“I caught the eight o'clock train just in time; which I considered most fortunate. How often afterward did I wish I had missed it! And reasoning within myself as the wheels bore me away, that it was perfectly right to spend the money to go home, for my father had been quite willing for me to take the treat with Mrs. Ferguson and the others, I settled back in my seat, and tried not to feel strange at travelling alone.”
“Oh dear me!” exclaimed the girls, huddling up closer to Miss Salisbury's knees. Miss Anstice paced back and forth; it was too late to stop the story now, and her nervousness could only be walked off.
“But I noticed the farther I got from the boarding school, little doubts would come creeping into my mind,—first, was it very wise for me to have set out in this way? then, was it right? And suddenly in a flash, it struck me that I was doing a very wrong thing, and that, if my father and my mother knew it, they would be greatly distressed. And I would have given worlds, if I had possessed them, to be back at Mrs. Ferguson's, studying my philosophy lesson. And I laid my head on the back of the seat before me, and cried as hard as I could.”
Amy sniffed into her handkerchief, and two or three other girls coughed as if they had taken cold, while no one looked into her neighbor's face.
“And a wild idea crossed my mind once, of rushing up to the conductor and telling him of my trouble, to ask him if I couldn't get off at the next station and go back; but a minute's reflection told me that this was foolish. There was only the late afternoon train to take me to the school. I had started, and must go on.”
A long sigh went through the group. Miss Anstice seemed to have it communicated to her, for she quickened her pace nervously.
“At last, after what seemed an age to me, though it wasn't really but half an hour since we started, I made up my mind to bear it as well as I could; father and mother would forgive me, I was sure, and would make Mrs. Ferguson overlook it—when I glanced out of the car window. Little flakes of snow were falling fast. It struck dismay to my heart. If it kept on like this,—and after watching it for some moments, I had no reason to expect otherwise, for it was of that fine, dry quality that seems destined to last,—I should not be able to get back to school that afternoon. Oh dear me! And now I began to open my heart to all sorts of fears: the train might be delayed, the stagecoach slow in getting through to Cherryfield. By this time I was in a fine state of nerves, and did not dare to think further.”
One of the girls stole her hand softly up to lay it on that of the principal, forgetting that she had never before dared to do such a thing in all her life. Miss Salisbury smiled, and closed it within her own.
There was a smothered chorus of “Oh dears!”
“I sat there, my dears, in a misery that saw nothing of the beauty of that storm, knew nothing, heard nothing, except the occasional ejaculations and remarks of the passengers, such as, 'It's going to be the worst storm of the year,' and 'It's come to stay.'