Such a two weeks as the last had been in the Ried family! The entire household had joined in the commotion produced by Ester's projected visit. It was marvelous how much there was to do. Mrs. Ried toiled early and late, and made many quiet little sacrifices, in order that her daughter might not feel too keenly the difference between her own and her cousin's wardrobe. Sadie emptied what she denominated her finery box, and donated every article in it, delivering comic little lectures to each bit of lace and ribbon, as she smoothed them and patted them, and told them they were going to New York. Julia hemmed pocket handkerchiefs, and pricked her poor little fingers unmercifully and uncomplainingly. Alfred ran of errands with remarkable promptness, but confessed to Julia privately that it was because he was in such a hurry to have Ester gone, so he could see how it would seem for everybody to be good natured. Little Minie got in everybody's way as much as such a tiny creature could, and finally brought the tears to Ester's eyes, and set every one else into bursts of laughter, by bringing a very smooth little handkerchief about six inches square, and offering it as her contribution toward the traveler's outfit. As for Ester, she was hurried and nervous, and almost unendurably cross, through the whole of it, wanting a hundred things which it was impossible for her to have, and scorning not a few little trifles that had been prepared for her by patient, toil-worn fingers.
"Ester, I do hope New York, or Cousin Abbie, or somebody, will have a soothing and improving effect upon you," Sadie had said, with a sort of good-humored impatience, only the night before her departure. "Now that you have reached the summit of your hopes, you seem more uncomfortable about it than you were even to stay at home. Do let us see you look pleasant for just five minutes, that we may have something good to remember you by."
"My dear," Mrs. Ried had interposed, rebukingly, "Ester is hurried and tired, remember, and has had a great many things to try her to-day. I don't think it is a good plan, just as a family are about to separate, to say any careless or foolish words that we don't mean. Mother has a great many hard days of toil, which Ester has given, to remember her by." Oh, the patient, tender, forgiving mother! Ester, being asleep to her own faults, never once thought of the sharp, fretful, half disgusted way in which much of her work had been performed, but only remembered, with a little sigh of satisfaction, the many loaves of cake, and the rows of pies, which she had baked that very morning in order to save her mother's steps. This was all she thought of now, but there came days when she was wide-awake.
Meantime the New York train, after panting and snorting several times to give notice that the twenty minutes were about up, suddenly puffed and rumbled its way out from the depot, and left Ester obeying orders, that is, sitting in the corner where she had been placed by Mr. Newton—being still outwardly, but there was in her heart a perfect storm of vexation. "This comes of mother's absurd fussiness in insisting upon putting me in Mr. Newton's care, instead of letting me travel alone, as I wanted to," she fumed to herself. "Now we shall not get into New York until after six o'clock! How provoking!"
"How provoking this is!" Mr. Newton exclaimed, re-echoing her thoughts as he bustled in, red with haste and heat, and stood penitently before her. "I hadn't the least idea it would take so long to go to the post-office. I am very sorry!"
"Well," he continued, recovering his good humor, notwithstanding Ester's provoking silence, "what can't be cured must be endured, Miss Ester; and it isn't as bad as it might be, either. We've only to wait an hour and a quarter. I've some errands to do, and I'll show you the city with pleasure; or would you prefer sitting here and looking around you?"
"I should decidedly prefer not running the chance of missing the next train," Ester answered very shortly. "So I think it will be wiser to stay where I am."
In truth Mr. Newton endured the results of his own carelessness with too much complacency to suit Ester's state of mind; but he took no notice of her broadly-given hint further than to assure her that she need give herself no uneasiness on that score; he should certainly be on time. Then he went off, looking immensely relieved; for Mr. Newton frankly confessed to himself that he did not know how to take care of a lady. "If she were a parcel of goods now that one could get stored or checked, and knew that she would come on all right, why—but a lady. I'm not used to it. How easily I could have caught that train, if I hadn't been obliged to run back after her; but, bless me, I wouldn't have her know that for the world." This he said meditatively as he walked down South Street.
The New York train had carried away the greater portion of the throng at the depot, so that Ester and the dozen or twenty people who occupied the great sitting-room with her, had comparative quiet. The wearer of the condemned brown silk and blue ribbons was still there, and awoke Ester's vexation still further by seeming utterly unable to keep herself quiet; she fluttered from seat to seat, and from window to window, like an uneasy bird in a cage. Presently she addressed Ester in a bright little tone: "Doesn't it bore you dreadfully to wait in a depot?"
"Yes," said Ester, briefly and truthfully, notwithstanding the fact that she was having her first experience in that boredom.