Jane of Lantern Hill

Chapter 15

"We must go and buy us a house soon, duck," said dad, jumping right into the middle of the subject as Jane was to find was his habit.

Jane turned it over in her mind.

"Is 'soon' to-day?" she asked.

Dad laughed.

"Might as well be. This happens to be one of the days when I like myself reasonably well. We'll start as soon as Jed brings our car."

Jed did not bring the car till noon so they had dinner before they set out, and Mrs Meade gave Jane a bag of butter cookies to stay their stomachs till supper-time.

"I like Mrs Meade," Jane told dad, a pleasant warmth filling her soul as she realized that here was somebody she did like.

"She's the salt of the earth," agreed dad, "even if she does think the violet ray is a girl."

The violet ray might have been a girl for anything Jane knew to the contrary ... or cared. It was enough to know that dad and she were off in a car that would have given Frank a conniption at sight, bouncing along red roads that were at once friendly and secretive, through woods that were so gay and bridal with wild cherry-trees sprinkled through them and over hills where velvet cloud-shadows rolled until they seemed to vanish in little hollows filled with blue. There were houses on every side in that pleasant land and they were going to buy one.... "Let's buy a house, Jane" ... just like that, as one might have said, "Let's buy a basket." Delightful!

"As soon as I knew you were coming I began inquiring about possible houses. I've heard of several. We'll take a look at them all before we decide. What kind of a house would you like, Jane?"

"What kind of a house can you afford?" said Jane gravely.

Dad chuckled.

"She's got some of the little common sense still left in the world," he told the sky. "We can't pay a fancy price, Jane. I'm not a plutocrat. On the other hand, neither am I on relief. I sold quite a lot of stuff last winter."

"'Peaceful Adjustment of International Difficulties'," murmured Jane.

"What's that?"

Jane told him. She told him how she had liked Kenneth Howard's picture and cut it out. But she did not tell him that grandmother had torn it, nor about the look in mother's eyes.

"Saturday Evening is a good customer of mine. But let us return to our muttons. Subject to the fluctuations of the market, what kind of a house would you like, my Jane?"

"Not a big one," said Jane, thinking of the enormous 60 Gay. "A little house ... with some trees around it ... young trees."

"White birches?" said dad. "I rather fancy a white birch or two. And a few dark green spruces for contrast. And the house must be green and white to match the trees. I've always wanted a green and white house."

"Couldn't we paint it?" asked Jane.

"We could. Clever of you to think of that, Jane. I might have turned down our predestined house just because it was mud colour. And we must have at least one window where we can see the gulf."

"Will it be near the gulf?"

"It must be. We're going up to the Queen's Shore district. All the houses I've heard about are up there."

"I'd like it to be on a hill," said Jane wistfully.

"Let's sum up ... a little house, white and green or to be made so ... with trees, preferably birch and spruce ... a window looking seaward ... on a hill. That sounds very possible ... but there is one other requirement. There must be magic about it, Jane ... lashings of magic ... and magic houses are scarce, even on the Island. Have you any idea at all what I mean, Jane?"

Jane reflected.

"You want to feel that the house is YOURS before you buy it," she said.

"Jane," said dad, "you are too good to be true."

He was looking at her closely as they went up a hill after crossing a river so blue that Jane had exclaimed in rapture over it ... a river that ran into a bluer harbour. And when they reached the top of the hill, there before them lay something greater and bluer still that Jane knew must be the gulf.

"Oh!" she said. And again, "Oh!"

"This is where the sea begins. Like it, Jane?"

Jane nodded. She could not speak. She had seen Lake Ontario, pale blue and shimmering, but this ... this? She continued to look at it as if she could never have enough of it.

"I never thought anything could be so blue," she whispered.

"You've seen it before," said dad softly. "You may not know it but it's in your blood. You were born beside it, one sweet, haunted April night ... you lived by it for three years. Once I took you down and dipped you in it, to the horror of ... of several people. You were properly baptized before that in the Anglican church in Charlottetown ... but that was your real baptism. You are the sea's child and you have come home."

"But you didn't like me," said Jane, before she thought.

"Not like you! Who told you that?"

"Grandmother." She had not been forbidden to mention grandmother's name to him.

"The old ..." dad checked himself. A mask seemed to fall over his face.

"Let us not forget we are house-hunting, Jane," he said coolly.

For a little while Jane felt no interest in house-hunting. She didn't know what to believe or whom to believe. She thought dad liked her now ... but did he? Perhaps he was just pretending. Then she remembered how he had kissed her.

"He does like me now," she thought. "Perhaps he didn't like me when I was born but I know he does now." And she was happy again.