Jane of Lantern Hill (1937)

Chapter 34

Grandmother coldly told mother to buy what clothes ... if any ... were necessary for Jane. Jane and mother had a happy afternoon's shopping. Jane picked her own things ... things that would suit Lantern Hill and an Island summer. Mother insisted on some smart little knitted sweaters and one pretty dress of rose-pink organdie with delicious frills. Jane didn't know where she would ever wear it ... it was too ornate for the little south church but she let mother buy it to please her. And mother got her the niftiest little green bathing-suit.

"Just think," reflected Jane happily, "in a week I'll be on Queen's Shore. I hope the water won't be too cold for swimming... ."

"We may be going to the Island in August," said Phyllis. "Dad says he hasn't been down for so long he'd like to spend another vacation there. If we do, we'll be stopping at the Harbour Head Hotel and it isn't very far from there to Queen's Shore. So we'll likely see you."  

Jane didn't know whether she liked this idea or not. She didn't want Phyllis there, patronizing the Island ... looking down her nose at Lantern Hill and the boot-shelf and the Snowbeams.  

Jane went to the Maritimes with the Randolphs this year and they left on the morning train instead of the night. It was a dull, cloudy day but Jane was so happy she positively radiated happiness around her like sunshine. Mrs Randolph's opinion of Jane was the very opposite of what Mrs Stanley's had been. Mrs Randolph thought she had never met a more charming child, interested in everything, finding beauty everywhere, even in those interminable stretches of pulpwood lands and lumber forests in New Brunswick. Jane studied the time-table and hailed each station as a friend, especially the ones with quaint, delightful names ... Red Pine, Bartibog, Memramcook. And then Sackville where they left the main line and got on the little branch train to Cape Tormentine. How sorry Jane felt for any one who was not going to the Island!  

Cape Tormentine ... the car ferry ... watching for the red cliffs of the Island ... there they were ... she had really forgotten how red they were ... and beyond them misty green hills. It was raining again, but who cared? Everything the Island did was right. If it wanted to rain ... why, rain was Jane's choice.  

Having left Toronto on the morning train, they were in Charlottetown by midafternoon. Jane saw dad the moment she stepped off the train ... grinning and saying, "Excuse me, but your face seems familiar. Are you by any chance ..." but Jane had hurled herself at him. They had never been parted ... she had never been away at all. The world was real again. She was Jane again. Oh, dad, dad!  

She had been afraid Aunt Irene would be there, too ... possibly Miss Lilian Morrow as well. But Aunt Irene, it transpired, was away on a visit to Boston and had taken Miss Morrow with her. Jane secretly hoped that Aunt Irene would be having such a fine time in Boston that she wouldn't be able to tear herself away for a long time.

"And the car has turned temperamental again," said dad. "I had to leave it in the garage at the Corners and borrow Step-a-yard's horse and buggy. You don't mind?"

Mind? Jane was delighted. She wanted that drive to Lantern Hill to be so slow that she could drink the road in as she drove along. And she liked to be behind a horse. You could talk to a horse as you never could to a car. The fact was, if dad had said they had to walk to Lantern Hill it wouldn't have mattered to Jane.  

Dad put lean strong hands under her arms and swung her up to the buggy seat.

"Let's just go on from where we left off. You've grown since last summer, my Jane."

"An inch," said Jane proudly.

It had stopped raining. The sun was coming out. Beyond, the white wave crests on the harbour were laughing at her ... waving their hands at her.