“I didn’t write that I was coming. I was not sure till the last minute. Are they all well about here?”
“Yes, I guess so. Eunice is well, any way. She was to meeting Sunday; and seems to me Lucinda said she was at the sewing-circle at the doctor’s the other day. She’ll be glad to see you, sick or well.”
“I’m glad and thankful that she is well,” said Fidelia softly. “I must say good-bye to the girls.”
She turned quickly towards the faces at the windows.
“Have you heard good news, Fidelia?” called some one.
There was no time for words, but the joy on the girl’s upturned face was better than any last words could have been, even though her lips trembled and her eyes were dim with tears.
And then the train swept on among the hills, and she who had been called “Faithful” turned her face toward her home, to get the first glimpse of the work which awaited her there. Not the work which she had been planning for herself during the last year, but her work all the same—the work which God had appointed her to do.
Declining the station-master’s invitation to “go in and see Lucinda and wait for a chance to ride home,” she went on her way with a cheerful heart. She followed the wide road, leading westward, only a little way. Then she went in at an open gate, and across a stony pasture, till she came to a narrow road leading at first through a thicket of spruce and cedar, where it was necessary carefully to pick her steps over the wet moss and stones, and over the network of brown roots which the spring freshets had laid bare. After a while the road began to ascend, and then the cedars and spruces were left behind, and birch and poplar and dogwood, but chiefly great maple trees, with branches high above all the rest, covered the hillside. It was up hill and down again all the way after that till the journey was done.
But she did not mind the hills or the roughness of the way. The fresh air and the free movement were delightful to her in her new freedom, and everything about her seemed beautiful. She caught sight of many a green thing growing among the dead leaves; and more than once she paused and stopped as if she would have liked to pick them. But her hands were full, and the nearer she drew to her home the more eager she grew to reach it. “I’ll come again,” she murmured. “Oh, I am so glad that Eunice is well!”
She reached the top of a hill steeper and higher than the rest, at a point from which could be seen a few miles of the railway, passing along the valley. Her thoughts came back to her companions, and she sighed, and all at once began to feel tired; and then she sat down to rest, and, as she rested, she took a book from the bag which she had been carrying in her hand.