FAREWELL TO BOARDING SCHOOL
A week passed and Margaret Selover had received a letter, supposedly
from the elderly Mr. Davis, bidding her start on her westward
journey Friday, the 25th.
Barbara Blair Wente, fluffy, golden and petite, sat curled up on the
window seat of the room they had shared together for the past year
looking the picture of misery.
“I hate him! Hate him!” Margaret was saying as she thumped a small
pillow preparatory to packing it in her trunk. Then she added,
rising and looking her defiance, “but he won’t keep me long, Babs.
You may be sure of that. I’ll make life so unpleasant for my hoary
guardian that he will soon be glad to release me. Oh dear, how I do
wish that I were older so that I might begin earning my own living,
but just wait until I’m eighteen. Then I will do something. Other
girls do and I believe I am normally clever.”
“Who do you suppose is to meet you in Chicago?” Barbara inquired.
“Don’t know and don’t care,” was the somewhat muffled reply from the
trunk, the cover of which was closed a moment later with a snap.
Then Margaret sat upon it as she remarked:—“My guardian kindly
informed me that I need have nothing whatever to say to my escort if
I did not wish to be friendly, but that, at least, I must allow him
to look out for my welfare.”
Babs sat up and looked interested. “Margaret, what if it should be a
real cow-boy like the ones we have seen in the moving pictures.
Those handsome young giants who are always helping damsels in
distress. Wouldn’t that be romantic? I’m just wild to see a live
cow-boy myself. They are fascinating on the screen.”
“Well, they don’t appeal to me,” Margaret replied, “I prefer boys
who are dressed in civilized clothes and who know how to talk. All
of the cow-boys in fiction use the queerest kind of a language.”
Four bells pealed through the corridors and Barbara rose
reluctantly.
“Even if my heart is nearly broken over your departure, Megsy, I
suppose I’ll have to go down to this old recitation,” she said.
Margaret also rose and going to the window, she looked out at the
bleak orchard. “I’m not going. What’s the use of working out
problems in geometry today when tomorrow I will be gone?”
Just at that moment there were skipping footsteps outside in the
corridor followed by an imperative knocking at the door.
Barbara opened it to admit a pretty, eager-eyed child, who held up a
yellow envelope. “It’s for you, Miss Margaret,” she said. “Mrs.
Martin said to bring it right up.”
The girl, as she opened the telegram, sincerely hoped that in it she
would find a message bidding her to remain at the school, but she
did not.
“Leave, if possible, on the 8.30 train tonight which reaches Chicago
at six tomorrow morning. Wear a red ribbon bow that you may easily
be recognized.”
It was signed: “Peter Wallace.”
Margaret’s eyes flashed and she tore the telegram to bits. “Peter
Wallace, indeed! I’m not going to take orders from a wild west
cow-boy. He may meet the six o’clock train tomorrow morning, but I
won’t be on it.”
However, when Barbara had reluctantly departed for her class,
Margaret found that the prospect of arriving in Chicago alone and
unprotected was not a pleasant one to contemplate. With her father
she had spent one day in the big city and she remembered how she had
clung to his hand when they had crossed the streets and how
terrorized she had been by the rush and roar of the traffic.
An hour later, when Babs returned, she was surprised to find that
the trunk had been taken to the station. That evening Mrs. Martin
and Barbara accompanied the young traveler to the train, as the
principal of the school wished to be sure that her young charge was
started safely on this, her first journey alone, and in the care of
the kindly conductor.
It was not until the next morning, when the train was slowly
entering Chicago, that Margaret, weary from an excited and sleepless
night, placed a small red ribbon bow on the lapel of her warm,
gold-brown coat, wondering, as she did so, what manner of person her
escort would be.