Lady Jane

LADY JANE WAS LINGERING ON THE SIDEWALK, NEAR THE GREEN FENCE
LADY JANE BY MRS. C. V. JAMISON Author of “Toinette’s Philip”
NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. 1922
Copyright, 1891, by The Century Co. Copyright renewed 1918 Printed in U. S. A.
LADY JANE
LADY JANE
It was in the beautiful Teche country, on a passenger train of the Louisiana and Texas Railroad, that “Lady Jane” first saw a blue heron.
The month was July, the weather was intensely hot, and the dusty, ill-ventilated car was closely packed with a motley crowd. Among the travelers were Texas ranchmen, cattle dealers from the Opelousas, Cajan farmers from the Attakapas, nuns, priests, itinerant merchants, tired, dusty women, dressed in cotton gowns and sun-bonnets, and barefooted, white-headed children, very noisy and restless, wandering constantly back and forth between the water-tank and their lunch-baskets, eating cold chicken or munching stale biscuit. The ranchmen and cattle dealers talked in loud, good-natured voices; the nuns bent over their prayer-books; the priests yawned and nodded; the merchants displayed their wares; the children fretted; the babies cried, while the weary mothers patted, tossed, and coaxed them with untiring love and patience; and the train flew on, with its hot, dusty passengers, over as beautiful a country as ever was seen, through level stretches of sugar-cane and rice, crossed by narrow bayous that intersected the green plane, catching here and there gleams of sunlight, like silver threads, through the dark cypress swamps, whose bleached trees were crowned with hoary moss, while the trunks were clothed in living green, and festooned with the lovely blossoms of the jasmine, and wild passion-flowers entwined with masses of delicate vines, twisted together in cords and loops of luxuriant verdure, that clambered upward from the dank soil toward the sunlight and the blue sky. In places the track seemed to run over beds of glossy latanea and swaying swamp-grasses, where glistened little shallow pools covered with lily-pads and white fragrant blossoms.