrow white face and grandmother’s soft wrinkled one.

“You’ve grown, Victoria,” said grandmother icily. She did not like Jane looking into her eyes on the level. And grandmother saw at a glance that Jane had somehow learned what to do with her arms and legs and was looking entirely too much mistress of herself. “Don’t smile with your lips closed, if you please. I’ve never really been able to see the charm of ‘La Gioconda.’”

They had dinner. It was six o’clock. Down home it would be seven. Dad would be … Jane felt she could not swallow a mouthful.

“Will you be good enough to pay attention when I am speaking to you, Victoria?”

“I beg your pardon, grandmother.”

“I am asking you what you wore this summer. I have looked into your trunk and the clothes you took with you don’t seem to have been worn at all.”

“Only the green linen jumper suit,” said Jane. “I wore it to church and the ice-cream social. I had gingham dresses to wear at home. I kept house for father, you know.”

Grandmother wiped her lips daintily with her napkin. It seemed as if she were wiping some disagreeable flavour off them.

“I am not inquiring about your rural activities” … Jane saw grandmother looking at her hands… . “It will be wise for you to forget them… .”

“But I’m going back next summer, grandmother… .”

“Be kind enough not to interrupt me, Victoria. And as you must be tired after your journey, I would advise you to go to bed at once. Mary has prepared a bath for you. I suppose you will be rather glad to get into a real bath-tub once more.”

When she had had the whole gulf for a bath-tub all summer!

“I must run over and see Jody first,” said Jane … and went. She could not forget her new freedom so quickly. Grandmother watched her go with tightening lips. Perhaps she realized that never again would Jane be quite the meek, overawed Victoria of the old days. She had grown in mind as well as in body.

Jane and Jody had a rapturous reunion. Jody had grown too. She was thinner and taller and her eyes were sadder than ever.

“Oh, Jane, I’m so glad you’re back. It’s been so long.”

“I’m so glad you’re still here, Jody. I was afraid Miss West might have sent you to the orphanage.”

“She’s always saying she will … I guess she will yet. Did you really like the Island so much, Jane?”

“I just loved it,” said Jane, glad that here was at least one person to whom she could talk freely about her Island and her father.

Jane was horribly homesick as she climbed the soft-carpeted stairway to bed. If she were only skipping up the bare, painted steps at Lantern Hill! Her old room had not grown any friendlier. She ran to the window, opened it and gazed out … but not on starry hills and the moon shining on woodland fields. The clamour of Bloor Street assailed her ears. The huge old trees about 60 Gay were sufficient unto themselves … they were not her friendly birches and spruces. A wind was trying to blow … Jane felt sorry for it … checked here, thwarted there. But it was blowing from the west. Would it blow right down to the Island … to the velvety black night starred with harbour lights beyond Lantern Hill? Jane leaned out of the window and sent a kiss to dad on it.

“And now,” remarked Jane to Victoria, “there will be only nine months to put in.”

“She will soon forget everything about Lantern Hill,” said grandmother.

Mother wasn’t so sure. She felt the change in Jane as did everybody. Uncle David’s family thought Jane “much improved.” Aunt Sylvia said Victoria had actually become able to get through a room without danger to the furniture. And Phyllis was a shade less patronizing, though with plenty of room for improvement yet.

“I heard you went barefoot down there,” she said curiously.

“Of course,” said Jane. “All the children do in summer.”

“Victoria has gone quite P. E. Island,” said grandmother with her bitter little smile, much as if she had said, “Victoria has gone quite savage.” Grandmother had already learned a new way to get under Jane’s skin. It was to say little biting things about the Island. Grandmother employed it quite mercilessly. She felt that Jane, in so many respects, had somehow slipped beyond her power to hurt. All the colour still went out of Jane in grandmother’s presence but she was not thereby reduced to the old flabbiness. Jane had not been chatelaine of Lantern Hill and the companion of a keen, mature intellect all summer for nothing. A new spirit looked out of her hazel eyes … something that was free and aloof … something that was almost beyond grandmother’s power to tame or hurt. All the venom of her stings seemed unable to touch this new Jane … except when she sneered at the Island.

