"Love him,--more than I want him?" She said it over in a halting whisper.

"Love him more than I--" Her lips moved inaudibly, forming the second half of the sentence. She bent over Billiken, crushing her in an embrace which made her cry. Then she caught up her foolish little hat and jammed it on without a glance at the mirror and flung herself into her coat. "I better go quick!" She was still whispering. "I better go quick!" She ran out of the room. Jane heard her on the stairs, then the slam of the front door and the sharp staccato of her feet upon the sidewalk.

Billiken, released from the spell, lifted up her voice and shrilly wept, pa.s.sionately pushing away her bowl and spoon, roaring with rage when Jane tried to touch her. It seemed to Jane that there was furious accusation in the small, red countenance. "_Don't_ shriek at me like that," she said, indignantly. "I'm not taking your mother away from you,--I'm trying to keep her for you!"

The door opened and Michael Daragh came in, his face glowing. "From the look she had on her when she flew by," he said, "I'm thinking you've surely won where the rest of us lost."

"I think she's going to tell him," said Jane, soberly.

"Glory be!" he said, fervently.

Jane sighed. "She's going to tell him, in the garish daylight, at the Gent's Furnishing counter. If she can! But she's left me with the 'heart-scald'!"

Michael Daragh had picked up Billiken at once and at once she had ceased to roar and soothed to a whimpering cry. "Hush, now _acushla_," he said, "hush now,--let you be still, _solis na suile_!" The baby stopped altogether, her ear intrigued by the purling Gaelic. "If you'll be slipping out now, the way she won't be noticing, I'll have her fine and fast asleep in two flips of a dead lamb's tail!"

Jane slipped out obediently and stepped softly down the precipitate stair. The matron looked up, her lips thinly compressed.

"Mr. Daragh thinks you have persuaded her to tell."

"I can't be sure. I think she meant to tell him when she left here."

"Well, I guess she'll change her mind by the time she gets to the store.

She's very weak, Ethel is."

"But there isn't anything weak about the way she cares for the Jerry person."

Mrs. Richards' lips tightened to a taut line. "When they get mad crazy about a man" (the plural p.r.o.noun pigeonholed Ethel in a cla.s.s) "they're like the Rock of Gibraltar."

"I'd like to stay the rest of the afternoon, if you don't mind," said Jane, at her winningest. "That is, if there's something I can do?" She looked at the littered table.

"How'd you like to cut out the paper joy-bells?" The matron melted a little. "A lady brought in the paper and the pattern yesterday, but I haven't had time to get the girls at them yet."

"But--that's magenta-colored!" Jane picked up a sheet of the paper.

"Well, I guess it isn't the regular Christmas shade, but I don't know that it matters, particularly. I expect it was some she had in the house.

You might put the girls at cutting them out and you could do the Merry Christmas sign." She gave her a long and narrow placard in mustard green and shook out some pattern letters from an envelope. Then she rang a firm and authoritative bell. "I'll have the girls a.s.semble in the dining room and they can work at the big table."

Immediately there were shuffling feet in the hall, slow feet on the stair, a heavy tread in the dining room behind them. Where was the youth in those young feet? There was something in the dragging gait that made Jane shiver. Seventeen of them seated themselves about the long table, all in huge, enveloping pinafores of dull brown stuff, coa.r.s.e and stiff.

They ranged in age from twenty to twelve but on every face, pretty or plain, stolid or wistful, sullen or sweet, she read the same look of crushed and helpless waiting. She spread out her materials and gave her directions and the girls set soberly to work. Seventeen heads bent in silence over the table; scissors creaked; upstairs a baby cried fretfully. There leapt into Jane's mind a memory picture of Nannie Slade Hunter before the joyfully hailed arrival of the Teddybear,--the tiny, white, enameled chiffonier with its little bunches of painted flowers spilling over with offerings--Lilliputian garments as 'fine as a fairy's first tooth'--the chortling pride of Edward R.--the beaming, nervous mother and mother-in-law--the endless flowers and books; Nannie herself, cunningly draped and swathed in Batik crepe, prettier than ever before in her pretty life--

Jane went quickly out of the room and sat down on the bottom step of the stairs which seemed to be rushing headlong out of the house of drab tragedy.

"What is it?" Michael Daragh bent over her.

She lifted a twisting face. "Michael Daragh, I never cry, even at funerals, but I'm going to cry now!"

