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    Jane of Lantern Hill
    Jane of Lantern Hill
    Jane of Lantern Hill
    Ebook282 pages4 hours

    Jane of Lantern Hill

    By Lucy Maud Montgomery

    4.5/5

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    Jane of Lantern Hill is the story of an unsatisfied girl living with her mother, aunt and cranky old grandmother in Toronto, Ontario.  Jane had always believed her father dead, but one day discovers he is alive and living on Prince Edward Island.  When Jane eventually gets to meet her father and spends a summer on the island at Lantern Hill, she believes life couldn’t get any better.

    This early work by Lucy Maud Montgomery was originally published in 1937 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography.

    Lucy Maud Montgomery was born on 30th November 1874, New London, in the Canadian province of Prince Edward Island. Her mother, Clara Woolner (Macneil), died before Lucy reached the age of two and so she was raised by her maternal grandparents in a family of wealthy Scottish immigrants. In 1908 Montgomery produced her first full-length novel, titled 'Anne of Green Gables'. It was an instant success, and following it up with several sequels, Montgomery became a regular on the best-seller list and an international household name.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWhite Press
    Release dateApr 24, 2015
    ISBN9781473374003
    Author

    Lucy Maud Montgomery

    L. M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery (1874-1942) was a Canadian author who published 20 novels and hundreds of short stories, poems, and essays. She is best known for the Anne of Green Gables series. Montgomery was born in Clifton (now New London) on Prince Edward Island on November 30, 1874. Raised by her maternal grandparents, she grew up in relative isolation and loneliness, developing her creativity with imaginary friends and dreaming of becoming a published writer. Her first book, Anne of Green Gables, was published in 1908 and was an immediate success, establishing Montgomery's career as a writer, which she continued for the remainder of her life.

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    Reviews for Jane of Lantern Hill

