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“‘Glimpses of the moon’ … one of the immortal phrases of literature, Jane. There are phrases with sheer magic in them… .”

“I know,” said Jane. “‘On the road to Mandalay’ … I read that in one of Miss Colwin’s books … and ‘horns of elfland faintly blowing.’ That gives me a beautiful ache.”

“You have the root of the matter in you, Jane. But, oh, my Jane, why … why … did Shakespeare leave his wife his second best bed?”

“Perhaps because she liked it best,” said Jane practically.

“‘Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings’ … to be sure. I wonder if that eminently sane suggestion has ever occurred to the commentators who have agonized over it. Can you guess who the dark lady was, Jane? You know when a poet praises a woman she is immortal … witness Beatrice … Laura … Lucasta … Highland Mary. All talked about hundreds of years after they are dead because great poets loved them. The weeds are growing over Troy but we remember Helen.”

“I suppose she didn’t have a big mouth,” said Jane wistfully.

Dad kept a straight face.

“Not too small a one, Jane. You couldn’t imagine goddess Helen with a rosebud mouth, could you?”

“IS my mouth too big, dad?” implored Jane. “The girls at St Agatha’s said it was.”

“Not too big, Jane. A generous mouth … the mouth of a giver, not a taker … a frank, friendly mouth … with very well-cut corners, Jane. No weakness about them … you wouldn’t have eloped with Paris, Jane, and made all that unholy mess. You would have been true to your vows, Jane … in spirit as well as in letter, even in this upside-down world.”

Jane had the oddest feeling that dad was thinking of mother, not of Argive Helen. But she was comforted by what he said about her mouth.

Dad did not always read from the masters. One day he took to the shore a thin little volume of poems by Bernard Freeman Trotter.

“I knew him overseas … he was killed … listen to his song about the poplars, Jane.

“And so I sing the poplars and when I come to die I will not look for jasper walls but cast about my eye For a row of wind-blown poplars against an English sky. “What will you want to see when you get to heaven,

Jane?”

“Lantern Hill,” said Jane.

Dad laughed. It was so delightful to make dad laugh … and so easy. Though a good many times Jane didn’t know exactly what he was laughing at. Jane didn’t mind that a bit … but sometimes she wondered if mother had minded it.

One evening after dad had been spouting poetry until he was tired Jane said timidly, “Would you like to hear me recite, dad?”

She recited “The Little Baby of Mathieu.” It was easy … dad made such a good audience.

“You can do it, Jane. That was good. I must give you a bit of training along that line, too. I used to be rather good at interpreting the habitant myself.”

“Someone she did not like used to be rather good at reading habitant poetry” … Jane remembered who had said that. She understood another thing now.

Dad had rolled over to where he could see their house in a gap in the twilit dunes.

“I see the Jimmy Johns’ light … and the Snowbeam light at Hungry Cove … but our house is dark. Let’s go home and light it up, Jane. And is there any of that apple-sauce you made for supper left?”

So they went home together and dad lighted his petrol lamp and sat down at his desk to work on his epic of Methuselah … or something else … and Jane got a candle to light her to bed. She liked a candle better than a lamp. It went out so graciously … the thin trail of smoke … the smouldering wick, giving one wild little wink at you before it left you in the dark.

When dad had converted Jane to the Bible, he set about making history and geography come alive for her. She had told him she always found those subjects hard. But soon history no longer seemed a clutter of dates and names in some dim, cold antiquity but became a storied road of time when dad told her old tales of wonder and the pride of kings. When he told the simplest incident with the sound of the sea in his voice, it seemed to take on such a colouring of romance and mystery that Jane knew she could never forget it. Thebes … Babylon … Tyre … Athens … Galilee … were places where real folks lived … folks she knew. And, knowing them, it was easy to be interested in everything pertaining to them. Geography, which had once meant merely a map of the world, was just as fascinating.

“Let’s go to India,” dad would say … and they went … though Jane would sew buttons on dad’s shirts all the way. Min’s ma was hard on buttons. Soon Jane knew all the fair lands far, far away as she knew Lantern Hill … or so it seemed to her after she had journeyed through them with father.

