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“I know a secret” is probably the most intriguing phrase in the world. Jane surrendered to its allure.

“Oh, tell me,” she implored. She wanted to be admitted to that charmed inner circle of girls who had been told one of Agnes’s secrets; and she wanted to know the secret for its own sake. Secrets must always be wonderful, beautiful things.

Agnes wrinkled up her fat little nose and looked important.

“Oh, I’ll tell you some other time.”

“I don’t want to hear it some other time. I want to hear it now,” pleaded Jane, her marigold eyes full of eager radiance.

Agnes’s little elfish face, framed in its straight brown hair, was alive with mischief. She winked one of her green eyes at Jane.

“All right. Don’t blame me if you don’t like it when you hear it. Listen.”

Jane listened. The towers of St Agatha’s listened. The shabby streets beyond listened. It seemed to Jane that the whole world listened. She was one of the chosen … Agnes was going to tell her a secret.

“Your father and mother don’t live together.”

Jane stared at Agnes. What she had said didn’t make any sense.

“Of course they don’t live together,” she said. “My father is dead.”

“Oh, no, he isn’t,” said Agnes. “He’s living down in Prince Edward Island. Your mother left him when you were three years old.”

Jane felt as if some big cold hand were beginning to squeeze her heart.

“That … isn’t … true,” she gasped.

“‘Tis, too. I heard Aunt Dora telling mother all about it. She said your mother married him just after he came back from the war, one summer when your grandmother took her down to the Maritimes. Your grandmother didn’t want her to. Aunt Dora said everybody knew it wouldn’t last long. He was poor. But it was you that made the most trouble. You should never have been born. Neither of them wanted you, Aunt Dora said. They fought like cat and dog after that and at last your mother just up and left him. Aunt Dora said she would likely have divorced him only divorces are awful hard to get in Canada and anyhow all the Kennedys think divorce is a dreadful thing.”

The hand was gripping Jane’s heart so tightly now that she could hardly breathe.

“I … I don’t believe it,” she said.

“If that’s how you’re going to talk when I tell you a secret, I’ll never tell you another one, Miss Victoria Stuart,” said Agnes, reddening with rage.

“I don’t want to hear any more,” said Jane.

She would never forget what she had heard. It couldn’t be true … it couldn’t. Jane thought the afternoon would never end. St Agatha’s was a nightmare. Frank had never driven so slowly home. The snow had never looked so grimy and dirty along the dingy streets. The wind had never been so grey. The moon, floating high in the sky, was all faded and paper-white but Jane didn’t care if it was never polished again.

An afternoon tea was in progress at 60 Gay when she arrived there. The big drawing-room, decorated lavishly with pale pink snapdragons and tulips and maidenhair fern, was full of people. Mother, in orchid chiffon, with loose trailing lace sleeves, was laughing and chatting. Grandmother, with blue-white diamonds sparkling in her hair, was sitting on her favourite needle-point chair, looking, so one lady said, “Such an utterly sweet silver-haired thing, just like a Whistler mother.” Aunt Gertrude and Aunt Sylvia were pouring tea at a table covered with Venetian lace, where tall pink tapers were burning.

Straight through them all Jane marched to mother. She did not care how many people were there … she had one question to ask and it must be answered at once. At once. Jane could not bear her suspense another moment.

“Mummy,” she said, “is my father alive?”

A strange, dreadful hush suddenly fell over the room. A light like a sword flashed into grandmother’s blue eyes. Aunt Sylvia gasped and Aunt Gertrude turned an unbecoming purple. But mother’s face was as if snow had fallen over it.

“Is he?” said Jane.

“Yes,” said mother. She said nothing more. Jane asked nothing more. She turned and went out and up the stairs blindly. In her own room she shut the door and lay down very softly on the big white bearskin rug by the bed, her lace buried in the soft fur. Heavy black waves of pain seemed rolling over her.

So it was true. All her life she had thought her father dead while he was living … on that far-away dot on the map which she had been told was the province of Prince Edward Island. But he and mother did not like each other and she had not been wanted. Jane found that it was a very curious and unpleasant sensation to feel that your parents hadn’t wanted you. She was sure that all the rest of her life she would hear Agnes’s voice saying, “You should never have been born.” She hated Agnes Ripley … she would always hate her. Jane wondered if she would live to be as old as grandmother and how she could bear it if she did.