    4.5/5

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    • 5/5
      Eleven-year-old Jane Stuart has had a rather gloomy childhood growing up with her beloved but distant mother and her cruel grandmother in her grandmother's massive and grim house on Gay Street in Toronto. Shortly after learning that her father isn't dead but only estranged from her mother, Jane receives an invitation to spend the summer with him on Prince Edward Island. While Jane desperately doesn't want to leave her mother, when she arrives in PEI she discovers how different her life can be and she begins to dream of a life where can be Jane of Lantern Hill all year round.While there's nothing earth-shattering or surprising in this simple tale, I absolutely adored it from start to finish. Montgomery's prose is as evocative as ever, beautifully conjuring the experiences of living in the country on PEI. While Jane reads a bit old for her age and some of her skills come a bit easy, it's also rewarding to see her grow as a person. Utterly charming, Jane has now taken second place after Anne Shirley has my favourite of Montgomery's creations.
    • 3/5
      Jane seemed too perfect with some flaws thrown in so she wouldn't be too perfect. I didn't care about most of the characters at all, really. I enjoyed that Jane lives in an emotionally abusive household and learned to stand up for herself. The plot has a fair bit of focus on that as well as the whole ''mystery'' of her parents' split. And this didn't have the same style of writing I have come to expect from Montgomery, I think.Overall it's an enjoyable read, and I think great just for a relaxing summer read, but I don't think it was as good as the Anne or Emily books.I also noticed some errors in the text (in this edition at least)Pg. 89: Missed period ''...delighter her Everything''Pg. 118: ''Snow beam'' instead of ''Snowbeam''Pg. 138: ''neve'' instead of ''never''Pg. 160: ''For away'' instead of ''far away''Pg. 276: ''Shed'' instead of ''she'd''
    • 5/5
      Jane of Lantern Hill has all the requisite characteristics of a Montgomery book - a lonely child, proud rich older character, misunderstandings and grudges held over a long time, and of course, some Prince Edward Island. I've read a lot of Montgomery but didn't remember this one, although I could predict a lot of the plot. Not that this was a problem - it's what I like about Montgomery's books.Jane Stuart is living in Toronto with her mother and grandmother, lonely and unhappy, although wise. When her father requests Jane for the summer on PEI, Jane is surprised and reluctant as she didn't even know he was alive. She falls under the spell of PEI in the summer which is exactly what happens here. I loved her delight with the environment and characters surrounding her as she threw herself into her new life. This changes Jane as she returns to Toronto and cannot be cowed by her grandmother as easily.I loved Jane's appreciation of her simple life in PEI, keeping house and making friends, loving the ocean and the sky. Montgomery follows her tried and true storyline and of course, a *spoiler* happy ending. I enjoyed by time with Jane and the nature of PEI.
    • 4/5
      I first read L. M. Montgomery's work when I was 10 (Sears Canada was out of Carolyn Keene's books and sent Anne of Green Gables instead). What a fortunate event that was. As a child, I loved Anne Shirley and the Story Girl and others of that ilk -- although even then, I found Anne's raptures a bit much. Fifty years later, I find Jane Stuart much more to my taste. The book is more sophisticated even if realistically speaking, Jane's plight is less dire than was Anne's. Jane has a home in Toronto, albeit with a stern and repressive grandmother; she has a parent even if her mother is ineffectual and frequently absent. At the age of eleven, Jane is shocked to discover that her father is alive and is horrified to have to spend the summer with him on Prince Edward Island.It is somewhat unrealistic that Jane falls in love with her father when she first meets him (even if she had loved his picture before she knew who he was). The amount of responsibility that she immediately takes on is appalling to modern sensibilities but Jane revels in her household duties and her new friends and her freedom, as well as the beauty of the maritime province. While there is no similarity in their writing, I find that Montgomery and Nancy Thayer both extol the beauties of Atlantic coastal communities so well that I yearn to move there even though I know full well that the weather can be quite lousy.Jane is preternaturally wise beyond her years in her perceptions of individuals -- but perhaps a lonely childhood with few friends and disapproving relatives made her very sensitive to nuances. She clearly understands that her parents' marriage was torpedoed by interfering, know-it-all relatives on each side, but it takes a very convenient plot device to bring her parents back together again.There are negatives, of course, but then I am an adult reading quite an old children's book. I liked Jane and enjoyed the way she moved from strength to strength. I love the way Montgomery bring scenery and people to life -- in the Toronto of the day as well as in Prince Edward Island. As a parent, I was certainly horrified by the amount of freedom and lack of supervision accorded to Jane on the island, but it was a different time and place.I do not know if I will ever read Anne of Green Gables again but I am keeping Jane for a 2nd reading.
    • 5/5
      Another charming story from L.M. Montgomery set, mostly, in Prince Edward Island. Jane lives at Lantern Hill in the summer time with her father but in the winter she lives in Toronto and is called Victoria. She loves Lantern Hill but Toronto is not much fun. Jane really wants to live in P.E.I. all year round. This is the story of how she accomplishes that
    • 5/5
      In the archetypical way, it is the child who sees clearly the truth and somehow, through grace or love, brings everything right. There are the requisite raptures over nature that make up a typical Montgomery novel, as well as familiar characters. But Jane is truly a lovely child.
    • 4/5
      What a charming, delightful, and satisfying read this was!Jane Victoria lives with her mother and grandmother in the city. Grandmother takes pleasure in making Jane's life miserable, and manipulating everyone else's. However, when a letter arrives from Jane's father, demanding his daughter's presence in Prince Edward Island for the summer, no one is more scared and horrified than Jane. She was sure her father was dead, and has only heard how horrible he was to her as a baby. Dutifully, she goes...and discovers that she has only begun to live, and grow.I liked Jane, very much, and how the author developed the story and characters. Recommended.
    • 3/5
