The brook was at hand, sparkling and clear, in which to wash her face, and she had a tiny mirror in her bag to tidy her hair. By way of breakfast until she could do better she folded one of the examination question papers into a cup and drank a long, sweet draught.
While she was setting her hat straight, far in the distance she heard a humming sound, and for the first time she noticed the poles and wires of a trolley line perhaps half a mile away over the fields. Sure enough! That was the new trolley line that had just been completed. She could ride on it as far as it went and then walk to another line perhaps. Somehow now that she was away she wanted to go far enough away from home to be really in a new atmosphere, where people would not find her and tell the Masseys about her. She must get at least a hundred miles away from home, perhaps more, or it would be no use going at all. Yet she dared not take much of a ride on the train, it would eat into her small hoard too much and leave her nothing to get started on when she found a new home. But a trolley! One could go a good many miles for five cents. She strained her eyes to watch for the car and soon spied it, a black speck moving from the east, growing momently larger and more distinct against the brightness of the morning. There would likely be another one going in the opposite direction soon. Could she make it across the fields before it came? They would probably run every half-hour. If she missed this next one it would not be so long to wait for the next. Was it too early for a girl to board a car in the open country? She eyed the sun. It could not be more than five o’clock. She decided to try for it, and picking up her small effects was soon on her way across the fields.
Fortune favored her, and a car came along soon after she arrived at the highway. She boarded it and found a seat in the end next to a laborer with a pickaxe and muddy boots, who was fast asleep and did not even know when she sat down. Most of the men in the car were laborers and were nodding drowsily, scarcely looking at one another. She was the only woman in the car, but they paid no heed to her, and she dropped back into the seat as the car lurched on its way, thankful that her hasty glance revealed no acquaintance from Meadow Brook or Heatherdell. She put her head back against the window and closed her eyes and her senses seemed to swim away from her. She suddenly realized that she had had no supper the night before and no breakfast but spring water that morning. All the strain of the day before and the terrible night seemed to climax in that moment, and for an instant she felt as if she were losing her consciousness. Then her will came to the front and she set her lips and determined to pull through no matter how hard the ride or how long the fast. She was young and this was her testing. She must not, she would not faint.
The car stopped for a moment to let on some more tired-looking men going to their work, and a whiff of spring blew in at her window fanning her brow. She thought again of the hand of her mother, and wondered if God were reminding her that He cared, and new strength seemed to come into her.
She was awakened from a half drowse at the next stop by the sound of a voice that sent terror through her heart. It was the same hoarse voice breaking out in raucous laughter that she had heard half subdued in the graveyard the night before, the one they had called “Kid.”
CHAPTER VIII
Joyce sat up startled and peered furtively from her window.
The man was outside waiting to board the car. He was big and red and ugly, with bold blue eyes and red hair. He had a weak mouth and a cruel jaw, and she couldn’t help shrinking into her corner as she looked. Suppose he had been the one to catch her and hold her hands in a vise-like grip last night! Her soul turned sick within her.
He came up the steps prating in a loud voice about women, called them “dames” and “skirts,” and his laughter was an offense. Laughter is like smells, it can be fragrant as the morning or it can be foul as the breath of a gutter. This man’s laughter was like a noxious gas.
Joyce would have fled if the aisle had not been blocked either way. Failing in that she shrank still further back in her seat, drew her hat over her eyes, and found herself trembling in every fibre. Why did such a man have to be on the earth, she wondered as she heard his voice going on in coarse remarks. And what possible companionship, even in business, could he have with the man she knew, whom she had always thought fine of soul?