Susan winked mournfully. "If there was only some way to meet Matilda on her way home and kind of get that through her head before she saw Mrs. Croft. You see, she always shuts that room up cold winters and keeps cold meat in there. I've had many a good meal out of that room."
"You must not cast about for ways and means," said Jane firmly. "Life is like a sunshiny warm day, and our part is to breathe and feel and thank God,--not to look for the sun to surely cease shining."
"But it does stop," wailed Susan, "often."
"Yes, thank Heaven," said Jane, "if it didn't, we'd be burnt up alive by our own vitality."
"Oh, dear," said Susan briefly, "you've an answer for everything. Well, let's get dinner."
AFTER dinner that day Emily Mead came with her work. Emily Mead was one of those nondescript girls who seem to spring up more and more thickly in these troublous, churned-up times of ours.
Too pretty to be plain, too unattractive to be beautiful. Too well-to-do to need to work, too poor to attain to anything for which she longed. Too clever to belong to her class, not clever enough to rise above it. Altogether a very fit subject for Jane to "sunshine," as her aunt put it.
"How do you get along with old Mrs. Croft?" she asked, directly she was seated.
"She's asleep yet," Jane said; "she was so restless all night."
"She always sleeps days and is awake all night; didn't you know that before?" queried Emily, in surprise. "Some one ought to have told you."
"It doesn't matter," said Jane serenely. There was never any bravado in her serenity; it was quite sincere.
"That was what made Katie so mad," Emily continued. "She said it gave her her days, to be sure, but, as she couldn't very well sleep, too, all day, she never really had any time herself."
"We'll get along all right," said Jane quietly; "old people have ways, and then they change and have other ways, and the rest must expect to be considerate."
"Mercy on us, I wonder what she'll change to next," said Susan, with feeling. She had just returned from listening at the invalid's door.
"Don't worry, Auntie,--just remember!" Jane's smile was at once bright and also a bit admonitory.
"I'm trying to believe that everything's all right always, too," said Susan to Emily, "but, oh, my!"