      There are those who feel that L.M. Montgomery, author of such beloved classics as Anne of Green Gables and Emily of New Moon, is too old-fashioned an author to appeal to today's young readers. I myself have always believed that while her work may belong, stylistically speaking, to the genre of sentimental girls' fiction so popular in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it is - emotionally and thematically - as relevant today as it ever was. The search for home and family, the struggle for a sense of belonging, is something that contemporary readers will recognize, though they have never set eyes on Prince Edward Island.While not one of Montgomery's most popular or well-known novels, Jane of Lantern Hill nevertheless addresses itself to a topic familiar to most children today: the trauma and stress caused by the separation of parents. It is the story of Jane Victoria Stuart, an unhappy young girl who lives with her overbearing and malicious grandmother, and kind but ineffectual mother in Toronto, who goes to spend the summer with her estranged father on Prince Edward Island. Here, at magical Lantern Hill, Jane is finally free to be herself, whether that involves cooking and keeping house, or playing freely with the neighbor children.Reread this past March for the Kindred Spirits group to which I belong, Jane of Lantern Hill is an engaging story with an appealing heroine. Although I cannot say that it is one of my favorite Montgomery stories, or that it has the emotional power of titles like Anne of Green Gables or The Blue Castle, it is still an enjoyable little book, well worth the time of any reader with a taste for sentimental fiction. L.M. Montgomery fans, in particular, will want to track this one down...
    • 5/5
      For most of her childhood, Jane Victoria Stuart believed that her father was dead. When she was eleven years old, she learned otherwise. For as long as she could remember, Jane had lived in Toronto with her lovely socialite mother and cold, repressive grandmother. Jane knows that her grandmother dislikes her, particularly the parts of her that seemed inherited from her father's side of the family. Jane, who has no memory of her father, hates him, too, because the memory of him seems to cause her beloved mother so much pain. Then, out of the blue, a letter arrives, demanding that Jane spend the summer with her father in Prince Edward Island. That summer is to change Jane's life forever.On Prince Edward Island, Jane learns what it is to have friends, to be competent at something, and to be loved without the fear and restrictions that characterize her life in Toronto. Jane's dad welcomes her with open arms and an open heart. Together, they choose a little cottage on Lantern Hill to be their summer abode, and Jane delights in every aspect of housekeeping. She befriends all of the neighborhood children and learns new skills every delightful day, from cooking to gardening to swimming in the Gulf. She goes home a confident, independent young woman instead of the cowed child she has always been . . . and she can't help but wonder: what did go wrong with her parents' marriage all those years ago?This is one of Montgomery's lesser-known works, but it remains one of my favorites. I love Jane's capable, down-to-earth nature, and I remember relishing her domestic conquests back when I first read the book at the age of nine or ten. And, though Jane is a child throughout the book (unlike many Montgomery titles, this spans only a couple of years, rather than the protagonist's entire girlhood), there are a lot of adult issues and concerns, not all of which are pleasantly resolved by the end of the book. It's a wonderfully complex story, and fans of Montgomery's other works should definitely seek it out.
    • 5/5
      Jane of Lantern Hill is a charming story, full of the delight and mirth that I have come to expect from Montgomery heroines. She is young and the story doesn't follow her into adulthood, but I was not left with the feeling of anticipation as I have been with some of Montgomery's other books with childhood heroines. Jane's gumption and determination make her an admirable character, one fit to be a role model for any young girl who might find herself in an environment perhaps not wholly encouraging. I count Jane of Lantern Hill among my favorite L. M. Montgomery novels.
    • 5/5
      Even after twenty years, I still love to read this book. Jane is such a wonderful heroine, so determined to be herself and to be kind and resourceful in spite of the pressures from the adults in her life. Even as an adult I wish I had her ability to sense and understand what's really going on under the surface with the people around her.
    • 4/5
      I like Montgomery's books more for her writing style and settings, generally. This book was really sad for me, probably because I was expecting something sugary. Jane pretty much has an emotionally abusive childhood. I didn't really feel like much was resolved in the end. The villains' comeuppance wasn't satisfying enough, and there are still some unresolved issues between characters. Perhaps my expectations were too high.
    • 4/5
      I love this book as much as I hate Anne of Green Gables.This book is a social revelation-the 1930s upper class American/Canadian world was so immensely different to the modern one. This book is a bit of a romance, being a teenager's book, but is very well written, and has a very likeable heroine.
    • 4/5
      Nice! Jane is another imaginative child, but her imagination doesn't get in the way of her competence. Unlike the usual orphans, she has rather too much family - her parents are separated, by the efforts of her aunt and grandmother. I loved her settling in on the Island, and her household abilities (I want some of those recipes!). And a lovely happy ending - Irene misjudged, how good. Not a magnificent story, but highly enjoyable; it might be worth reading twice.
    • 4/5
      3.5 starsJane has been living in Toronto with her rich grandmother and her mother as long as she can remember. She doesn’t even realize her father is still alive and living on Prince Edward Island, until a letter comes asking if she can stay with him for a summer. Her (hateful!) grandmother hates Jane’s father, and all Jane knows is to hate him, and she doesn’t want to go. But, when she meets her dad, she is pleasantly surprised. I enjoyed this! LM Montgomery’s books are pretty simple, and the end was tied up with a nice bow, but I still enjoyed it, overall.
    • 2/5
      I received a free copy of Jane of Lantern Hill in exchange for an honest review.I usually love reading books set in Canada, especially ones set in cities I have lived in and know. There are parts of this story I enjoyed such as classist grandmother and the description of her unwelcoming home in Toronto. And, the parts where Jane finds out more about herself while living on PEI for the summer – barefoot and free. However, there are parts that are so outdated that the story left me feeling flat. The verb ‘jew’ was used i.e. her father did not jew down the price of the cottage. Unlike the classism, this term was not unpacked for the reader. Also, I found the ending a bit too ‘Disney’. Everything worked out beautifully and they lived happily ever after. For those reasons, I would not recommend it to younger readers.
    • 4/5
      Jane Stuart, or Victoria as she is called, lives with her mother and grandmother in an old mansion in an old part of Toronto. Though her mother loves her the same can't be said for Grandmother who has a hate-on for Jane. Grandmother has no room in her heart for anyone other than her daughter; she keeps tight rein on her. Jane and her mother walk on eggshells in fear of Grandmother's wrath.

