When she reached the station, however, her plans seemed balked for the station itself was closed and dark. There was a bench, however, down along the platform under a shed-like roof, and a great arc light glowed above it. People were walking back and forth too as if waiting for a train, so Joyce sat down at one end of the bench and took out her bit of sewing. No one noticed her and her swift fingers had soon run on the bias bands around collar and cuffs, and turned down the binding smoothly. She just loved the hemming of them down. It was like a bit of fancy work, and they looked so pretty—the blue edging the sheer white. Of course the dress could have been bound around neck and sleeves without the white collar and cuffs but this touch of prettiness made it look more comely, and she must remember her appearance if she was to hope to get a school around here sometime. Mrs. Bryant had given her the reputation of a lady and she must keep it up, even if it meant a little more work for her.
By the time the half past nine train had gone she had the organdie bound, and was sewing up the string girdle. She lingered only until the seams were run up before she gathered up her things and hurried back to her little dark house. It was growing lonely on the station platform, and she did not like to stay any longer, but she could turn the girdle inside out in the dark by the help of a safety pin, and then everything would be ready for morning. She would only have to hem the skirt and put on the collar and cuffs.
Sitting in the dark on her box she found a safety pin in her handbag and, fastening it in the end of the girdle, began pushing it through, and when it was turned all the way, creased it carefully and smoothed it between her fingers till it almost looked as if it were ironed flat. Then she took off her serge dress, put on her gingham apron and lay down under her paper blankets for another night’s sleep, too weary to do more than thank her Heavenly Father for keeping her so far. As she drifted away into sleep she heard a soft, sweet voice, like a pleasant melody in her soul, Aunt Mary’s voice long ago, saying over the golden text from Sunday School, over and over again till she learned it, “And the barrel of meal wasted not, neither did the cruse of oil fail, according to the word of the Lord.”
“I must have a Bible,” she said to herself dreamily. “I wish I had brought mine along.”
CHAPTER XV
Notwithstanding her weariness Joyce did not sleep well that night. She heard the late travellers passing by and the milkman and grocery trucks on their way to a new day, and she tossed on her rattling, lumpy bed till almost dawn. Somehow all the happenings of the last few days seemed to have arrived in concrete form and to be standing about her couch for her to reckon with.
First, there was the matter of her leaving home. Ought she to have left at all? And if she should have left, was that the right way to have done it? The whole problem of her life took on a distorted form in the midnight and darkness that it had never presented before. She thought of her friends back in Meadow Brook who had loved her and Aunt Mary. What would they think of her going? Perhaps she should have waited to tell them all, and yet how could she make explanations? It would only bring discredit upon Eugene and Nannette and that she did not want to do. No, she could not have asked her friends, or even have told them good-bye without more explanation than she was ready to give. There was the minister, and Judge Peterson, the Browns and Ridgeways, and a host of others. They never would have let her go alone out into the world without even a destination, and no chance of a job. They would have worked it somehow for her to stay with one of them. She would never have been free, and Eugene and Nannette would have been furious at her making a display of their family quarrels in the town. No, she could have come away in no other manner. And she had to come. She could not have stayed much longer even if she had not started that night.
These questions somewhat conquered, her thoughts turned to the first night away from home, the awful experience in the cemetery, and the look on the face of her old friend when she had asked him what he was doing.
And now she knew what had been the underlying thorn in her soul that had made the pain ever since.
Long ago, perhaps ten years before, when she had been a little girl, there had been a holiday when she and Aunt Mary had started off with a neatly packed luncheon and a handful of books to spend the day in the woods, a long promised, eagerly anticipated excursion. There were chicken sandwiches neatly wrapped in wax paper. How well she remembered helping to make them! And little blackberry turnovers rich with gummy sweetness. Hard-boiled eggs, tiny sweet pickles from the summer’s vintage, sponge cakes, big purple grapes, and a bottle of milk to drink. Plenty of everything. Aunt Mary never stinted a lunch and she always put in enough for a guest if one should turn up.