An impatient exclamation from Allison reached the dining-room thunderously: "Where was Jane?" Julia Cloud caught that anxious question, and then Clive, who had evidently heard also, roused himself to ask a question: "Who is this Jane person they talk so much about? I don't seem to have seen her! Where is she?"
"She is Miss Bristol," said Julia Cloud, stiffening just a little at the young fellow's tone of insolence. "She is in college and very busy, but has been unusually busy since you have been here because she is caring for a little child whose mother has been very ill."
"Oh!--You mean she's a sort of sehvant?"--He drawled the question most offensively, and Julia Cloud had a sudden ridiculous impulse to seize his sleek shoulder and shake him. Instead she only smiled and quoted a Bible verse: "I have seen servants upon horses, and princes walking as servants upon the earth."
Clive eyed her with a puzzled expression: "I don't getcha!" he answered finally, but Julia Cloud made no further comment than to pass him a second cup of coffee. She could hear the soft excited whispers still going on in the living-room and she longed to fly in there and leave this ill-bred guest to his own devices, for she knew something must have happened to trouble her children, and that if this intruder were not present she would be at once taken into their confidence. Still she had to sit and smile and keep him from hearing them.
Leslie was talking more softly now, with cautious looks toward the dining-room.
"Jane had finished her exam. and hurried down because she thought there would be a lot of business and she wanted Emily Reeder to be put in treasurer and was trying to work it, and hadn't an idea Alice and I were working it to put her in. We didn't think she would get there and meant to have it all finished before she came, but someone turned around and gave a queer little cough just as Eunice finished her nasty speech, and we all turned quickly and there in the open door stood Jane, as white as a sheet, with her great, big blue eyes looking black as coals and such suffering I never saw in a human face--and she just stood and looked at them all, a hurt, loving, searching look, as if she was reading their souls, and no one spoke nor moved, only Eunice, who got very red, and Eugenia, who straightened up and got haughty and hateful, looking as if she was glad Jane heard it all. She had a kind of glitter in her eyes, like triumph--and it was very still for a whole minute, and then Jane put out her hands in a little, quick, pleading motion and turned away quickly and was gone----"