The man on the platform smiled and nodded. Then, taking his handkerchief from his pocket, he waved to his little daughter, who, waving her own, watched him until the now rapidly moving train quite hid his lonely figure from sight. Then she sighed, tucked her handkerchief in her coat pocket, and sat down beside the old gentleman, who was apparently still amused and interested, perhaps also touched.
“Well,” he heard her say to herself with a little break in her voice, “it’s all over and it’s just begun.” Then she settled herself back in her chair, while her neighbor wondered at this somewhat puzzling remark.
“How can it be all over and at the same time just begun, my dear?” he ventured to ask, his kind blue eyes studying her face.
Virginia looked at him. They two were quite alone on the platform. The old gentleman, having heard her last request of her father, concluded that she was using her judgment and deciding whether or not she had best talk to him. His conclusion was quite right. “He certainly is oldish, and very kind looking,” Virginia was thinking. “I guess it wouldn’t be familiar.”
“Why, you see, sir,” she answered, having in her own mind satisfied herself and her father, and allowing herself to forget all about Aunt Lou, “it’s all over because I’ve said good-by to father, and it’s just begun—that is, the making of me is just begun—because I’m on my way East to school.”
“So going East to school is going to be the making of you, is it?”
“That’s what Aunt Lou says; and, besides, ‘a very broadening experience.’”
“I see; and who is Aunt Lou?”
“She’s my mother’s sister from Vermont. You see, my mother lived in Vermont when she was a girl, and went to St. Helen’s, too; but when she got older, she came to Wyoming to teach school and married my father. My mother is dead, sir,” she finished softly.
His eyes grew kinder than ever. “I’m sorry for that,” he said softly, too.