Jane of Lantern Hill by L. M. Montgomery Page A

mean.”
    â€œIs it my recitation? No one. Miss Semple asked me to recite, and I picked the recitation myself because I liked it,” said Jane. It might even be said she retorted it. She was hurt…angry…a little “pepped up” because of her success. “I thought it would please you. But you are never pleased with anything I do.”
    â€œDon’t be cheaply theatrical, please,” said grandmother. “And in future, if you have to recite”…very much as she might have said, “if you have to have smallpox”…“please choose poems in decent English. I do not care for patois . ”
    Jane didn’t know what patois was, but it was all too evident that she had made a mess of things somehow.
    â€œWhy was grandmother so angry, mummy?” she asked piteously, when mother came in to kiss her good-night, cool, slim, and fragrant, in a dress of rose crêpe with little wisps of lace over the shoulders. Mother’s blue eyes seemed to mist a little.
    â€œSomeone she…did not like…used to be…very good at reading habitant poetry. Never mind, heart’s delight. You did splendidly. I was proud of you.”
    She bent down and took Jane’s face in her hands. Mother had such a dear way of doing that.
    So, in spite of everything, Jane went very happily through the gates of sleep. After all, it does not take much to make a child happy.

CHAPTER 9
    The letter was a bolt from the blue. It came one dull morning in early April…but such a bitter, peevish, unlovely April…more like March in its disposition than April. It was Saturday, so there would be no St. Agatha’s, and when Jane wakened in her big black walnut bed she wondered just how she would put in the day, because mother was going to a bridge and Jody was sick with a cold.
    Jane lay a little while, looking through the window, where she could see only dull gray sky and old tree tops having a fight with the wind. She knew that in the yard below the window on the north there was still a lingering bank of dirty gray snow. Jane thought dirty snow must be the dreariest thing in the world. She hated this shabby end of winter. And she hated the bedroom where she had to sleep alone. She wished she and mother could sleep together. They could have such lovely times talking to each other with no one else to hear, after they went to bed or early in the morning. And how lovely it would be when you woke up in the night to hear mother’s soft breathing beside you and cuddle to her just a wee bit, carefully, so as not to disturb her.
    But grandmother would not let mother sleep with her.
    â€œIt is unhealthy for two people to sleep in the same bed,” grandmother had said with her chill, unsmiling smile. “Surely in a house of this size everybody can have a room to herself. There are many people in the world who would be grateful for such a privilege.”
    Jane thought she might have liked the room better if it had been smaller. She always felt lost in it. Nothing in it seemed to be related to her. It always seemed hostile, watchful, vindictive. And yet Jane always felt that if she were allowed to do things for it…sweep it, dust it, put flowers in it…she would begin to love it, huge as it was. Everything in it was huge…a huge black walnut wardrobe like a prison, a huge chest of drawers, a huge walnut bedstead, a huge mirror over the massive black marble mantelpiece…except a tiny cradle which was always kept in the alcove by the fireplace…a cradle that grandmother had been rocked in. Fancy grandmother a baby! Jane just couldn’t.
    Jane got out of bed and dressed herself under the stare of several old dead grands and greats hung on the walls. Below on the lawn robins were hopping about. Robins always made Jane laugh…they were so saucy, so sleek, so important, strutting over the grounds of 60 Gay just as if it were any common yard. Much they cared for