“And does she?” I looked up at the Baxter girl. “I’m always afraid of a bad ending. Does she get back in the end?”
The Baxter girl fluttered through the pages.
“The money’s stolen first—a man takes it—while she’s asleep——Oh, it’s beastly, that scene. She has to save it all up again. It takes her years. But—oh, yes, she does go back.”
“The railway journey,” said Miss Howe. “Do you remember?”
“If you want happy endings”—the Baxter girl flattened out the last page with a jerk—“there you are!”
I read over her shoulder. The strong scent that hung about her seemed to float between me and the page.
“Here we are—where she gets to the station. ‘Eden,’ Madala calls it, but the woman calls it ‘Breckonridge.’
At last and at last the station-board with the familiar name flashed past her window. She thrilled. The station lamps repeated it as the train slowed down. She thought—how long the platform’s grown! ... a bookstall! ... a bookstall on each side! ... there used not to be ... wasn’t the station smaller?...
She spoke to the ticket collector shyly, blushing, like a girl going to an assignation and thinking that all the world must know it.
He answered, already catching at the ticket of the traveller behind her—