“Some day, Jane, you and I will really go and see them. The Land of the Midnight Sun … doesn’t that phrase fascinate you, Jane? … far Cathay … Damascus … Samarkand … Japan in cherry-blossom time … Euphrates among its dead empires … moonrise over Karnak … lotus vales in Kashmir … castles on the banks of the Rhine. There’s a villa in the Apennines … ‘the cloudy Apennines’ … I want you to see, my Jane. Meanwhile, let’s draw a chart of Lost Atlantis.”

“Next year I’ll be beginning French,” said Jane. “I think I’ll like that.”

“You will. You’ll wake up to the fascination of languages. Think of them as doors opening into a stately palace for you. You’ll even like Latin, dead and all as it is. Isn’t a dead language rather a sad thing, Janet? Once it lived and burned and glowed. People said loving things in it … bitter things … wise and silly things in it. I wonder who was the very last person to utter a sentence in living Latin. Jane, how many boots would a centipede need if a centipede needed boots?”

That was dad all over. Tender … serious … dreamy … and then a tag of some delightful nonsense. But Jane knew just how grandmother would have liked that.

Sundays were interesting at Lantern Hill not only because of the Bible readings with dad but because she went to the Queen’s Shore church with the Jimmy Johns in the mornings. Jane liked it tremendously. She put on the little green linen jumper dress grandmother had bought her and carried a hymn-book proudly. They went across the fields by a path that wound around the edge of Big Donald’s woods, through a cool back pasture where sheep grazed, down the road past Min’s ma’s house, where Min joined them, and finally along a grassy lane to what was called “the little south church” … a small white building set in a grove of beech and spruce where lovable winds seemed always purring. Anything less like St Barnabas’s could hardly be imagined but Jane liked it. The windows were plain glass and you could see out of them right into the woods and past the big wild cherry-tree that grew close up to the church. Jane wished she could have seen it in blossom time. All the people had what Step-a-yard called their Sunday faces on and Elder Tommy Perkins looked so solemn and other-worldly that Jane found it almost impossible to believe that he was the same man as the jolly Tommy Perkins of weekdays. Mrs Little Donald always passed her a peppermint over the top of the pew and though Jane didn’t like peppermints she seemed to like that one. There was, she reflected, something so nice and religious about its flavour.

For the first time Jane could join in the singing of the hymns and she did it lustily. Nobody at 60 Gay had ever supposed Jane could sing; but she found that she could at least follow a tune and was duly thankful therefor, as otherwise she would have felt like an outsider at the Jimmy Johns’ “sing-songs” in their old orchard on Sunday evenings. In a way Jane thought the sing-songs the best part of Sunday. All the Jimmy Johns sang like linnets and everybody could have his or her favourite hymn in turn. They sang what Step-a-yard, who carried a tremendous bass, called “giddier” hymns than were sung in church, out of little dog-eared, limp-covered hymn-books. Sometimes the stay-at-home dog tried to sing, too. Beyond them was the beauty of a moonlit sea.

They always ended up with “God Save the King” and Jane went home, escorted to the door of Lantern Hill by all the Jimmy Johns and the three dogs who didn’t stay at home. Once dad was sitting in the garden, on the stone seat Timothy Salt had built for her, smoking his Old Contemptible and “enjoying the beauty of the darkness,” as he said. Jane sat down beside him and he put his arm around her. First Peter prowled darkly around them. It was so still they could hear the cows grazing in Jimmy John’s field and so cool that Jane was glad of the warmth of father’s tweed arm across her shoulders. Still and cool and sweet … and in Toronto at that moment every one was gasping in a stifling heat wave, so the Charlottetown paper had said yesterday. But mother was with friends in Muskoka. It was poor Jody who would be smothering in that hot little attic room. If only Jody were here!

“Jane,” dad was saying, “should I have sent for you last spring?”

“Of course,” said Jane.

“But should I? Did it hurt … anybody?”

Jane’s heart beat more quickly. It was the first time dad had ever come so near to mentioning mother.

“Not very much … because I would be home in September.”

“Ah, yes. Yes, you will go back in September.”

Jane waited for something more but it did not come.

“Do you ever see anything of Jody?” wrote Jane to mother. “I wonder if she is getting enough to eat. She never says she isn’t in her letters … I’ve had three … but sometimes they sound hungry to me. I still love her best of all my friends but Shingle Snowbeam and Polly Garland and Min are very nice. Shingle is making great progress. She always washes behind her ears now and keeps her nails clean. And she never throws spit balls though she thinks it was great fun. Young John throws them. Young John is collecting bottle caps and wears them on his shirt. We are all saving bottle caps for him.

