“She’s a lazy, good-for-nothing, frivolous huzzy!” declared Mrs. Bubble in hot wrath.
“I’ve been looking for just that kind,” asserted Wallingford. “She’ll do for me. Fannie, get into the buggy. I came down to take you for a ride to the depot.”
“If she goes away from this house she don’t come back till she gets down on her knees and begs my forgiveness!” shrieked the woman.
“If she does that I’ll have her sent to a bugitorium,” declared Wallingford. “She don’t need to come back here. I’ll take care of her myself. You’ll go with me, won’t you, Fannie?”
“Anywhere,” she said brokenly.
“Then come on.”
Turning, he helped her into the buggy and they drove away, followed by the invectives of Mrs. Bubble. The girl was in a tumult of emotion, her whole little world clattering down about her ears. Bit by bit her story came out. It was sordid enough and trivial enough, but to her it was very real. That afternoon she had planned to go to the country for ferns with a few girls, and they were to meet at the house of one of her friends at one o’clock. Her stepmother had known about it three days in advance, and had given her consent. When the time came, however, she had suddenly insisted that Fannie stop to wash the dishes, which would have made her a half-hour late. There followed protest, argument, flat order and as flat refusal—then the handle of the feather duster. It was not an unusual occurrence for her stepmother to slap her, Fannie admitted in her bitterness. Her father, pompous enough outside, was as wax in the hands of his termagant second wife, and, though his sympathies were secretly with the girl, he never dared protect her.
They had driven straight out the west road in the excitement, but Wallingford, remembering in time his train schedule, made the straightest détour possible to the depot. He had barely time to buy his tickets when the train came in, and he hurried Fannie into the parlor car, her head still in a whirl and her confusion heightened by the sudden appreciation of the fact that she had no hat. The stop at Blakeville was but a brief one, and as the train moved away Fannie looked out of the window and saw upon the platform of the little depot, as if these people were a part of another world entirely, the station agent, the old driver of the dilapidated ’bus, Bob Ranger and others equally a part of her past life, all looking at her in open-mouthed astonishment. Turning, as the last familiar outpost of the town slipped by, she timidly reached out her hand and laid it in that of Wallingford.
The touch of that warm hand laid on his electrified Wallingford. Many women had loved him, or thought they did, and he had held them in more or less contempt for it. He had regarded them as an amusement, as toys to be picked up and discarded at will; but this, somehow, was different. A sudden and startling resolve came to him, an idea so novel that he smiled over it musingly for some little time before he mentioned it.
“By George!” he exclaimed by and by; “I’m going to marry you!”