The Life of Jane- Chapter Six continued

                                 Scholarship Time - Chapter Six continued


          In early March 1959, three months before Jane's Graduation Day,she was  in Fredericton, sitting in a big room on a big wooden chair.
She wore a red cashmere sweater, a white Peter Pan blouse with short sleeves, a grey woolen skirt, and brown oxford shoes. Of course she was also wearing a brasier, panties and a slip. But the men in the room  of course, didn't know anything about Jane's underclothes.
       Three men all dressed in dark suits, dark ties and white shirts sat across from her on the other side of a dark oak table.
     "Now tell us Miss Sinclair why do you think you deserve the Beaverbrook Scholarship?" a tall grey-haired man with a grey moustache asked her. He sat in the middle of the trio. That opening question launched a two hour question and answer session between Jane and the three men. She must have impressed them, as did her graduating marks, which with the exception of one B were all straight A's.
     After Graduation Day Jane came back to Fredericton, making plans  to take a journey while working again at the golf club. While she took orders, swept and vacuumed the floors and cleaned and polished knives, forks and spoons, she thought constantly about the Beaverbrook scholarship. Would she win it or not? At night time after watching some t.v. program  or going out with her brother Tom, who was now studying to be a doctor at Dalhousie university, she would listen to the radio before dozing off to sleep
     But before she fell asleep or after waking up in the morning, one of the first things on her mind was the question:Did I win or not? She would phone home in the middle of the weekday, nearly every day when she was at the golf club and ask her mother "Is there anything in the mail about the scholarship?"
    For a month and a half, that is until mid-August, her mother would usually reply, "Jane nothing like that came to-day." And then on a sunny hot day in August, Mrs. Sinclair told Jane over the phone,"There's something here for you dear."
    Jane quickly asked the supervisor in the golf club if she could just go home for an hour. "Fine with me," the man replied and  watched in surprise as Jane tore out of the club, got on her motorcycle and roared off home. Once there  she ran up the stairs of the Sinclair house and slammed the front door shut.
     "It's on the kitchen table,"  her mother said as she sat in the livning room. "I haven't opened it."
      On the kitchen table was a cream-coloured envelope with a Beaverbrook scholarship on the envelope's left hand corner. Jane trembled as she tore open the envelope . "We are happy to inform you," the typed letter began, "that you have won..."
      Jane read no further. She screamed with joy, ran over to the livng room and hugged her mother.
     "I did it mum, I did it!" she shouted. "I've won the scholarship. I'm going to London. To London. Oh that's wonderful."
     Jane kissed her mother and ran away from the house  into the sweltering day that had nary a cloud in the sky. Then she sat in a nearby park and cried with joy. Hours later,  as dusk settled over Fredericton, Jane still couldn't believe her good luck. She was going to London on a Beaverbrook Scholarship. Amazing, she thought, just amazing.