CHAPTER I

A GLIMPSE OF JANET

It was an every-day sort of a looking road, broad and dusty and flat. It ran straight across the landscape and ended abruptly in a merger of blue sky and sparkling sea. On either side of it sandy soil dotted with clusters of dwarfed scrub oaks stretched out into limitless space. There was an uninteresting sameness about its sunny dustiness that discouraged all hope of adventure.

But on a late September afternoon it was the setting of a little scene that marked the turning place in the life of Janet Page.

The drowsy quiet was broken first by the short, excited bark of a dog, a crackle of leaves and a snapping of twigs in the scrub oak, and then several things happened in quick succession.

A long snake scuttled into the road, a wiry little Irish terrier bounded after it, followed by a whirling fury of starched petticoats, long slender legs and an immense red bow.

This was Janet.

A tiny cloud of dust curtained them all for a minute; when it settled, it disclosed a rigid tableau. Janet held the dog's collar in one strong little brown hand, and with the other and the aid of one foot she grasped the snake.

"Do something!" she demanded excitedly, as she turned angry eyes toward a fat, roly-poly figure that still remained partially hidden by the scrub oak, watching the scene with an expression of fear and distaste in his pale blue eyes.

This was Harry Waters.

"What do you want me to do?" he asked sulkily.

Janet was too much occupied to look at him, but her voice expressed the contempt she felt.

"You might take Boru," she suggested.

Harry made a wide detour and, snatching the dog, retreated hurriedly back to the side of the road.

"You're not going to kill him," he said nervously, and he pointed a trembling finger at the wriggling snake.

For answer, Janet picked up a large stone. Harry turned his face away. He wanted to put his fingers in his ears so that he would not hear the soft thud that followed, but the frantic dog made that impossible.

"Come on back," Janet said at last; "he's quite dead, and I've thrown him into the bushes, so you won't even have to look at him." Her voice sounded very grown up and patronizing, and Harry justly resented it.

"Now look here, Janet Page," he exploded; "you needn't put on airs. It's not such a big thing to kill a snake anyway," he finished lamely. "I could have done it only I didn't see any sense in it; even if it had bitten Boru, it wouldn't have hurt him any." Harry was trying hard to justify an act that he hardly understood himself. He was a nice boy, two years Janet's senior, and until to-day he had never let her forget his advantage.

He tried to assert it now.

"You see, I'm older than you are and I've got lots more sense. I knew that a snake like that couldn't really hurt a dog and so I just--" He paused, and under Janet's cool gaze he blushed very slowly, right up to the roots of his hair.

"Why don't you tell the truth?" she asked quietly. "You know you are afraid of snakes."

"Well, what if I am?" Harry shifted his feet uncomfortably. "I can't help it, can I? Anyway, your grandmother says--"

"Never mind what my grandmother says," Janet interrupted angrily. "I know it all by heart. She says you are a very mannerly little boy; that's because you never forget to take off your hat when you go into her room. And she says you're respectful; that's because you always say 'yes, ma'm; no ma'm; thank you, ma'm,' and she says you always look tidy, and that's because you never climb trees and always wear shoes and stockings, no matter how hot it is, and--"

"Can't help it if my mother makes me, can I?" Harry blazed out.

Janet paused to consider.

"No, I don't suppose you can," she said at last; "only somehow I wish you were different." Her gaze traveled slowly from his round-toed boots to his neatly brushed hair; a dreamy look came into her eyes, and the little flecks of gold in the soft-brown iris caught the sun's rays and glistened. She sighed profoundly.

"But if you couldn't kill a snake," she said, speaking more to herself than to him, "why, you couldn't ever kill a dragon, you see; nor ride a coal-black charger, nor fight for your lady's favor--" Her brow wrinkled in a puzzled frown, but it cleared almost at once. "I was forgetting," she laughed; "you wouldn't want to anyway, so it doesn't matter; that is, not so very much."

She looked around her for Boru; he was busily investigating the remains of the snake in the bushes, but at her whistle he trotted obediently to her heel, and together they walked off down the road.

Harry, after a miserable minute of indecision, followed.

