In five minutes the little fellow was in his own cosey “nest,” unconscious how he arrived there, and dreaming of a poultry-house full of downy chickens helping him to eat honey from a broken custard-cup.
The last to fall asleep that night under the old-time roof was Isabelle. Long after the others were at rest she sat by the uncurtained window of her “studio,” watching the clouds in the sky, and feeling anything but happy.
“All the others are so busy, and all are earning their own money except me! Oh! nobody knows how hard it is! To give up everything I liked and bury myself alive in a horrid country town, which isn’t even a village, but a collection of scattered tenements, with people living in them who never call upon their neighbors, except, of course, the Brooks. But they ought to be kind; they enticed us here! Though I did think this morning it all was going to be better and easier; to-night I’m utterly discouraged. If it weren’t for breaking my mother’s heart, I’d run away!”
Poor Isabelle! She had been the “show pupil” of her class, and the real talent she did possess had been magnified by injudicious praise into what was “genius” in her own estimation. She had been the only one who had disliked the country project, and she found her trials even greater than she had anticipated.
Presently, by dwelling upon the dark side of her lot, she had worked herself up into a most unenviable state of mind, and had thrown herself dramatically upon the floor to sob her grief away. But after a while she became conscious of some noise outside the building, and timidity very promptly banished melodrama.
She sat up and strained her ears to hear.
Crunch! crunch! crunch!
“Why—it—sounds—like—like—wheels!” she murmured with chattering teeth.
“Whack! bang!”
Surely that was a muttered imprecation which she caught!