Years of Grace

I

Little Jane Ward sat at her father’s left hand at the family breakfast table, her sleek, brown pigtailed head bent discreetly over her plate. She was washing down great mouthfuls of bacon and eggs with gulps of too hot cocoa. She did not have to look at the great black clock, surmounted by the bronze bird, that had stood on the dining-room mantelpiece ever since she could remember, to know that it was twenty minutes after eight. If she hurried with her breakfast she could get off for school before Flora and Muriel called to walk up with her. If she could escape them she could meet André, loitering nonchalantly near the Water Works Tower, and walk up with him. She could walk up with him anyway, of course, but, with Flora and Muriel fluttering and giggling at her elbow, it would not be quite the same.

Her father was buried behind the far-flung pages of the Chicago Tribune. Her mother sat behind the coffee tray, immaculately clad in a crisp white dressing-sack, her pretty, proud little head held high above the silver urn, her eyes wandering competently over the breakfast table. Her sister, Isabel, was not yet down. Her sister Isabel was nineteen. Grown up. Her school days behind her. A young lady. About to become a débutante. Old enough to loiter, unrebuked, in bed, after a late party, until her father had left for the office and Jane was well on her way to school.

“Jane,” said her mother tranquilly, “don’t take such large mouthfuls.” Jane was not grown up. Jane was still fourteen. Young enough to be rebuked for almost anything, including table manners.

“What’s the hurry, kid?” said her father cheerfully, lowering the margins of the paper. He was nearly always cheerful. His brown eyes twinkled as they rested on Jane. They usually did.

“I want to get off to school early,” said Jane plausibly. “I want to meet Agnes.”

“Agnes!” exclaimed her mother with a little fretful shrug. “Always, Agnes!”

That was all, but it was quite enough. Jane knew very well that her mother did not approve of Agnes Johnson. And Jane knew why. With the crystal clarity of fourteen-year-old perception, Jane knew why all too well. It was because Agnes lived west of Lincoln Park and her father was a newspaper reporter and her mother worked in an office. Her mother was somebody’s secretary. There was something unforgivable in that.

Her mother did approve, now, of Flora Furness and Muriel Lester. She approved of them wholeheartedly. They lived just around the corner. Flora on Rush Street, in a big brown stone house with lilac bushes in the yard, and Muriel on Huron, in a grey stone fortress, built by Richardson, the great Eastern architect. Muriel gave a party every Christmas vacation. A dancing party, with white crash laid down over the parlor carpet and an orchestra, hidden in palms, beneath the stairs. Flora’s house was very large and lovely. It had belonged to her grandfather. It had a big ballroom, tucked away under its mansard roof and there was a tiger-skin rug in the front hall and gold furniture in the drawing-room and a conservatory, opening off the library, with hanging Boston ferns and a real orange tree and two grey parrots in a gilded cage.

Her mother liked Jane to walk to school with Flora and Muriel. She liked her to have them over to play. She had always liked it, from the days of their first paper dolls. There were things that were wrong with Flora and Muriel, too. But they were subtle things that didn’t seem to make much difference. Nevertheless they caused comment. Comment, at least, from her mother and Isabel. Jane had sensed them always, without exactly understanding.

There was something wrong with Flora’s mother, who was perhaps the prettiest, and certainly the most fashionable lady that Jane had ever seen. She was always going out to parties, sweeping out of her front door in rustling draperies, slipping through the crowd of staring children on the sidewalk, wafting a kiss to Flora, and vanishing into the depths of her little blue brougham that waited at the curb. She had a pug for a lap dog and drove out every spring and summer afternoon in a dark blue victoria, with two men up, behind a pair of spanking bays, with a little tip-tilted sunshade of black lace held over her tiny flowered toque of violets. She had always the pug with her, and never Flora, and sometimes a gentleman called Mr. Bert Lancaster, who led cotillions and danced with Isabel occasionally at parties and skated with her sometimes on the Superior Street rink, and made her very happy when he did.

There was something wrong with all Muriel’s family, though her eldest sister, Edith, had been the belle of last winter and her second sister, Rosalie, was going to be the belle of this and had been with Isabel at Farmington and was one of Isabel’s dearest friends. This wrong was easier to fathom. It was because their name was Lester, though everyone knew that it had once been Leischer, and their grandfather, old Solomon Lester, made no bones about it at all, but was just frankly Hebraic, so everyone said who had met him in New York.

Jane knew all this and had always known it. She could not have said how. She was acutely conscious of everything that her mother approved or disapproved. And now that Isabel had come home from Farmington and was frankly recognized as someone to be listened to, Jane was acutely conscious of her opinions, too. It never occurred to her to agree or disagree with them, consciously. There they were. Opinions. Jane bumped into them, tangible obstacles in her path, things to be recognized, and accepted or evaded, as the exigencies of the situation demanded. Just now she didn’t bother at all about Agnes. Jane was very fond of Agnes, but Agnes was, for the moment, a pretext.

“May I be excused?” she asked meekly.

