Just as the last little pat was given to the pillow, a distant rumbling was heard, and Dixie ran to the front window of the cabin and looked down the valley road. “It’s coming, teacher, Miss Bayley. The stage is ’most here!”
Josephine Bayley felt as though she were a girl again, a very young girl. Dixie’s excitement was contagious. Donning her hat and jacket, and taking her shopping-bag, which had room in it for all the things they were going to purchase, she caught the little girl by the hand, and, though her feet longed to skip, they thought it best to walk demurely, for the innkeeper’s wife, Mrs. Enterprise Twiggly, had appeared to greet any newcomers that might have arrived to stay at the inn, and well did Miss Bayley know that she expected schoolteachers to appear morosely dignified.
Mr. Hiram Tressler, the driver of the stage, was a very old man, having driven that route more years than Mr. Enterprise Twiggly could remember. He had been born and brought up in those parts, but his unwavering good nature and optimism had kept him young-looking, and his life out-of-doors had made him, as he himself said, “as hard as a pine-knot.”
“All aboard, them that’s comin’ aboard!” he called from his high seat. Then, noting that the new teacher, whom he had brought up from Reno but a month before, was about to embark with him, he added, “Miss Bayley, wouldn’t you an’ little Dixie Martin like to sit up front?”
The young girl looked up into the face of her companion so eagerly that the teacher gave a laughing response that she was sure they would be glad to accept the invitation. The passengers inside the coach looked like traveling salesmen, with much baggage stowed about them, and they seemed much more desirous of sleeping than they did of admiring the majestic scenery through which they were to pass. One did waken when the stage started with a jolt, but soon dozed again.
Little Dixie, wedged in between Miss Bayley and the stage-driver, looked up beamingly at first one and then the other. “Traveling’s real exciting, isn’t it?” she said at last, when they were well under way.
Josephine Bayley nodded. Was it amusing or was it tragic, she was wondering, that this little midget, small for her twelve years, had never been out of Woodford’s but once before, and that once to help select a coffin. Josephine Bayley resolved that this day should be so brimmed with happy hours that the little girl would have no time to recall the sad memory of that other journey to Genoa.
They were turning down the rough, rugged cañon road that was deep in the shadow of great old pines, when Ken, Carol, and Baby Jim leaped from behind the massive trunks where they had been hiding, and shouted, waving their handkerchiefs, “Good-by, Dixie! Good-by, teacher!” Then Baby Jim’s shrill, excited voice floated down the cañon after them, “Bring me some candy!”
What a happy light there was in the gold-brown eyes that were lifted to the teacher, as the little girl said: “I hoped they’d all come. I’m so glad they wanted to!”
Josephine Bayley held the thin hand of the child in a close clasp, and she was thinking: “Lucky little girl! How I wish I had some one to care whether I come or go! Brother Tim is all I have in this wide world, and we are so far apart.” Then, remembering that this was to be Dixie’s day, the teacher chatted about things that would interest her little comrade, and two hours later Mr. Hiram Tressler sang out, “There’s Genoa’s church-steeple.” Then, with evident pride, “Teacher, did ye ever see any buildin’ go up much higher’n that?”