oh, I want to see and hear her terrible much. She is to sing at the Old Timers’ concert tomorrow night at Kensington. The folks who are getting the concert up are friends of hers, or, of course, she’d never have come to a little country village. Only sixteen miles away — and I can’t go.”
Jordan couldn’t think of anything to say. He reflected savagely that if he had a horse of his own he would take Aunty Nan to Kensington, Mrs. William or no Mrs. William. Though, to be sure, it WAS a long drive for her; and she was looking very frail this summer.
“Ain’t going to last long,” muttered Jordan, making his escape by the porch door as Mrs. William puffed in by the other. “The sweetest old creetur that ever was created’ll go when she goes. Yah, ye old madam, I’d like to give you a piece of my mind, that I would!”
This last was for Mrs. William, but was delivered in a prudent undertone. Jordan detested Mrs. William, but she was a power to be reckoned with, all the same. Meek, easygoing Billy Morrison did just what his wife told him to.
So Aunty Nan did not get to Kensington to hear little Joscelyn sing. She said nothing more about it but after that night she seemed to fail very rapidly. Mrs. William said it was the hot weather, and that Aunty Nan gave way too easily. But Aunty Nan could not help giving way now; she was very, very tired. Even her knitting wearied her. She would sit for hours in her rocking chair with the gray kitten in her lap, looking out of the window with dreamy, unseeing eyes. She talked to herself a good deal, generally about little Joscelyn. Mrs. William told Avonlea folk that Aunty Nan had got terribly childish and always accompanied the remark with a sigh that intimated how much she, Mrs. William, had to contend with.
Justice must be done to Mrs. William, however. She was not unkind to Aunty Nan; on the contrary, she was very kind to her in the letter. Her comfort was scrupulously attended to, and Mrs. William had the grace to utter none of her complaints in the old woman’s hearing. If Aunty Nan felt the absence of the spirit she never murmured at it.
One day, when the Avonlea slopes were golden-hued with the ripened harvest, Aunty Nan did not get up. She complained of nothing but great weariness. Mrs. William remarked to her husband that if SHE lay in bed every day she felt tired, there wouldn’t be much done at Gull Point Farm. But she prepared an excellent breakfast and carried it patiently up to Aunty Nan, who ate little of it.
After dinner Jordan crept up by way of the back stairs to see her. Aunty Nan was lying with her eyes fixed on the pale pink climbing roses that nodded about the window. When she saw Jordan she smiled.
“Them roses put me so much in mind of little Joscelyn,” she said softly. “She loved them so. If I could only see her! Oh, Jordan, if I could only see her! Maria says it’s terrible childish to be always harping on that string, and mebbe it is. But — oh, Jordan, there’s such a hunger in my heart for her, such a hunger!”
Jordan felt a queer sensation in his throat, and twisted his ragged straw hat about in his big hands. Just then a vague idea which had hovered in his brain all day crystallized into decision. But all he said was:
“I hope you’ll feel better soon, Aunty Nan.”
“Oh, yes, Jordan dear, I’ll be better soon,” said Aunty Nan with her own sweet smile. “‘The inhabitant shall not say I am sick,’ you know. But if I could only see little Joscelyn first!”
Jordan went out and hurried downstairs. Billy Morrison was in the stable, when Jordan stuck his head over the half-door.
“Say, can I have the rest of the day off, sir? I want to go to Kensington.”
“Well, I don’t mind,” said Billy Morrison amiably. “May’s well get you jaunting done ‘fore harvest comes on. And here, Jord; take this quarter and get some oranges for Aunty Nan. Needn’t mention it to headquarters.”
Billy Morrison’s face was solemn, but Jordan winked as he pocketed the money.
“If I’ve any luck, I’ll bring her something that’ll do her more good than the oranges,” he muttered, as he hurried off to the pasture. Jordan had a horse of his own now, a rather bony nag, answering to the name of Dan. Billy Morrison had agreed to pasture the animal if Jordan used him in the farm work, an arrangement scoffed at by Mrs. William in no measured terms.
Jordan hitched Dan into the second best buggy, dressed himself in his Sunday clothes, and drove off. On the road he re-read a paragraph he had clipped from the Charlottetown Daily Enterprise of the previous day.
“Joscelyn Burnett, the famous contralto, is spending a few days in Kensington on her return from her Maritime concert tour. She is the guest of Mr. and Mrs. Bromley, of The Beeches.”
“Now if I can get there in time,” said Jordan emphatically.
Jordan got to Kensington, put Dan up in a livery stable, and inquired the way to The Beeches. He felt rather nervous when he found it, it was such a stately, imposing place, set back from the street in an emerald green seclusion of beautiful grounds.
“Fancy me stalking up to that front door and asking for Miss Joscelyn Burnett,” grinned Jordan sheepishly. “Mebbe they’ll tell me to go around to the back and inquire for the cook. But you’re going just the same, Jordan Sloane, and no skulking. March right up now. Think of Aunty Nan and don’t let style down you.”
A pert-looking maid answered Jordan’s ring, and stared at him when he asked for Miss Burnett.
“I don’t think you can see her,” she said shortly, scanning his country cut of hair and clothes rather superciliously. “What is your business with her?”
The maid’s scorn roused Jordan’s “dander,” as he would have expressed it.
“I’ll tell her that when I see her,” he retorted coolly. “Just you tell her that I’ve a message for her from Aunty Nan Morrison of Gull Point Farm, Avonlea. If she hain’t forgot, that’ll fetch her. You might as well hurry up, if you please, I’ve not overly too much time.”
The pert maid decided to be civil at least, and invited Jordan to enter. But she left him standing in the hall while she went in search of Miss Burnett. Jordan gazed about him in amazement. He had never been in any place like this before. The hall was wonderful enough, and through the open doors on either hand stretched vistas of lovely rooms that, to Jordan’s eyes, looked like those of a palace.
“Gee whiz! How do they ever move around without knocking things over?”
Then Joscelyn Burnett came, and Jordan forgot everything else. This tall, beautiful woman, in her silken draperies, with a face like nothing Jordan had ever seen, or even dreamed about, — could this be Aunty Nan’s little Joscelyn? Jordan’s round, freckled countenance grew crimson. He felt horribly tonguetied and embarrassed. What could he say to her? How could he say it?
Joscelyn Burnett looked at him with her large, dark eyes, — the eyes of a woman who had suffered much, and learned much, and won through struggle to victory.
“You have come from Aunty Nan?” she said. “Oh, I am so glad to hear from her. Is she well? Come in here and tell me all about her.”
She turned toward one of those fairylike rooms, but Jordan interrupted her desperately.
“Oh, not in there, ma’am. I’d never get it out. Just let me blunder through it out here someways. Yes’m, Aunty Nan, she ain’t
