“I guess I should like it out your way too,” said Tom, turning his head as if it were not quite safe to look into her eyes at that moment, “and perhaps sometime I can come. I guess it’s good for folks to see something besides their own things, and—I know I should like it out West if you were there.”
And then they parted, each of them having apparently some trouble with the throat just then, and Tom drawing his sleeve across his eyes in a suspicious manner as he walked down the lane.
“The Lord bless and keep you and cause His face to shine upon you,” Ruel Saxon said solemnly as he bade the girl good-by at the depot.
It was the last word before the train pulled out, for Esther’s heart was full, and she could say no more after sending her love for the thousandth time to them all at home. And then the beautiful New England village, with its lovely homes and shaded streets, faded from Kate’s sight; the hills and the little fields, crossed by the old stone walls, rushed past her, and it was the wide green stretches of the home country for which the eyes of her heart were straining as she flew on into the West.
It was a great day for the family when she reached home. The doctor was at the depot, impatient as a boy over the three minutes’ delay in the train that brought her in, and he almost forgot to secure her trunk, or set her bag into the carriage, in his delight at seeing her.
“Well, I believe they must have treated you pretty well back there,” he said, pinching her cheek. And he would have had her on the scales before she left the depot if she had not protested that she could not spare a second getting weighed.
“I shall lose a pound for every minute we waste getting home,” she cried, jumping into the carriage; and at this he laughed, and putting the reins into her hands, told her to get the gray filly over the ground as fast as she pleased. How they did go dashing down the road, and what wonder that excitement was rife in the town that afternoon as to what member of the community was lying at the point of death that the doctor was going at such a rate to see him!
They were on the porch to greet her when she pulled up at the door, Mrs. Northmore and Virgie, with Aunt Milly gorgeous in her best cap and kerchief at the rear; and such a hugging and kissing, such a laughing and crying followed as might have made one wonder what would have happened if the girl had stayed away a year instead of a single summer.
It was good to be back—so good; she realized it more with every minute, and the trite old saying that the best part of going away from home is coming back again appealed to her as never before. The trunk was unpacked with all the household gathered round, but no one, not even Mrs. Northmore, daring to help, lest some precious token, tucked safely in by Kate’s own hand, should be drawn prematurely from its corner or shaken unwarily from the folds of a dress. Oh, the joy of drawing them out, one after another, and the bursts of delight with which they were received!
Virgie skipped about the room in glee over the trinkets which had been brought to her from Boston and the sea; Dr. Northmore declared he must have coffee made at once to give him a chance of using the beautiful cup which Stella had painted with just such blossoming honeysuckles as grew over the door from which he had carried away his bride; Aunt Milly stood agape over the glories of the black silk apron which her young ladies had embroidered for her in figures of the gayest colors—Jack Horner enjoying his Christmas pie in one corner, Miss Muffet frightened from her curds by the wicked black spider in another, and the muffin man with his tray on his head stalking proudly between; while as for Mrs. Northmore, she sat like a little child, her lap filling with treasures, nibbling now and then at the flag-root, or burying her face in those dear old odors, and lifting it again with smiles shining through the tears in her eyes.