"What difference if you did? She and Eugene will be coming out on the train pretty soon," Mrs. Darby declared.
"She doesn't know he's there, maybe. They may miss each other," her husband replied.
Then he left the arbor and effaced himself, as was his custom, from his wife's presence, and busied himself with matters concerning the lily-ponds on the far side of the grounds where pink lotuses were blooming.
Meantime Jerusha Darby's fingers fairly writhed about her tatting-work, as she waited impatiently for the sound of the afternoon train from the city.
"It's time the four-forty was whistling round the curve," she murmured. "My girl will soon be here, unless the train is delayed by that bridge down yonder. Plague on these June rains!"
Mrs. Darby said "my girl" exactly as she would have said "my bank stock," or "my farm." Hers was the tone of complete possession.
"She could have come out in the auto in half the time, the four-forty creeps so, but the roads are dreadfully skiddy after these abominable rains," Mrs. Darby continued.
The habit of speaking her thoughts aloud had grown on her, as it often does on those advanced in years who live much alone. The little vista of rain-washed meadows and growing grain that lay between tall lilac-trees was lost to her eyes in the impatience of the moment's delay. What Jerusha Darby wanted for Jerusha Darby was vastly more important to her at any moment than the abstract value of a general good or a common charm.
As she leaned forward, listening intently for the rumble of the train down in the valley, a great automobile swung through the open gateway of "Eden" and rounded the curves of the maple-guarded avenue, bearing down with a birdlike sweep upon the rose-arbor.
"Here I am, Aunt Jerry," the driver's girlish voice called. "Uncle Cornie is coming out on the train. I beat him to it. I saw the old engine huffing and puffing at the hill beyond the third crossing of the Winnowoc. It is bank-full now from the rains. I stopped on that high fill and watched the train down below me creeping out on the trestle above the creek. When it got across and went crawling into the cut on this side I came on, too. I had my hands full then making this big gun of a car climb that muddy, slippery hill that the railroad cuts through. But I'd rather climb than creep any old day."