The three children looked at each other and then quickly looked away again.
"We don't know, exactly," said Katharine.
"We think she's visiting somebody over on Virginia Street," said Mark, hoping that he spoke the truth, and that She (who was all that was left of Jane) had not strayed farther.
"Well, go and get her," said their mother, taking some interesting-looking packages from the car. "This is a party."
The three children looked at the ground, hopelessly.
"Or wait," their mother went on, not noticing. "You all go in the car and pick her up; that'll be quicker. I'll be breaking the news to Miss Bick about the party." And she started toward the house, her arms loaded with packages.
Mark and Katharine and Martha waited till she was safely inside. Then they turned to Mr. Smith and all started to speak at once. Then they stopped and looked at each other again.
"Shall we tell him?" Katharine asked.
"Yes." Mark nodded decisively. "There comes a time in the affairs of men, and this is it."
"I said we ought to, all along," said Martha. "I said he'd know what to do. This'll prove it."
And she and Mark and Katharine all piled into the front seat of the car and began telling Mr. Smith about the dread events of the morning. They didn't go into the reason for Jane's upset, though, or the way she felt about stepfathers, out of consideration for his feelings.
And Mr. Smith didn't waste time in unnecessary questions. ("Which proves," said Mark to Katharine, afterward, "that he would make an ideal step, and not Murdstone at all!") He started the motor, and the car shot down Maplewood and turned into Virginia Street.
She-who-was-no-longer-Jane was no longer to be seen.
"She must be in this block somewhere," said Katharine. "She hasn't had time to walk any farther."
"What do we do now?" said Martha.
"The question is moot," said Mark. "She could be in any one of these houses."
"We could holler 'Fire!' and everyone would come running out," suggested Katharine.
"Let's not have any more fires or running." Martha shuddered, remembering certain past experiences. "Let's knock at all the doors and ask them if they want to subscribe to the Literary Digest."
"That's no good," said Mark, who had done this one summer to try to earn spending money. "All they ever say is 'No,' and shut the door."
Martha turned to Mr. Smith. "It's up to you," she said trustingly.
Mr. Smith looked pleased and touched. He also looked a little nervous, as though he were hoping he might live up to their trust. He cleared his throat.
"Well," he said, "first of all, does any of these houses look like the kind of house the family of that kind of girl would live in?"
Mark and Katharine and Martha stared up and down the block. Luckily it was a short one, with only eight houses in it, four on each side of the street. Almost all the houses looked very much like their own—comfortable, slightly shabby, family sort of houses, with an easy-to-get-along-with, lived-in look.
All but one.
The eighth house was made of cold-looking gray stone, and sat primly on an impossibly neat emerald lawn that was shut off from the street by a forbidding hedge of evergreens. A small sign on the lawn said "Please." The walk to the front door was of bright blue gravel, edged with some boring plants that looked as though they had never blossomed and didn't intend to. There were no croquet wickets on the lawn and no bicycles or kiddy-cars sitting around, the way there were in front of most of the other houses.
"That's the one." Mark was positive. "It has to be. It looks just like her."
He and Katharine and Martha and Mr. Smith got out of the car and advanced stealthily up the street till they stood confronting the gray stone house. No one was in sight. From within came the sound of someone practicing a difficult piece upon the piano.
"That couldn't be Jane," said Martha. "She hates practice."
"I bet she doesn't now," said Mark.
"We'd better not let her see us" said Katharine. She doesn't seem to like us very well any more."
"If her new family's anything like her, I don't think they'll like us either," said Mark. He turned to Mr. Smith. "I guess it's still up to you, sir."
Mr. Smith cleared his throat nervously again. "All right," he said. "I'll try."
So Mark and Katharine and Martha hid behind the evergreen hedge, and Mr. Smith, after checking to make sure that no telltale parts of them were exposed to the public gaze, squared his shoulders and marched bravely up the blue gravel walk and knocked on the front door with the imitation antique brass knocker.