Mother and grandmother found her there when everybody had gone.

“Victoria, get up.”

Jane did not move.

“Victoria, I am accustomed to be obeyed when I speak.”

Jane got up. She had not cried … hadn’t somebody ages ago said that “Jane never cried” … but her face was stamped with an expression that might have wrung anybody’s heart. Perhaps it touched even grandmother, for she said, quite gently for her:

“I have always told your mother, Victoria, that she ought to tell you the truth. I told her you were sure to hear it from someone sooner or later. Your father is living. Your mother married him against my wish and lived to repent it. I forgave her and welcomed her back gladly when she came to her senses. That is all. And in future when you feel an irresistible urge to make a scene while we are entertaining, will you be good enough to control the impulse until our guests are gone?”

“Why didn’t he like me?” asked Jane dully.

When all was said and done, that seemed to be what was hurting most. Her mother might not have wanted her either, to begin with, but Jane knew that mother loved her now.

Mother suddenly gave a little laugh so sad that it nearly broke Jane’s heart.

“He was jealous of you, I think,” she said.

“He made your mother’s life wretched,” said grandmother, her voice hardening.

“Oh, I was to blame, too,” cried mother chokingly.

Jane, looking from one to the other, saw the swift change that came over grandmother’s face.

“You will never mention your father’s name in my hearing or in your mother’s hearing again,” said grandmother. “As far as we are concerned … as far as YOU are concerned … he is dead.”

The prohibition was unnecessary. Jane didn’t want to mention her father’s name again. He had made mother unhappy, and so Jane hated him and put him out of her thoughts completely. There were just some things that didn’t bear thinking of and father was one of them. But the most terrible thing about it all was that there was something now that could not be talked over with mother. Jane felt it between them, indefinable but there. The old perfect confidence was gone. There was a subject that must never be mentioned and it poisoned everything.

She could never bear Agnes Ripley and her cult of “secrets” again and was glad when Agnes left the school, the great Thomas having decided that it was not quite up-to-date enough for his daughter. Agnes wanted to learn tap-dancing.

It was a year now since Jane had learned that she had a father … a year in which Jane had just scraped through as far as her grade was concerned… . Phyllis had taken the prize for general proficiency in her year and did Jane hear of it! … had continued to be driven to and from St Agatha’s, had tried her best to like Phyllis and had not made any great headway at it, had trysted with Jody in the back yard twilights and had practised her scales as faithfully as if she liked it.

“Such a pity you are not fonder of music,” said grandmother. “But of course, how could you be?”

It was not so much what grandmother said as how she said it. She made wounds that rankled and festered. And Jane was fond of music … she loved to listen to it. When Mr Ransome, the musical boarder at 58, played on his violin in his room in the evenings, he never dreamed of the two enraptured listeners he had in the back yard cherry-tree. Jane and Jody sat there, their hands clasped, their hearts filled with some nameless ecstasy. When winter came and the bedroom window was shut, Jane felt the loss keenly. The moon was her only escape then and she slipped away to it oftener than ever, in long visitations of silence which grandmother called “sulks.”

“She has a very sulky disposition,” said grandmother.

“Oh, I don’t think so,” faltered mother. The only times she ever dared to contradict grandmother were in defence of Jane. “She’s just rather … sensitive.”

“Sensitive!” Grandmother laughed. Grandmother did not often laugh, which Jane thought was just as well. As for Aunt Gertrude, if she had ever laughed or jested it must have been so long ago that nobody remembered it. Mother laughed when people were about … little tinkling laughs that Jane could never feel were real. No, there was not much real laughter at 60 Gay, though Jane, with her concealed gift for seeing the funny side of things, could have filled even that big house with laughter. But Jane had known very early that grandmother resented laughter. Even Mary and Frank had to giggle very discreetly in the kitchen.

Jane had shot up appallingly in that year. She was rather more angular and awkward. Her chin was square and cleft.

“It gets more like HIS every day,” she once heard grandmother saying bitterly to Aunt Gertrude. Jane winced. In her bitter new wisdom she suspected that “his” was her father’s chin and she straightway detested hers. Why couldn’t it have been a pretty rounded one like mother’s?

