Jane of Lantern Hill (10 page)

Jane, to her horror, slept in next morning, and when she rushed downstairs she saw an extraordinary sight…dad coming over from the Jimmy Johns' with a rocking chair on his head. He also had a gridiron in his hand.

“Had to borrow one to broil the codfish on, Jane. And Mrs. Jimmy John made me take the chair. She said it belonged to Aunt Matilda Jollie and they had more rocking chairs than they had time to sit in. I made the porridge and it's up to you to broil the codfish.”

Jane broiled it and her face as well, and it was delicious. The porridge was a bit lumpy.

“Dad isn't a very good cook, I guess,” thought Jane affectionately. But she did not say so and she heroically swallowed all the lumps. Dad didn't; he ranged them along the edge of his plate and looked at her quizzically.

“I can write, my Jane, but I can't make porridgeable porridge.”

“You won't have to make it after this. I'll never sleep in again,” said Jane.

There is no pleasure in life like the joy of achievement. Jane realized that in the weeks that followed, if she did not put it in just those words. Old Uncle Tombstone, the general handy man of the Queen's Shore district, whose name was really Tunstone and who hadn't a niece or nephew in the world, papered all the rooms for them, patched the roof and mended the shutters, painted the house white with green trim and taught Jane how, when, and where to dig for clams. He had a nice old rosy face with a fringe of white whisker under his chin.

Jane, bubbling over with energy, worked like a beaver, cleaning up after Uncle Tombstone, arranging the bits of furniture as dad brought them home, and getting curtains up all over the house.

“That girl can be in three places at once,” said dad. “I don't know how she manages it…I suppose there really is such a thing as witchcraft.”

Jane was very capable and could do almost anything she tried to do. It was nice to live where you could show how capable you were. This was her own world and she was a person of importance in it. There was joy in her heart the clock round. Life here was one endless adventure.

When Jane was not cleaning up she was getting the meals. She studied her
Cookery
for
Beginners
every spare moment and went about muttering, “All measurements are level,” and things like that. Because she had watched Mary and because it was born in her to be a cook, she got on amazingly well. From the very first her biscuits were never soggy or her roast underdone. But one day she flew too high and produced for dessert something that a charitable person might have called a plum pudding. Uncle Tombstone ate some of it and had to have the doctor that night…or so he said. He brought his own dinner the next day…cold bacon and cold pancakes tied up in a red handkerchief, and told Jane he was on a diet.

“That pudding of yours yesterday, miss, it was a mite too rich. My stomach ain't used to Toronto cookery. Them there vitamins now…I reckon you have to be brought up on them for them to agree with you.”

To his cronies he averred that that pudding would have given the rats indigestion. But he liked Jane.

“Your daughter is a very superior person,” he told dad. “Most of the girls nowadays are all tops and no taters. But she's superior—yes, sir, she's superior.” How dad and Jane laughed over that. Dad called her “Superior Jane” in a tone of mock awe till the joke wore out.

Jane liked Uncle Tombstone too. In fact, nothing in her new life amazed her more than the ease with which she liked people. It seemed as if everyone she met was sealed of her tribe. She thought it must be that the P. E. Islanders were nicer, or at least more neighborly, than the Toronto people. She did not realize that the change was in herself. She was no longer rebuffed, frightened, awkward because she was frightened. Her foot was on her native heath and her name was Jane. She felt friendly towards all the world and all the world responded. She could love all she wanted to…everybody she wanted to…without being accused of low tastes. Probably grandmother would not have recognized Uncle Tombstone socially; but the standards of 60 Gay were not the standards of Lantern Hill.

As for the Jimmy Johns, Jane felt as if she must have known them all her life. They were so called, she discovered, because Mr. James John Garland had a James Garland to the northeast of him and a John Garland to the southwest of him, and so had to be distinguished in some way. Her first forenoon at Lantern Hill all the Jimmy Johns came galloping over in a body. At least, the young fry galloped with the three dogs…a brindled bull-terrier, a golden collie, and a long brown dog who was just a dog. Mrs. Jimmy John, who was as tall and thin as her Jimmy John was short and fat, with very wise, gentle gray eyes, walked briskly, carrying in her arms a baby as fat as a sausage. Miranda Jimmy John, who was sixteen, was as tall as her mother and as fat as her father. She had had a double chin at ten and nobody would ever believe that she was secretly overflowing with romance. Polly Jimmy John was Jane's age but looked younger because she was short and thin. “Punch” Jimmy John, who had brought the key, was thirteen. There were the eight-year-old twins…the George twin and the Ella twin…their bare chubby legs all spotted with mosquito bites. And every one of them had a pleasant smile.

