"Yawning Gap," suggested the mother, reverting to a dearly loved romance.
"Yes. I'll come to the Yawning Gap and I'll give the call."
"And I'll call back: _Oh! wow!--Oh! wo!_" The musical voice rose like a flute and Noreen danced about.
"And I'll answer: _wo wow!--oh!_" The piping tones were also flute-like, an echo of the mother's.
"And then, down will fall the drawbridge with a mighty clatter." Mary-Clare looked majestic even in her muddy trousers as she portrayed the action. "And over the Gap will come the Princess Light-of-my-Heart with her message."
"Ah! yes, Motherly. It will be such fun. But if Jan-an can come here to stay, then what?" the voice faltered.
"Why, Light-of-my-Heart, I will return strong and hungry, and Jan-an and my Princess and I will sit by the fire to-night and roast chestnuts and apples and there will be such a story as never was before."
"Both ways are beautiful ways, Motherly. I don't know which is bestest."
It was always so with Mary-Clare and Noreen, all ways were alluring; but the child had deep intuitions, and so she set her face at once away from the little yellow house and the mother in the doorway, and started on her quest of Jan-an.
When the child had passed from sight Mary-Clare packed a bit of luncheon in a basket and ran lightly across the road. She looked back, making sure that no one was watching her movements, then she plunged into the woods, her head lowered, and her heart throbbing high.
The trail was not an easy one--Mary-Clare had seen to that!--and as no one but Noreen and herself ever trod it, it was hardly discernible to the uninitiated. Up and up the path led until it ended at a rough, crude cabin almost hidden by a tangle of vines.
Looking back over the years of her married life, Mary-Clare often wondered how she could have endured them but for the vision and strength she received in her "Place," as she whimsically called it--getting her idea from a Bible verse.
Among the many things that old Doctor Rivers had given Mary-Clare was a knowledge and love of the Bible. He had offered the book to her as literature and early in life she had responded to the appeal. The verse that had inspired her to restore a deserted cabin to a thing of beauty and eventually a kind of sanctuary, was this: