"My Papa," Helen Louise announced happily.
Mrs. Cherry sensed something wrong. She looked at Arethusa more closely. "You ain't found him? Here, Cherry, you take the children and the bundles and put them in the waitin'-room and then come straight back here and we'll help Miss Worth'ton hunt her father."
"I don't want to be put in the waitin'-room!" wailed Helen Louise in protest, "I want to stay with Papa!"
Mrs. Cherry was reproving her and starting her off in the direction of the designated depository, when Arethusa interrupted the proceedings. She did not want Mrs. Cherry, kind as she had been and kind as her intentions still were to continue being, with her just now. If this was a fiasco to her Beautiful Dream she needed a few moments to face it alone. A funny sort of little pride gave her this feeling. She had talked to Mrs. Cherry so glowingly and at such length about her father and her Visit.
But Mr. Cherry, till just now silent, had a suggestion to make. "S'pose," he drawled, "if Miss Worth'ton wants to wait by herself here, Maria, me and you set inside awhile, and then if she finds she reely has missed him somehow, I might help her to look him up, mebbe."
Arethusa considered this a decidedly brilliant idea. It relieved her of present society, which though friendly was irksome, and promised future comfort.
She rewarded the tall, thin father of Helen Louise with a misty smile.
Mrs. Cherry thought it very good, also. Miss Worth'ton wasn't to worry a mite now, not a mite. If her father didn't come for her, the Cherry family would escort her right up to his front door.
So the little procession trailed away and left Arethusa once more alone, and most disconsolate, against her kindly iron pillar.
The station had gradually become deserted, until there were only a few employees pottering about here and there, and one lone man standing talking to the blue-capped man at the gate.