Plain Jane and pretty Betty

“Here’s the moving van now!”

Jane Cross ran into the front room where Mrs. Powell was sitting patiently on one of the many roped boxes that was to go with the load.

“It isn’t more than half an hour late, at that,” Jane added, as Mrs. Powell looked up at her questioningly.

“Pretty good for a moving van,” said the latter, with a faint smile. “Especially in Coal Run. Is it here?”

For answer, Jane pointed to the big van that had backed its yawning doors close to the broken boardwalk that led from the road to the Powell front porch.

Mrs. Powell got up with a gesture of weariness and went out to two burly men who dropped from the van. Jane followed and remained on the porch, watching.

Queer thoughts were running through Jane’s head, jubilant thoughts, almost.

She was leaving Coal Run! That dirty, dreary little town the population of which consisted to a great extent of miners with their more or less dirty and stupid families.

Jane was not at home with these people, with the boys and girls who attended the dingy schoolhouse on Cattle Creek. For some reason that she could not fathom, the crude ways, the uncouth manners of the inhabitants of the mining town offended and puzzled her.

Jane had fought against this inherent difference, this instinctive shrinking. She had been brought up to believe that pride was sinful. She believed this, and honestly tried to change herself since she alone was odd among the children of Coal Run.

It was hard, though; and Jane Cross had succeeded but indifferently. If one had asked her schoolmates, they would have said that she succeeded not at all, would have given her no credit for a hard fight.

Meanwhile, they felt her difference and resented it.

No matter how poor her clothes, Jane was always neat, her hands and face were scrubbed to a shining cleanliness, her bobbed brown hair was brushed sleekly close to her small round head until it shone.

Though she was not homely, was even nice looking in a simple unobtrusive way, the school children of Coal Run had retaliated by calling her “Plain Jane,” jeering at her and taunting her in a way that made the sensitive girl’s life miserable.

There was nothing that she could regret leaving behind in Coal Run except, perhaps, the little house where she had lived contentedly with Mrs. Cross for as long back as she could remember.

The latter had been a widow—this, too, for as long as Jane could remember. Mr. Cross, a miner, had been killed in a mine explosion. The company he had worked for had provided for his widow during her lifetime and would have continued to provide for her if she had lived twenty years longer.

But Mrs. Cross had died quietly one night in her sleep, and Jane awoke to find herself alone in the world and—penniless.

Things might have gone very hard for the girl—then only ten—had it not been for the prompt friendliness of Mr. and Mrs. Powell. This plump and kindly couple took the heartbroken girl into their home, and into their hearts as well, and from that time on treated her as though she were their own.

Now Jane was sixteen, though looking and seeming younger by a year or two, and misfortune had come to Mr. Powell. There was a merger and a change of officers in the coal company for which Mr. Powell had worked in their local office for years, with the result that Jane’s benefactor presently found himself without a position and with only a little money in the bank.

It was hard on him, a change like this coming late in life, and for a time it seemed as though the blow had paralyzed him. He rallied soon, emerging from his dazed state to find himself a position in the thriving town of Greenville, forty miles from Coal Run.

It was a bookkeeper’s job that did not pay much that had been offered him, but it was a raft to cling to until he could look about and find something better. Mr. Powell accepted the post gratefully and immediately made preparations for the removal of Mrs. Powell and Jane to their future home.

Jane was not sorry to leave Coal Run. Greenville might prove little better, but at least it would be a change from the mining town, and youth is hopeful. Jane would try to be very pleasant and patient and helpful in Greenville. She would truly try to make people like her.

The wounds inflicted by the thoughtlessly cruel children of Coal Run went deeper than even Jane thought, and, unless quickly healed, promised to leave scars that might gravely affect her future.

Even now she was shy, shrinking, super-sensitive, quick to see a slight even where none was intended. It was good for her that she was leaving Coal Run before the habit of thinking herself inferior became a fixed obsession.

Now as she watched the moving-men and Mrs. Powell from the vantage point of the porch she was surprised to see Mr. Powell descend from the truck, his short legs dangling so far from the ground that he had to jump to reach it.

