"Did you ever dream of such a horrible old woman?" said Bab, walking indignantly down the street to Sixth Avenue. But these last shafts from the quiver which had pricked them so often in the past months could not annoy Jessamy and Barbara long, because they were the last; were they not going home, home, and is not home a word to conjure evils away?
The ride seemed endless to the two girls, feverish with impatience; the train dragged around the curve at Fifty-third Street, and loitered as it had never done before at each station. But at last—at last the tedious journey ended, and once they had turned east out of crowded Columbus Avenue, Jessamy and Bab fairly ran down the street where their apartment waited them.
They let themselves into the house with their own latch-key; the janitor's wife was cleaning brasses, and said good morning pleasantly, but with no notion of what a great event was happening before her Swabian eyes. How could she have, poor soul, since people move in and out of apartments every day, and few of them are young exiles, hungry for a home, come to take possession of their Land of Promise?
Jessamy's heart beat so she could hardly get up the stairs, but Bab honorably waited for her, and would not put the key in the lock—not the general, common lock of the outer door, solemn as that ceremony had been, but the sacred, blessed lock of their own private-hall door.
She threw the door open, clutched Jessamy's hand, who returned the pressure with interest, and together they entered their home.
How beautiful, peaceful, homelike everything looked! There stood Bab's piano, Jessamy's desk, and the pictures they had loved welcomed them from the walls like living things.
They ran from room to room, calling to each other, sobbing and laughing and kissing the inanimate things like crazy girls. Phyllis's desk stood in her room, and the little rocking-chair Bab loved best held out its arms to her beside her bed. In the dining-room they found silver they had thought never to see again, and dishes which, empty or full, they knew would be equal to food to their mother.
They made their excited way back to the parlor finally, and Jessamy dropped exhausted in the window, which was mysteriously draped with white lace, though they had made up their minds to self-denial in the matter of curtains. Her eyes rested on her father's chair, and her lips trembled with joy and gratitude. "Oh, God bless that dear, dear Mrs. Van Alyn!" she said, though she usually found such expression impossible.
Barbara opened the piano, and laid her hands on the keys. She struck two or three chords of "Home, Sweet Home," and then laid her head down on the pretty case to cry the happiest tears she had ever shed.