Janet | Page 3

was a long pause, for Janet did not reply. She was watching a butterfly out in the garden and trying to decide what it was he was whispering to that big floppy rose.
Mrs. Page settled back into her pillows and pulled the coverlet well up under her chin.
"You may go," she said, pointing a bony finger toward the door. "I am about to write to your brother. I regret that I will have to tell him that you are not only careless but rude."
"Yes, grandmother." Janet stood up, and after she had carefully straightened the chair upon which she had been sitting she walked quietly out of the room.
Once in the hall, with the door closed, a tiny sigh escaped her. She leaned up against the old clock and stared at a patch of sunlight on the rug. Two big round tears rolled down her cheeks unnoticed.?
Boru came over inquisitively from his place by the stairs and licked her hand. She dropped to her knees beside him and hugged him impulsively.
"Come along, old fellow," she whispered. "Let's go up to the 'widows' walk' and think it all out. I guess grandmother is right; something has come over me."
CHAPTER TWO
: ON THE WIDOWS' WALK
"But just what is it?" she mused a few minutes later, as she settled herself comfortably and pulled Boru's shaggy head down to her knee.
The "widows' walk" was Janet's favorite place in which to think things out, for it was on the flat roof of the house, away from any possible interruptions. Martha, the old servant, had long ago given up attempting the rickety stairs that led to it. It was in itself a rather dangerous spot. Many of the boards that went to make the platform were broken or badly rotted from long exposure to wind and rain. The railing that ran around it was in the last stage of decay. But there was something about it, perhaps the feeling of being up among the tree tops, that made Janet disregard its dangers.
As a rule, she was content to sit and gaze out to sea and "pretend."? The name, "widows' walk," opened up so many avenues of imaginings. She often saw the ghosts of the poor distracted women of long ago, pacing up and down, their eyes always turned toward the sea, searching for a familiar masthead. Old Chester had once been a famous fishing village, and the roof of every house along the shore was topped by some sort of observatory. Sometimes it was a square glass cupola, but more often it was a wooden walk, such as crowned the Page house, and because in so many, many cases the looked-for boats never did return to harbor, these walks unhappily came to be known as "widows' walks."
To-day, however, Janet had no time for fancy. Something inside her head and her heart was demanding to be put into words.
"I wonder what is the matter with me?" she said again. "I feel awfully different. I suppose I'm unhappy. Am I, do you think?"
If anyone had accused Janet of talking to herself she would have resented it hotly, but it was characteristic of her to pour out her troubles to the ever-patient and understanding Boru.
"I'm lonely, for one thing," she confided as she pulled one velvety soft ear. "Of course any one but you would say that was silly, for I have Harry to play with, and then there are the Blake children." Two well-behaved, very clean and very shiny girls filled her imagination for an instant, but she dismissed them with a frown. "They don't count, because they simply won't play the way I want to. Harry is a boy, and I do -- no, I did like him a little better, but you know, old fellow, after the way he acted to-day about the snake, I just -- well, he is a scare-cat and that's all there is about it."
Boru's eyes, almost as brown as his mistress's, looked up in solemn confirmation of her last remark.
Her thoughts wandered for a minute and then came back to the original idea.
"I guess lonely isn't just exactly the word, but it's something a lot like it. I want someone to be with who is more like me -- " She broke off suddenly, "I wish I had a sister," she whispered softly. Her arm tightened around Boru's neck, and she buried her head in his shaggy coat. Then quite suddenly she sat upright, and her eyes flashed. "I'm mad. too; mad all the way through at everything and everybody except you," -- Boru acknowledged the exception with an affectionate lick -- "and I think the person I'm the very maddest at is my big brother Thomas. He's not a bit the kid of brother to have." She jumped up suddenly,