Mr. Powell was so short and round and comfortable-looking generally that few suspected him of possessing the temper of a lean six-footer. This temper would blaze out at times, blasting all before it, only to retire as suddenly as it had come, leaving Mr. Powell as bland and round and smiling as ever. It was a righteous temper however, and only flashed forth in a righteous cause. Therefore, people feared it and were wont to treat its owner with a respect they might not otherwise have accorded him.

Jane loved him, as indeed she loved both these kindly people, and would have gone on hands and knees to serve either one of them.

Mr. Powell was not in a temper now, Jane was glad to see. In fact, he appeared very much pleased with himself and was on exceedingly friendly terms with both the burly moving-men.

“You see I came with them, to make sure they got here before night, Lou,” the girl heard him call to Mrs. Powell. “And what’s more, I’m going all the way to Greenville with them, to make sure of the same thing.”

“What’s to become of Jane and me?” Mrs. Powell retorted.

“You will go on the train, of course,” returned her husband. “Unless,” jokingly, “you’d like to ride on top of the van.”

It was then that Jane had her bold thought. How she dared put it into words she never afterward could tell. But in a moment she found herself running over the broken boards of the walk toward Mr. Powell.

“Oh!” she cried, “I don’t suppose you really would let me go with you on the van?”

“Bless us!” cried Mr. Powell, appealing to the cheerfully grinning moving-men to share the joke with him. “Jane has taken me seriously. She really does want to ride on the top of the van.”

“Not on the top of the van,” Jane wheedled—and she knew just how to do it, too, with those she loved. “In the front seat, or in the van, or on the furniture itself—anywhere, so long as I can go with you.”

“Bless us!” said Mr. Powell again. “The child’s in earnest. After all,” shaking his head and looking attentively at the moving-men, “what’s to prevent?”

“Nothing, sir,” said one of the latter, grinning broadly. “I can sit up behind with the load and there’s room for three on the front seat, if the young lady wants to go along.”

Jane’s eyes began to dance. There was color in her usually pale face. She looked appealingly at Mrs. Powell.

“Do you mind?” she asked. “Will it be very lonesome for you, going up without me on the train?”

Mrs. Powell smiled reassuringly.

“I am so tired that I shall probably sleep all the way to Greenville, anyway,” she said. “If it will be any pleasure to you, go along on the truck, my dear child, by all means!”

So it was settled, and Jane waited impatiently while the furniture was piled on the truck and securely fastened in at the back with ropes.

This took only a short time, for the possessions of the Powells were limited, and Jane was soon standing beside the truck, her hat and coat on, waiting for one of the men to hand her to the high seat.

While she stood there, her eyes happened to turn up the road.

She became suddenly white and grasped at the arm of the man nearest her.

“Oh, please!” she gasped. “Can’t we get away from here? Oh, I must get away from here, in a hurry!”

Alarmed by her look and manner, the good-hearted fellow half lifted Jane to the high seat and swung himself up after her.

“All set, Bill!” he called to his mate. “Mr. Powell, ready?”

At the words Mr. Powell himself appeared at the side of the truck and swung himself up into the seat beside Jane. The girl huddled down between the two men, her eyes fixed steadily on the road ahead of her.

As the engine of the truck turned over with a grumbling roar the sound of children’s shrill voices raised tauntingly came from the road behind them.

“Plain Jane! Plain Jane! Had to ride in the van! Couldn’t ride in the train! Plain Jane! Plain Jane!”

Long after the voices had been drowned by distance and by the roaring of the motor they rang in Jane’s ears, filled her eyes with tears and her heart with an aching pain.

Oh, she was glad to leave Coal Run! Glad! Glad!

After a while the cool air on her face and Mr. Powell’s gently tactful and very funny conversation soothed her and brought a faint smile to her lips.

After all, she was a very lucky girl to have such dear, kind friends as the Powells. And she was leaving Coal Run! Greenville could not be worse. It might be much, much better.

A half-hour passed. Coal Run was left far behind when a sudden lurch of the truck caused her to grip the seat with both hands. The driver was taking a sharp curve on a rough, hilly road at a perilous rate of speed, Jane thought. She wished he would not be quite so daring.

Then came a noise like the exploding of a cannon in her ears.

Jane cried out in terror as the truck lurched, then skidded sickeningly across the road.