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“Frank always said he’d been stolen, mummy. It must be Snowball … a strange cat wouldn’t make a fuss over me like this… .”

“I shouldn’t have thought Snowball would either,” laughed mother.

“I expect he’s glad to see a friend,” said Jane. “We don’t know how he’s been treated. He feels awfully thin. We must take him home.”

“On the streetcar… .”

“We can’t leave him here. I’ll hold him … he’ll be quiet.”

Snowball was quiet for a few moments after they entered the car. There were not many people on it. Three boys at the far end sniggered as Jane sat down with her armful of cat. A pudgy child edged away from her in terror. A man with a pimply face scowled at her as if he were personally insulted by the sight of a Persian cat.

Suddenly Snowball seemed to go quite mad. He made one wild leap out of Jane’s incautiously relaxed arms and went whizzing around the car, hurtling over the seats and hurling himself against the windows. Women shrieked. The pudgy child bounced up and screamed. The pimply-faced man’s hat got knocked off by a wild Snowballian leap, and he swore. The conductor opened the door.

“Don’t let the cat out,” shrieked breathless, pursuing Jane. “Shut the door … shut it quick … it’s my lost cat and I’m taking it home.”

“You’d better keep hold of it then,” said the conductor gruffly.

“Enough is as good as a feast,” thought Snowball … evidently … for he allowed Jane to nab him. The boys all laughed insultingly as Jane walked back to her seat, looking neither to the right nor to the left. A button had burst off her slipper and she had stumbled and skinned her nose on the handle of a seat. But she was Jane victorious … as well as Victoria.

“Oh, darling … darling,” said mother, in kinks of laughter … real laughter. When had mother laughed like that? If grandmother saw her!

“That’s a dangerous animal,” said the pimply-faced man warningly.

Jane looked at the boys. They made irresistibly comic faces at her and she made faces back. She liked Snowball better than she ever had before. But she did not relax her grip on him until she heard the door of 60 Gay clang behind her.

“We’ve found Snowball, grandmother,” cried Jane triumphantly. “We’ve brought him home.”

She released the cat who stood looking squiffily about.

“That is not Snowball,” said grandmother. “That is a female cat.”

Judging from grandmother’s tone it was evident that there was something very disgraceful about a female cat!

The owner of the female cat was eventually discovered through another lost-and-found and no more Persians appeared at 60 Gay. Jane had ticked off December, and January was speeding away. The Lantern Hill news was still absorbing. Everybody was skating … on the pond or on the little round, tree-shadowed pool beyond the Corners… . Shingle Snowbeam had been queen in a Christmas concert and had worn a crown of scalloped tin; the new minister’s wife could play the organ; the Jimmy John baby had eaten all the blooms off Mrs Jimmy John’s Christmas cactus, every last one of them; Mrs Little Donald had had her gobbler for Christmas dinner … Jane remembered that magnificent white gobbler with the coral-red wattles and accorded him a meed of regret; Uncle Tombstone had butched Min’s ma’s pig and Min’s ma had sent a roast to dad; Min’s ma had got a new pig to bring up, a nice pink pig exactly like Elder Tommy; Mr Spragg’s dog at the Corners had bit the eye out of Mr Loney’s dog and Mr Loney was going to law about it; Mrs Angus Scatterby, whose husband had died in October, was disappointed over the result … “It’s not so much fun being a widow as I expected,” she was reported to have said; Sherwood Morton had gone into the choir and the managers had put a few more nails in the roof … Jane suspected Step-a-yard of that joke; there was wonderful coasting on Big Donald’s hill; her dad had got a new dog, a fat white dog named Bubbles; her geraniums were blooming beautiful … “and me too far away to see them,” thought Jane with a pang; William MacAllister had had a fight with Thomas Crowder because Thomas told William he didn’t like the whiskers William would have had if he had had whiskers; they had had a silver thaw … Jane could see it … ice jewels … the maple wood a thing of unearthly splendour … every stalk sticking up from the crusted snow of the garden a spear of crystal; Step-a-yard was mudding … what on earth was mudding? … she must find out next summer; Mr Snowbeam’s pig-house roof had blown off … “if he’d nailed the ridge-pole firmly on last summer when I advised him to, this wouldn’t have happened,” thought Jane virtuously; Bob Woods had fell on his dog and sprained his back … was it Bob’s back or the dog’s that was sprained? … Caraway Snowbeam had to have her tonsils out and was putting on such airs about it; Jabez Gibbs had set a trap for a skunk and caught his own cat; Uncle Tombstone had given all his friends an oyster supper; some said Mrs Alec Carson at the Corners had a new baby, some said she hadn’t.

