A sense of buoyancy bore her up. Her feet touched the grass of the meadow as if it had been full of springs. She lost the consciousness of her great weariness. Her soul had found wings. She was walking into a crimson path of the sunset, and April was in her lungs. How good to be away from the smell of pork chops and hot cabbage, the steam of potatoes and Gene Massey’s voice. Never, never would she go back. Not for all the things she had left behind. They were few. She was glad she had her few little trinkets. They were all that mattered anyway. Except the fur neckpiece. It went hard to lose that. The last thing Aunt Mary bought her. Of course it would have been wiser to wait to pack. There were her two good gingham dresses, and two others that were faded, but she would need things to work in, and there was the little pink Georgette that Aunt Mary bought her last summer! She hated to lose that. But Aunt Mary, if she could see would quite understand, and if she could not see it could all be explained in heaven some day. There would be no use sending to Nannette or Gene for anything. They would never send her a rag that belonged to her. There would be inconveniences of course, her hair-brush, her tooth brush—but what were they?
And then, quite suddenly as she climbed the fence, and stood in a long, white road winding away over a hill, the sun which had been slipping, slipping down lower and lower, went out of sight and left only a ruby light behind, and all about the world looked gray. The sweet smells were there, and the wonderful cool air to touch her brow lightly like that hand of her mother so long ago, just as it touched and called her in the kitchen a few minutes before, but the bright world was growing quiet at the approaching night, and suddenly Joyce began to wonder where she was going.
Automobiles were coming and going hurriedly as if the people in them were going home to dinner, and they smiled and talked joyously as they passed her, and looked at her casually, a girl walking alone in the twilight with her hat in her hand.
Joyce came to herself and put on her hat, she put her papers together in a book, and the books under her arm, and slipped the strap of her handbag over her wrist. She went on walking down the road toward the pink and gold of the sunset and wondered where she was going, and then, as she lifted her eyes she saw a star slip faintly out in the clear space between the ruby and rose, as if to remind her that One above was watching and had not forgotten her.
CHAPTER II
Back in the kitchen she had left silence reigned, and all the pans and kettles and bowls which had been used in preparing the hurried evening meal seemed to fill the place with desolation. It was not a room that Nannette cared to contemplate as she came out to get the coffee-pot for Eugene’s second cup which he insisted be kept hot. She frowned at the jelly roll all powdered with sugar and lying neatly on a small platter awaiting dessert time. It was incredible that Joyce had managed to make it in so short a time with all the rest she had to do, but she needn’t think she could make up for negligence and disobedience by her smartness.
“Gene, I think you better go down to the garage and talk to her,” said Nannette coming back with coffee, “The kitchen’s in an awful mess and she ought to get at it at once. I certainly don’t feel like doing her work for her when I’ve been in the city all day, and then this shock about Junior on top of it all.”
“Let her good and alone,” said Gene sourly, “She’s nothing to kick about. If I go out there and pet her up she’ll expect it every time. That’s the way mother spoiled her, let her do every thing she took a notion to, and she has to learn at the start that things are different. What made her mad anyhow? She’s never had a habit of flying up. I didn’t think she had the nerve to walk off like that, she’s always been so meek and self-righteous.”
“Well, I suppose she didn’t like it because I wore that precious fox scarf of hers to the city. She’s terribly afraid her things will get hurt, and she pretends to think a lot of it because mother gave it to her last Christmas.”
“Did you wear her fur?”