To round out the experiences of the winter, fate decreed that Mr. Farnshaw could not come for her, and the glitter of the inside of a railway coach, with its brass lamps, plush seats, and polished woods, was added to her experimental knowledge. Luther was somehow connected in her mind with the day’s experiences and she wished devoutly that she could talk to him about the disappointment of leaving her school before the end of the term, and of this journey home on the train, and of Hugh. Yes, Elizabeth would have told Luther even of Hugh. Luther Hansen was to Elizabeth Farnshaw unchanged and unchangeable. The transformations of her own life did not call for any such transformations in him. He was Luther. It had been his mental processes which had won and now sustained her attachment for him. Their two minds had worked together as one mind while they had struggled with the innocent problems of their childhood days, and Elizabeth still felt incomplete without him. She had been less conscious of Luther’s absence the first year than at any time since his going away, but in Topeka, and now that she was approaching the scene of their association together, Elizabeth wanted him with a depth of homesickness she had never felt before. It was hard to go back to the old battleground and not find him there. The prospects in store for her at home made her shrink. Elizabeth fell to wondering if any improvement in that home were possible. She had had them quite cheerfully in mind all winter, but now that the distance between her home and herself lessened rapidly a feeling of inadequacy came upon her, and the glitter of the wonderful coach in which she was riding was forgotten. Could she help? The only thing that was very clear to her was that much patience would be necessary. At Uncle Nathan’s they had been gentle and loving and tolerant.
“Can I make them see it—and see how?” she asked herself so many times that the wheels beneath her took up the refrain.
“Gentle and loving and tolerant—gentle and loving and tolerant—gentle and loving and tolerant,” they sang for miles as she sat with her young brow puckered into a deep frown.
The realities of life were thrust into the foreground the moment Elizabeth arrived, and for new reasons she missed Luther. Mr. Farnshaw resented the new circular.
“Is that th’ damned fool kind of coat she was talkin’ about?” he inquired as his daughter alighted from the farm wagon at the kitchen door that afternoon. “It ain’t got no warmth,” he added scornfully. “Th’ ain’ nothin’ to it but looks, an’ not much of that. What ’d y’ you do with th’ coat you had?”
The old heartsickening contention had begun.
“I’ve got it.”
“Well, you see that you wear it and don’t go makin’ a fool out of yourself around here. I’d ’a’ kept my money if I’d ’a’ knowed it was goin’ t’ be put into a thing that’d swell up in th’ wind like a balloon.”
Mrs. Farnshaw saw the look that swept over Elizabeth’s face and instinctively ranged herself on the side of the young girl. She saw with a woman’s eyes the style in the garment and its importance in her daughter’s appearance. When Elizabeth took it off her mother took it to the bedroom to put it away, remarking in a whisper that it made her look quite like a school-teacher ought to look. She was secretly glad that her daughter had it, since it was already paid for and she did not have to make it. It would be the most observed wrap in the schoolhouse the next Sunday if she could only persuade Elizabeth to go to meeting. The metal clasp had virtues all its own.
“I think it’s ever so much more stuck-up than if it had buttons,” she whispered.