“Use your finger bowl,” said her mother abstractedly.

“What’s the rush, kid?” asked her father again. “Done your algebra?”

Her algebra was Jane’s bête noire. She never told her teacher how much her father helped her. She nodded, rising.

“Understand that last quadratic equation?”

Jane nodded again and kissed her mother goodbye.

“Keep that frock clean,” said her mother, “Don’t climb on fences.”

Jane kissed her father. His face was lean and hard and smelled of shaving-soap. His cheeks were always very smooth in the morning.

“Goodbye, kid. I see in the paper that the Gilbert and Sullivan operas are coming. We’ll have to see The Mikado.”

Jane flushed with pleasure. Even André was forgotten. Jane had only been to the theatre four times before in all her life. Once when she was very young to see Elsie Leslie in Little Lord Fauntleroy and twice to see Joseph Jefferson in Rip van Winkle and once last year to hear Calvé in Carmen, with all the family, because there was an extra seat, on Thanksgiving afternoon.

“Really, Papa? Honestly?” Her face was shining. Then she heard the doorbell ring. Her heart sank, in spite of her glowing prospects. That was Flora and Muriel at the front door, of course. Minnie, the waitress, went to open it. There was a shuffle, a whispered joke, and a giggle in the hall. It was certainly Flora and Muriel. Jane walked slowly out of the room.

“I wish that child would drop Agnes Johnson,” she heard her mother say and caught the irritated rustle of her father’s paper in reply.

“Just a jiffy!” she called, and raced upstairs, two steps at a time, for her homework.

“Don’t wake Isabel!” called her mother.

When Jane came downstairs again her father was struggling into his coat in the front hall. Flora and Muriel sat mutely on the bench beneath the hat-rack, school books in hand. Minnie handed her her lunch for recess. A little wicker basket with a leather strap, containing two jelly sandwiches, Jane knew, and a piece of cake and her favorite banana.

Flora and Muriel rose to meet her. Her father was humming, gaily, regarding the children before him with a benevolent smile. As they reached the front door he broke into jocular song.

“Three little maids from school are we,
Pert as a school girl well can be,
Filled to the brim with girlish glee,
Three little maids from school!”

Flora and Muriel were regarding him dispassionately. Jane was just a little bit ashamed of him. In the presence of her contemporaries, Jane felt almost grown up. Her father opened the door for them with mock ceremony.

“Everything is a source of fun.
Nobody’s safe for we care for none.”

He tweaked her pigtails affectionately.

“Life is a joke that’s just begun!
Three little maids from school!”

They were out and had run down the steps before he could go any further. Jane’s sense of embarrassment had deepened. Flora was fifteen and was already talking of putting up her golden curls. Muriel had a real suit, with a skirt and Eton jacket, and her dresses reached almost to her boot tops. It was too bad of her father. The song wasn’t so very funny, after all. Nor so very true.

Life didn’t seem at all a joke to Jane as she skipped down Pine Street, that crisp October morning, arm in arm with her friends. She was wondering whether André would be waiting under the Water Works Tower. And whether Flora and Muriel would try to tease them if he were. And what he would think, if they did. And what her mother would say if she knew that André was waiting almost every morning, when she reached Chicago Avenue, waiting to walk up the Drive with her carrying her school books. Funny French André, whom Flora and Muriel always laughed at, a little, and of whom her mother and Isabel didn’t at all approve, because he was French and a Roman Catholic and went to church in the Holy Name Cathedral and lived in a little flat in the Saint James Apartments and had an English mother who wore a funny-looking feather boa and a French father who was a consul, whatever that was, and spoke broken English and didn’t know many people.

Muriel was talking of Rosalie’s coming-out party. There was to be a reception and a dinner and a dance and Muriel was going to sit up for it and have a new pink muslin dress, ordered from Hollander’s in New York.

Isabel was going to have a reception, too, but no dinner, as far as Jane knew, and certainly no dance. Jane’s clothes were all made on the third floor by Miss McKelvey, who came twice every year, spring and fall, for two weeks, taking possession of the sewing machine in the playroom and turning out an incredible number of frocks and reefers and white percale petticoats with eyelet embroidery. She made lots of Isabel’s dresses, too, and some of Jane’s mother’s. And doll clothes, on the side, for Jane, though Jane was too old for that, now. She hadn’t looked at her doll for nearly two years. That wonderful French doll with real hair and eyes that opened and shut, that her mother had brought her from Paris on the memorable occasion, five years before, of her trip abroad.

Jane had always loved Miss McKelvey from the days that she used to ride on her knees when she wound the bobbins. And she always liked her new clothes. It was only when Flora and Muriel talked of theirs that it occurred to her to disparage them. Flora and Muriel had lovely things. Dresses from New York and coats made at real tailors’. But Jane didn’t want them, really. At least she wouldn’t have wanted them if Flora and Muriel had only let her alone. She hadn’t wanted them, at all, until she had met André. Now she couldn’t help wondering what André would think if he could see her at a real dance, some evening, in a pink muslin dress from Hollander’s. Of course she and André didn’t go to dances. But there would be the Christmas parties and if she had a pink muslin, just hanging idle in the closet, perhaps she could wear it to dancing school or even to supper, some Saturday night at André’s, if he ever asked her again and her mother would let her go.

