CHAPTER VI
INVENTIONS
The settling down in Greenville of the Powell family, lately of Coal Run, was very easy and pleasant.
The little house on the side street was as cozy and comfortable as Mrs. Powell’s energy and Jane’s helpful hands could make it.
There were only five rooms, but these were sufficient for the needs of the small family.
The front room was small, but once dressed with Mrs. Powell’s mission furniture, red tablecover, cushions and rugs, with immaculate muslin curtains covering no less immaculate windows, the room was very homelike and pleasant.
Back of the sitting room was the dining room. Though the furniture in it was more or less rickety—containing the staved-in chair and the one-rockered rocker which Mr. Powell had not yet had time to fix—this room, like the other, had a cozy, pleasant air.
Rents in the brown rug had been patiently mended by Mrs. Powell before the moving, and now pieces of furniture were placed in such a way as to cover the most conspicuous patches. It was a nice room, and there was hardly any time in the day when it was not flooded with sunshine.
Back of the dining room was the kitchen—a small kitchen for a country house but all the better for that.
Mrs. Powell had scrubbed the dingy paint until it shone. Even then, though the walls were a cheerful cream-color, the woodwork was a dull brown that gave a gloomy tone to the room.
One day, after a short excursion into the town, Jane appeared with a can of paint and a new paint brush.
She smiled when Mrs. Powell stared at her.
“I thought I’d give the wood in the kitchen a coat of cream-colored paint,” she said. “Do you mind?”
“Mind!” cried the older woman delightedly. “Why, it’ll be just the thing! But take care you don’t tire yourself out, Jane Cross,” she added warningly. “There’s more work in that kitchen than you think for, most likely.”
But Jane to whom a can of paint, a paint brush, and something to paint were an unmitigated joy, set to work with a will on the kitchen woodwork.
The result was more delightful than even she had dared to hope. Not only the woodwork of the little kitchen but the kitchen table and the chairs as well, blossomed out in two coats of ivory paint that was a joy to behold.
“They look just as good as new!” Mrs. Powell exclaimed, as she and Jane hung yellow curtains at the window. These last had been an inspiration of Jane’s as well, and with the sunlight streaming through them, they made the kitchen indescribably pretty and cheerful.
“I declare, Jane Cross, you’re a wonder!”
The transformation of the kitchen was complete and Mrs. Powell surveyed the pleasant result, one arm about Jane. She turned and regarded the girl’s face steadily and affectionately for a moment, marked the clear steady purpose of the eyes, the streak of ivory-colored paint at the corner of her mouth—a mouth too wide for beauty—and suddenly Mrs. Powell smiled.
“You’re the kind of girl, Jane Cross,” she said, “that does everything well that she wants to. You’re a sweet child and a great comfort to me. Now run along and get that streak of paint off your face!”
Upstairs were two bedrooms. One thought, looking at the two rooms, that the builder when planning the house might well have spared a slice of the larger room to add to the smaller and so arranged his space in a more impartial manner.
As it was, the big room was very, very big—like the little girl with the curl—and the small room, if not exactly horrid, was certainly very small.
The small room, of course, was turned over to Jane, and she did the best she could with it. Her single iron bed took up an alarming amount of space. She had just room to squeeze a tiny table and a chair in beside it and leave space enough at the foot of the bed for the dresser.
The builder had been unfair in the matter of windows, too.
While the front room had four of these—rather a superfluous number one would think—Jane’s room had only one, and that not in the best position to catch the sun. For the greater part of the day the room was gloomy, and Jane seldom visited it except to go to bed.
She thought of Betty Browning in the richest, most palatial house on Rose Hill and wondered what her room was like. She would have liked just once to have been allowed to look inside it.
Meanwhile, Mr. Powell became enthusiastic about his new position with Martin and Hull.
“They’re old men, but square shooters, both of them!” he exclaimed. “I like ’em and if I have luck I may be able to rise before long to a much better position than I have now. It may be the luckiest thing that ever happened to us that we had to leave Coal Run.”
Jane thought so too. She could have been quite happy in her new environment had it not been for her meeting with Betty Browning and that pretty girl’s insolent, disdainful attitude toward her.
Meanwhile, Jane became friendly with Billy Dobson, the grocer’s clerk. She found out that he was not an ordinary grocer’s clerk at all, and this is how it happened:
About a week after her arrival with the Powells at Greenville Jane was on her usual round of marketing—Mrs. Powell declared that she could trust Jane to pick out a chicken or any other kind of fowl, fish, or meat, far more readily than she could trust herself!—and, with a large bundle already in her arms, entered Mason’s store to complete her purchases.
A loud guffaw of laughter greeted her entrance, and Jane thought sensitively that some one was laughing at her. But she saw her mistake almost instantly.
It was Billy Dobson who was being laughed at, and by the jovial owner of the store himself, large, fat, jolly Mr. Mason.
Billy, Jane thought, looked as though he disliked being laughed at. The young fellow’s usual cheerful grin was absent and he scowled at his employer.
“You can laugh all right,” Billy retorted, anger in his voice. “All the inventors that ever lived have had to be laughed at by people that couldn’t understand their inventions.”
“Go on, my boy, I don’t mean to make you mad.” Mr. Mason laid a kindly hand on the lad’s shoulder. “Maybe you have got a good idea, I don’t know. But you take your inventions so seriously that sometimes it strikes me funny.”
“It’s only one invention,” said Billy, irritably rubbing the back of his head. “And I must say it never struck me as funny.”
Here Billy espied Jane and his face smoothed to its usual expression as he took her order.
Jane had an opportunity to speak to him while Mr. Mason was taking care of another customer.
“I didn’t know you invented things,” she said. “I think it’s wonderful!”
Billy’s face brightened and he looked at Jane with increased interest. Here was a girl who was evidently as sensible as she looked! He pretended modesty.
“I wish I could find some one else who would think it’s wonderful—some one with stacks of money.”
“You probably will,” said Jane, and added innocently: “Inventors have to, don’t they?”
“They do,” said Billy, looking suddenly grim and quite old, Jane thought, much older than he really was. “And that, let me tell you, is the hard part of inventing—not the invention itself.”
Jane thought about Billy a great deal after that. Billy was an inventor, one of those wonderful beings to whom ordinary people could only look up with awe and wonder. Suppose Billy should be lucky and make a fortune from his invention? Wonderful! After that Billy Dobson, the grocer’s clerk, carried about with him an aura of romance which, in Jane’s mind at least, set him apart from the crowd as a wonderful and superior being.
“Maybe some day I can say ‘I knew him when he was only a grocer’s clerk,’” she thought, and thrilled to the thought.
It was not so very long after this remarkable discovery that Jane was awakened one night by a strange light in her room. The red glow came through her one window and danced eerily on the walls.
Jane sprang from the bed, her heart in her mouth.
“Fire!” she cried, unaware that she had spoken the word aloud.