Down Jasper Lane (Amherst Island Trilogy)

“Oh, Ellen,” Caro breathed when Ellen came down the front stairs in the dress, her hair tied back with a matching ribbon she’d found later among the tissue paper. It had touched her, that ribbon, because she knew her uncle had thought of it, and for a moment she’d missed him, with his easy smile and troubled eyes, as if he wanted to do the right thing but wasn’t sure how.

Ruthie stared at her with wide eyes. “You look bee-yoo-ti-ful!”

Everyone laughed, and Ellen did a little twirl, her heart fair to bursting. She felt beautiful, a far cry from the girl she’d once been, with tangled hair and coal smuts on her face. Just look at me now, Aunt Ruth, she thought, and then felt guilty for wanting to show up her aunt, who had given her the dress in the first place.

By the time they arrived at the hall and tumbled out of the sledge, the dance was well under way. Trestle tables were loaded with all sorts of pies, cakes, and bowls of punch, and a little band in the corner was getting up a merry tune with a banjo and a couple of fiddles.

Ellen stood in the doorway and surveyed it all in wonder. Couples danced on the cleared space in the center of the hall, and she wondered if anyone would ask her to dance. She found her gaze searching, almost of its own accord, for Jed.

She spied him almost right away, standing in the corner, as she’d expected. He wore a suit, but it didn’t look right on him somehow. Ellen was used to seeing him in his plain trousers, suspenders, and homespun shirt. The suit, she noticed, was a little too small, and his hair had been flattened down with water to no avail, for a cowlick still stuck up determinedly in the back. Even so, Ellen thought, he looked quite handsome; the suit was small because at fifteen he was starting to develop the muscles of a man, his shoulders broadening, his hands and feet bigger too. Jed looked like he didn’t know what to do with either.

Ellen wondered if he would ask anyone to dance.

“Ellen? Would you care to dance?”

Startled, Ellen turned to see Lucas smiling at her. He wore a suit too, but unlike Jed’s his was too big, his narrow shoulders seeming lost in the large jacket. It must have been an old one of his father’s, or perhaps Jed’s. At thirteen, the same age as Ellen, Lucas was still slight, a full head shorter than Jed. He blinked at her now, smiling uncertainly, clearly nervous.

Ellen glanced once more at Jed. He was watching them, she realized, but when he caught her looking at him he just scowled and turned away. Fighting a ridiculous sense of disappointment, Ellen turned back to Lucas. “I’d love to dance, Lucas. Thank you.”

Lucas led her onto the cleared dance floor, awkward in his self-consciousness, but when they actually started to dance Ellen realized he was quite good. Far better than she was, at any rate. She’d never really danced before. She stumbled through the steps, begi

nning to blush.

“I’m awful,” she said with an embarrassed laugh. She’d stepped on Lucas’ foot twice.

“It doesn’t matter,” Lucas told her, and somehow that was better than him lying and saying she was a good dancer when she so obviously wasn’t.

“How can you dance so well?”

“Ma taught us when we were little, in the kitchen. She’d hum the tune.”

It painted a nice picture, especially since Maeve Lyman was still laid up in bed, and had been for much of the winter. “Did Jed dance as well?” Ellen couldn’t help but asking. She snuck another glance towards the corner of the room, but she couldn’t see him.

“Ma made him,” Lucas told her, “but he didn’t like it much.”

Ellen could easily imagine that.

After the dance was over, Lucas led her over to the refreshments and fetched her a glass of punch. Ellen took it with murmured thanks.

“So have you any resolutions?” she asked him. “1905! It’s hard to believe.”

“Learn as much as I can,” Lucas replied with a smile. “So I can take the entrance examination for Glebe Collegiate next year.”

“You’ll go to high school,” Ellen said with just a trace of envy, for surely more schooling was not in store for her. In April she’d return to Seaton, and Aunt Ruth had made it clear that she’d be lucky to stay another year, and try for her Year Eight certificate. Even if she did get her certificate, she’d be done with her education after that. Ellen swallowed hard, just to think of it. What would she do with her days? Cook and clean and help in the store, she supposed. Make herself useful, but it didn’t fill her with the same glow that helping here did.

“Won’t you go, Ellen?” Lucas asked. “You could take the examination next year. Then we’d be in Kingston together.”

“I wish I could. But I don’t know if my aunt and uncle will ever let me return.” The lump in her throat seemed to thicken so even swallowing was impossible. She stared down at the cup of punch cradled in her hands.

“Well, they should,” Lucas said. “You ought to go to high school, and even university, if you wanted to.”

Ellen let out a little laugh. “Not many girls go to university, Lucas.”

“Some do,” he insisted. “And with your drawing, you could go to an art school. Learn things properly.”

“I didn’t even know there was such a thing.” She could not even imagine it: a school just for art! Drawing all day, perhaps, and painting too probably. Yet Lucas might as well have suggested she fly to the moon.

“I don’t even know if I’d pass the entrance examination to Glebe,” she said. “I’m not half as clever as you are.” No matter what Miss Gardiner had said, she still found arithmetic painstakingly difficult.