Page:Dorothy Canfield - Rough-hewn.djvu/207

 at their feet. They still said very little, Marise not daring to talk for fear of making a mistake, for fear that she would not remember just what and how much Mlle. Hasparren knew. The music-teacher held the girl's slim fingers close. Marise answered their pressure with a nervous fervor, inexpressibly grateful to the other, loving everything about her from her steady face and kind, shadowed eyes, to her heavy, badly-cut shoes, dusty now, which would be dustier later after they had trudged along the hot white road at Midassoa. Never, so long as she lived, was she able to forget how Mlle. Hasparren had looked to her, when she came quietly into the salon and lifted her up from Jeanne and said in a plain matter-of-fact way as though nothing were the matter but Jeanne's sickness, that they must get a doctor and probably Jeanne wasn't as sick as she looked. She had just taken Marise by the hand and showed her how to go on living … when it seemed to Marise that she had come to the end.

They heard the train whistle shriekingly in the distance, and the somnolent porters roused themselves. Marise tightened her hold on the strong fingers which held hers. Her heart ached with longing, with confusion. Suppose Papa did not come … what would she do? But suppose he did … wouldn't it be impossible not to make mistakes, not to forget what you were to say and what you weren't?

But when the train came in, and Marise saw at the other end of the long platform her father's massive bulk heavily descending from a compartment, and saw his eyes begin to search the crowd for her face, all her confusion melted away in a great burst of relief.… Papa was there, something of her very own in the midst of all those strangers! Her heart almost broke with its release from tension.

And yet before she ran to meet him, she put her arms around the music-teacher and kissed her hard on both swarthy cheeks.

Then she ran with all the speed of her long legs, and flung herself upon Papa's broad chest and tried to put her arms