Thanks to that flight of Elinor and Ross to the seashore, the State Fair had been only a memory for more than a month. But diligent search by Miss Eliza, in the way of inquiries at church and when in town, had discovered a friend who was going to Lewisburg later in the Fall to shop, and who would be more than glad to take the girl under her wing. Then almost at the very last moment this promised company was forced to abandon her trip and Arethusa was left high and dry. The fate of her Visit trembled in the balance for a few days. Miss Eliza was strongly inclined to postpone the whole affair until she could arrange things to go with her niece herself, but she finally gave in to the pleading that Arethusa was entirely ready. Why should she wear the first freshness off her outfit before she made this Visit?
But if she was going alone, she was going fully-equipped so far as advice was concerned. Miss Eliza had spent several conscientious hours of instruction and counsel. Arethusa had been told a dozen times over just what she was to do, and that she was to leave the train only when it stopped for the very last time to stay, without going on. The terminus of the line was Lewisburg.
"And if you sit there a half an hour, you make sure," said Miss Eliza, firmly.
A great many people, added she, especially young people, get lost by leaving trains at wrong stations.
Miss Letitia contributed her quota also, though it was more in actual preparation for contingencies that might arise than advice. Arethusa's name and address had been sewed in everything she had on, "in case of accident." Miss Letitia had had a dream one night of an unidentified body lying by a railroad track after a wreck. She dreamed the body to be Arethusa's. Then she had read, very often, of folks whose sense of their own identity had been taken from them most completely by a blow on the head; this also had happened in wrecks. Should there be a wreck and the dream come true, or the other horrible thing happen, in either case they would never know what became of Arethusa. The thought harrowed Miss Letitia. Fortunately, she had only dreamed the dream the one time, so there was not quite so much danger of it being fulfilled. Had she dreamed it three nights, Arethusa should never have gone a step on this trip. But even had the other dreadful thing occurred, it would have been the most careless searcher who would have failed to discover just who Arethusa was and where she belonged, after Miss Letitia had finished her labeling, in slanting, old-fashioned letters on neatly bound-down squares of white linen.
The traveller carried a small packet of baking-soda, tucked into a corner of her satchel by the long-sighted Miss Letitia, "in case of car-sickness." There was nothing so good for nausea as soda.
Arethusa wore the dark blue suit Miss Letitia had made her, with its plain, full gathered skirt, all lined for better warmth, and its double-breasted coat, trimmed with the buttons from one of her great-grandfather's broadcloth suits. Her traveling waist was pongee.
"Pongee is the best material to travel in that I know of," said Miss Eliza. "It never shows the least bit of soil."
It was buttoned modestly to her throat, ending in a straight line, neither high nor low which would have been most trying to nearly everyone, but above which Arethusa's flower face rose as lovely as ever. Her hat was a plain round felt trimmed with two really beautiful turkey feathers that Miss Eliza had been saving carefully since the winter previous. Arethusa had never had a feather on a hat before (only ribbons, the year round), and she considered these feathers the height of elegance. Her hair was fixed on the top of her head for the very first time in her life, a graduation from the long red plait just for this glorious Visit. Her feeling about that heavy, unbecomingly arranged roll, and the hairpins which held it in place, was an indescribable mixture of pride and elation and satisfaction.
Clutched tightly in one white, cotton-gloved hand was Mandy's contribution, a small, neatly tied-up box of lunch. Her extra money was in a little bag on a string around her neck, where Miss Eliza had also deposited the trunk check. There was only the tiniest possible amount of change in her purse. She carried a hand-satchel so ancient in appearance that it might have been the forerunner of all hand-satchels, and her trunk was a wee round-topped affair of red leather with a canvas cover. It was a trunk which had been last viewed by the public when Miss Eliza and Miss Letitia attended the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. Miss Eliza was not one to expend money for anything, when what she already had was still perfectly good, albeit a trifle out of date.