When She-who-was-no-longer-Jane turned out of Maplewood into Virginia Street, she went straight to the gray stone house and up the blue gravel walk, and in at the front door. After all, this was her house and she belonged to this family now.
She went in at the front door and up the front stairs to what was now her room. There were handwoven curtains of a cold gray at the windows, and the walls were painted in the same colorless tint. There were no colored pictures on the walls, only sepia prints of Sir Galahad and a lady called Hope. The bookshelves were full of heavy, instructive-looking books, and no toys or games, only a few sets of the helpful kind that show you how to weave linen and tool leather in six easy lessons.
She-who-was-no-longer-Jane sat down on an uncomfortable imitation antique chair and began looking at one of the instructive books. She did this as though it were perfectly natural and as though she'd been doing nothing else for years, but all the same, deep down inside her, she felt strangely empty and uncomfortable, as though she didn't belong in this prim gray room at all.
After a bit, deciding she didn't feel like being instructed just now, she put down the book and took a round, shining object from her pocket. She sat staring at it for a long while. In a dim way her mind connected it with the empty, uncomfortable feeling that seemed to hang over her, but she couldn't remember why the shiny thing made her feel lonely and unhappy.
Of course the trouble was that when she wished to belong to another family, she hadn't said a thing about not being Jane any longer. And so she had become the girl Jane would have been if she had been brought up in this cold, gray house. But down inside her somewhere, the real Jane was still struggling to exist. This is called heredity versus environment, and it is quite a struggle.
After she had been sitting by herself (or by her two selves) for a few minutes, a lady appeared in the door. She was dressed in a gown of sober gray wool.
"Why, here you are!" she cried. "Mother has been worried. She couldn't find her Little Comfort anywhere!"
"I was playing," said She-who-was-now-part-Jane and-part-Mother's-Little-Comfort (only from now on I think it will save time if we just think of her as She).
"Where were you playing?" said the gray lady. "You weren't in the solarium and you weren't in the patio!"
"I was around the corner. I was playing with some children."
"But we don't know anyone around the corner," said the gray lady in alarm. "Mother wants you to have fresh air and exercise, of course, but one can't be too careful about speaking to strangers! Were they nice children?"
She hesitated. "You wouldn't like them," She said, finally, hanging her head and looking closer at the round shining thing in her hand.
"Really, Comfort, you are not behaving like yourself today!" said the lady, reproachfully.
"I know it," said She, unhappily.
"Haven't I told you always to look at me when I am speaking to you?" the lady went on. "What is that you have in your hand?"
"I don't know. I found it."
"Let me see," said the lady. She took the shining thing in her own hand. "But this is very interesting! It seems to be some kind of ancient talisman. See, there is writing on it, but I don't recognize the language. It is not Greek or Latin. Probably it is Sanskrit. Father will translate it for us when he comes home. And now how would you like to take a nice nap until dinnertime?"
Jane an
d Mark and Katharine and Martha had all scorned naps for years, and the small remnant of Jane that was still there somewhere, buried under layers, of Little Comfort, rose to the surface. "I wouldn't like it at all," She said.
"But you always have a nap at this hour!" cried the lady.
"Do I?" said She, her heart sinking. "Couldn't I dig some worms and go fishing instead?"
The lady looked shocked. "Why, Comfort! You know fishing is cruel, except when necessary to provide food, and we are all vegetarians here!"
"Build a block fort and have a war with toy soldiers?" suggested She, faintly.
"Why, Comfort!" cried the lady again. "There are no toy soldiers in this house! They are symbols of world militarism, and not suitable playthings! I can't think what has come over you today! It must be the influence of those bad children! No, let us go down to the drawing room and put this ancient talisman in the curio cabinet, and then you can practice your new piece till Father comes."
The remnant of Jane that still existed didn't like seeing the round shining thing go out of her possession at all, and she didn't much want to practice a new piece either. And she had her doubts about a house in which naps were taken and bright colors were shunned, and things that were ordinary and fun were made to seem ugly and wicked. But She dejectedly followed the gray lady out of the room and down the stairway into the drawing room, which was large and cold and grey, and took her seat on the piano stool.
