The Project Gutenberg eBook, Sunshine Jane, by Anne Warner, Illustrated by Harriet Roosevelt Richards

Title: Sunshine Jane

Author: Anne Warner

Release Date: November 10, 2011 [eBook #37972]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SUNSHINE JANE***

E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Ernest Schaal,
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
(http://www.pgdp.net)
from page images generously made available by
Internet Archive/American Libraries
(http://www.archive.org/details/americana)

SUNSHINE JANE

"Auntie Susan, it's Aunt Matilda and Mr. Beamer."
Frontispiece. See Page 265.

SUNSHINE JANE

BY
ANNE WARNER

AUTHOR OF "THE REJUVENATION OF AUNT MARY," "SUSAN CLEGG AND HER FRIEND, MRS. LATHROP," ETC.

WITH FRONTISPIECE BY
HARRIET ROOSEVELT RICHARDS

BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1914

Copyright, 1913, 1914,
By Little, Brown, and Company.

All rights reserved

Published, February, 1914

Reprinted, January, 1914

Set up and electrotyped by J. S. Cushing Co., Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
Presswork by S. J. Parkhill & Co., Boston, Mass., U.S.A.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

• General Ignorance 1
• Everybody Gets There 6
• Matilda Teaches 22
• Jane Begins Sunshining 37
• A Change in the Feel of Things 61
• Lorenzo Rath 84
• A New Outlook on Matilda 98
• Soul-uplifting 127
• Madeleine's Secret 138
• Old Mrs. Croft 148
• She Sleeps 159
• Emily's Project 169
• Emily is Herself Freely 191
• Jane's Converts 208
• Real Conversation 220
• The Most Wonderful Thing ever Happened 233
• Why Jane Should have Believed 243
• In a Perfectly Right Way 256
• The Results 277

SUNSHINE JANE

SUNSHINE JANE

CHAPTER I

GENERAL IGNORANCE

THERE was something pathetic in the serene unconsciousness of the little village as the stage came lumbering down the hillside, bearing its freight of portent. So many things were going to be changed forever after,—and no one knew it. Such a vast difference was going speedily to make itself felt, and not a soul was aware even of what a bigger soul it was so soon to be. Old Mrs. Croft, clear at the other end of town and paralyzed for twenty years, hadn't the slightest conception of what a leading part was being prepared for her to play. Poor Katie Croft, her daughter-in-law and slave, whose one prayer was for freedom, dreamed not that the answer was now at last coming near. Mrs. Cowmull, sitting on her porch awaiting the "artist who had advertised," knew not who or what or how old he might be or the interest that would soon be hers. Poor Emily Mead, shelling peas on the bench at the back of her mother's house, frowned fretfully and, putting back her great lock of rich chestnut hair with an impatient gesture, wished that she might see "just one