Not that a mere pink muslin could ever make Jane look like Muriel. Jane knew that all too well. Or like Flora. She hadn’t any curls, to begin with, and she simply couldn’t look stylish. The way Isabel did, for instance, in any old rag. Isabel was just as pretty as Muriel’s sisters, no matter what she wore.

There was André, school books in hand, loitering under the Water Works Tower. He grinned a little sheepishly as the trio approached him. Flora and Muriel were pinching her elbows.

“Don’t be silly!” she implored.

“He’s silly!” tittered Flora.

“No, he’s not!” she declared hotly.

They only giggled.

“Well, anyway, he’s sissy,” said Muriel accusingly. “Why doesn’t he play with the other boys?”

By this time they had reached him.

“Hello,” said André.

“Hello,” said Jane.

He took her school books. Flora shook her curls at him. They shone like burnished gold against the rough chinchilla cloth of her navy blue reefer. Muriel rolled her great blue eyes under her wide hat brim. Her eyelashes were very long and curly and her cheeks were rose red in the sharp lake breeze. André grinned. He dropped into step at Jane’s elbow. They walked half a block in silence. Almost in silence. Jane could hear Muriel’s stifled giggles. Then Flora leaned mockingly forward. She looked across Muriel’s mirthful countenance to Jane’s disdainful one and then on, to André’s cold young profile.

“I’ll race you to the corner, Muriel,” she said wickedly. Muriel dropped Jane’s elbow.

“Two’s company!” she heard Muriel cry as they set off in a rush. Jane felt a little foolish. Then André glanced shyly down at her. He met her eyes and smiled. She looked hurriedly away, but she knew, instantly, that everything was all right. Let them be silly. It didn’t matter. And she did want to talk to André. André talked of things she liked. André had seen lots of plays, here and in New York and in Paris. And André had lived abroad. He had been born in Fontainebleau and he had visited in London and he had crossed the ocean three times since his father had come to America. André had read everything and he had a little puppet theatre and an awfully good stamp collection and a work shop in his bedroom where he modelled in clay and made some very clever things, bookends and paperweights and statues, that his father had cast, sometimes, for his mother to keep. André went to a class every Saturday morning at the Art Institute. A life class, so Flora and Muriel had said with a telling titter. Jane devoutly hoped her mother wouldn’t hear of that.

André was sixteen and he wasn’t going to college. Not to Harvard or Yale or Princeton, at least, where the other boys were going. He wasn’t even going to boarding school. He was just going to go on studying in Chicago and taking courses at the Art Institute until he went back to Paris. He was going back, when he was nineteen, to study at the Sorbonne, whatever that was, and try to get in the Beaux Arts. He was putting on a play called Camille, now, in his puppet theatre. He wanted Jane to help him. That was what he was talking about.

He talked so long and so interestingly that they were actually in front of the school before Jane realized it. There was Agnes, sitting on the front steps. She waved cheerfully at André, her funny freckled face wreathed in smiles. Agnes liked André and Agnes was never silly. She knew just how Jane felt about him and still she didn’t think that there was anything to laugh at. Out of the corner of her eye Jane could see Flora and Muriel up at the front window, pointing André out to some other girls. He saw them, too, of course, but he didn’t seem to care. André never did care if people thought things. Jane always did. She wished he’d leave her at the corner every morning, half a block from the school, but she didn’t want to tell him so. For most of all she cared what André thought. She knew André awfully well, of course, but not well enough to tell him a thing like that.

The first bell rang while he was talking with Agnes. Jane slipped her arm through hers and turned toward the door.

“See you after lunch,” said André, cap in hand. “If you could manage to come over about half-past two we could paint the first set. Mother told me to ask you to tea.”

Jane only smiled and nodded, but she walked into the study hall in a thrill of anticipation. Tea with André. His mother had asked her. She wouldn’t tell her mother. She would just go. Jane’s eyes were dancing behind her lowered eyelids as ancient Miss Milgrim read the Beatitudes and the Lord’s Prayer over the bowed heads of the assembled school. She was almost laughing aloud as she rose for the morning hymn. Her thin little voice shrilled up to Heaven’s gates in purely secular ecstasy.

“Rejoice, ye pure in heart!
Rejoice, give thanks and sing!
Your glorious banner raise on high
The cross of Christ, your King!”

She was going to tea with André.

“Rejoice! Rejoice! Rejoice, give thanks and sing!”

André was waiting for her on the steps of the Saint James Apartments at half-past two. He wore a funny navy-blue beret on his sleek black hair and he was spinning a top. No other Chicago boy of sixteen ever spun a top and Jane had never seen any other beret. That was the kind of thing that André did that made Flora and Muriel think that he was sissy. Jane wished he wouldn’t. She liked to spin tops herself and the beret was most becoming. Still, there was no sense in willfully laying yourself open to mockery. Flora and Muriel had no idea how nice André really was.

