‘I want my best shoes, an’ a wing on my finger, an’ the axe to kill the fatted calf.’
Would the basket never be empty? Her head began to throb, and she felt as if her body were an ache personified. The mingled odours of corned beef and cabbage issued from one of the pots and permeated the freshly ironed clothes. She drew a long, deep breath of disgust. At least in Boston she would be free from the horrors of ‘boiled dinner.’
Her scanty wardrobe was finished at last, and she stood waiting for Abraham Lincoln and the spring waggon to carry her to the station. A strange tenderness towards her old environment came over her, as she stood on the threshold of the great unknown. She looked lovingly at the cows, lazily chewing their cud in the sunshine; she felt sorry for her step-mother, as she strove to woo slumber to Polly’s wakeful eyes with the same lullaby which had done duty for the whole six; she even found it in her heart to kiss Lemuel, who, with his ready talent for the unusual, was busily cramming mud paste into the seams of the little trunk which held her worldly all. She looked at it with contemptuous pity.
‘You poor old thing! You’ll feel as small as I shall among the saratogas and the style. Well, I’ll be honest from the start and tell them that the only thing we’re rich in is mortgages. I guess they’ll know without the telling. I wonder if they’ll be ashamed of me?’
Her father came and lifted the trunk into the back of the waggon, and they started along the grass-bordered road to the station. He began recalling the city as he remembered it.
‘You’ll have to go to Bunker Hill, of course, and the Common, and be sure and look out for the statues, they’re everywhere. Lincoln freeing the slaves—that’s the best one to my thinking, and that’s down in Cornhill, if I remember right. My, but that’s a place! Mind you hold tight to your cousins. The streets, and the horses, and the people whirl round so, it’s enough to make you lose your head. Well, well, I wouldn’t mind going along with you to see the sights.’
He bought her ticket, and secured her a comfortable seat, then he said, ‘God bless you,’ and went away.
Pauline looked after him wonderingly. He had never said it to her before. Perhaps it was a figure of speech which people reserved for travelling. She supposed there was always the danger of a possible accident. Ah! if they could only have started off together, as he said, and never gone back to Sleepy Hollow any more!