Jean of GreenacresForrester, Izola L. (Izola Louise)
General
Jean of Greenacres
Forrester, Izola L. (Izola Louise)
Artists -- Juvenile fiction; Family -- Juvenile fiction; New England -- Juvenile fiction
After service, Mrs. Crane said she must run into the children’s ward
across the street at St. Luke’s to see how one of her settlement girls
was getting along. Bab and Jean stayed down in the wide entrance hall,
until the latter noticed the little silent chapel up the staircase at
the back.
“Oh, Bab, could we go in, do you think?” she whispered.
Bab was certain they could, although service was over. They entered the
chapel, and knelt quietly at the back. It was so different from the
great cathedral over the way, so silent and shadowy, so filled with the
message to the inner heart, born of the hospital, “In the midst of life
ye are in death.”
“That did me more good than the other,” Jean said, as they went
downstairs to rejoin Mrs. Crane. “I’m sure worship should be silent,
without much noise at all. Up home the little church is so small and
sort of holy. You just have that feeling when you go in, and still it’s
very plain and poorly furnished, and we haven’t a vested choir. The
girls sing, and Cousin Roxy plays the organ.”
Bab sighed.
“Jean, you’re getting acclimated up there. I can see the signs. Even now
your heart’s turning back home. Never mind. We’ll listen to Aunt Win’s
Russian choir tonight, and that shall suffice.”
In the afternoon, some friends came in for tea, and Jean found her
old-time favorite teacher, Daddy Higginson, as all the girls called him
at the school. He was about seventy, but erect and quick of step as any
of the boys; smooth shaven, with iron gray hair, close cut and curly,
and keen, whimsical brown eyes. He was really splendid looking, she
thought.
“You know, Jeanie,” he began, slipping comfortably down a trifle in his
easy chair, as Bab handed him a third cup of tea, “you’re looking fine.
How’s the work coming along up there in your hill country? Doing
anything?”
Jean flushed slightly.
“Nothing in earnest, Mr. Higginson. I rather gave up even the hope of
going on with it, after we went away.”
“You couldn’t give it up if it is in you,” he answered. “That’s one of
the charms and blessings of the divine fire. If it ever does start a
blaze in your soul’s shrine, it can never be put out. They can smother
it down, and stamp on it, and cover it up with ashes of dead hopes, all
that, but sure as anything, once the mind is relaxed and at peace with
itself, the fire will burn again. You’re going back, I hear from Bab.”
Jean nodded.
“I’m the eldest, and the others are all in school. I’m needed.”
He smiled, looking down at the fire Justine had prepared for them on the
wide hearth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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