"Grandmother is so disappointed she wants to cry all the time," went on Jane, her lip quivering.
"You promised!" Christopher"s tone was growing threatening. "Hurry up.
There isn"t much time."
"I don"t care," said Jane defiantly.
"Jane Baker! Do you mean to say you are going to break your promise?"
This was attacking Jane"s vulnerable spot, for she prided herself upon always keeping her word. She sat up in bed.
"But if it"s a wrong promise?" she a.s.serted weakly.
"It"s the same promise as when you made it," announced Christopher with calm conviction, and he approached the bed with the small box in his hand.
Grandmother completed her afternoon toilet in something of a hurry, for she thought she heard sounds in Jane"s room.
"What is it?" she asked a little anxiously, appearing in the doorway just as Christopher opened the door from within.
"Nothing," he answered. "I was just helping Janey get-get fixed."
Grandmother glanced at Jane, lying flat on her pillow, her face turned away.
"Don"t you feel as well, Janey?" she asked tenderly, crossing to the bedside quickly.
Jane shook her head without speaking. She was white about the lips but her face looked red and blotched. Grandmother lifted one of the little hands; it felt hot and feverish. Huldah entered just then with a daintily arrayed supper tray but Jane pushed it aside with a shudder.
"I am afraid it is measles," grandmother said in a low tone aside to Huldah. "She is sick again and see how flushed and broken out her face looks. We"d best send Kit away somewhere."
"He can go down to the farmhouse," replied Huldah promptly. "Joshua will see to him. I"m going to stay up here nights until the child"s better.
Where could the precious lamb have caught the measles? I don"t know of a case for miles around."
Mrs. Baker spent an anxious night for Jane tossed and moaned in her sleep in a distressful way. Several messages had been sent to the doctor and grandmother had also sent Jo Perkins into Hammersmith with a note to Mrs. Hartwell-Jones, to tell her of the sudden illness and to warn Letty against coming out to Sunnycrest for fear of contagion. Such a dreary home-coming it promised to be for the returned travelers!
Christopher was decidedly taken aback by his banishment. He had not counted on anything of that sort and remonstrated vigorously.
"If it is measles, I don"t see the use in sending me away now," he argued. "I guess the harm"s already done."
But grandmother was determined to take no risks and sent Christopher off with a hand-bag.
Toward morning Jane became quieter and grandmother fell into an exhausted sleep. When Jane woke, she tiptoed softly into the bath-room, went through her morning bath and got back into bed again without disturbing her grandmother. The blotchy flush had entirely left her face and she looked and acted perfectly well. Indeed, she appeared quite like her usual self, except for a certain look of unhappiness which even the thought of her mother"s coming could not banish from her chubby face.
Grandmother was surprised to see this sudden change for the better, when she finally awoke, and she sent Jo Perkins speeding again into the village with a telegram to grandfather. But she decided to take no chances until Dr. Greene had come and p.r.o.nounced the danger of measles really past, so Christopher was still held in quarantine at the farmhouse at the foot of the hill.
The doctor was late and took his departure only just before the arrival of the travelers. He had been puzzled by Jane"s symptoms.
"There were evidences of an upset stomach," he said, "but not enough to have caused fever and a breaking out."
She might get up and dress, he added as he left, and such a scramble Jane had to get into her clothes in time, with one eye on the clock! But she succeeded, and was the first to rush into her dear, dear mother"s arms.
What a day of jubilation it was! What wonderful tales of travel! What wonderful presents! But through it all there was something not quite natural about the behavior of the children. Christopher"s cheerfulness was a little overdone. The look of unhappiness still lurked in the depths of Jane"s eyes and she very pointedly avoided her brother.
"If grandmother had not a.s.sured me to the contrary, I should say the children were suffering from a guilty conscience," said Mr. Christopher Baker, Jr., to his wife.
"Yes," she agreed. "And Janey appears on the eve of confession. I have noticed two or three times that she has been on the point of telling me something and Kit has stopped her. Do you suppose there can be something behind her illness?"
After supper the family were a.s.sembled on the veranda, and Mrs. Baker, Jr., or "Mrs. Kit" as she was generally called-asked about Letty.
"We know how interested you both must be in Mrs. Hartwell-Jones and Letty," replied grandmother, "and so we have planned to invite them to Sunnycrest to spend a week. They are to come on Monday."
Jane and Christopher exchanged sudden, startled looks.
"Aren"t we going home on Monday?" demanded Christopher.
"No, my boy. I have a ten days" holiday and we are going to spend it here, all together," answered his father.
Jane burst into tears.
"Now, Jane!" whispered Christopher fiercely, and reached out a hand to clutch Jane"s skirts.
But she was too quick for him and sprang to the shelter of her mother"s arms.
"Oh, we needn"t have done it! We needn"t have done it!" she wailed.
Everybody was unspeakably astonished except Christopher, who grew very red in the dusk, squirmed about on his chair, finally rose and muttering something about "girls being such softies," ran into the house.
"Oh, mother," sobbed Jane, "come over here."
She drew her mother apart and made her sit down. Then standing beside her, the dear mother-shoulder ready to hide a shamed face, she whispered her story:
"Kit and I thought you and father were going to take us right back home to the city, and we didn"t want to go, and Kit said if one of us was ill or something, that we couldn"t go so soon, so he-he made me promise and we-I ate a lot of mushy bread and milk and drank some warm water and Kit whirled me till I was dizzy and-and grandmother put me to bed; then Kit came up and painted my face out of our water-color box and whirled me again and grandmother thought it was measles. She was scared and she cried because she had to give up her trip to the city with grandfather to meet you and mother-oh, mother, I"m so mis"rable! And I have broken my promise to Kit, too, "cause I promised him not to tell!"
The halting, sobbing whisper ceased and Jane, in an agony of weeping, buried her head in her mother"s breast.
"Why, Jane!" exclaimed her mother. "Why, Janey!"
After the scolding, the sermon and the punishment were over and the children had been sent forgiven to bed, the four grown-ups went out onto the veranda again. It was a soft, balmy night, with no hint of the coming autumn in the air. The stars twinkled good-humoredly.
Grandmother, grandfather, mother and father all looked at one another for a moment; then-I am sorry to say that then they laughed; laughed until the tears rolled down their cheeks and they had to sit down to keep from tipping over.
But of course Jane and Christopher never knew that.
CHAPTER XX
OLD SCENES AGAIN