They walked in silence, Janet a little ahead, until they reached the road that ran along the waterfront and passed the white gate of the old Page house.

"Aren't you going to go with me any more!" Harry asked forlornly.

Janet stopped and looked at him.

"Maybe."

"When?"

"Don't know."

"Well, I don't care if you don't; you're just a girl anyway." Harry's lip trembled ever so slightly and he turned on his heel and hurried off, trying to hold his head high.

Janet swung on the gate for a few minutes and watched him until a bend in the road hid him from view, then she went up the long flight of stone steps.

The Page house crowned the terrace above. It was big, somber and very old. To Janet it seemed to be very tired, too, as though it had waited and watched a long time for the sea, whose waves beat incessantly on the shore below, to yield some secret now long forgotten by the living world.

Four stern columns guarded the square porch and the old-fashioned, ivory-white door with its leaded fan lights and heavy knocker. Janet slipped noiselessly into the wide hall that reflected the glow of polished mahogany and soft afternoon sunlight. Just as she tiptoed across the thick rag rugs and was half way up the stairs, the big grandfather clock boomed three, and as if in echo to it a voice, quavering but still clear and penetrating, called:

"Is that you, Janet?"

Janet had a sudden and unheard of wish not to answer, but she conquered it and replied at once:

"Yes, grandmother, it's me." Before the words had had time to float down the stairs she was conscious of her mistake. "Drat the personal pronoun anyway," she said to herself; "now I will catch it."

"Janet, I called you," the voice came again, and Janet started guiltily.

"I'm coming, grandmother," she answered, and walked primly back downstairs.

Mrs. Page's room was on the first floor at the back of the house away from the sea and overlooking a trim little garden. An old-fashioned sleigh bed stood between the windows, and in the very middle of it a little old lady, wearing an immense cap, sat propped up against half a dozen pillows.

This was Mrs. Page, Janet's grandmother. She was perhaps the most feared and certainly the most respected woman in Old Chester, and although she had been bedridden for as many years as Janet could remember she took a lively interest in the affairs of the community, and no important step was ever taken until Cap'n Page's widow was consulted. Her advice had a way of sounding very much like a command.

Janet knew the room by heart. She could have told the location of everything in it with her eyes blindfolded, so she wasted no time in looking about her but went straight up to the bed and sat down on the low chair, where all Mrs. Page's callers sat. It was placed so that she could see them without twisting her neck; a thing she particularly disliked having to do.

"You called me, grandmother?"

Two steely blue eyes opened slowly, and seemed to bore into the soft depth of Janet's brown ones.

"I did; there can be no doubt of that; nor, I may add, of your reply."

For perhaps the first time in her life Janet interrupted her.

"I know I said me instead of I, but I was thinking of something else and I forgot," she exclaimed impatiently.

"And may I ask what you were thinking of?" Mrs. Page inquired in surprise.

Janet frowned and shook her head. "It's not the slightest use to, for you'd never, never understand. You see, it was something entirely different from all this." She looked around the immaculate room and shook her head again, this time in despair.

Mrs. Page lifted herself on to one elbow and looked at her grand-daughter carefully for a full minute.

"Janet," she said severely, "what has come over you?"

There was a long pause, for Janet did not reply. She was watching a butterfly out in the garden and trying to decide what it was he was whispering to that big floppy rose.

Mrs. Page settled back into her pillows and pulled the coverlet well up under her chin.

"You may go," she said, pointing a bony finger toward the door. "I am about to write to your brother. I regret that I will have to tell him that you are not only careless but rude."

"Yes, grandmother." Janet stood up, and after she had carefully straightened the chair upon which she had been sitting she walked quietly out of the room.

Once in the hall, with the door closed, a tiny sigh escaped her. She leaned up against the old clock and stared at a patch of sunlight on the rug; Two big round tears rolled down her cheeks unnoticed.

Boru came over inquisitively from his place by the stairs and licked her hand. She dropped to her knees beside him and hugged him impulsively.

"Come along, old fellow," she whispered. "Let's go up to the 'widow's walk' and think it all out. I guess grandmother is right; something has come over me."