But it happened that when the vacation week came, Estelle was away before us. Alice Yorke had invited her to visit with her, a married sister living in a town not far from Boston. And the others seemed strangely little impressed with the momentous fact that we were going to the city. Cyrus was too much occupied with the depressing condition of business affairs to notice what girls were doing. Cyrus had old-fashioned ideas, and girls’ employments were chiefly “recreations” to his mind. When I explained that I was going to try to make better arrangements for the dairy products and the preserves, and that Octavia was going with me, he said, absently, that it would be “a nice little trip for us.” And then his brow darkened with care. Cyrus would have liked to make life all nice little trips for his womankind. He felt—without thinking much about the matter—that they were made to have womanly pursuits, and to take life lightly.
But the discharged men had not been taken on again at the shipyard; the outlook was doubtful, and I knew that Cyrus doubted himself, and was tempted to doubt God’s providence.
When we have made sacrifices for what we feel to be the right, we are apt to look to Providence for immediate results in lines of our own choosing. I thought that “God’s providence is mine inheritance” might be a good motto to hang up in the shipyard counting-room just now. But one could not tell how Cyrus would take such an attention.
Dave drew a long, long breath when I told him that we were going.
“I’m glad that you’re going to have a little glimpse of the world,” he said. And I realized, for the first time, how the grinding, uncongenial work at the yard was telling upon him. There was such a longing in his voice! He had grown thin, and there was a sharp little pucker between his finely-penciled brows. But he had sat up a good many nights with Rob, which was an additional strain to that of the unaccustomed labor.
“The way of the transgressor is hard,” said Octavia, when I expressed my pity for Dave; but I saw that her eyes as they followed him were full of tears.
We set off hopefully, even after that, for we were young, and I had already tasted the intoxicating joy of success, especially with my quince jelly. And I meditated a new departure, as the train bore us swiftly along the border of our beautiful river already growing green and perfumed with spring. It was almost sacrilege to think of it, with Octavia beside me, her face flushed and her eyes dreamy with the consciousness of “Evelyn Marchmont” in her bag. For it was sausages that I meant to add to the gilt-edged and paying products of Groundnut Hill Farm!
“Evelyn Marchmont” would not win glory and gold at once; I knew that with all my Palmyran ignorance. And I was quite sure, although I dared not ask—Estelle was so fierce in her sisterly faith—that Dave’s dreadful debt had not yet been paid. Some one must be practical. So all along, in the sweet April weather, with the authoress palpitating with her high hopes and dreams beside me, I reckoned the probable profits of Groundnut Hill Farm sausages, so many pounds per year!
As we alighted from the train, in the great, roaring, bustling Boston station, two young girls coming out of the car in front caught my eye. The well-poised head, with waving, yellow locks, was surely familiar. And had any one but Miss Jobyns of Palmyra trimmed that sailor hat? Beside the yellow head and familiar sailor hat was—yes, surely it was Alice Yorke’s satiny black braids. The two girls disappeared in the throng before I could reach them.
“Oh, no, it couldn’t be they,” said Octavia, easily. “Wrenton is more than thirty miles from Boston, and Estelle didn’t say anything about coming here.”