And it turned out that practicing on the piano, which was always sheer torment to Jane in the past, was a mere cinch now. She played away primly and perfectly, while the gray lady sat in a stiff chair of carved oak, and looked at a magazine called The Outlook.
This went on for what seemed like years, and the last trace of Jane was just beginning to think it might as well die away forever when there was an interruption. Someone knocked at the front door.
"Who could that be?" said the lady. "Father would use his key, and we never have visitors here."
"I bet you don't!" thought the small spark of Jane, with a last flicker of life.
The lady went to the front door and opened it. A rather small gentleman stood outside. He wore a pointed beard and a nervous expression.
"Good afternoon, madam," he said, putting one hand behind his back as though he were crossing his fingers (which he was). "I am writing a book on child psychology, and I hear you have a very intelligent daughter. I wonder if I might interview her?"
"How interesting!" cried the lady. "I have made a life study of child psychology myself!"
"You have?" said the small gentleman, looking more nervous.
"Yes. What method do you follow, the Schwartz-Metterklume or the Brontossori?"
The small gentleman looked as if he wished he were somewhere else. "I have my own method," he said. "You wouldn't have heard of it."
"But how interesting!" cried the lady. "You must come in and tell me all about it." And she led the small gentleman through the gray hall into the gray drawing room.
Outside, Katharine leaned out from her evergreen hiding place. "Psst," she said.
"Come on," said Mark, from behind his.
And followed by Martha, they crossed the emerald lawn and mounted the front steps of the house. The lady had left the front door ajar in her excitement, and standing in the hallway the children could hear everything that happened in the drawing room perfectly.
"Of course we wouldn't want any publicity," the lady was saying. "You won't use her real name in the book, will you?"
"Naturally not," said the voice of Mr. Smith (for of course the small gentleman was he). "I shall call her chapter The Jane Case."
Mark and Katharine and Martha heard a gasp, as though the name had meant something to someone in the room.
"Unless of course that is her name?" Mr. Smith's voice went on.
"Oh, no," said the voice of the lady. "We call her Comfort, but her name is Iphigenia."
"If a what?" said Katharine to Mairk, in the front doorway.
"Shush," said Mark to Katharine.
"I see," came the voice of Mr. Smith, from the drawing room. "How do you do, Iphigenia? Do you believe in magic?"
"Oh no," came the voice of the lady, before She could answer. "I'm afraid your method is a bit old-fashioned. Iphigenia has never believed in magic, or anything else untrue."
"How sad for her," said the voice of Mr. Smith. "However, what are her interests? Does she collect anything, perhaps?"
"Why, yes," said the lady, before She could answer again. "She collects objects of art. Only this afternoon she brought home a rare old talisman!"
In the doorway Martha pinched Katharine. "The charm!" she hissed.
"Shush," Katharine hissed back.
"You don't say?" Mr. Smith's voice sounded excited. "I wonder if I might see if for a moment?"
"I don't see why not," came the voice of the lady. Her footsteps could be heard, crossing the room, and the suspense was more than Mark and Katharine and Martha could bear. They moved across the hall to see what was happening.
The floor of the hall was highly polished and there were some little gray hand-hooked rugs scattered about on it. Martha tripped on one of the rugs, slipped on the floor, and fell into the drawing room with a crash, just as the lady was turning from the curio cabinet with the charm in her hand and Mr. Smith was reaching out his own eager hand to take it. Mark and Katharine followed Martha into the room.
"Hello," said She, smiling at them. After half an hour in the gray house, She liked their looks better than she had at their last meeting. She turned to the gray lady. "These are the children I was playing with this afternoon."
"Well, I'm afraid they are very rude children," said the lady, recovering from her surprise. She looked at Mark and Katharine and Martha sternly. "In this house we don't walk in the front door without being asked. I think you had better go home at once. Iphigenia doesn't want to see you."