The year was very uneventful. Jane would have called it monotonous if she had not as yet been unacquainted with the word. There were only three things in it that made much impression on her … the incident of the kitten, the mysterious affair of Kenneth Howard’s picture and the unlucky recitation.

Jane had picked the kitten up on the street. One afternoon Frank had been in a great hurry to get somewhere on time for grandmother and mother and he had let Jane walk home from the beginning of Gay Street when he was bringing her from St Agatha’s. Jane walked along happily, savouring this rare moment of independence. It was very seldom she was allowed to walk anywhere alone … to walk anywhere at all, indeed. And Jane loved walking. She would have liked to walk to and from St Agatha’s or, since that really was too far, she would have liked to go by streetcar. Jane loved travelling on a streetcar. It was fascinating to look at the people in it and speculate about them. Who was that lady with the lovely shimmering hair? What was the angry old woman muttering to herself about? Did that little boy like having his mother clean his face with her handkerchief in public? Did that jolly looking little girl have trouble getting her grade? Did that man have toothache and did he ever look pleasant when he hadn’t it? She would have liked to know all about them and sympathize or rejoice as occasion required. But it was very seldom any resident of 60 Gay had a chance to go on a streetcar. There was always Frank with the limousine.

Jane walked slowly to prolong the pleasure. It was a cold day in late autumn. It had been miserly of its light from the beginning, with a dim ghost of sun peering through the dull grey clouds, and now it was getting dark and spitting snow. The lights gleamed out: even the grim windows of Victorian Gay were abloom. Jane did not mind the bitter wind but something else did. Jane heard the most pitiful, despairing little cry and looked down to see the kitten, huddled miserably against an iron fence. She bent and picked it up and held it against her face. The little creature, a handful of tiny bones in its fluffed-out Maltese fur, licked her cheek with an eager tongue. It was cold, starving, forsaken. Jane knew it did not belong to Gay Street. She could not leave it there to perish in the oncoming stormy night.

“Goodness sake, Miss Victoria, wherever did you get that?” exclaimed Mary, when Jane entered the kitchen. “You shouldn’t have brought it in. You know your grandmother doesn’t like cats. Your Aunt Gertrude got one once but it clawed all the tassels off the furniture and it had to go. Better put that kitten right out, Miss Victoria.”

Jane hated to be called “Miss Victoria,” but grandmother insisted on the servants addressing her so.

“I CAN’T put it out in the cold, Mary. Let me give it some supper and leave it here till after dinner. I’ll ask grandmother to let me keep it. Perhaps she will if I promise to keep it out here and in the yard. You wouldn’t mind it round, would you, Mary?”

“I’d like it,” said Mary. “I’ve often thought a cat would be great company … or a dog. Your mother had a dog once but it got poisoned and she would never have another.”

Mary did not tell Jane that she firmly believed the old lady had poisoned the dog. You didn’t tell children things like that and anyway she couldn’t be dead sure of it. All she was sure of was that old Mrs Kennedy had been bitterly jealous of her daughter’s love for the dog.

“How she used to look at it when she didn’t know I saw her,” thought Mary.

Grandmother and Aunt Gertrude and mother were taking in a couple of teas that day so Jane knew she could count on at least an hour yet. It was a pleasant hour. The kitten was happy and frolicsome, having drunk milk until its little sides tubbed out almost to the bursting point. The kitchen was warm and cosy. Mary let Jane chop the nuts that were to be sprinkled over the cake and cut the pears into slim segments for the salad.

“Oh, Mary, blueberry pie! Why don’t we have it oftener? You can make such delicious blueberry pie.”

“There’s some who can make pies and some who can’t,” said Mary complacently. “As for having it oftener, you know your grandmother doesn’t care much for any kind of pie. She says they’re indigestible … and my father lived to be ninety and had pie for breakfast every morning of his life! I just make it occasional for your mother.”

“After dinner I’ll tell grandmother about the kitten and ask her if I may keep it,” said Jane.

“I think you’ll have your trouble for your pains, you poor child,” said Mary as the door closed behind Jane. “Miss Robin ought to stand up for you more than she does … but there, she’s always been under the thumb of her mother. Any way, I hope the dinner will go well and keep the old dame in good humour. I wisht I hadn’t made the blueberry pie after all. It’s lucky she won’t know Miss Victoria fixed the salad … what folks don’t know never hurts them.”