“Look out, dear, and see the fields and houses—see that handsome dog, and see the little pond!”
Ardelia shot a quick glance at the blurring green that dizzied her as it rushed by; the train was a fast express making up for lost time. Then with a scowl she resumed the contemplation of her starched gingham lap. The swelteringly hot day, and the rapid, unaccustomed motion combined to afflict her with a strange internal anticipation of future woe. Once last summer, when she ate the liquid dregs of the ice-cream man’s great tin, and fell asleep in the room where her mother was frying onions, she had experienced this same foreboding, and the climax of that dreadful day lingered yet in her memory. So she set her teeth and waited with stoical resignation for the end, while the young lady babbled of green fields, and wondered why the child should be so sullen. Finally she laid it to homesickness, and recovered her faith in human nature.
At last they stopped. The young lady seized her hand, and led her through the narrow aisle, down the steep steps, across the little country-station platform, and Ardelia was in Arcady.
A bare-legged boy in blue overalls and a wide straw hat then drove them many miles along a hot, dusty road, that wound endlessly through the parched country fields. To the young lady’s remark that they needed rain sadly, he replied, “Yep!” and held his peace for the following hour. Occasionally they passed another horse, but for the most part the only sight or sound of life was afforded by the hens clucking angrily as the travelers drove them from their dust baths in the powdery road. Released from her horror of foreboding, Ardelia took a more apparent interest in her situation, and would perhaps have spoken if her chaperone had opened conversation; but the young lady was weary of such efforts, disposed to a headache from the blinding heat, and altogether inclined to silence. At last they turned into a driveway, and drew up before a gray wooden house. Ardelia, cramped with sitting still, for she had not altered her position since she was placed stiffly on the seat between her fellow-passengers, was lifted down and escorted up the shingle-walk to the porch. A spare, dark-eyed woman in a checked apron advanced to meet them.
“Terrible hot to-day, ain’t it?” she sighed. “I’m real glad to see you, Miss Forsythe. Won’t you cool off a little before you go on? This is the little girl, I s’pose. I guess it’s pretty cool to what she’s accustomed to, ain’t it, Delia?”
“No, I thank you, Mrs. Slater, I’ll go right on to the house. Now, Ardelia, here you are in the country. I’m staying with my friend in a big white house about a quarter of a mile farther on. You can’t see it from here, but if you want anything you can just walk over. Day after to-morrow is the picnic I told you about. You’ll see me then, any way. Now run right out in the grass and pick all the daisies you want. Don’t be afraid; no one will drive you off this grass!”
“’Huh?’”
The force of this was lost on Ardelia, who had never been driven off any grass whatever, but she gathered that she was expected to walk out into the thick, rank growth of the unmowed side yard, and strode downward obediently, turning when in the exact center of the plot, for further orders.
“Now pick them! Pick the daisies!” cried Miss Forsythe excitedly. “I want to see you.”