But even as she spoke the sad look spread over her face again. She walked back to the place where she had been standing, and looked resolutely away from the sign—at the tipped-over load of hay, at the engine-house, at the sleighs passing to and fro—through eyes dimmed afresh with tears.
Thus she still stood when her father returned. The expressman who halted his bob-sleigh at the cutting in front of her, and who sat holding the reins while her father piled her valise and parcels on behind, looked her over with a half-awed, half-quizzical glance, and seemed a long time making up his mind to speak. Finally he said:
“How d’do? Want to ride here, on the seat, longside of me?”
There was an indefinable something in his tone, and in the grin that went with it, which she resented quickly.
“I had no idea of riding at all,” she made answer.
Her father, who had seated himself on a trunk in the centre of the sleigh, interposed. “Why, Jess, you remember Steve, don’t you?” he asked, apologetically.
The expressman and the girl looked briefly at one another, and nodded in a perfunctory manner.
Lawton went on: “He offered himself to give us a lift as far as the house. He’s goin’ that way—ain’t you, Steve?”
The impulse was strong in Jessica to resist—precisely why she might have found it difficult to explain—but apparently there was no choice remaining to her. “Very well, then,” she said, “I will sit beside you, father.”
She stepped into the sleigh at this, and took her seat on the other end of the big trunk. The express-man gave a slap of the lines and a cluck to the horse, which started briskly down the wide street, the bell at its collar giving forth a sustained, cheery tinkle as they sped through the snow.