      Quite by accident, Jane learns that her father is alive and living on Prince Edward Island. When he sends for her, Jane is devastated. She can't imagine being away from her mother and living with a stranger for a whole summer, even though she'll be away from Grandmother. Jane is surprised to find that her father is a warmhearted man with a big imagination. They buy a house in Lantern Hill and Jane set about making their house a home, the home she always imagined she would have. Jane makes friends with the neighbours and gains a reputation for being able to do anything. When she returns to Toronto, Grandmother learns that Jane is a force to be reckoned with and things will never be the same again.

      What an excellent little book Jane of Lantern Hill is! In a way, it reminded me of The Secret Garden. A precocious little girl moves away from the place she has always lived, meets new people and tries new things becoming a better person by the end of the book. The difference is Jane is lovable right from the beginning. She has loyalty to her mother even though the woman is completely spineless. Jane becomes so wise and strong, much wiser than the adults. And that Grandmother...yikes! Icy cold nasty lady. I kept imagining the step-mother in Cinderella.

      The differences between her life in Toronto and Prince Edward Island are so completely opposed that I wondered if this was a comment on Montgomery's own life. At the time this was written, Lucy Maude was near the end of her life. She had been married to a minister with mental problems not to mention her own depression. The weight of keeping up appearances must have been smothering, much like Jane's life with Grandmother. She must have had fond memories of herself as a young woman in PEI. Jane is set free to be herself on the island. The island is as much a character as Jane is.

      Although Montgomery's writing is prone to unbelievable coincidences and unlikely situations, it's full of quirky characters and sparks of insight that even adults can appreciate like the following:

      Jane, the most awful as well as the most beautiful things in the world can be said in three words or less… I love you…he is gone…he is come…she is dead…too late…and life is illumined or ruined.

      Though Montgomery is known for Anne Shirley and her adventures, I hope readers will give Jane Stuart a chance.

      Highly recommended though difficult to get if you don't live in Canada.
    • 4/5
      Jane of Lantern Hill is one of my old favourites. It’s fairly typical Montgomery, with similarities to the Anne and Emily books in themes and style, but with its own story and a different cast of characters. Jane lives rather unhappily with her mother and grandmother in mainland Canada until one day out of the blue her father asks for her to visit him on Prince Edward Island. At first she doesn’t want to leave her mother, but she finds a lot to love about the Island, the people she meets there, and the freedom she finds.

    Book preview

    Jane of Lantern Hill - Lucy Maud Montgomery

    JANE OF LANTERN HILL

    by

    Lucy Maud Montgomery

    Copyright © 2013 Read Books Ltd.

    This book is copyright and may not be

    reproduced or copied in any way without

    the express permission of the publisher in writing

    British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

    A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

    Contents

    Lucy Maud Montgomery

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    Lucy Maud Montgomery

    Lucy Maud Montgomery was born on 30th November 1874, on Prince Edward Island, Canada. Her mother, Clara Woolner (Macneil), died before Lucy reached the age of two and so she was raised by her maternal grandparents in a family of wealthy Scottish immigrants. The Family were deeply rooted in the development of the island, having arrived there in the 1770’s, and both Lucy’s grandfather and great grandfather had been figures in the province’s governance.

