"Well, I will say this," remarked Mrs. Cherry, as she divided Arethusa's contribution into equal portions between her offspring, after the donor had succeeded in convincing her that she honestly wanted none of it. "I will say this for my children. They might be acting like hoodlums over this here food, but they ain't never seen none just like it before," She bit into one of Mandy's beaten biscuit sandwiches with the pink ham in between, herself, with relish. "Your aunt must have a mighty good cook. She cert'inly must!"
Watching the little Cherry's devour her lunch and the garrulity of their mother consumed so much time for Arethusa, that almost before she knew it the little wave of excitement denoting the nearing of a journey's end swept through the car. The conductor passed by and gathered the little slips of stiff paper from the men's hats; every passenger began his or her peculiar preparations for leaving the train.
Mrs. Cherry began gathering up her boxes and parcels. Helen Louise was sent to the water cooler to wet a handkerchief and then her face and Peter's were vigorously scrubbed. At any other time, Mrs. Cherry would have dragged both children to the cooler, but she was not taking any chances with pretty, unprotected Arethusa. No one else should have that seat of hers.
The baggageman came through the car; calling as he went, "Anybaggageyouwantdeliveredinthe-city, car-ri-age or omnibus."
It gave Arethusa a most delightful little thrill all down her spine to hear him. She was not exactly sure he was the person to give her check to, but decided it would be best to obey the letter of the law this time. Miss Eliza had mentioned no baggageman, but she had been most explicit in her directions to Arethusa that she give that check to no one but her father.
She rescued her hat from its paper protection and put it on her tumbled hair, from which some of the precious hairpins had fallen during the excitement of the journey; unfolded her coat and donned it; drew on the cotton gloves and clutched her purse and satchel once more as when she had started, and with the death grip Miss Eliza had adjured for fear of those pickpockets with which railway stations are always infested, and Arethusa was Ready. And she was ready with a palpitating heart, for the brakeman had accommodatingly called, "Lewisburg," right in her very own ear, as if he wished her to be quite sure this was the right place to leave her seat.
Mrs. Cherry had been very busy with her progeny and her paraphernalia and impedimenta of various sorts—it was marvelous how she managed to gather them all together with only two hands—and she was ready also. But even in the midst of this sleight of hand performance, she did not forget her self-constituted guardianship of Arethusa.
"Sure you're going to know your Pa?" she enquired. "Don't you want me to be waiting and help you hunt for him?"
No, Arethusa was very, very sure she would know him. She did not need any help to find him.
And then with one last shrieking grind of the wheels, the train stopped in the shed at Lewisburg, and Arethusa, all injunctions to sit still for a half hour forgotten as if they had never been, immediately began with her fellow passengers a movement towards the door. But so slow was this movement that her impatient heart thought she would never, never be out of that car.