"I hate it all--hate it, hate it!" she found herself saying over and over again after the good-byes had been said at the station, and Hazel and Mr. Clyde and Doctor Heath had supplied her with flowers and magazines for the long day's journey. It was all she could think or feel at the time; but soon the little pronoun changed, and the thought grew more bitter:
"I hate him! How could he--how dared he do as he did! Because I am poor, I suppose. Oh! I wish I could make him pay for it. I wish I could make him love me really and truly, and then just scorn him! But what a fool I am--as if he could love after what I heard--oh, why did I hear it! I wish I may never see his face again, and I wish I 'd stayed at home where I belong--I hate him!"--And so on "da capo" hour after hour, and the incessant chugetty-chug-chug of the express furnished the rhythmic, basal tone for the bitter motive.
It was long after lunch time, and the train of thought had not changed, when Rose's eye fell upon the dainty basket Martin had placed in the rack.
"This is a pretty state of mind to go home to Martie in!" she said to herself, rising and taking down the basket. "I have n't eaten a good meal since last Saturday at lunch, and I 'm--why, I believe I 'm hungry!"
She opened the basket, and loving evidence of Minna-Lu's admiration tempted her to pick a little here and there--a stuffed olive or two, a roast quail, a delicate celery sandwich, a quince tart, a bunch of Hamburg grapes. Soon Rose was feasting on all the good things, and her harsh thoughts began to soften. How kind they all were! And they truly loved her--and what had they not done for her comfort and pleasure! Rose, setting her pretty teeth deep into a third quince tart, looked out of the window and almost exclaimed aloud at the sight. The vanguard of the Green Mountains closed in the upper end of the river-valley along which they were speeding. It was home that was behind all that! The thought still further softened her.
What? Carry her bitterness and disappointed pride back into that dear, peaceful home? Not she! "They shall never know--never!" she said to herself--"I 'm not Molly Stark for nothing, and there are others in the world beside Jack Sherrill." And so she continued to speak cold comfort to herself for the next four hours until the brakeman called "Barton's River!"
There beyond the platform was the old apple-green pung!--and yes! father and March and Budd and dear old Chi anxiously scanning the coaches.
Home at last! and such a home-coming! How busy the tongues were for a week afterwards! How wildly gay was Rose, who kept them laughing over the many queer doings of the metropolis, over Wilkins and Minna-Lu and Martin and Mrs. Scott! And how lovingly she spoke of Hazel's charming hospitality and of Mr. Clyde's thoughtfulness for her pleasure, although, as she mentioned his name, a wave of color mounted to the roots of her hair at the ugly thought that would intrude. Chi listened with all his ears, enjoying it with the rest; but once upstairs in his room over the shed, he would sit down on the side of his bed to ponder a little the gay doings of his Rose-pose among the "high-flyers," and then turn in with a sigh and a muttered:
"'T ain't Rose-pose. I knew how 't would be.--There 's a screw loose somewhere; but she's handsome!--handsome as a picture, 'n' I 'd give a dollar to know if she 's cut that other one out."
"Valentines seem kind of scarce this year," he remarked rather grimly, a few days after her arrival, as late in the afternoon, he returned from Barton's with little mail and no boxes of flowers. "It's the sixteenth day of February, but it might be Fast Day for all that handful of mail would show for it!" He placed the package on Mrs. Blossom's work-table at which Rose was sitting busy with some sewing. They were alone in the room.