The faded blue eyes filled with tears. She had no notion of harassing me on the subject, but spoke quietly and at length of her own religious convictions.
The east wind crept in through the window, and once my little companion shivered. I noticed that she was rather thinly clad. I unstrapped my shawl and wrapped it around her. She let her head fall at my side, and went to sleep. Slowly, I was constrained to draw her up closer and put my arm around her as support. In so doing, I received from some source an unaccountable strength and calm of spirit.
At Braintree, which the child had told me was her home, I woke her up, and she got off.
I was to stop at West Wallen, the railway station least remote from Kedarville, and expected there to meet Mrs. Philander Keeler, or some member of that mysterious family, to convey me to Wallencamp.
It seemed as though the train had had time to travel the whole interminable length of the Cape, and plunge off into the ocean beyond, when, in fact, we were just entering upon that peculiar body of land at West Wallen.
There was no one there to meet me. The little dépôt was held by a strange night brigade of boys and girls, playing "blind-man's buff." They shouted like cannibals, and bore down on all opposing objects with resistless force. I did not attempt an entrance. A rough, good-natured looking man stood on the platform outside.
I put on my glasses (I was sadly and unaffectedly near-sighted), and having further assured myself of his seeming honesty, inquired if there was such a place as Kedarville in the vicinity.
"Waal, no, miss, thar' ain't," said he, with a noonday smile, which informed me that there was yet something to hope for. "Thar's no Kedarville that I know on. Thar's a Wallencamp some miles up yender. We don't often tackle no Sunday go-to-meeting names on to it, but I reckon, maybe, it's the same you're a-lookin' for."
He had spoken with such startling indefiniteness of the distance that I asked him how far it was to Wallencamp.
"Waal, thar' you've got me," said he, beaming on me in a broadly complimentary way, as though I had actually circumvented him in some skilful play at words. "Fact is, thar' ain't never been no survey run down in that direction that I know on. We call it four miles, more or less. That's Cape Cod measure—means most anythin' lineal measure. Talkin' 'bout Cape Cod miles," he continued, with an irresistible air of raillery; "little Bachelder Lot lives up thar' to Wallencamp, and they don't have no church nor nothin' thar', so Bachelder and some on 'em they come up here, once in a while, ter Sunday-school. Deacon Lancy, he'd rather see the Old Boy comin' into Sunday-school class any time than Bachelder; for he's quiet, the little bachelder is, but dry as a herrin'. So the Deacon thought he'd stick him on distances. The Deacon is a great stickler on distances.