Joan, already exhilarated by a foretaste of independence, and enjoying to the full what Turgenev calls "that carelessness, that deuce-take-it air which comes out so naturally in foreign travel," changed at Broad Street for a local train that stops at all the smart little flower-bedecked stations which make the environs of Philadelphia so charming to the eye. Neat turnouts were waiting at most of them, dog-carts with dapper grooms at the horses' heads, big machines driven by bare-headed young people in sports clothes; here and there a quietly elegant brougham or limousine with men in livery on the box.
As her train passed, she caught glimpses of mellow, red-brick houses that gave the effect of age without decadence; tree-lined avenues, hot-houses, gardens, velvet lawns. It was country that lacked the broad, picturesque loveliness of Kentucky landscape, but it had a definite charm of its own—a well-ordered, leisurely, finished permanence which reminded one that not only American history but American society had its stronghold here, changing less than elsewhere in our adolescent land. There was no suggestion, as in the South, of having seen better days; no raw, temporary promise of the future as in the Middle West. Joan remembered having heard that many people who danced in the Philadelphia Assembly of to-day bore the same names as those who danced in it when Philadelphia was the country's capital, and Mr. Washington its first President. She wondered hopefully whether Desmond was one of those names....
People got in and out of the train, carrying golf-bags and tennis-rackets. Joan smoothed the skirt of the "little model" Effie May had provided for traveling purposes; a fawncolored crêpe with lacy cuffs and collar, which had at first given her qualms of uneasiness. There was a long cloth coat to match, and a hat of the costliest simplicity; and she was not used to traveling dressed as for a party. Now, however, she was grateful for her step-mother's insistence, with a gratitude which increased in proportion to the distance between them.
"Always dress up on a train," was Effie May's sage counsel, "so that people will notice you're a lady, and treat you according."
People had undoubtedly noticed, and she had been treated "according"; and now toward her journey's end it was particularly agreeable to feel that among these fellow-travelers on pleasure bent she need have no qualms as to her personal appearance, at least. Underneath she might know herself to be plain, poor little Joan Darcy, an adventuress in search of a husband; but on the surface she was as affluent a young lady as ever rang for the porter to lower a shade that was within two feet of her hand.
It may be premature to state that our heroine had already adjusted her future to her present pleasing environment; but the fact remains that when the train stopped at the station for which her subconscious mind had fortunately been listening, Joan was just in the act of moving Ellen Neal and her mother's furniture into a large Quaker house with a gambrel roof....
Betty was waiting for her in a dog-cart; brown as a berry, with sleeves rolled up, and a bare, tousled head, quite a different young person already from the shy little girl who had been her slave at the Convent.
"Hurry up, old Joie!" she called, wrestling with the cob, who rose on his hind legs to snort at the snorting engine, while a diminutive groom tried with frantic leapings to reach his head. "The Rabbit hates to stand! Run and get Miss Darcy's things, Jenks" (this to the groom) "and be quick about it, will you? You see," she explained as Joan climbed perilously aboard and was duly kissed, "when I left, Mother was two up and four to play, and it's the finals, and she's already got a leg on the cup. Great, isn't it? We'll have to gallop all the way to get there before it's over!"
"What are you talking about?" asked mystified Joan. "A leg on the cup—!" Hitherto golf had not entered into her vocabulary; though she had gazed at it from afar, wondering at the strange ways men choose to waste their golden hours.
"Why, the tournament, of course! Didn't I write you? We're deep in it. Where are your clubs, by the way?" She glanced at Joan's bag and parasol-case. "Oh, dear! Have you left them on the train?"