“It’s time to start,” called Ted, with practised wisdom allowing ten minutes for good-byes, parting instructions, and forgotten messages.
The adieus were said. Aunt Grace, clasping Gail in her arms, began to sob, out of a full heart and a general need for the exercise. Gerald Fosland took the hand of his wife and kissed it, in most gallant fashion.
“I shall miss you dreadfully, my dear,” he stated.
“I shall be thinking of you,” responded Arlene, adjusting her veil.
Mrs. Davies drew Arlene into the drawing room.
“It was so sweet of you to agree to accompany Gail,” she observed. “It would be useless to attempt to influence her now, but I look to you to bring her back in a week. Her prospects are really too brilliant to be interrupted by an unfortunate episode of this nature.”
CHAPTER XV
BUT WHY WAS SHE LONESOME?
Everybody was at the depot to meet Gail; just everybody in the world! It was midnight when the train rolled in, and, as she came toward the gate, the faces outside, with the high station lights beaming down upon their eagerness, were like a flashing dream of all the faces she had ever loved. Of course there was her mother, a little stiff, a little sedate, a little reserved, but, under her calm exterior, fluttering with a flood of pent-up emotion. There was her father, a particularly twinkling-eyed gentleman, a somewhat thinner, somewhat older, somewhat neater edition of Uncle Jim, and he had, of all things, her favourite collie, Taffy, perched high on his shoulder! It was from her father that Gail had her vivacity and from her mother her faculty of introspection. Dazed by the unexpected delight, and the pain, too, of seeing all these dear old faces, she was for picking them out in detail, when Taffy made a blur of them. Taffy, suddenly recognising his playfellow in the throng, first deafened Miles Sargent with a series of welcoming barks, and then began climbing up his back. Sargent, always gifted with the capacity for over-estimating his own powers, a quality which had permitted his brother Jim to slightly outrun him in the game of life, had fondly hoped that he could restrain Taffy by the firm hold of the forepaws over his shoulder; but collies are endowed with a separate set of muscles for wriggling purposes alone, and the first thing Miles Sargent knew, Taffy had crawled right over him, and had kicked off from his cravat, and had shot straight through the outcoming throng, a flash of yelping brown and white, brushing over a woman with a basket, and landing against Gail with the force of all his lively affection.
That was only the beginning of the impetuosity with which she was received at home. She had never realised that she had quite so many friends, and even the people in the street seemed familiar, as she was bundled out to the car, with Arly smiling steadfastly in the background and remembered only at intervals. They looked more substantial and earnest and sincere and friendly, these people, than the ones with whom she had been recently associated. They were more polished in New York, more sure of themselves, more indifferent to the great mass of their fellow humanity, but here one could be trustful. It was so good to be home!
Of course Howard was there, just the same old Howard, and he bustled up to her with the same old air of proprietorship, quite as if nothing had ever happened to disturb their relations. It was he who took her by the arm and engineered her out to her father’s car. At first she was puzzled by his air of having a right to boss her around, and then the reason flashed on her mind. Pride! Howard did not want their set to know that he was no longer drum major in the Sargent procession.