It was a large, circular box, set on a pedestal, revolving on a pin. Perpendicular slits were cut, at regular intervals, all around its lower wall, and within were coiled long, colored picture-scrolls, facing outward. When the box, or drum, revolved, the scene depicted suddenly sprang into motion.
She could not have followed, had she tried, the subtle, involuted train of association that led her back to her experience with the long disremembered plaything. But, even as she thought of it, she saw herself, as she had so often sat, a disappointed, bewildered child, staring at the stupid, tiresome lengths of crude, static prints, which her inexperienced hand had not learned to adjust, so they would become significant, entertaining.
Like a sudden flash of light, came the suggestion that, up to this, she had sat just so, regarding life. Seeing it in the flat, finding it dull, stale, unprofitable. What if it were possible to learn the trick of adjustment! What if it were possible to discover the dynamic pivot, by which the great revolution would take place, the revolution that would make life interesting, give it meaning? Had any one ever found either?
Instantly, she thought of two persons—the two who, more than any others she had ever known, had got the most good pleasure out of life. Daniel Ballard—Martha Slawson. Two very different personalities, in widely different situations, yet with the same invincible courage, the same curious capacity for inspiring others with their own faith in all that is best. These two had the same wide vision, the same high purpose. They both had looked on life, and found it good.
Long before her car reached Burbank, Katherine had determined to go home.
She heard, with composure, the Junction "starter's" announcement, that her car had gone out three minutes before. She must wait an hour, if she wanted to take the next. In her present mood, she was glad of the opportunity to try her new-found strength. Out of her depths of depression she had leaped in one miraculous moment, to a height of exaltation such as she had never known before. She was ready to fight the world, in order to prove she could come out conqueror.
"No, ma'am, there ain't any other way of getting back, excepting the trolley, unless you take an automobile. But I tell you what! The Boston train'll be along presently. There'll be rigs here then, and motors come to meet it, and probably some of them'll be going back your way. They'd give you a lift, I dare say, if you're in a great hurry and asked them."
Katherine considered. To sit in the station, tamely waiting for things to come her way, was out of all line with her present impulse. She could not endure inaction. She had a flagellant's ecstatic eagerness to begin her own castigation. She would walk.
The starter did not confide to her his private opinion of her plan, when she indicated what she proposed to do by asking directions as to the way.
"There's a goodish stretch out of here, where the walking's easy. But you'd have to get beyond that, before you'd be likely to be come up with, by a rig, or a car, going your way. You see, the trolley-line and the motors both use the road. Foot passengers ain't allowed to, where there's so much traveling. It'd be dangerous. But once you get off the main beat, going in the direction of your town, all you have to do is stick to the road and you'll get there!"