What had 60 Gay to offer against the colour and flavour of news like that? Jane ticked off January.

February was stormy. Jane spent many a blustery evening, while the wind howled up and down Gay Street, poring over seed catalogues, picking out things for dad to plant in the spring. She loved to read the description of the vegetables and imagine she saw rows of them at Lantern Hill. She copied down all Mary’s best recipes to make them for dad next summer … dad who was likely at this very moment to be sitting cosily by their own fireside with two happy dogs curled up at his feet and outside a wild white night of drifting snow. Jane ticked off February.

When Jane ticked off March she whispered, “Just two and a half months more.” Life went on outwardly the same at 60 Gay and St Agatha’s. Easter came and Aunt Gertrude, who had refused sugar in her tea all through Lent, took it again. Grandmother was buying the loveliest spring clothes for mother who seemed rather indifferent to them. And Jane was beginning to hear her Island calling to her in the night.

On a wild wet morning in late April the letter came. Jane, who had been watching for it for weeks and was beginning to feel a bit worried, carried it in to mother with the face of

One to whom glad news is sent From the far country of his home after long banishment.

Mother was pale as she took it and grandmother was suddenly flushed.

“Another letter from Andrew Stuart?” said grandmother, as if the name blistered her lips.

“Yes,” said mother faintly. “He … he says Jane Victoria must go back to him for the summer … if she wants to go. She is to make her own choice.”

“Then,” said grandmother, “she will not go.”

“Of course you won’t go, darling?”

“Not go! But I must go! I promised I’d go back,” cried Jane.

“Your … your father will not hold you to that promise. He says expressly that you can choose as you please.”

“I WANT to go back,” said Jane. “I’m going back.”

“Darling,” said mother imploringly, “don’t go. You grew away from me last summer. If you go again I’ll lose more of you… .”

Jane looked down at the carpet and her lips set in a line that had an odd resemblance to grandmother’s.

Grandmother took the letter from mother, glanced at it and looked at Jane.

“Victoria,” she said, quite pleasantly for her, “I think you have not given the matter sufficient thought. I say nothing for myself … I have never expected gratitude … but your mother’s wishes ought to carry some weight with you. Victoria”— grandmother’s voice grew sharper–“please do me the courtesy of looking at me while I am speaking to you.”

Jane looked at grandmother … looked her straight in the eyes, unflinchingly, unyieldingly. Grandmother seemed to put a certain unusual restraint on herself. She still spoke pleasantly.

“I have not mentioned this before, Victoria, but I decided some time ago that I would take you and your mother for a trip to England this summer. We will spend July and August there. You will enjoy it, I know. I think that between a summer in England and a summer in a hut in a country settlement on P. E. Island even you could hardly hesitate.”

Jane did not hesitate. “Thank you, grandmother. It is very kind of you to offer me such a lovely trip. I hope you and mother will enjoy it. But I would rather go to the Island.”

Even Mrs Robert Kennedy knew when she was beaten. But she could not accept defeat gracefully.

“You get that stubborn will of yours from your father,” she said, her face twisted with anger. For the moment she looked simply like a very shrewish old spitfire. “You grow more like him every day of your life … you’ve got his very chin.”

Jane was thankful she had got a will from someone. She was glad she looked like dad … glad her chin was like his. But she wished mother were not crying.

“Don’t waste your tears, Robin,” said grandmother, turning scornfully from Jane. “It’s the Stuart coming out in her … you could expect nothing else. If she prefers her trumpery friends down there to you, there is nothing you can do about it.
I
have said all I intend to say on the matter.”

Mother stood up and dabbed her tears away with a cobwebby handkerchief.

“Very well, dear,” she said brightly and hardly. “You have made your choice. I agree with your grandmother that there is nothing more to be said.”

