"I can't modify my anticipations, Cousin Lois. Don't try to help me. If I am to be disillusioned, let it come with an awful bump. Nothing short of being knocked down with a broadside like that little negro boy can do my case any good. I'm hopeless."
"I believe you are. Well, we shall see. We must be nearly there. The last time the train stopped,--was it to shoo a cow off the track or to repair the telegraph wires?--the conductor said we were only five hours late. But that was six hours ago. I wonder what we are stopping at this little shed for? Oh, hurry, Carolina! He is calling Enterprise and beckoning to us."
"No hurry, ma'am," said the conductor. "The train will wait until you all get off in comfort, or I'll shoot the engineer with my own hand!"
Carolina stepped from the train to the platform and looked around. Then she bit her lip until it bled. Cousin Lois was counting the hand-luggage and purposely refrained from looking at her.
There was a platform baking in the torrid heat of a September afternoon. From a shed at one end came the clicking of a telegraph instrument. That, then, must be the station. Six or eight negro boys and men, who had been asleep in the shade of a dusty palmetto, roused up at the arrival of the train and came lazily forward to see what was going on. There were some dogs who did not take even that amount of trouble. A wide street with six inches of dust led straight away from the station platform. There was a blacksmith shop on one side and a row of huts on the other. Farther along, Carolina could see the word "Hotel" in front of a one-story cottage. The town fairly quivered with the heat.
"Was you-all expectin' any one to meet you?" inquired the conductor.
"Why, yes," answered Mrs. Winchester. "Miss Yancey said she would send for us."
"Miss Yancey? Miss Sue or Miss Sallie Yancey? Fat lady with snappin' brown eyes?"
"Yes, that describes her."
"The one that's just been to New York with the colonel's children?"