Because in a very real sense Jane was still living on the Island. This helped to take the edge off her first two weeks of unbearable homesickness. While she was practising her scales she was listening for the thunder of the breakers on Queen’s Shore; while she ate her meals she was waiting for dad to come in from one of his long hikes with Happy trotting at his heels; when she was alone in the big gloomy house she was companioned by the Peters … who could have imagined that a couple of cat’s a thousand miles away could be such comforts? … When she lay awake at night she was hearing all the sounds of her Island home. And while she was reading the Bible chapter to grandmother and Aunt Gertrude in that terrible, unchanged drawing-room, she was reading it to dad on the old Watch Tower.

“I should prefer a little more REVERENCE in reading the Bible, Victoria,” said grandmother. Jane had been reading an old Hebrew war tale as father would have read it, with a trumpet clang of victory in her voice. Grandmother looked at her vindictively. It was plain that reading the Bible was no longer a penance to Jane. She seemed positively to enjoy it. And what could grandmother do about it?

Jane had made a list on the back of her arithmetic notebook of the months that must pass before her return to the Island, and smiled when she ticked off September.

She had felt very reluctant to go back to St Agatha’s. But in a short time she found herself saying one day in amazement, “I like going to school.”

She had always felt vaguely left out … excluded at St Agatha’s. Now, for some reason unknown to her, she no longer felt so. It was as if she had become a comrade and a leader overnight. The girls of her class looked up to her. The teachers began to wonder why they had never before suspected what a remarkable child Victoria Stuart was. Why, she was simply full of executive ability.

And her studies were no longer a tribulation. They had become a pleasure. She wanted to study as hard as she could, to catch up with dad. Dim ghosts of history … exquisite, unhappy queens … grim old tyrants … had become real … marked poems in the reader she and dad had read together were full of meaning for her … the ancient lands where they had roamed in fancy were places she knew and loved. It was so easy to learn about them. Jane brought home no more bad reports. Mother was delighted but grandmother did not seem overly pleased. She picked up a letter one day which Jane was writing to Polly Jimmy John, glanced over it, dropped it with disdain:

“Phlox is not spelled f-l-o-x, Victoria. But I suppose it does not matter to your haphazard friends how you spell.”

Jane blushed. She knew perfectly well how to spell phlox but there was so much to tell Polly … to ask Polly … so many messages to send to the people in that far, dear Island by the sea … she just scribbled away furiously without thinking.

“Polly Garland is the best speller at Lantern Corners school,” said Jane.

“Oh, I have no doubt … no doubt whatever … that she has all the backwoods virtues,” said grandmother.

Grandmother’s sneers could not poison Jane’s delight in the letters she got from the Island. They came as thick as autumn leaves in Vallambroso. Somebody at Lantern Hill or Hungry Cove or the Corners was always writing to Jane. The Snowbeams sent composite letters, dreadfully spelled and blotted, written paragraph about. They possessed the knack of writing the most amusing things, illustrated along the edges with surprisingly well-done thumb-nail sketches by Shingle. Jane always wanted to shriek with laughter over the Snowbeam letters.

Elder Tommy had the mumps … fancy Elder Tommy with the mumps … Shingle had fancied it in a few sidesplitting curves… . The tail-board of Big Donald’s cart had come out when he was going up Little Donald’s hill and all his turnips had rolled out and down the hill and was he mad! The pigs had got into the Corners graveyard; Min’s ma was making a silk quilt … Jane immediately began saving patches for Min’s ma’s quilt… . Ding-dong’s dog had torn the whole seat out of Andy Pearson’s second best trousers, the frost had killed all the dahlias, Step-a-yard was having boils, there had been a lovely lot of funerals this fall, old Mrs Dougald MacKay had died and people who were at the funeral said she looked perfectly gorgeous, the Jimmy Johns’ baby had laughed at last, the big tree on Big Donald’s hill had blown down … Jane was sorry for that, she had loved that tree… . “We miss you just awful, Jane… . Oh, Jane, we wish you could be here for Hallowe’en night.”