Of that walk she never liked to speak afterwards. Many times she stopped, almost but not quite willing to return; tired, half-frozen, and unhappy that her rest had terminated unpleasantly, yet so very, very homesick that she seemed driven on to the station,—if to reach it were a possibility. 162
Fortunately for her, when she had reached the last half she was overtaken by a man driving an empty wood-cart, who stopped and asked her if she “didn’t want a lift?” From what this saved her, no one could ever know.
In the mean time, Aunt Betty, with her eyes dimmed—but she did not know it was by tears—had watched her through a slit in a green paper window-shade.
Until she left the door, she did not believe she could do so foolish a thing as to attempt the walk to the station on such a morning; but when she saw her step off so courageously down the narrow foot-path, she began to have misgivings.
Notwithstanding her tears, the sight seemed to harden instead of soften her heart. “If the gal will go, go she will,” she said aloud, with some unforgiving wags of her head. “She’s stuck full of obstinacy as her father was afore her.” And by this time Marion was hidden from her sight by the deep snow-banks, and she turned from the window into her lonely kitchen with a heavy heart.
Marion, safely back in the academy, had, like Aunt Betty, her own troubled thoughts.
She found only Helen there among the scholars, and every teacher away but Miss Ashton, who evidently had not expected her back so soon.
Regular school duties did not begin until Tuesday of the next week, and now it was only Wednesday night. She might have remained in Belden a day 163 or two longer, and then left with her aunt’s approval.
What kind of a return had she made to her aunt for her kindness?
Marion’s room, that she had thought of with so much longing as she sat in the farm kitchen, had lost its charm. She was very willing to believe it was because her room-mates were not there, and the fast falling darkness prevented her from seeing from her window the winter view, which even the grand old mountains that she had left behind her did not make her value less.