CHAPTER XXXVII
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 noway 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.