Mrs. Boyd was going over her past life. It had been much in her mind the last year. A commonplace factory girl earning her living, an orphan at that. Her dream was a lover, presently, marriage, a little home, and keeping it tidy, and babies of her very own. The lover came, a nice steady machinist with a little education, saving up money, marriage and the home of a few rooms, buying this and that of the simplest kind, and then the baby, a nice, plump, blue-eyed boy who grew apace and was the delight of both. What more could she ask for? That was certainly content.
He took out a small life insurance, though it almost broke her heart to think of his dying. And she never dreamed of the baby. He was so well and strong and joyous. Yet a few days’ illness swept him out of the world, and almost broke their hearts. Then a little girl came. She liked girls the best, they were more to the mother. She could make their clothes, they could go out together. Then lovers would come and marriage, and all the everyday interest of new lives.
One sad day James Boyd was brought home dead. Something had gone wrong with the machinery and before it could be stopped his life had been beaten out. Neighbors were kind to her, the employer took charge of the funeral, but there were other sorrows and losses in the world.
She had one brother of whom she had seen very little, as he had gone West when a mere boy. He had a big farm and five children and he wrote for her to come out, as his wife had recently died. The steady home looked so inviting. Yes, she would go.
The life insurance had been well invested by a friend of her husbands’.
“Don’t disturb it,” he counseled. “You may not like it there and want to come back, and your brother may marry again. There’s enough to give you a nice start in something.”
If she had never gone! How many times she had wondered! For midway in the journey there was a horrible accident in a small town where two roads crossed. The child flew out of her arms and she lay unconscious. There was no hospital. Kindly neighbors took in the wounded and the dead.
When she came to herself one morning the child was fretting and she nursed it. She could not remember distinctly, but they were both alive and she gave thanks as she hugged the child to her heart.
“Will you have some breakfast? You had a good natural sleep last night, and the baby is all right. The other poor baby was killed and its mother is dying, maybe dead now. There was so much confusion. The baggage car was wrecked and burned, the trunks lost, and it seems so hard to get on track of relatives. Some cannot be identified.”
The listener shuddered. Then the breakfast came and she ate it with an eager appetite.