    As a young girl, Montgomery had a very privileged upbringing. Due to the family’s wealth, she had access to a greater number of books than was usual in this era. These resources, coupled with the family’s Scottish traditions of oral storytelling, gave her a taste for literature.

    Montgomery took a teacher’s degree at Charlottetown’s Prince of Wales College before beginning work at a rural school to raise funds for and additional year at Dalhousie University. She continued to teach for a couple of years until her income from writing enabled her to become a full-time author. She then moved back home to live with her grandmother. In 1908, Montgomery produced her first full-length novel, titled Anne of Green Gables. It was an instant success and, following it up with several sequels, Montgomery became a regular on the best-seller list and an international household name.

    In 1911 she married Ewan Macdonald, a Presbyterian minister, following the death of her grandmother. They had two sons together but the marriage was fraught with difficulties. Ewan had a severe mental disorder that frequently left him incapacitated, seriously hampering his career and eventually forcing him to resign from the ministry in 1935. The couple retired to Toronto and resided there together until Montgomery’s death on 24th April 1942.

    1

    Gay street, so Jane always thought, did not live up to its name. It was, she felt certain, the most melancholy street in Toronto . . . though, to be sure, she had not seen a great many of the Toronto streets in her circumscribed comings and goings of eleven years.

    Gay Street should be a gay street, thought Jane, with gay, friendly houses, set amid flowers, that cried out, How do you do? to you as you passed them, with trees that waved hands at you and windows that winked at you in the twilights. Instead of that, Gay Street was dark and dingy, lined with forbidding, old-fashioned brick houses, grimy with age, whose tall, shuttered, blinded windows could never have thought of winking at anybody. The trees that lined Gay Street were so old and huge and stately that it was difficult to think of them as trees at all, any more than those forlorn little things in the green pails by the doors of the filling station on the opposite corner. Grandmother had been furious when the old Adams house on that corner had been torn down and the new white-and-red filling station built in its place. She would never let Frank get petrol there. But at that, Jane thought, it was the only gay place on the street.

    Jane lived at 60 Gay. It was a huge, castellated structure of brick, with a pillared entrance porch, high, arched Georgian windows, and towers and turrets wherever a tower or turret could be wedged in. It was surrounded by a high iron fence with wrought-iron gates . . . those gates had been famous in the Toronto of an earlier day . . . that were always closed and locked by Frank at night, thus giving Jane a very nasty feeling that she was a prisoner being locked in.

    There was more space around 60 Gay than around most of the houses on the street. It had quite a bit of lawn in front, though the grass never grew well because of the row of old trees just inside the fence . . . and quite a respectable space between the side of the house and Bloor Street; but it was not nearly wide enough to dim the unceasing clatter and clang of Bloor, which was especially noisy and busy where Gay Street joined it. People wondered why old Mrs Robert Kennedy continued to live there when she had oodles of money and could buy one of those lovely new houses in Forest Hill or in the Kingsway. The taxes on a lot as big as 60 Gay must be ruinous and the house was hopelessly out of date. Mrs Kennedy merely smiled contemptuously when things like this were said to her, even by her son, William Anderson, the only one of her first family whom she respected, because he had been successful in business and was rich in his own right. She had never loved him, but he had compelled her to respect him.

    Mrs Kennedy was perfectly satisfied with 60 Gay. She had come there as the bride of Robert Kennedy when Gay Street was the last word in streets and 60 Gay, built by Robert’s father, one of the finest mansions in Toronto. It had never ceased to be so in her eyes. She had lived there for forty-five years and she would live there the rest of her life. Those who did not like it need not stay there. This, with a satirically amused glance at Jane, who had never said she didn’t like Gay Street. But grandmother, as Jane had long ago discovered, had an uncanny knack of reading your mind.

    Once, when Jane had been sitting in the Cadillac, one dark, dingy morning in a snowy world, waiting for Frank to take her to St Agatha’s, as he did every day, she had heard two women, who were standing on the street-corner, talking about it.

    Did you ever see such a dead house? said the younger. It looks as if it had been dead for ages.