They went upstairs in the elevator and André’s mother opened the front door. André’s mother had only one servant and that one was often out. The children entered the little crowded living-room. There were lots of books in it, filling the walls from floor to ceiling. Not nice volumes in neat, uniform sets of sombre leather, as in Jane’s own father’s library or in Flora’s grandfather’s, but all sorts and sizes of books in all kinds of variegated bindings, some quite dilapidated, set haphazard on the shelves. There were some sets, of course. A long line of bound Punch, for instance, and many more Arabian Nights than Jane had ever known there were, and a red row of nearly thirty volumes by Guy de Maupassant. Jane had never heard of him.

André’s mother had been reading in the big green Morris chair in the bay window that looked down Rush Street, all the way to the river. The book still lay in the chair seat. It was a French book, called Madame Bovary. André’s mother saw Jane looking at it.

“You’ll like that book, Jane,” she said, “when you’re older.”

That was the way André’s family always spoke of books. Just as if they were people living in the world with you, nice friendly people, whom you were bound to meet some day and get on famously with when you finally knew them.

Jane followed André into his little bedroom. His paints were all set out on a table with some sheets of Bristol board.

“I saw Bernhardt do Camille in Paris, last summer,” said André eagerly, “And I remember all her sets. We can make ours just the same.”

Jane sat down beside André at the little table, feeling a little flushed and excited to think that this was really André’s very own room. She had been in it several times before, of course, but it made her feel that funny way inside every time. André was very near her, just across the paint water. He went on talking about Sarah Bernhardt most enthusiastically, but there was something about his very enthusiasm that made Jane think that perhaps he was feeling funny too. Terribly happy and excited and just a little nervous, as she was herself. But then they fell to discussing colours and later to painting and André grew lost in his work, as he always did, and Jane applauded him and was very much interested and greatly surprised when André’s mother stood in the doorway and said it was half-past four and time for tea.

Jane had never known anyone who had tea, regularly, every day, like breakfast, lunch, and dinner, except André’s family. Jane’s mother had it on Wednesdays, when lots of ladies came to call, and now that Isabel was home from school, she had it on Sundays, too, for hordes of young men in frock coats, who came early and lingered late. The last of them usually stayed to supper and hymn-singing around the Steinway upright in the parlor.

But those teas were parties, with candy and three kinds of cake and funny fishy little sandwiches that Minnie made meticulously in the pantry. The tea-table was always set with the silver tray and the silver tea-set and lots of little Dresden plates and embroidered napkins and Jane’s mother and Isabel were always all dressed up in their best bib and tucker, sitting primly behind the teakettle, never dreaming of eating anything until the doorbell rang.

André’s tea was very different. His mother presided nonchalantly from the depths of the Morris armchair over a gold and white china tea-set and there was nothing to eat except very thin slices of bread and butter and a plate of sponge cake, untidily torn to pieces. That sponge cake, André’s mother explained as Jane’s eyes widened at the sight of it, was a spécialité de la maison. It seemed you couldn’t cut it without spoiling it. A funny kind of cake, Jane thought, to serve for tea. But very good.

André’s father came in just before the bread and butter was finished. Mr. Duroy was a little grey-haired Frenchman, with wise brown eyes that glittered behind his pince-nez eyeglasses. The glasses balanced precariously on his aquiline nose and he was continually taking them off and waving them about as he talked. They were fastened to his coat lapel with a narrow black ribbon, which made him look very unlike other men. A shred of scarlet silk was always run through his buttonhole. Jane never knew why.

He talked a great deal and so did André’s mother. But not at all as Jane’s family did. Never about people. People you knew, at least. This afternoon he was talking very excitedly about something called the Dual Alliance and a Frenchman named Alexandre Ribot who was President du Conseil, whatever that might be, and seemed to be doing something important about France and Russia. Mr. Duroy had a great deal to say about Mr. Ribot, though he didn’t seem to know him. The only people that Jane could ever remember hearing her family talk about whom they did not know were Benjamin Harrison and Grover Cleveland. And these gentlemen never provoked her mother and Isabel to utterance. Her father occasionally made statements about them that always passed unchallenged, André’s mother, now, had views of her own on Mr. Ribot. Jane and André didn’t talk at all, but before she knew it the clock struck six and Jane realized that she should have gone home long ago. She rose a little shyly. Jane never knew just how to leave a party.

“I must lend you Camille,” said André and plucked the book, in a yellow paper cover, from off the bookshelves. “La Dame aux Camellias” was printed on the outside. “Mother is going to help me do a good translation. See if you don’t like it.”

Jane privately hoped that she knew enough French to read it, with a dictionary.

“André will walk home with you,” said André’s mother.

And indeed it was very dark. Jane didn’t know what her mother would say, if she were home. Of course she might be out with Isabel. They were very busy these days with parties and dressmakers.

