Frankie protested.
“Brownsville Landing!” she cried. “Oh, Cousin Ella! It’s the worst place!”
She remembered visits there in the summer holidays, the boredom of it, the ugliness. But Minnie assured her that it would only be temporary, while they looked about and made their plans. She brought forward the sensibleness of it, made Frances feel how rash and headstrong it would be not to go.
She had her way, as she always did. The house was closed, the furniture sold, the servants dismissed. After a curious fortnight in a boarding house nearby, where their friends came to say good-by, they went off, with all their effects in two modest trunks.
Early in the afternoon they reached Brownsville Landing.
Even grief could not blind them to the fact that they were interesting figures—two young orphans. They were aware that every one of the idlers in the station knew who they were and where they were going. They followed Thomas Washington to the battered old surrey and sat down, perfectly decorous, without turning their heads, conscious nevertheless of being regarded with sympathy, with speculation.
They were tacitly agreed that it would not be correct to talk; in silence and concealing all trace of curiosity they went rattling off up Main Street and along the dusty five-mile road to the farm.
Their grandmother was waiting for them in terror. How to console them? Their loss seemed to her so terrible, so desolating. She could with truth say nothing better than—“You are utterly ruined and alone in the world, friendless and penniless.” She watched the carriage coming, with the girls side by side, images of decent grief, perfectly restrained; then, when the carriage stopped, the restraint vanished, and they rushed into her arms, sobbing.
She led them into the darkened parlour, and sat down on the sofa between them, trying in a trembling voice to comfort them with religion and proverbs, inextricably mixed. But Frankie was not in any way to be quieted. She wept so violently, so passionately that the old lady could think of nothing better to do than to lead her upstairs and urge her to lie down.
“There! There!” she murmured. “What can Grandma do for you?”