She went out, leaving Jane with a heart that was almost breaking. Never in her life had mother spoken to her in that hard, brittle tone. She felt as if she had been suddenly pushed far, far away from her. But she did not regret her choice. She had no choice really. She had to go back to dad. If it came to choosing between him and mother … Jane rushed to her room, flung herself down on the big white bearskin, and writhed in a tearless agony no child should ever have to suffer.

It was a week before Jane was herself again, although mother, after that bitter little outburst, had been as sweet and loving as ever. When she had come in to say good night she had held Jane very tightly and silently.

Jane hugged her mother closer to her.

“I have to go, mother … I have to go … but I DO love you… .”

“Oh, Jane, I hope you do … but sometimes you seem so far away from me that you might as well be beyond Sirius. Don’t … don’t let any one ever come between us. That is all I ask.”

“No one can … no one wants to, mother.”

In one way, it occurred to Jane, that was not strictly true. She had known for a long while that grandmother would like very well to come between them if she could only bring it about. But Jane also knew that by “no one” mother meant dad, and so her answer was true.

There was a letter from Polly Garland the last day of April … a jubilant Polly.

“We’re all so glad you’re coming back this summer, Jane. Oh, Jane, I wish you could see the pussy-willows in our swamp.”

Jane wished so, too. And there were other fascinating bits of news in Polly’s letter. Min’s ma’s cow was worn out and Min’s ma was going to get a new one. Polly had a hen setting on nine eggs … Jane could see nine real live wee baby chicks running round. Well, father had promised her some hens this summer … Step-a-yard had told Polly to tell her it was a great spring and even the roosters were laying; the baby had been christened William Charles and was toddling round everywhere and getting thin; Big Donald’s dog had been poisoned, had had six convulsions, but had recovered.

“Only six more weeks.” It was weeks now where it had been months. Down home the robins would be strutting round Lantern Hill and the mists would be coming in from the sea. Jane ticked off April.

It was the last week in May that Jane saw the house. Mother had gone one evening to visit a friend who had just moved into a new house in the new Lakeside development on the banks of the Humber. She took Jane with her and it was a revelation to Jane whose only goings and comings had been so circumscribed that she had never dreamed there were such lovely places in Toronto. Why, it was just like a pretty country village out here … hills and ravines with ferns and wild columbines growing in them and rivers and trees … the green fire of willows, the great clouds of oaks, the plumes of pines and, not far away, the blue mist that was Lake Ontario.

Mrs Townley lived on a street called Lakeside Gardens, and she showed them proudly over her new house. It was so big and splendid that Jane did not feel very much interested in it and after a while she slipped away in the dusk to explore the street itself, leaving mother and Mrs Townley talking cupboards and bathrooms.

Jane decided that she liked Lakeside Gardens. She liked it because it twisted and curved. It was a friendly street. The houses did not look at each other with their noses in the air. Even the big ones were not snooty. They sat among their gardens, with spireas afoam around them and tulips and daffodils all about their toes, and said, “We have lots of room … we don’t have to push with our elbows … we can afford to be gracious.”

Jane looked them over carefully as she went by but it was not until she was nearly at the end of the street, where it turned into a road winding down to the lake, that she saw HER house. She had liked a great many of the houses she had passed but when she saw this house she knew at first sight that it belonged to her … just as Lantern Hill did.

It was a small house for Lakeside Gardens but a great deal bigger than Lantern Hill. It was built of grey stone and had casement windows … some of them beautifully unexpected … and a roof of shingles stained a very dark brown. It was built right on the edge of the ravine overlooking the tree-tops, with five great pines just behind it.

“What a darling place!” breathed Jane.

It was a new house: it had just been built and there was a For Sale sign on the lawn. Jane went all around it and peered through every diamond-paned window. There was a living-room that would really LIVE when it was furnished, a dining-room with a door that opened into a sun-room and the most delightful breakfast nook in pale yellow, with built-in china-closets. It should have chairs and table of yellow, too, and curtains at the recessed window between gold and green that would look like sunshine on the darkest day. Yes, this house belonged to her … she could see herself in it, hanging curtains, polishing the glass doors, making cookies in the kitchen. She hated the For Sale sign. To think that somebody would be buying that house … HER house … was torture.