    That house died thirty years ago, when Robert Kennedy died, said the older woman. Before that it was a lively place. Nobody in Toronto entertained more. Robert Kennedy liked social life. He was a very handsome, friendly man. People could never understand how he came to marry Mrs James Anderson . . . a widow with three children. She was Victoria Moore to begin with, you know, old Colonel Moore’s daughter . . . a very aristocratic family. But she was pretty as a picture then and was she crazy about him! My dear, she worshipped him. People said she was never willing to let him out of her sight for a moment. And they said she hadn’t cared for her first husband at all. Robert Kennedy died when they had been married about fifteen years . . . died just after his first baby was born, I’ve heard.

    Does she live all alone in that castle?

    "Oh, no. Her two daughters live with her. One of them is a widow or something . . . and there’s a granddaughter, I believe. They say old Mrs Kennedy is a terrible tyrant, but the younger daughter . . . the widow . . . is gay enough and goes to everything you see reported in Saturday Evening. Very pretty . . . and can she dress! She was the Kennedy one and took after her father. She must hate having all her fine friends coming to Gay Street. It’s worse than dead . . . it’s decayed. But I can remember when Gay Street was one of the most fashionable residential streets in town. Look at it now."

    Shabby genteel.

    Hardly even that. Why, 58 Gay is a boarding-house. But old Mrs Kennedy keeps 60 up very well, though the paint is beginning to peel off the balconies, you notice.

    Well, I’m glad I don’t live on Gay Street, giggled the other, as they ran to catch the car.

    You may well be, thought Jane. Though, if she had been put to it, she could hardly have told you where she would have liked to live if not at 60 Gay. Most of the streets through which she drove to St Agatha’s were mean and uninviting, for St Agatha’s, that very expensive and exclusive private school to which grandmother sent Jane, now found itself in an unfashionable and outgrown locality also. But St Agatha’s didn’t mind that . . . St Agatha’s would have been St Agatha’s, you must understand, in the desert of Sahara.

    Uncle William Anderson’s house in Forest Hill was very handsome, with landscaped lawns and rock gardens, but she wouldn’t like to live there. One was almost terrified to walk over the lawn lest one do something to Uncle William’s cherished velvet. You had to keep to the flat stepping-stones path. And Jane wanted to run. You couldn’t run at St Agatha’s either, except when you were playing games. And Jane was not very good at games. She always felt awkward in them. At eleven she was as tall as most girls of thirteen. She towered above the girls of her class. They did not like it and made Jane feel that she fitted in nowhere.

    As for running at 60 Gay . . . had anybody ever run at 60 Gay? Jane felt as if mother must have . . . mother stepped so lightly and gaily yet that you thought her feet had wings. But once, when Jane had dared to run from the front door to the back door, straight through the long house that was almost half the length of the city block, singing at the top of her voice, grandmother, who she had thought was out, had emerged from the breakfast-room and looked at her with the smile on her dead-white face that Jane hated.

    What, she said in the silky voice that Jane hated still more, is responsible for this outburst, Victoria?

    I was running just for the fun of it, explained Jane. It seemed so very simple. But grandmother had just smiled and said, as only grandmother could say things:

    I wouldn’t do it again if I were you, Victoria.

    Jane never did it again. That was the effect grandmother had on you, though she was so tiny and wrinkled . . . so tiny that lanky, long-legged Jane was almost as tall as she was.

    Jane hated to be called Victoria. Yet everybody called her that, except mother, who called her Jane Victoria. Jane knew somehow that grandmother resented that . . . knew that for some reason unknown to her, grandmother hated the name of Jane. Jane liked it . . . always had liked it . . . always thought of herself as Jane. She understood that she had been named Victoria after grandmother, but she did not know where the Jane had come from. There were no Janes in the Kennedys or Andersons. In her eleventh year she had begun to suspect that it might have come from the Stuart side. And Jane was sorry for that, because she did not want to think she owed her favourite name to her father. Jane hated her father in so far as hatred could find place in a little heart that was not made for hating anybody, even grandmother. There were times Jane was afraid she did hate grandmother, which was dreadful, because grandmother was feeding and clothing and educating her. Jane knew she ought to love grandmother, but it seemed a very hard thing to do. Apparently mother found it easy; but, then, grandmother loved mother, which made a difference. Loved her as she loved nobody else in the world. And grandmother did not love Jane. Jane had always known that. And Jane felt, if she did not yet know, that grandmother did not like mother loving her so much.