"Oh yes, she does, if she only knew it!" said Mark bravely, advancing into the room. "Let me take that charm a minute and I'll prove it. It belongs to us anyway!"
"If you mean this rare old Sanskrit talisman," said the lady, "it certainly does not. It belongs to my Iphigenia."
"She's not yours; she's ours," said Martha, getting up from the floor.
"Her name isn't what you said; it's Jane," said Katharine.
"She doesn't live here; she lives over on Maplewood," said Mark.
"Not another word," said the lady. "Such awful fibbing I never heard! You are either the worst-brought-up children I have ever seen or you are all mentally unbalanced! I'm afraid I shall have to telephone your parents!"
"No, don't do that!" said Mr. Smith, coming forward anxiously. "I'm afraid this is all my fault. I'm afraid I asked these children to come. Just a little experiment, you know. All part of my method."
"Then I don't think much of it," said the lady, getting really cross. "I don't believe you are a child psychologist at all, or if you are, you shouldn't be allowed to be! I shall write to the Psychology Journal and complain!"
"Very well. You're right. I'm not," said Mr. Smith, giving up. "But don't be alarmed; I can explain everything. Only it's a long story; so if you'd just let me have that charm..."
"So that's it!" cried the lady. "I see it all now! It's a plot! Coming here pretending to be writing a book, and all the time trying to steal our art treasures! For shame, taking advantage of these unfortunate children!"
"No, no," said Mr. Smith, becoming agitated. "This is all a mistake. That little girl isn't who you think she is at all."
"You wouldn't like her if you got to know her," put in Katharine earnestly. "You would find her a wolf in sheep's clothing."
"She's my sister, only she has what-d'you-call-'ems," said Mark.
"Hallucinations," explained Mr. Smith.
"We want to take her where they'll be kind to her," said Martha. "Jane, Jane, come on home out of this cold, slippery house!"
The remnant of Jane, down in the heart of Iphig
enia, heard Martha's call. She thought how much happier she felt with Martha and Mark and Katharine, yes, and Mr. Smith, too, than she did with the gray lady. She remembered her own home and her own family, and wished she belonged to them again. She yearned to answer Martha. And she made a great effort, and forced her way to the surface and started to speak.
But before she could there was an interruption. A thin, gray gentleman appeared in the drawing room.
"Yarworth! Here you are at last!" cried the gray lady. "This criminal, aided by these delinquent children, was trying to rob our Iphigenia!"
"Dear me," said the gray gentleman, retreating slightly. "Are you sure?"
"Don't just stand there!" cried the lady. "Defend us! What will Iphigenia think of her father?"
What Iphigenia would have thought of her father will probably never be known. For at that moment Mr. Smith, having had quite enough of both Iphigenia and her parents, decided to act.
"I'm sorry to appear rude, madam, but you'll be glad of it afterwards," he said. "At least I hope so."
And he snatched the charm from the lady's hand, took a deep breath, and wished that Jane might be twice as much Jane as she ever was.
Jane, finding herself suddenly herself again, gave a glad cry and ran, much to the surprise of Mark and Katharine and Martha, straight to Mr. Smith.
"You were wonderful," she said. "Part of me was here all along, hoping you'd save me, and you did! You were wonderful!"
"It was nothing," said Mr. Smith, modestly.
"We told you so," said Mark and Katharine to Jane.
They had run to Mr. Smith, too, and so had Martha, and now the five of them stood united, looking defiantly at the gray lady and the gray gentleman.
The lady was blinking her eyes. The gentleman was rubbing his. They looked rather like two people who have just awakened from a nightmare.
"What is the meaning of this intrusion?" demanded the gray lady. "What are you doing in our house? Go away at once!"
"This isn't your little girl, then?" asked Mr. Smith, with his arm around Jane.
The lady looked at Jane with distaste. "I never saw the horrid little thing before in my life!"