“Miranda and I decorate the church every Saturday night with flowers. We have a good many of our own and we get some from the Titus ladies. We go over on Ding-dong’s brother’s truck to get them. They live at a place called Brook Valley. Isn’t that a nice name? Miss Justina is the oldest and Miss Violet the youngest. They are both tall and thin and very ladylike. They have a lovely garden, and if you want to stand in well with them, Miranda says you must compliment them on their garden. Then they will do anything for you. They have a cherry walk which is wonderful in spring, Miranda says. They are both pillows in the church and every one respects them highly, but Miss Justina has never forgiven Mr Snowbeam because he once called her ‘Mrs’ when he was absent-minded. He said he would have thought she’d be pleased.

“Miss Violet is going to teach me hemstitching. She says every lady ought to know how to sew. Her face is old but her eyes are young. I am very fond of them both.

“Sometimes they quarrel. They have had a bad time this summer over a rubber plant that was their mother’s who died last year. They both think it ugly but sacred and would never dream of throwing it away, but Miss Violet thinks that now their mother is gone they could keep it in the back hall, but Miss Justina said, no, it must stay in the parlour. Sometimes they would not speak to each other on account of it. I told them I thought they might keep it in the parlour one week and in the back hall one week, turn about. They were very much struck with the idea and adopted it and now everything is smooth at Brook Valley.

“Miranda sang ‘Abide with Me’ in church last Sunday night. (They have preaching at night once a month.) She says she loves to sing because she always feels thin when she sings. She is so fat she is afraid she will never have any beaus but Step-a-yard says no fear, the men like a good armful. Was that coarse, mummy? Mrs Snowbeam says it was.

“We sing every Sunday night in the Jimmy Johns’ orchard—all sacred songs of course. I like the Jimmy Johns’ orchard. The grass is so nice and long there and the trees grow just as they like. The Jimmy Johns have such fun together. I think a big family is splendid.

“Punch Jimmy John is teaching me how to run across a stubble-field on bare feet so it won’t hurt. I go barefoot sometimes here. The Jimmy Johns and Snowbeams all do. It’s so nice to run through the cool wet grass and wriggle your toes in the sand and feel wet mud squashing up between them. You don’t mind, do you, mother?

“Min’s ma does our washing for us. I’m sure I could do it but I am not allowed to. Min’s ma does washing for all the summer boarders at the Harbour Head, too. Min’s ma’s pig was very sick but Uncle Tombstone doctored it up and cured it. I’m so glad it got well, for if it had died I don’t know what Min and her ma would have to live on next winter. Min’s ma is noted for her clam chowder. She is teaching me how to make it. Shingle and I dig the clams.

“I made a cake yesterday and ants got in the icing. I was so mortyfied because we had company for supper. I wish I knew how to keep ants in their place. But Uncle Tombstone says I can make soup that IS soup. We are going to have chicken for dinner to-morrow. I’ve promised to save the neck for Young John and a drumstick for Shingle. And oh, mother, the pond is full of trout. We catch them and eat them. Just fancy catching fish in your own pond and frying them for supper.

“Step-a-yard has false teeth. He always takes them out and puts them in his pocket when he eats. When he is out of an evening and they give him lunch, he always says, ‘Thanks, I’ll call again,’ but if they don’t, he never goes back. He says he has to be self-respecting.

“Timothy Salt lets me look through his spy-glass. It’s such fun looking at things through the wrong end. They seem so small and far away as if you were in another world.

“Polly and I found a bed of sweet grass on the sandhills yesterday. I’ve picked a bunch to take back for you, mother. It’s nice to put among handkerchiefs, Miss Violet Titus says.

“We named the Jimmy Johns’ calves to-day. We called the pretty ones after people we like and the ugly ones after people we don’t like.

“Shingle and Polly and I are to sell candy at the ice-cream social in the Corners hall next week.

“We all made a fire of driftwood on the shore the other night and danced about it.

“Penny Snowbeam and Punch Jimmy John are very busy now bugging potatoes. I don’t like potato bugs. When Punch Jimmy John said I was a brave girl because I wasn’t afraid of mice, Penny said, ‘Oh ho, put a bug on her and see how brave she’ll be.’ I am glad Punch did not put me to the test because I am afraid I could not have stood it.