“The first time,” she reflected. “Too bad Trixy isn’t in to help me with the ceremony.” The chain was fastened with a small circular clasp and this did not yield readily to her finger pressure. After a few attempts, however, the clasp opened and then she promptly snapped it shut, and for the briefest moment gazed in her mirror.
“Sort of pretty,” Gloria concluded. “Odd, at any rate.” She straightened the slender string of dark stones, and allowed them to lay flat against her throat. “Jane always loved beads around my neck,” she further reflected. “I hope she will like these as well as she did the little blue and white ones she so hated to have me give up.”
A glance at the small clock warned her the train would be due in fifteen minutes, and that meant to call to Sam to take her to the station, in a very small and very humble type of automobile, that he always called “his team.” Sam would be sure to “stick around” hoping for passengers in such a plight as Gloria found herself.
“Hop right in,” he answered, cranking as he talked. “This here little team comes in right handy on a day like this. I jest took the little pale girl down.”
“Oh, I forgot I promised to call for Miss Mears,” Gloria told the man now climbing over the wheel.
“Ain’t no need. She’s went. I took her for the ten five. Land sakes! What a bustle she was in! ’Tain’t none of my affairs, but if I was to say anythin’ I’d jest about guess that little girl has somethin’ frettin’ her mind.”
He was rattling along and shouting vigorously to send his high pitched voice still higher, in order to make sure that his remarks reached the solitary passenger behind him. Gloria was discreet enough to make no comment. Sam was never to be encouraged in anything like criticism, and although she would have loved to know why Mary had dashed for the earlier train, she said not a word to provoke further comment.
Sam subsided. For a considerable distance he merely groaned or grunted as the car hit the high spots, then finally, just as the rattle box bounced over a big “thank-e-mum” he shouted back at his fare:
“Is she sickly?”
“Why, no. I don’t think so,” replied Gloria grudgingly. It would have been silly for her to ask, who?