The street lamps were flickering on their tall standards as they stepped out on Chicago Avenue. The drugstore windows across the street in the Kinzie flats glittered with yellow light. Great green and red and blue urns of coloured water glowed behind the glass.

“Pure colour,” said André. “Pure as light.”

He took her arm as they crossed the car tracks. Jane held her elbow very stiff and straight but she felt a little thrill run right up her arm from where his fingers rested on her coat sleeve. He was looking at her face and he was very near her, but Jane didn’t turn her head. When they reached the further curbstone he dropped her arm, at once. Jane felt awfully happy.

“I’ll try to find those pictures of Bernhardt for you,” said André. “They’re around somewhere in an old copy of Le Théâtre. If you could copy them for the puppet—”

“I’d love to,” said Jane. “I can make her hair of ravelled yarn.”

“Golden brown,” said André, “and very fuzzy. She has beautiful hair.”

They walked in silence for a few minutes. Pine Street was very empty and very quiet. A hansom cab went by, the horse’s feet clapping sharply on the cedar block pavement. A belated errand boy whizzed past on a bicycle. He trilled his bell shrilly for the Superior Street corner. Jane was thinking how dark and straight her pigtails were. Her hair was so fine that it didn’t show for much, except just after a shampoo. She wished, terribly, that she had Flora’s red-gold tresses. Or Muriel’s seven black finger curls. Or this Bernhardt’s golden-brown fuzz, that she had never seen and André so admired.

He took her arm again for the next crossing.

“I know you’ll copy her beautifully,” he said. And Jane felt happy once more. Warm and glowing, deep down inside.

When they reached her house, André lingered a moment on the pavement, under the big bare elm tree.

“I—I had a lovely time,” said Jane.

“You’ll read the play?” said André. “And come again tomorrow?”

Jane nodded. There was a little pause. André moved about a bit. The street was very dark. The street lights were on the corners.

“Will you—will you dance the Halloween cotillion with me at dancing-school?” said André.

Jane’s heart leaped up in ecstasy.

“Oh,” she said softly, “I—I’d love to.”

“All right,” said André. “That’s fine.” He lingered a moment longer. “Well—good night,” he said, taking off the beret.

Jane ran up the front steps and rang a peal of triumph on the doorbell. She skipped up and down in the vestibule waiting for the door to open. Unconsciously she hummed a fragment of her father’s morning song.

“Life is a joke that’s just begun!” she carolled, as Minnie stood on the threshold. The words, at the moment, had for her no meaning. She was just singing.

II

Jane had no time to read La Dame aux Camellias that night. Her homework was very long. She looked it over, translating a line here and there, hoping in vain for pictures, before she went to bed. She left it on her table next morning when she started out for school.

André had the copy of Le Théâtre under his arm when she met him under the Water Works Tower. They sat down on a green bench in the little public park to inspect it. Flora and Muriel went on ahead. There were four pictures of Bernhardt. Three of her as Camille and one in a play called Phèdre. In Phèdre, she wore a Greek costume and a chiffon veil was over her frizzy hair. But in Camille Jane could see clearly just how lovely it was. There was one of her dying, on a kind of sofa, with her curls straying out all over the pillows. No wonder that André thought it was beautiful. Jane thought she could copy the costumes. André remembered all the colours.

She told Agnes about the play at recess and Agnes was very much thrilled. She took special pains with her French that morning and learned one extra irregular verb. She hoped it would appear in Camille, in one of its most unusual tenses. She decided, quite firmly, to work hard on the grammar that winter and really learn to speak the language. Perhaps when she and André had done Camille he might ask her to do Phèdre, too. She talked about that possibility very seriously with Agnes after school. So long and so seriously that she was just a little late in getting home for luncheon.

Her mother and Isabel were already seated at the dining-room table. The homely odour of fried ham greeted her nostrils as soon as she entered the room. She flung her books on a chair. She was pleasantly hungry.

“Gosh, I had fun in school today,” she said.

Then she noticed that something was wrong. She would have noticed it sooner if she hadn’t been thinking so intently of the joys in store for her.

“You’re very late,” said Isabel.

Jane sat down and unfolded her napkin. Minnie passed the ham. No one said anything more for a moment. The silence was very forbidding.

“Jane,” said her mother presently, “where did you get the book that I found on your table this morning?”

Jane dropped her knife and fork. She was extremely surprised.

“Wha—what book?” she asked, instinctively playing for time.

“That French book,” said her mother, and her tone spoke volumes.

Jane stared at her in silence.

“Where on earth did you find it?” asked Isabel.

Jane’s great brown eyes turned on her sister.

“Answer Mother, Jane.” The tone brooked no delay. Jane’s eyes returned to the head of the table.

“From—from André,” she said. Her voice, in her own ears, sounded strangely husky.

“André!” said her mother, staring at Isabel. “That explains it.”

“You don’t mean to say,” said Isabel, “that André gave you that book?”

“Yes,” said Jane with difficulty.

“What for?” said her mother. The last word was really almost a shriek.

“To—to read,” said Jane.

Isabel and her mother exchanged a glance of horror.

