“Um,” said Mr. Sheridan. Then, boring the end of his cane through a dead leaf, he asked carelessly,
“But when did Miss Lily see me? I’ve never been here before.”
“Yesterday morning she said. She said she couldn’t tell exactly what you were like, because she only saw you in her handmirror while she was brushing her hair, but _I_ think she got a pretty good idea.”
Poor Miss Lily. If she had ever dreamed that Jane would be placidly repeating her indiscreet little confidences, she would have died of mortification. But Jane, who, in her own peculiar way, was immeasurably more astute than Miss Lily, saw very plainly that Mr. Sheridan was trying to suppress a complacent smile.
“Why, in the first place, she’d heard that one of the family was going to live in this house again, and then she saw you drive in here, so she just used her common sense, I suppose.”
After a moment, he said, with the most engaging friendliness,
“Lambert. Are you going to live here a long time?”
“Do? Well,—that would be a little difficult to explain. I came here primarily for—solitude.” The melancholy tone of his voice prompted a dozen inquisitive questions to the tip of Jane’s tongue.
“There are different kinds of illness,” said Mr. Sheridan gloomily and mysteriously. Jane’s grave eyes considered him attentively. Perhaps he was suffering from a guilty conscience. He might have embezzled money from a bank. He might even have killed someone. She felt very sorry for him.
“Don’t you ever want to see anybody? I can’t understand that.”
“My dear child,” said Mr. Sheridan in a patronizing tone, “there are probably several things that you don’t understand yet. How old are you, may I ask?”
“Fourteen. Fifteen really. My birthday comes next month. But don’t you remember that it says in the Bible that it isn’t good for people to be alone. That was the text just last Sunday, and I remember thinking that that was why we are all crowded together into this town, instead of scattering out over there—” she waved in the direction of the country, “where it seems much nicer.”
Mr. Sheridan made no reply, for a moment. Then as Jane made a motion to depart, he said hastily,
“Oh, _I_ go to school, and help mother, and go on adventures—”