Kate stood in the little vestibule, hanging to the door and looking back as long as she could see the three people she was leaving. Katherine was between the boys, hatless, in a blue smocked dress; she was waving and blowing kisses. She looked like a sister to the boys, and not even an older sister from the distance of the speeding bus. Then the vehicle jerked around a corner and Kate sat down, faced about the way they were going, and contemplated her own immediate future.
In school she had often sat watching the big clock over the blackboard in the front of the room; just before the minute hand reached the hour it had a way of suddenly jerking itself ahead with a little click. That was what had happened on the instant of parting from her mother—time, somehow, or at least her place in time, had jerked suddenly and unexpectedly ahead. Now the hour must be striking, she reflected whimsically, and she was at the beginning of a new one. So much the better. She expected it to be a wholly fascinating hour, and Elsie the unknown comrade was waiting in it.
CHAPTER III
THE COMRADE DOES NOT APPEAR
Although Kate kept her book “The King of the Fairies” on her lap in bus and trains, she did not look into its pages at all. Still it had its meaning and its use on the journey. It was something well known and dearly loved going with her into strangeness and uncertainty. Its purple cloth binding spoke to her through the tail of her eye even when she was most busy taking in the fleeting landscape. One would have thought her a seasoned traveller and a very well-poised person if he had seen her sitting so still, her hands lightly touching the closed book, her gaze missing little of interest in country and town as the train rushed along. But in reality her mind was as busy as the spinning wheels, and her thoughts ranged everywhere from the commonplace to the inspired; and as for her emotions, they were in a whir.
But the thought that recurred over and over and from which she never entirely escaped during the whole five hours of travel was this: was any one else in the world so happy and elated as she? People she saw looking from windows, people working in factories, people working in meadows, people walking on streets—how dull and uneventful their present hour was compared to her present hour! And the Hart boys back at home! How could they bear the commonplaceness of going on in the same spot all summer, doing the same things, and seeing the same people! And only one week ago she herself had been more than contented, happily expectant even, when she was facing just such a summer!
Of course, she wondered about Elsie a lot. In fact, she scarcely thought of Great Aunt Katherine at all. Would Elsie meet her at the South Station in Boston? Great Aunt Katherine’s letter had said Elsie’s maid would meet her. But surely Elsie herself would be there, too. Kate, for a minute, imagined herself in Elsie’s place, eagerly waiting among the crowds at the great terminal for the appearance of the new friend, wondering and speculating about her, just as Kate herself was wondering and speculating about Elsie.
The journey seemed very short. Kate could not believe they were actually in Boston until the conductor coming through assured her that in less than two minutes they would be in. But for Kate the next two minutes seemed longer than all the rest of the journey put together. She sat on the edge of the seat, one hand grasping the handle of her suitcase, the other clutching “The King of the Fairies.” And even in her tense excitement the long-drawn-outness of those two minutes made her think about the King of the Fairies and what he had taught, or rather shown, the girl and boy in the book about time—what a mysterious thing it was, quite man-made and not real. She could well believe it now. However, even that two minutes came to an end, as such eternities will.
At the train steps there were “red caps” galore clamouring for baggage to carry, and a pushing crowd of passengers who had poured down from the long line of coaches. Kate shook her head as a matter of course to the porters, and marched along, her rather heavy leather bag, marked with the initials K. M. in white chalk, in one hand, the book and her purse—not a very good balance—in the other. No one could come out into the train shed to meet you, Kate remembered now from the two or three times she had been in that station with her mother. Well, Elsie would be up at the entrance, standing on tiptoes, looking off over heads until their eyes met. How should they know each other? No special arrangement had been made to insure Kate’s being recognized. But Katherine had said, “Don’t worry. Aunt Katherine’s not one to bungle anything. She or Elsie or the maid, probably all three, will spot you at once. And if they don’t, all you have to do is to find a telephone booth and call up the Oakdale house.” And now, coming up through the shed, straining her eyes toward the gate, Kate had not the slightest doubt that the minute her eyes met Elsie’s eyes they would know each other. She had lived in anticipation of this minute now so steadily for so long that she would feel confident of picking Elsie out in a crowd of a thousand girls all of the same age.
But she was getting near the gate and still she had seen no one that might be Elsie. Then, walking on tiptoes for a second, a difficult feat when you are as loaded down as she was, she did see a girl standing a little way back from the gate and watching the passengers with impatient eagerness as they came through. For an instant the eyes of the two girls met. Kate went suddenly, unexpectedly shy at that encounter. But instantly an inner Kate squared her shoulders, in a way the inner Kate had, and forbade the outer Kate to tremble. And when Kate, in a flash, had restored herself to herself, she knew that the girl waiting there was certainly not Elsie; she was too utterly different from anything she had imagined about her. There! She was right. The girl had greeted the woman just ahead of Kate and they hurried off together talking volubly. Kate drew a relieved sigh. She never could have liked that overdressed girl as well as she knew she was going to like Elsie. They would never have become chums and comrades.
But now she herself was outside the gate. She suddenly realized that her suitcase was very heavy and put it down. Simultaneously she looked around confidently for a friendly, welcoming face, for the eyes of the new comrade. There was no such face, no such eyes. But she did become aware of a youngish woman, in a very smart gray tailored suit and Parisian looking black hat with a gray wing, bearing directly down upon her. She was certainly too young to be Great Aunt Katherine; but it was hard to believe that such smartness and apparent distinction could belong to a maid.