“Jane Victoria Stuart?” said Mrs. Jimmy John with a questioning smile.

“Jane!” said Jane, with such an intonation of triumph that the Jimmy Johns all stared at her.

“Jane, of course,” smiled Mrs. Jimmy John. Jane knew she was going to like Mrs. Jimmy John.

Everybody except the baby had brought a present for Jane. Mrs. Jimmy John gave her a lamb skin dyed red for a bedside rug. Miranda brought her a little fat white jug with pink roses on its sides, Punch brought her some early radishes, Polly brought her a rooted geranium slip, and the twins brought a toad apiece “for her garden.”

“You have to have toads in your garden for luck,” explained Punch.

Jane felt it would never do to let her first callers go home without something to eat, especially when they had come bearing gifts.

“Mrs. Meade's pie will go round if I don't take a piece,” she thought. “The baby won't want any.”

The baby
did
want some, but Mrs. Jimmy John shared hers with him. They sat around in the kitchen on the chairs and on the sandstone doorstep and ate the pie while Jane radiated hospitality.

“Come over whenever you can, dear,” Mrs. Jimmy John told her. Mrs. Jimmy John thought Jane pretty young to be keeping house for anybody. “If there's any way we can help you, we'll be glad to.”

“Will you teach me how to make bread?” said Jane coolly. “We can get it at the Corners, of course, but dad likes homemade bread. And what kind of cake flour would you recommend?”

Jane got acquainted with the Snowbeams also that week. The Solomon Snowbeams were a rather neglected rapscallion family who lived in a ramshackle house where the spruce barrens ran down to a curve of the harbor shore known as Hungry Cove. Nobody knew how Solomon Snowbeam contrived to feed his family…he fished a little and “worked out” a little and shot a little. Mrs. Snowbeam was a big, pink, overblown woman, and Caraway Snowbeam, “Shingle” Snowbeam, Penny Snowbeam, and “Young John” Snowbeam were impudent, friendly little creatures who certainly did not look starved. Millicent Mary Snowbeam, aged six, was neither impudent nor friendly. Millicent Mary was, so Polly Garland told Jane, not all there. She had blank, velvety nut-brown eyes…all the Snowbeams had beautiful eyes…reddish-golden hair and a dazzling complexion. She could sit for hours without speaking…perhaps that was why the chattering Jimmy Johns thought her not all there…with her fat arms clasped around her fat knees. She seemed to be possessed of a dumb admiration for Jane and haunted Lantern Hill all that summer, gazing at her. Jane did not mind her.

If Millicent Mary did not talk, the rest of the Snowbeams made up for it. At first they were inclined to resent Jane a bit, thinking she must know everything because she came from Toronto and would be putting on airs about it. But when they discovered she hardly knew anything…except the little Uncle Tombstone had taught her about clams…they became very friendly. That is to say, they asked innumerable questions. There was no false delicacy about any of the Snowbeams.

“Does your pa put live people in his stories?” asked Penny.

“No,” said Jane.

“Everybody round here says he does. Everybody's scared he'll put them in. He'd better not put
us
in if he doesn't want his snoot busted. I'm the toughest boy in Lantern Hill.”

“Do you think you are interesting enough to put in a story?” said Jane.

Penny was a little scared of her after that.

“We've been wanting to see what you looked like,” said Shingle, who wore overalls and looked like a boy but wasn't, “because your pa and ma are divorced, ain't they?”

“No,” said Jane.

“Is your pa a widow then?” persisted Shingle.

“No.”

“Does your ma live in Toronto?”

“Yes.”

“Why doesn't she live here with your pa?”

“If you ask me any more questions about my parents,” said Jane, “I'll get dad to put you into one of his stories…every one of you.”

Shingle was cowed but Caraway took up the tale.

“Do you look like your mother?”

“No. My mother is the most beautiful woman in Toronto,” said Jane proudly.

“Do you live in a white marble house at home?”

“No.”

“Ding-dong Bell said you did,” said Caraway in disgust. “Ain't he the awful liar? And I s'pose you don't have satin bedspreads either?”

“We have silk ones,” said Jane.

“Ding-dong
said
you had satin.”

“I see the butcher bringing your dinner up the lane,” said Young John. “What are you having?”

“Steak.”

