A moment more, and he was carrying her suitcase in one hand and his mother’s in the other, while she, walking with the lady, wondered at herself and wished that fate were not just about to whirl her away from these most interesting people.

Then she caught a glimpse of her father at the train gate, with his old derby pulled down far over his forehead as if it were getting too big and his shabby coat collar turned up about his sunken cheeks. How worn and tired he looked! Yes, and old and thin. She hadn’t remembered that his shoulders stooped so, or that his hair was so gray. Had all that happened in two years? And that must be Louise waving her handkerchief so violently just in front of him. Was that Harry in that old red baseball sweater with a smudged white letter on its chest, and ragged wrists? He was chewing gum, too! Oh, if these new acquaintances would only get out of the way! It would be so dreadful to have to meet and explain and introduce! She forgot that she had a most expressive face and that her feelings were quite open to the eyes of her new friends, until she suddenly looked up and found the young man’s eyes upon her interestedly, and then the pink color flew over her whole face in confusion.

“Please excuse me,” she said, reaching out for her suitcase. “I see my father,” and without further formalities she fairly flew down the remainder of the platform and smothered herself in the bosom of her family, anxious only to get them off to one side and away from observation.

“She’s a lovely girl,” said the lady wistfully. “She wants to be an interior decorator and make a name and fame for herself, but instead she’s got to go home from college and keep the house for that rabble. Still, I think she’ll make good. She has a good face and sweet, true eyes. Sometime we’ll go and see her and find out.”

“M’m!” said the son, watching Cornelia escape from a choking embrace from her younger brother and sister. “I should think that might be interesting,” and he walked quite around a group of chattering people greeting some friends in order that he might watch her the longer. But when Cornelia at last straightened her hat and looked furtively about her, the mother and son had passed out of sight, and she drew a deep sigh of thanksgiving and followed her father and the children downstairs to the trolley. They seemed delightful people, and under other circumstances she might have heartily enjoyed their company, but if she had hard things to face she didn’t want an audience while she faced them. Her father might be shabby and old, but he was her father, and she wasn’t going to have him laughed at by anybody, even if he didn’t always see things as she thought he ought to see them.

Chapter 2

It was a long ride, and the trolley was chilly. Cornelia tried to keep from shivering and smiled at everything Louise and Harry told her, but somehow things had gotten on her nerves. She had broken out into a perspiration with all the excitement at the station and now felt cold and miserable. Her eyeballs ached with the frequent tears that had slipped their salty way that afternoon, and her head was heavy, and heavier her heart.

Across the way sat her father, looking grayer and more worn in the garish light of the trolley. His hair straggled and needed cutting, and his cheeks were quite hollow. He gave a hollow cough now and then, and his eyes looked like haunted spirits, but he smiled contentedly across to her whenever he caught her glance. She knew he meant that she should feel how glad he was to get her back. She began to feel very mean in her heart that she could not echo his gladness. She knew she ought to, but somehow visions of what she had left behind, probably forever, got between her and her duty, and pulled down the corners of her mouth in a disheartening droop that made her smiles a formal thing, though she tried, she really did try, to be what this worn old father evidently expected her to be—a model daughter, glad to get home and sacrifice everything in life for them all.

These thoughts made her responses to the children only halfhearted. Harry was trying to tell her how the old dog had died and they had only the little pup left, but it was so game it could beat any cat on the street in a fight already, and almost any dog.

Louise chimed in with a tale about a play in school that she had to be in if Nellie would only help her get up a costume out of old things. But gradually the talk died down, and Louise sat looking thoughtfully across at her father’s tired face, while Harry frowned and puckered his lips in a contemplative attitude, shifting his gum only now and then, enough to keep it going, and fixing his eyes very wide and blue in deep melancholy upon the toe of his father’s worn shoe. Something was fast going wrong with the spirits of the children, and Cornelia was so engrossed in herself and her own bitter disappointment that she hadn’t even noticed it.

In the midst of the blueness the car stopped, and Mr. Copley rose stiffly with an apologetic smile toward his elder daughter.

“Well, this is about where we get off, Nellie,” he said half wistfully, as if he had done his brave best, and it was now up to her.

Something in his tone brought Cornelia sharply to her senses. She stumbled off the car and looked around her breathlessly, while the car rumbled on up a strange street with scattered houses, wide-open spaces reminding one of community baseball diamonds, and furtive heaps of tin cans and ashes. The sky was wide and open, with brilliant stars gleaming gaudily against the night and a brazen moon that didn’t seem to understand how glaringly every defect in the location stood out, but that only made the place seem more strange and barren to the girl. She had not known what she expected, but certainly not this. The houses about her were low and small, some of them of red brick made all alike, with faded greenish-blue shutters and a front door at one side opening on a front yard of a few feet in dimensions, with a picket fence about it, or sometimes none at all.