Jane of Lantern Hill Read Online Free

bench in an old disused summer-house. Mother and grandmother were both away and Aunt Gertrude was in bed with a bad cold, or else Jane would not have been sitting in the back yard. She had crept out to have a good look at the full moon…(Jane had her own particular reasons for liking to look at the moon)…and the white-blossoming cherry tree over in the yard of 58. The cherry tree, with the moon hanging over it like a great pearl, was so beautiful that Jane felt a queer lump in her throat when she looked at it…almost as if she wanted to cry. And then…somebody really was crying over in the yard of 58. The stifled, piteous sounds came clearly on the still, crystal air of the spring evening.
    Jane got up and walked out of the summer-house and around the garage, past the lonely dog-house that had never had a dog in it…at least, in Jane’s recollection…and so to the fence that had ceased to be iron and become wooden paling between 60 and 58. There was a gap in it behind the dog-house where a slat had been broken off amid a tangle of creeper, and Jane, squeezing through it, found herself in the untidy yard of 58. It was still quite light, and Jane could see a girl huddled at the root of the cherry tree, sobbing bitterly, her face in her hands.
    â€œCan I help you?” said Jane.
    Though Jane herself had no inkling of it, those words were the keynote of her character. Anyone else would probably have said, “What is the matter?” But Jane always wanted to help: and, though she was too young to realize it, the tragedy of her little existence was that nobody ever wanted her help…not even mother, who had everything heart could wish.
    The child under the cherry tree stopped sobbing and got on her feet. She looked at Jane and Jane looked at her and something happened to both of them. Long afterwards Jane said, “I knew we were the same kind of folks.” Jane saw a girl of about her own age, with a very white little face under a thick bang of black hair cut straight across her forehead. The hair looked as if it had not been washed for a long time but the eyes underneath it were brown and beautiful, though of quite a different brown from Jane’s. Jane’s were goldy-brown like a marigold, with laughter lurking in them, but this girl’s were very dark and very sad…so sad that Jane’s heart did something queer inside of her. She knew quite well that it wasn’t right that anybody so young should have such sad eyes.
    The girl wore a dreadful old blue dress that had certainly never been made for her. It was too long and too elaborate and it was dirty and grease-spotted. It hung on the thin little shoulders like a gaudy rag on a scarecrow. But the dress mattered nothing to Jane. All she was conscious of was those appealing eyes.
    â€œCan I help?” she asked again.
    The girl shook her head and the tears welled up in her big eyes.
    â€œLook,” she pointed.
    Jane looked and saw between the cherry tree and the fence what seemed like a rudely made flower-bed strewn over with roses that were ground into the earth.
    â€œDick did that,” said the girl. “He did it on purpose…because it was my garden. Miss Summers had them roses sent her last week…twelve great big red ones for her birthday…and this morning she said they were done and told me to throw them in the garbage pail. But I couldn’t…they were still so pretty. I come out here and made that bed and stuck the roses all over it. I knew they wouldn’t last long…but they looked pretty and I pretended I had a garden of my own…and now…Dick just come out and stomped all over it…and laughed .”
    She sobbed again. Jane didn’t know who Dick was, but at that moment she could cheerfully have wrung his neck with her strong, capable little hands. She put her arm about the girl.
    â€œNever mind. Don’t cry any more. See, we’ll break off a lot of