Jennie Weeks was frankly enchanted.
"My sakes!" she said to Kate. "If I'm not grateful to you for
getting me into a place like this. I wouldn't give it up for all
the school-teaching in the world. I'm going to snuggle right in
here, and make myself so useful I won't have to leave until I die.
I hope you won't turn me out when to come to take charge."
"Don't you think you're presuming?" said Kate.
Jennie drew back with a swift apology, but there was a flash in
the little eyes and a spiteful look on the small face as she
withdrew.
Then Kate was shown each of John's wonderful inventions. To her
they seemed almost miracles, because they were so obvious, so
simple, yet brought such astounding returns. She saw offices and
heard the explanation of big business; but did not comprehend,
farther than that when an invention was completed, the piling up
of money began. Before the week's visit was over, Kate was trying
to fit herself and her aims and objects of life into the
surroundings, with no success whatever. She felt housed in,
cribbed, confined, frustrated. When she realized that she was
becoming plainly cross, she began keen self-analysis and soon
admitted to herself that she did not belong there.
Kate watched with keen eyes. Repeatedly she tried to imagine
herself in such surroundings for life, a life sentence, she
expressed it, for soon she understood that it would be to her, a
prison. The only way she could imagine herself enduring it at all
was to think of the promised farm, and when she began to think of
that on Jardine terms, she saw that it would mean to sit down and
tell someone else what she wanted done. There would be no battle
to fight. Her mind kept harking back to the day when she had said
to John that she hoped there would be a lake on the land she
owned, and he had answered casually: "If there isn't a lake, make
one!" Kate thought that over repeatedly. "Make one!" Make a
lake? It would have seemed no more magical to her if he had said,
"Make a cloud," "Make a star," or "Make a rainbow." "What on
earth would I do with myself, with my time, with my life?"
pondered Kate.
She said "Good-bye" to Mrs. Jardine and Jennie Weeks, and started
home with John, still pondering. When the train pulled into
Hartley, Nancy Ellen and Robert were on the platform to meet them.
From that time, Kate was on solid ground. She was reckoning in
terms she could comprehend. All her former assurance and energy
came back to her. She almost wished the visit were over, and that
she were on the way to Walton to clean the school-house. She was
eager to roll her sleeves and beat a tub of soapy clothes to foam,
and boil them snowy white. She had a desire she could scarcely
control to sweep, and dust, and cook. She had been out of the
environment she thought she disliked and found when she returned
to it after a wider change than she could have imagined, that she
did not dislike it at all. It was her element, her work, what she
knew. She could attempt it with sure foot, capable hand, and
certain knowledge.