    You fuss entirely too much about her, grandmother had once said contemptuously, when mother was worried about Jane’s sore throat.

    She’s all I have, said mother.

    And then grandmother’s old white face had flushed.

    I am nothing, I suppose, she said.

    "Oh, mother, you know I didn’t mean that," mother had said piteously, fluttering her hands in a way she had which always made Jane think of two little white butterflies. I meant . . . I meant . . . she’s my only child. . . .

    And you love that child . . . his child . . . better than you love me!

    Not better . . . only differently, said mother pleadingly.

    Ingrate! said grandmother. It was only one word, but what venom she could put into a word. Then she had gone out of the room, still with that flush on her face and her pale blue eyes smouldering under her frosty hair.

    2

    Mummy, said Jane as well as her swelled tonsils would let her, why doesn’t grandmother want you to love me?

    Darling, it isn’t like that, said mother, bending over Jane, her face like a rose in the light of the rose-shaded lamp.

    But Jane knew it was like that. She knew why mother seldom kissed her or petted her in grandmother’s presence. It made grandmother angry with a still, cold, terrible anger that seemed to freeze the air about her. Jane was glad mother didn’t often do it. She made up for it when they were alone together . . . but then they were so very seldom alone together. Even now they would not have very long together, for mother was going out to a dinner party. Mother went out almost every evening to something or other and almost every afternoon too. Jane always loved to get a glimpse of her before she went out. Mother knew this and generally contrived that Jane should. She always wore such pretty dresses and looked so lovely. Jane was sure she had the most beautiful mother in the whole world. She was beginning to wonder how any one so lovely as mother could have a daughter so plain and awkward as herself.

    You’ll never be pretty . . . your mouth is too big, one of the girls at St Agatha’s had told her.

    Mother’s mouth was like a rosebud, small and red, with dimples tucked away at the corners. Her eyes were blue . . . but not an icy blue like grandmother’s. There is such a difference in blue eyes. Mother’s were just the colour of the sky on a summer morning between the great masses of white clouds. Her hair was a warm, wavy gold and to-night she was wearing it brushed away from her forehead, with little bunches of curls behind her ears and a row of them at the nape of her white neck. She wore a dress of pale yellow taffeta, with a great rose of deeper yellow velvet at one of her beautiful shoulders. Jane thought she looked like a lovely golden princess, with the slender flame of the diamond bracelet on the creamy satin of her arm. Grandmother had given her the bracelet last week for her birthday. Grandmother was always giving mother such lovely things. And she picked out all her clothes for her . . . wonderful dresses and hats and wraps. Jane did not know that people said Mrs Stuart was always rather overdressed, but she had an idea that mother really liked simpler clothes and only pretended to like better the gorgeous things grandmother bought for her for fear of hurting grandmother’s feelings.

    Jane was very proud of mother’s beauty. She thrilled with delight when she heard people whisper, Isn’t she lovely? She almost forgot her aching throat as she watched mother put on the rich brocaded wrap, just the colour of her eyes, with its big collar of grey fox.

    Oh, but you’re sweet, mummy, she said, putting up her hand and touching mother’s cheek as mother bent down and kissed her. It was like touching a rose-leaf. And mother’s lashes lay on her cheeks like silken fans. Some people, Jane knew, looked better farther off; but the nearer you were to mother, the prettier she was.

    Darling, do you feel very sick? I hate to leave you but . . .

    Mother didn’t finish her sentence but Jane knew she meant, Grandmother wouldn’t like it if I didn’t go.

    I don’t feel very sick at all, said Jane gallantly Mary will look after me.

    But after mother had gone, with a swish of taffeta, Jane felt a horrible lump in her throat that had nothing to do with her tonsils. It would be so easy to cry . . . but Jane would not let herself cry. Years ago, when she had been no more than five, she had heard mother say very proudly, Jane never cries. She never cried even when she was a tiny baby. From that day Jane had been careful never to let herself cry, even when she was alone in bed at night. Mother had so few things to be proud of in her: she must not let her down on one of those few things.

    But it was dreadfully lonely. The wind was howling along the street outside. The tall windows rattled drearily and the big house seemed full of unfriendly noises and whispers. Jane wished Jody could come in and sit with her for a while. But Jane knew it was useless to wish for that. She could never forget the only time Jody had come to 60 Gay.