“Well—honestly—” said Isabel.

“Have you read it?” asked her mother.

“No,” said Jane. Her ear caught their little gasps of relief. She didn’t understand at all. She only knew that she and André and their perfect plan were in some dreadful danger. She must try to explain.

“He’s going to give it in his theatre. Mamma,” she went on hurriedly. “He wants me to help him. He wants me to make the costumes. We’re going—”

Her mother and Isabel exchanged another glance of horror.

“What’s the matter?” cried Jane, her nerves breaking under the strain. “What’s happened?”

Her mother smiled at her very kindly.

“Nothing has happened, Jane. I’m very glad you haven’t read the book. It’s not at all a nice book for a child to read. But we’ll just return it to André today. You needn’t think anything more about it.”

“But Mamma!” cried Jane. “You—you can’t do that! Why—why we’ve made all our plans—I was going over there this afternoon—we’ve almost finished the first set—he—”

“It doesn’t make any difference what you’ve done, Jane,” said her mother firmly, “or what you’ve planned. It’s not a nice book for a little girl to read and—”

“Have you read it?” asked Jane rudely. And she meant to be rude. She knew her mother couldn’t read French. Isabel herself couldn’t read it, half as well as Jane could.

“You don’t have to read books, Jane,” said her mother with dignity, “to know that they shouldn’t be read. This book is very unpleasant.”

“Why, it’s notorious!” said Isabel.

“Isabel!” said her mother.

Jane felt very confused.

“If you haven’t read it, Mamma,” she said reasonably, “don’t you think that perhaps you’ve made a mistake? André’s mother saw him give it to me. She’s going to help us with the play.”

She saw at once that she hadn’t helped her cause at all.

“Honestly!” said Isabel again. “Those frogs!”

“French people,” said her mother, once more with dignity, “don’t feel about these things the way we do. They have very different ideas of right and wrong.”

“André’s mother is English,” said Jane sullenly.

“She married a Frenchman,” said Isabel, as if that settled it.

“We won’t discuss it further,” said Jane’s mother. “Eat your lunch.”

“Mamma!” cried Jane in desperation. “You don’t understand. I—I can’t go back on André! I can’t—”

“Jane,” said her mother. “You will eat your lunch. And then you will call up André and tell him that you can’t have anything to do with the play and that you can’t go over there this afternoon. I’ll send Minnie over with the book. I don’t want you to go over to André’s any more at all. You’ve been seeing far too much of him lately. Any boy that would give a little girl a book like that—”

But Jane had sprung to her feet.

“I won’t eat my lunch!” she cried. “And I won’t call up André! I think you’re too mean! You don’t understand! You don’t understand anything!” Her voice was breaking. She wouldn’t cry before them! She rushed from the room.

“It’s a long time,” she heard her mother say, as she reached the door, “since Jane has had a tantrum.”

She stumbled up the stairs. She gained the refuge of her bedroom and banged the door. The book was gone. She couldn’t go to André’s. She couldn’t help him with that play. She flung herself on her bed in stormy tears.

It wasn’t very long before the door opened and Isabel entered, without a knock. Jane lay very still and tried to hush her sobs.

“Don’t be silly, kid,” said Isabel. She sat down on the bed.

“Don’t talk to me,” said Jane.

“Stop crying,” said Isabel reasonably, “and be sensible.”

There was a little pause.

“That’s a dreadful play, Jane,” said Isabel.

Jane didn’t reply.

“Sarah Bernhardt does it,” said Isabel. “She’s an awful woman.”

Jane lay very still.

“When she was here,” said Isabel, “none of us girls were allowed to see her. She’s not nice.”

Jane sat up. André’s reverent accents still rang in her ears.

“She has beautiful hair,” thought Jane. “Golden brown—and frizzy.”

“What do you mean by ‘not nice’?” she inquired indignantly.

Isabel’s face looked a little queer. She was watching her younger sister rather curiously.

“Immoral,” said Isabel finally.

“I don’t believe it,” said Jane, after a moment.

“Oh, yes, she is,” said Isabel easily. “Everyone knows that.”

Jane stared, unconvinced. Isabel was still looking at her in that funny way.

“Don’t you know what I mean?” said Isabel.

There was an awful pause. Jane wasn’t sure that she did. But it sounded dreadful.

“I—don’t—believe—it,” said Jane slowly. “André said—”

“French people are different,” said Isabel. “They don’t mind things like that.”

“They’re not different!” said Jane. But of course she knew that they were. Not different like that, though. Whatever it was, if it were true, André couldn’t know it.

“Now, don’t be silly, Jane,” said Isabel once more. “Minnie’s keeping your lunch. Go down and eat it and then telephone André and tell him.”

“I can’t tell him!” wailed Jane.

“Well—you can tell him something,” said Isabel plausibly. “You can tell him that Mamma doesn’t want you to stay indoors on such a bright afternoon.”

“Do you want me to lie to him?” said Jane.

“Well, Jane!” Isabel was actually laughing. “You wouldn’t tell him the truth, would you?”

