Oddly enough, at that moment Glory was saying to herself, as she hurried down the street, “I wish she wouldn't call me her ‘Disappointment’ like that—dear auntie! There's any quantity of love in it, but I don't like the sound of it. It reminds me of the trains I've missed, and the books I've forgotten, and—oh, me!—all the lessons I haven't learned! I wish auntie didn't care so much about such things—I don't!”
It was a splendid September day. The sweet, sharp air kissed the girl's fresh cheeks into blushes and sent her feet dancing along with the very joy of locomotion. In spite of herself Glory began to be happy. And the girls were at the station to see her off—that was an unexpected compliment. They ran to meet her excitedly.
“Quick, quick, Glory! We've ‘held up’ the train as long as we can!” they chorused. “Didn't you know you were late, for pity's sake? And it's the Crosspatch Conductor's day, too—we've had an awful time coaxing him to wait! But he's a real dear, after all.”
“Give me your books—help her on, Judy! There, take 'em quick! Good-by.”
“Our sympathies go-o with—yo-oo-ou!”
The chorus of gay voices trailed after her, as she stood alone on the platform. With a final wave of her book-strap she went dolefully inside. Suddenly the September getting-off intoxication oozed out of her finger-tips. She tumbled into the nearest seat with a sigh. It was even worse than she had anticipated.
“I wish the girls hadn't come down,” she thought ungratefully. “Sending their condolences after me like that! I guess I could see the triumph in Judy Wells' face, and Georgia Kelley's, and all their faces. They were hugging themselves for not having to go back to the seminary. Nobody's got to but just poor me. I declare, I'm so sorry for you, Glory Wetherell, and I think I'm going to cry!”
The “girls,” all four of them, had graduated the previous spring. Only heedless, unstudy-loving Glory had lagged over into another year, and must go back and forth from little Douglas to the Center Town Seminary all by herself. Every morning and every night—the days loomed ahead of her, not to be numbered or borne. Well, it was hard. No more merry chattering rides, as there had been last year when the girls were her companions. No more gay little car-feasts on the home trips, out of the carefully hoarded remnants of their dinners.
“I wish I'd kept up in mathematics and things!” lamented Glory, gazing at the flying landscape with gloomy eyes. “If I'd known how this was going to feel, I'd have done it if it killed me. Think of a year of this! Two times three quarters of an hour is an hour and a half. Let me see—in the three terms there'll be three times sixty-five days. Three times sixty-five is”—Glory figured slowly—“one hundred and ninety-five days! An hour and a half in one day—in one hundred and ninety-five days there will be—oh, forever!” groaned Glory. She sat and looked into the year to come with a gloomy face. In spite of herself she multiplied one hundred and ninety-five by one and a half.
“That's the number of hours you're going to sit here on a car-seat, is it?” she demanded of herself. “It's a nice prospect, isn't it? You'll have a charming time, won't you? Aren't you glad you didn't keep up in things?”