"Now that would be the great waste of time surely," he smiled down at her. "Masefield has the true word for it,--'Energy is agony expelled,'

says he. Let you be making that Merry Christmas sign the while you're sorrowing."

"There they sit--in those awful, mud-colored pinafores--making paper joy-bells! I can't _bear_ it! _Magenta_ joy-bells!" The matron started upstairs and Jane drew aside to let her pa.s.s. "What are they going to have for Christmas, Mrs. Richards?"

"Well, we have a real nice dinner,--not turkey, of course, but a nice dinner," said the matron, "and every girl gets a pair of stockings and a handkerchief and a Christmas postcard----"

"With more joy-bells?" Jane wanted hotly to know, "or an angel in a nightdress and a snow scene?"

Mrs. Richards went firmly up the stairs. "We naturally cannot take much time to pick out the subjects, but every girl gets a pretty card."

Jane got swiftly to her feet. "Michael Daragh, do you know what I'm going to do?" She hadn't known herself an instant earlier. "I'm not going home to Vermont for the holidays! I'm going to stay and help with the Christmasing here--and I'll spend the money I would have spent on my trip. I'm going to buy holly and greens and miles of red ribbon and acres of tissue paper and a million stickers, and seventeen presents--seventeen perfectly useless, foolish, unsuitable, beautiful things! Do you hear, Michael Daragh?"

"I hear," he said, and again his lean face lighted oddly from within, "I hear, G.o.d save you kindly, and I'm rare and thankful to you, Jane Vail!"

CHAPTER VII

The doorbell cut jaggedly into Jane's exalted mood and she went into the office and sat down to work on the Merry Christmas sign. She meant to replace it with a joyful scarlet one, but meanwhile it would keep her fingers busy and give her an excuse for lingering until Ethel came back with the news of her confession and its results, and she could be planning the holiday cheer she meant to make in this melancholy house.

She was still rather startled at her sudden decision but pleased with herself beyond words. To give up the festive return to the village ...

her Aunt Lydia's damp-eyed delight, the "little gatherings of the young people" in her honor, the gay and jingling joy of the season ... and stay in a boarding house and make determined merriment for the Agnes Chatterton home. Then, tracing a large and ugly M, she laughed aloud. The truth was, she told herself flatly, she was pleased to the marrow of her bones to be here instead of there, not only in fresh fields and pastures thrillingly and picturesquely new, but away from the reckless necessity for settling the Marty Wetherby matter once and for all. And the big Irishman seemed almost pathetically pleased at her announcement, and it was entirely conceivable that Rodney Harrison would provide flesh-pots and diversions. All in all, she was cannily glad to abide by her hasty and handsome offer, and she worked steadily at her letters while Mrs.

Richards wrote at her littered desk.

The doorbell rang again and Mrs. Richards peered out into the hall.

"Well, there's Irene, come for Billiken! That doesn't look much as if Ethel had told him." There was a good deal of triumph in the glance she flung at Jane. "Well, I can't say I'm surprised; I didn't think she'd have the courage."

Michael Daragh came in, his face grave. "Here's Irene, come for the child. I don't like the look of it."

"Well, _I'm_ not surprised," said Mrs. Richards again.

A young woman presented herself at the office door. There was resolute respectability in her blue serge suit, brushed shiny, too thin for December wear. She carried a small straw telescope and her voice sounded capable and firm. "Can I go right up, Mrs. Richards?"

"Why, I suppose you may as well, Irene. You've come for Billiken?"

"Yes. I'm taking her on the night-boat."

"Wait," said the Irishman, as she turned toward the stairs. "Did Ethel tell him?"

"You mean, did she tell Jerry about--about the baby?" The good sister of the erring sister flushed painfully. "Not that I've heard of. I guess she knows better than that."

"There is no 'better than that,'" said Michael Daragh, sternly. "There is nothing better than the truth." The line of his lean jaw was salient.

"If I can once get her respectably married," said Irene, nippingly, her small face resolute, "I won't worry about what she tells or doesn't tell.

It's been hard enough on _me_, I can tell you!" She went briskly upstairs and they heard her firm closing of the door.

"You see?" the matron wanted to know.

"I'm fearing we've lost the fight," said Michael Daragh.

Jane insisted on hope. "Perhaps she did tell him, and everything's all right, but she had no chance to see Irene and explain! Surely you won't let her take Billiken until we are sure?"