“I won’t lie to André,” said Jane. “Besides, Mamma—”

“Oh, Mamma’ll get over it. She won’t care what you say as long as you don’t go.”

The door opened again. Jane’s mother stood on the threshold.

“Don’t be silly, Jane,” she said.

Jane wiped her eyes.

“Go down and eat your lunch!” She patted Jane very nicely on the shoulder. They all turned toward the door.

“Isabel,” said her mother, halfway down the hall, “I can’t find that book anywhere. I left it on my desk.”

“Oh!” said Isabel, and her voice sounded a bit confused. “It’s in my room. I started to bring it downstairs for you.”

Jane looked through Isabel’s door. There was the little yellow volume on the sofa, with Jane’s own French dictionary beside it. Jane despised Isabel, for a moment. Her mother picked up the volume gingerly as if it burned her fingers.

“I never expected to see,” she said, “a paper-covered French book in this house.”

“All French books have paper covers,” Jane began. André had told her that. But of course it was no use. She didn’t go on with it. Instead she went downstairs and tried to eat her lunch at the pantry table beneath the telephone, thinking of what she had better say to André.

The telephone was very new. It had only been put in that autumn and Jane usually thought it was lots of fun to use it. But she didn’t think so now. When she had eaten her ham and one preserved peach she stood before it quite a little time in silence before she gave André’s number.

He answered the call himself. She knew his voice immediately. His funny telephone voice, trickling so miraculously into her ear, when he was four long city blocks away.

“Hello, Jane,” he said.

She didn’t waste any time on preliminaries.

“I can’t come over,” she said miserably.

“Why not?” said André.

Jane gulped a little before she could reply.

“Mamma—Mamma—” she began weakly. How could she tell him?

“I don’t hear you,” said André.

“Mamma,” said Jane desperately. She couldn’t tell him. “Mamma wants me to play out of doors—it’s such a nice day.”

“Oh,” said André. He sounded very sorry. “Well—perhaps we could take a walk by the lake.”

Jane fell a prey to panic. This was what always happened when you lied.

“I—I can’t,” she said very quickly. “I—I’m going over to Flora’s.”

“Oh,” said André. And his voice sounded just a little queer.

“We—are going to play in her yard,” said Jane.

“I see,” said André.

“I—I’ll see you tomorrow,” said Jane.

He didn’t answer.

“Won’t I?” asked Jane pitifully.

“Oh, yes,” said André. “Yes. I—I’ll be waiting.”

“Well, goodbye,” said Jane.

“Goodbye,” said André. “I’m awfully sorry.”

Jane hung up the receiver. She felt perfectly miserable. She had lied to André. She despised Isabel, yet she’d taken her advice. And he hadn’t believed her. He hadn’t believed her at all. He had known she was lying. Jane was plunged in despair. Well—at least she could go over to Flora’s. She could make that lie come true.

Flora’s front door was opened by Flora’s butler. Jane always felt a little uneasy with butlers but she knew this one very well. He had been with the Furnesses for years. Not like Muriel’s butlers who changed every month or so. He smiled reassuringly down at Jane.

“Miss Flora is upstairs,” he said. All Flora’s servants called her “Miss Flora.” It was very impressive. At home everyone said just “Jane.”

Jane walked very softly down Flora’s hall, skirting the black walnut furniture with care. The floor was very slippery and the tiger skin rug before the fireplace snarled with its papier-mâché jaws and glared with its yellow glass eyes in a very realistic manner.

At the foot of the stairs she met Flora’s mother. She was beautifully dressed in a dark green velvet gown, with leg-of-mutton sleeves of lighter green taffeta, and her little blond head was held very high and topped with a tortoiseshell comb, tipped sideways in her hair. She was running down the stairs very quickly, with her little tan pug behind her, and her cheeks were very pink and her eyes were very bright, and when she saw Jane she stopped and laughed as if she were just so happy she had to laugh at everyone.

“Hello, little Jane!” she said.

At the sound of her voice someone came out of the drawing-room. It was Mr. Bert Lancaster. He looked very tall and handsome, Jane thought. She didn’t wonder that Isabel liked to dance with him. His moustache was beautiful and he had a black pearl in his necktie. He walked at once up to Flora’s mother. He took her hand as if he liked to hold it. Flora’s mother looked happier than ever.

“This is little Jane Ward,” she said.

“Hello, little Jane Ward,” laughed Mr. Bert Lancaster. He, too, looked as if he were so happy that he had to laugh at everyone.

Flora’s mother stooped over and kissed Jane’s cheek. Her face felt very smooth and soft and it smelled of flowers. Mr. Bert Lancaster was watching her. Then she picked up the pug and held it tenderly in her arms and kissed the top of its little tan head and looked up at Mr. Lancaster over its black muzzle. They turned away from Jane toward the drawing-room door.

“I told you not to come ’til four,” said Flora’s mother, still smiling up at Mr. Lancaster over the pug. Jane couldn’t hear his reply.

