AS Humphrey Meadowcroft changed cars at a junction twenty miles below
Paulding, though he exchanged a Pullman express for a crowded and
dingy coach of an accommodation train, he experienced, nevertheless, a
strange sense of satisfaction which increased momentarily. He felt as
if he were going home. He didn’t remember to have experienced before
just that peculiar sensation. It was almost as if he were a boy--the
boy he had never been--going home for the holidays.
There were still lingering patches of snow in this section of the
country on hillsides and in sheltered corners of meadows and fields;
but it would not be long now before the elms of the avenue of South
Paulding would be clad in their first delicate veiling of green. And
already the children would be finding the first wild flowers in the
woods. Next week when the schools would reopen, again he would see
the little ones in starched blouses and pinafores, as he had first
seen them a year ago, carrying tidy bouquets of anemones, hepaticas,
blood-root, and mayflowers to their teachers. But last year he had been
merely a spectator at the window. Now he felt himself a part of it all,
one of the village people. Wherefore, it was truly home-coming.
He almost expected to find that odd, faithful Tommy Finnemore at the
station. But he was returning two days earlier than he had expected,
and there was no way for the boy to learn of his change of plan. True,
he had telegraphed his sister; but Isabel was the last person to take
any trouble in a case of that sort. It wouldn’t, indeed, be unlike her
purposely to keep the knowledge from Tommy and Betty Pogany.
Whereupon Humphrey Meadowcroft shrugged his shoulders. It was hardly
likely that Betty would make any attempt to inquire for him. He
sighed. His journey had been in the interest of Rose Harrow and he had
accomplished more than he had expected to be able to do. He wondered,
half-whimsically yet seriously, too, whether even the stony-hearted
Miss Pogany might not be moved by these results. He hadn’t, of course,
acted with any such purpose in mind--he had begun the quest at New
Year’s, and being interrupted had taken his first opportunity to return
to Philadelphia and complete it. Nevertheless, there was no reason why
it shouldn’t serve as an entering wedge, and he felt that he might hope
for an end of the absurd as well as uncomfortable relations between
them that had held for the last weeks he had been in Mr. Appleton’s
place.
At the same time, the girl had declared she would never forgive him,
and it might be that she would continue obdurate in the face of
everything. Meadowcroft wasn’t sure that she wasn’t of the stubborn
sort who cannot relent. After all, there was that curious Indian type
of countenance which must stand for something. It wasn’t so noticeable
now that she was so thin--or was he more accustomed to it?--but it
was the mold in which her features were cast. It might be that, once
she had become convinced that another was her enemy, she was herself
implacable thereafter.
Such a temperament should be handled with extreme care, he
acknowledged. He said to himself that he supposed that until such an
one is sufficiently mature to be reasonable, one should avoid direct
issues. Doubtless, he would have done better to speak to Betty quietly
or to ask her and Rose to come to his home for an informal talk. He had
felt at the moment that he ought to avoid that sort of thing--that it
was incumbent upon him to treat his friends among the pupils exactly
as he treated the strangers. But perhaps he had overacted. Perhaps he
had been hard to speak out suddenly to Betty before the whole school.
Perhaps he had been cruel in calling the girls out to the bench like
criminals--Betty in particular, who, though she wasn’t Bouncing Bet,
was conspicuously tall and who had suffered so much as a child from
being an object of curiosity. After all, he ought not to have expected
her to be reasonable at thirteen and being of so limited experience.
And if he had, indeed, seemed to her deliberately and perhaps
revengefully cruel, certainly he ought to make large allowance for her.
None the less, due allowance being made, the girl certainly had been
high-handed. She had chosen and followed her own way so boldly and
self-confidently that she had been a veritable Children’s Crusade in
herself!
Well, here was the scene of the crusade. Here was Paulding and yonder
the high school. And shortly after the train stopped at South Paulding
and there was his sister’s carriage in waiting. There was no other
greeting than that of the coachman and the station agent, but he was
home again. And the morrow would bring Tommy.