Page:Hollyhock house; a story for girls (IA hollyhockhousest00tagg).pdf/25

Rh “You look as though you were going to fly away, Janie Goldilocks!” she cried, dropping back on her heels to regard Jane. Mary was always discovering her sister anew.

“Wish I could!” cried Jane. “Fly right up like a spark—my hair is red enough! And be a spark that wouldn’t cool in the air, but keep on and on! Over the Himalayas!” she added as an afterthought; that sounded magnificently distant, big and vague.

“Over the home layers would do for me—the chicken house!” laughed Mary.

“My voice goes up and up; it’s part of me, yet, when it is up, it is no longer a part of me,” said Jane. “I’m here, my feet on the ground, and I can send my voice skyward, and it is mine, me, and not me. It goes very, very high”

“I noticed it,” said Mary. Indeed Janie’s singing had mounted to the treetops, an arrow of sound, sharp, clear, yet never shrill.

“You old nuisance!” cried Jane. “Why don’t you ever want to fly? And why do you sing in that purring alto, just like yourself? I want to jump over the moon and sing to C above high C! It’s just because you’ve brown hair!”

“I don’t know,” suggested Mary. “It was the cow who jumped over the moon, and cows