Grainger left Mary at the elevator in the trackless palm forest of the Idealia. After he had gone she came down again carrying a small hand-bag, ’phoned for a cab, drove to the Grand Central Station, boarded a 12.55 commuter’s train, rode four hours with her burnt-umber head bobbing against the red-plush back of the seat, and landed during a fresh, stinging, glorious sunrise at a deserted station, the size of a peach crate, called Crocusville.
She walked a mile and clicked the latch of a gate. A bare, brown cottage stood twenty yards back; an old man with a pearl-white, Calvinistic face and clothes dyed blacker than a raven in a coal-mine was washing his hands in a tin basin on the front porch.
“How are you, father?” said Mary timidly.
“I am as well as Providence permits, Mary Ann. You will find your mother in the kitchen.”
In the kitchen a cryptic, gray woman kissed her glacially on the forehead, and pointed out the potatoes which were not yet peeled for breakfast. Mary sat in a wooden chair and decorticated spuds, with a thrill in her heart.
For breakfast there were grace, cold bread, potatoes, bacon, and tea.
“You are pursuing the same avocation in the city concerning which you have advised us from time to time by letter, I trust,” said her father.
“Yes,” said Mary, “I am still reviewing books for the same publication.”
After breakfast she helped wash the dishes, and then all three sat in straight-back chairs in the bare-floored parlor.
“It is my custom,” said the old man, “on the Sabbath day to read aloud from the great work entitled the ‘Apology for Authorized and Set Forms of Liturgy,’ by the ecclesiastical philosopher and revered theologian, Jeremy Taylor.”