After which Betsey Pilrig watched the light of his roadster twinkle into nothingness. Moonlight called her attention to the box-car wagon. She visualized the long-legged, ragged child Thurley who had sung for her supper—and got it—at the Hotel Button, and the worthless parents. Then she saw Philena limping eagerly about in Thurley’s train as they played missionaries; she saw Thurley in her white dress on Children’s Day when she was made to speak the part of Saturday and declared joyously that she did not care, she really wanted to work for her living. She saw a taller, lovelier Thurley singing at Philena’s funeral. Then she saw Dan and Thurley in the first flush of courtship, with Thurley all blushes and happy songs and four or five engagements a day, while Dan’s business ran itself ... well, that was at an end. In her simple fashion Betsey realized the girl Thurley would never return nor would Dan Birge remain a light-hearted, whistling boy. As for Abby Clergy, some folks might call it generous on her part to take Thurley to the city, but Betsey called it using youth as a crutch and a revenge and she wondered what Miss Abby’s parents would have said if they had known.
“It’s late, Granny love! Tell me—did he mind?” Turning, she found Thurley waiting to say good night to her.
She came and peeked over Betsey’s shoulder at the old wagon. “Good-by, funny home,” she kissed her finger tips to it. “I sha’n’t forget you—not even if I drive into the Corners the next time in a limousine with a footman.”
After Miss Clergy and Thurley had left the Corners, Hopeful and Ali Baba took the day off to get out an extra of their own as to what had happened.
“ ... dressed in a black silk forty-year old she was and a hat to match and all her rings on her fingers and the same hobnail boots,” Ali Baba informed Corners loungers, “but as chirp as if she’d never gone to ruin for over thirty years about an Eyetalian barber—poor Miss Abby! And I bet my hat, she’ll have new clothes and be as up to snuff as they make ’em when she gets to New York.... Thurley? Oh, her own self with a pink dress and a white shade hat and Miss Abby sayin’ to her, ‘We’ll only be shabby a little while longer. It isn’t goin’ to take us long to learn new ways.’ Thurley’s eyes was as blue as the sea and she kept starin’ out beyond everybody and goodness only knows what she was thinkin’ ... anyhow, they’re gone! We’ve orders to close the house and blest if she didn’t have our cousin Betsey Pilrig come to live with us—as good a thing as Miss Abby has done in over thirty years—for it will take the heart from Betsey to lose Thurley, too! When Dan Birge knows that Abby Clergy has stole his girl and she isn’t goin’ to marry him no more’n a terrier’ll leave a badger hole, I guess for the first time in history a Birge will be so sore he’ll have to ride in a rubber-tired cab!” Conscious of being the courier of a thrilling event, Ali Baba nonchalantly borrowed tobacco and strolled on to spread the glad tidings.
Even a mystery or a haunted lady becomes a bore after a certain time. It is like a jolly week-end guest who, without invitation, spends the entire season in one’s only and best pink room. So had Miss Clergy become a nonentity to the town—“a pity,” the older people said, “a pill” retorted the younger.
Which explained somewhat the shock it gave the town when news of her flight to New York with Thurley was announced. “How could that poor soul ever get up and get?” the town asked itself. The truth of the rapidity was that because she had been dormant for so many years—and had endless money—any activity would either be of microscopic importance or stupendous haste; there could be no middle, sane course of action. With Thurley Precore as the incentive, the former course was out of the question. It was like the sleeping princess upon rousing—she lost no time in finding out the state of mind towards him who kissed and wakened her. So Miss Clergy could not leave town fast enough to please herself. She trembled lest Dan Birge, through customary masculine knavery, trick Thurley into marriage and cheat her newly-throbbing heart of its long-awaited revenge.
Three weeks later, when the town was still agog, saying they guessed even “the crabs were laughing with their claws” at the thought of a Birge being handed the mitten, two pillars of the church vowed that Dan Birge had proposed to Lorraine McDowell and been accepted; that he had spoken to her father about the wedding. So he could not have cared so much or else he was marrying Lorraine out of spite. Lorraine would be, at any event, mistress of the twenty-thousand-dollar house and would wear both the solitaire and the wedding band Dan had planned to give Thurley Precore.
The news rivalled the amazement over Miss Clergy’s recovery. The town began to “lot” on whether or not Thurley, with all her notions of being a fine singer, would not be sorry some day.