“Well, I’m glad that’s over,” said Mrs. Eldred aloud. “I always feel sorry for Hannah when she has to say good-by. She does suffer so over it, but she recovers quickly.”
“She seems to be acquiring a comfortable philosophy,” remarked Mr. Eldred, as he looked at his watch and then up the street where his car was not in sight. “She told me that the world was fixed wrong, because it ought to be possible to be with all of one’s beloveds at the same time. ‘But,’ she added sagely, ‘that’s probably Heaven.’”
“‘Earth being so good, would Heaven seem best?’” quoted Hannah’s mother, smiling. “We have all had to stay our hearts with that thought, I suppose. I am much more content about both girls, since Karl and Miss Lyndesay took them in hand. For a few days I really feared that the 152 adjustment might be too much for them. But Karl worked some magic spell over Frieda, and Miss Lyndesay charmed Hannah. I must go over to Brookmeadow this very week, and pay my respects to that remarkable woman.”
“Some mothers would be jealous of such an outside influence,” suggested Mr. Eldred, glancing fondly at his pretty little wife.
“Then they are very unwise,” declared that lady decisively. “I remember my own girlhood well enough to know that there were certain crises through which my mother could not help me as well as an outsider, simply because she was my mother. I’m not in the least afraid that any one could be dearer to Hannah than I am, and she is such a bundle of contradictions, of sweet impulses and rebelliousness, that I’m heartily glad of all the help I can get in bringing her up. There’s my car. Do try to come home to luncheon. I’ll be missing my lively children and their German-English patois!”
The two girls on the train had settled themselves cosily with the aid of a porter rendered over-zealous by Mr. Eldred’s generosity, and were watching the flying scenery and the other passengers with interest. Frieda was not eager to arrive at her journey’s end. She already missed Karl and the friendly Eldreds, who had seemed nearer her own parents than any one else in this strange country could. 153 The prospect before her was not wholly pleasant. Hannah had spent so much energy in singing the praises of Dexter College, Alice Prescott and Catherine Smith, that Frieda’s desire to see them was distinctly modified by a jealous feeling that such perfections must be somewhat tiresome. She was much more interested in watching a bride and groom across the aisle, and in making comments on American trains, some of which, according to her compact with Karl, she kept to herself, meaning to unburden her mind in the first letter she should write him. Others of a favorable sort she made aloud to Hannah, who received them graciously, on behalf of the nation. The day wore away not unpleasantly, but when the gas was lighted and the bride frankly rested her head upon the bridegroom’s shoulder, a mighty homesickness swept over Frieda. She could barely choke down her food in the dining-car, and hated a waiter for watching her with a white-toothed smile. The porter was making up berths when they returned and the proceeding scandalized her, accustomed as she was to the decency of compartment trains.
Forgetting her promise, she spoke her disgust:
“Ladies and gentlemen like pots of marmalade on shelves in a cupboard!”
Hannah only laughed and scrambled up to the top shelf with the agility of a squirrel, leaving Frieda to solitude and unsuspected misery.
154The porter and the grinning waiter would not be forgotten. Their blackness combined with the close warm atmosphere to alarm her. She dared not undress, and when she tried to lie down, she felt as though she should choke. The darkness seemed to her sleepy but resisting mind to be taking on human shape. With her eyes closed she saw it develop pink fingernails and gleaming teeth and eyeballs. Her real distrust of anything foreign was made keener by her homesickness. At last she fell into an uneasy sleep, clutching her purse and her gold beads tightly. At each station she woke with a jerk and a horrible conviction that the train had been wrecked and she was the sole survivor. Sometimes she put her hand up and felt of the wooden wall over her head for assurance that the upper berth to which Hannah had blithely committed herself had not treacherously closed. There were subdued rustlings in the aisle now and then, and quick brushings past her curtains which made her sit up, gasping, her eyes staring into the dark and her heart thumping. Frieda Lange crawled out of her tumbled berth next morning, certain that life could have in store for her nothing more hideous than her first night in an American sleeping-car.