“My stars! We never have steak…nothing but bread and molasses and fried salt pork. Dad says he can't look a pig in the face 'thout grunting and mam says let him bring her home something else and she'll be mighty glad to cook it. Is that a cake you're making? Say, will you let me lick out the pan?”

“Yes, but stand back from the table. Your shirt is all over chaff,” ordered Jane.

“Ain't you the bossy snip?” said Young John.

“Foxy-head,” said Penny.

They all went home mad because Jane Stuart had insulted Young John. But they all came back next day and forgivingly helped her weed and clean up her garden. It was hard work and it was a hot day, so that their brows were wet with honest sweat long before they had done it to Jane's taste. If anybody had made them work as hard as that they would have howled to high heaven; but when it was for fun…why, it
was
fun.

Jane gave them the last of Mrs. Meade's cookies. She meant to try a batch of her own next day anyhow.

Jane had already decided that there was never a garden in the world like hers. She was crazy about it. An early, old-fashioned yellow rose bush was already in bloom. Shadows of poppies danced here and there. The stone dyke was smothered in wild rose bushes starred with crimson bud-sheaths. Pale lemon lilies and creamy June lilies grew in the corners. There were ribbon-grass and mint, bleeding-heart, prince's feather, southernwood, peonies, sweet balm, Sweet May, Sweet William, all with sated velvet bees humming over them. Aunt Matilda Jollie had been content with old-fashioned perennials and Jane loved them too, but she made up her mind that by hook or crook she would have some annuals next summer. Jane, at the beginning of this summer, was already planning for next.

In a very short time she was to be full of garden lore and was always trying to extract information about fertilizers from anybody who knew. Mr. Jimmy John gravely advised well-rotted cow manure, and Jane dragged basketfuls of it home from his barnyard. She loved to water the flowers…especially when the earth was a little dry and they drooped pleadingly. The garden rewarded her…she was one of those people at whose touch things grow. No weed was ever allowed to show its face. Jane got up early every morning to weed. It was wonderful to wake as the sun came over the sea.

The mornings at Lantern Hill seemed different from the mornings anywhere else…more morningish. Jane's heart sang as she weeded and raked and hoed and pruned and thinned out.

“Who taught you these things, woman?” asked dad.

“I think I've always known them,” said Jane dreamily.

The Snowbeams told Jane their cat had kittens and she could have one. Jane went down to choose. There were four, and the poor, lean, old mother cat was so proud and happy.

Jane picked a black one with a pansy face…a really pansy face, so dark and velvety, with round golden eyes. She named it Peter on the spot. Then the Jimmy Johns, not to be outdone, brought over a kitten also. But this kitten was already named Peter and the Ella twin wept frantically over the idea of anybody changing it. So dad suggested calling them First Peter and Second Peter…which Mrs. Snowbeam thought was sacrilegious. Second Peter was a dainty thing in black and silver, with a soft white breast. Both Peters slept at the foot of Jane's bed and swarmed over dad the minute he sat down.

“What is home without a dog?” said dad, and got one from old Timothy Salt at the harbor mouth. They named him Happy. He was a slim white dog with a round brown spot at the root of his tail, a brown collar and brown ears. He kept the Peters in their place and Jane loved him so much it hurt her.

“I like
living
things around me, dad.''

Dad brought home the ship clock with the dog. Jane found it useful to time meals by, but as far as anything else was concerned there was really no such thing as time at Lantern Hill.

By the end of a week Jane knew the geography and people of Lantern Hill and Lantern Corners perfectly. Every hill seemed to belong to somebody…Big Donald's hill…Little Donald's hill…Old Man Cooper's hill. She could pick out Big Donald Martin's farm and little Donald Martin's farm. Every household light she could see from the hill-top had its own special significance. She knew just where to look to see Min's ma's light sparkle out every night from the little white house in a misty fold of the hills. Min herself, an owl-eyed gypsy scrap, full of ginger, was already a bosom friend of Jane's. Jane knew that Min's colorless ma was entirely unimportant except as a background for Min. Min never would wear shoes or stockings in summer and her bare feet twinkled over the red roads to Lantern Hill every day. Sometimes Elmer Bell, better known as Ding-dong, came with her. Ding-dong was freckled and his ears stuck out, but he was popular, though pursued through life by some scandalous tale of having sat in his porridge when he was an infant. When Young John wanted to be especially annoying he yelled at Ding-dong, “Sot in your porridge, you did…sot in your porridge!”