“Silly!” said Flora’s mother, as he held the brocade portieres aside for her at the drawing-room door. She passed through them, looking over her shoulder at Mr. Lancaster. He followed her rustling train. Jane ran upstairs to Flora’s bedroom.

Flora’s bedroom was beautiful. All blue and white, with white-painted furniture and a little brass bed and real silver brushes and mirrors on her little dressing-table. Jane had no dressing-table. She kept a wooden brush and a celluloid comb and a steel nail file in her upper bureau drawer. Flora had two heart-shaped silver picture frames, too. In one was her mother, smiling over a feather fan in a lovely light evening gown, with pearls on her throat and long white gloves running up her arms to her great puffy sleeves. In the other frame was Flora’s father. He looked a little silly in that silver heart. Fat-faced and bald-headed and solemn. It was a very good picture, though. That was just the way he always looked, on the rare occasions when Jane ran into him in Flora’s hall.

Flora wasn’t doing much of anything. Jane explained that she had come to play in the yard. Flora said that was fine. Muriel was coming over and they could go out to the playhouse.

The playhouse was a tiny structure, out near the stable, the scene of all their childish frolics. They didn’t use it to play in now, of course, but Flora sometimes made candy on the little cooking-stove and she and Jane and Muriel always liked to talk there undisturbed.

“We’ll make fudge,” said Flora.

“Mamma wants me to be out-of-doors,” said Jane, still trying to make that lie come true.

“We’ll leave the windows open,” said Flora.

Jane decided that would be true enough. They ran down the back stairs and got some things from the cook and went out the side door by the lilac bushes. Muriel was just coming around the corner.

Jane began to feel much better as soon as she measured out the chocolate and sugar. She thought she could explain to André tomorrow morning. She thought he would understand. Mothers were mothers. You weren’t responsible for what they thought or what they made you do.

Flora’s fire began to burn almost immediately. The scent of cooking chocolate permeated the air. Muriel’s pink muslin had come from Hollander’s. It had real lace on the bertha. She was going to have some high-heeled slippers.

“Hello!” said Flora suddenly. “There’s André.”

There was André, indeed, loitering a little aimlessly by the iron fence. Muriel immediately began to giggle. Jane rushed to the playhouse door.

“Yoo-hoo, André!” she called ecstatically. “Come on over!”

He vaulted the fence at a bound. Jane ran out to meet him.

“Oh, André,” she said, “I’m terribly glad you came!”

He looked pleased, but he didn’t say anything.

“We’re making candy,” said Jane.

“André! Do you like fudge?” shrieked Flora from the doorway.

“You bet,” said André. Muriel went right on giggling. Jane walked with André into the playhouse. How good the chocolate smelled! Jane felt she liked fudge, as never before.

She told him all about it, an hour later. He was walking home with her down Erie Street, in the last red rays of the October sun. It was awfully hard to lead up to it. Suddenly she took the plunge.

“I—I’m afraid I can’t do Camille with you, André,” she said.

He stopped quite still on the pavement.

“Why not?” he asked.

Jane felt her cheeks growing very hot and red.

“Mamma—Mamma doesn’t want me to,” she said.

“Why not?” asked André again.

Jane looked miserably away from him.

“She—she doesn’t like the play.”

André looked extremely astonished.

“Why,” he said finally, “she—she must like it. Everyone likes Camille.”

“Mamma doesn’t,” said Jane. There it was. That was all there was to say.

“Do you mean to tell me,” said André hotly, “that she won’t let you do it?”

Jane nodded unhappily. André looked extremely puzzled.

“Well, then,” he said finally, “I guess you can’t.”

Jane’s heart leaped up with gratitude. He did understand. Mothers were mothers. But there was still the lie.

“André—” said Jane, and stopped.

“Yes?” said André. It was terribly difficult.

“André,” said Jane again and her voice was very low. She couldn’t look at him. “I—I didn’t tell you the truth, over the telephone.”

André didn’t say anything.

“Mamma didn’t say I had to play out-of-doors this afternoon. I—I was scared to tell you what she really said.”

“Why?” said André very seriously.

Jane felt her eyes fill with tears.

“Because,” said Jane, and her lips were trembling, “I didn’t know what you’d think of me.”

André saw the tears. He looked awfully embarrassed and terribly kind.

“That’s all right, Jane,” said André. She was smiling straight up at him through the tears. “I guess you know I’ll always think one thing of you.”

Jane was consumed in a flame of grateful happiness.

“Oh, André!” she breathed.

“Never mind Camille,” said André, as they began walking again. “We can do something else.”

Jane became suddenly conscious of the windows of her house. They stared down on Pine Street.

“Perhaps—perhaps,” she said guiltily, “you hadn’t better come any further.”

André flushed right up to the edge of his beret. But he never stopped smiling.

“Oh—all right,” he said.

“See you tomorrow!” said Jane.

He waved his cap at her. Jane ran across the street and up the block. At her front steps she paused to look after him. He waved again. She felt terribly happy. She didn’t mind about Camille, now. No one could help mothers. And they would do something else.