    Well, anyhow, said Jane, trying to look on the bright side of things in spite of her sore throat and aching head, I won’t have to read the Bible to them to-night.

    Them were grandmother and Aunt Gertrude. Very seldom mother because mother was nearly always out. But every night before Jane went to bed she had to read a chapter in the Bible to grandmother and Aunt Gertrude. There was nothing in the whole twenty-four hours that Jane hated doing more than that. And she knew quite well that that was just why grandmother made her do it.

    They always went into the drawing-room for the reading and Jane invariably shivered as she entered it. That huge, elaborate room, so full of things that you could hardly move about in it without knocking something over, always seemed cold even on the hottest night in summer. And on winter nights it was cold. Aunt Gertrude took the huge family Bible, with its heavy silver clasp, from the marble-topped centre table and laid it on a little table between the windows. Then she and grandmother sat, one at each end of the table, and Jane sat between them at the side, with Great-grandfather Kennedy scowling down at her from the dim old painting in its heavy, tarnished gilt frame, flanked by the dark blue velvet curtains. That woman on the street had said that Grandfather Kennedy was a nice friendly man but his father couldn’t have been. Jane always thought candidly that he looked as if he would enjoy biting a nail in two.

    Turn to the fourteenth chapter of Exodus, grandmother would say. The chapter varied every night, of course, but the tone never did. It always rattled Jane so that she generally made a muddle of finding the right place. And grandmother, with the hateful little smile which seemed to say, So you can’t even do this as it should be done, would put out her lean, crapy hand, with its rich old-fashioned rings, and turn to the right place with uncanny precision. Jane would stumble through the chapter, mispronouncing words she knew perfectly well just because she was so nervous. Sometimes grandmother would say, A little louder if you please, Victoria. I thought when I sent you to St Agatha’s they would at least teach you to open your mouth when reading even if they couldn’t teach you geography and history. And Jane would raise her voice so suddenly that Aunt Gertrude would jump. But the next evening it might be, Not quite so loud, Victoria, if you please. We are not deaf. And poor Jane’s voice would die away to little more than a whisper.

    When she had finished grandmother and Aunt Gertrude would bow their heads and repeat the Lord’s Prayer. Jane would try to say it with them, which was a difficult thing because grandmother was generally two words ahead of Aunt Gertrude. Jane always said Amen thankfully. The beautiful prayer, haloed with all the loveliness of age-long worship, had become a sort of horror to Jane.

    Then Aunt Gertrude would close the Bible and put it back in exactly the same place, to the fraction of a hair, on the centre table. Finally Jane had to kiss her and grandmother good night. Grandmother would always remain sitting in her chair and Jane would stoop and kiss her forehead.

    Good night, grandmother.

    Good night, Victoria.

    But Aunt Gertrude would be standing by the centre table and Jane would have to reach up to her, for Aunt Gertrude was tall. Aunt Gertrude would stoop just a little and Jane would kiss her narrow grey face.

    Good night, Aunt Gertrude.

    Good night, Victoria, Aunt Gertrude would say in her thin, cold voice.

    And Jane would get herself out of the room, sometimes lucky enough not to knock anything over.

    When I grow up I’ll never, never read the Bible or say that prayer, she would whisper to herself as she climbed the long, magnificent staircase which had once been the talk of Toronto.

    One night grandmother had smiled and said, What do you think of the Bible, Victoria?

    I think it is very dull, said Jane truthfully. The reading had been a chapter full of knops and taches, and Jane had not the least idea what knops or taches were.

    Ah! But do you think your opinion counts for a great deal? said grandmother, smiling with paper-thin lips.

    Why did you ask me for it then? said Jane, and had been icily rebuked for impertinence when she had not had the least intention of being impertinent. Was it any wonder she went up the staircase that night fairly loathing 60 Gay? And she did not want to loathe it. She wanted to love it . . . to be friends with it . . . to do things for it. But she could not love it . . . it wouldn’t be friendly . . . and there was nothing it wanted done. Aunt Gertrude and Mary Price, the cook, and Frank Davis, the houseman and chauffeur, did everything for it. Aunt Gertrude would not let grandmother keep a housemaid because she preferred to attend to the house herself. Tall, shadowy, reserved Aunt Gertrude, who was so totally unlike mother that Jane found it hard to believe they were even half-sisters,

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