“Great Guns!” he shouted, throwing the reins over the dashboard, and leaping out over the wheel.
“It’s Steve,” cried the bride in a rapture, and Alice pinched herself with delight as Steve embraced his lady.
210“However in the world did you get off here?” he asked, releasing her enough to reply.
“How did you?” she answered, and he laughed, “O, I thought I’d drive over to the Junction to meet you and carry you home, and I heard about the train being stalled out here and couldn’t get out for hours, so I drove on, that’s all. But the idea of you hoofing it in!” He put his head back and laughed loudly.
His fiancée then remembered Alice and introduced her, telling Steve of her kind interest. He was all cordiality, and offered to give her a ride back to the train.
“No, no,” she protested. “I love to walk. And do hurry along home and have the wedding. I’m so glad it all turned out all right; and you’re feeling happier, aren’t you?” she asked the girl.
Steve put his arm around his little bride gently. “I guess she won’t ever feel bad again. I shan’t let her go off alone any more. And thank you for what you done. I shan’t forget it. Say, couldn’t you stop off now for the wedding?”
“O, do,” begged the bride, and Alice had to refuse tenderly. She watched them get into the buggy, and drive happily away, waving to her as they did so. Then she turned back to her train, and her own car.
One of the card-playing women was tired and inclined to be sociable. So Alice sat with her, by 211 invitation, and listened to the history of her family’s diseases and operations, and her difficulties with servants, till the train was started once more and the rumble of the cars resumed their interrupted song of “Getting nearer, getting nearer.”
“I must hear it that way every minute,” Alice thought, as she took her own seat again, and while the lamps were lighted, watched in the windows not the rushing landscape but her own face. “It would be so easy to hear ‘Getting farther,’ and think of leaving home for nine whole months, but I’ll just remember Hannah and Catherine and Frieda and dear Dexter,–and that will keep the garment from slipping off my shoulders.”