Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v108.djvu/130

120 Then, suddenly, the conductor or somebody called out "Barnville Junction," and we remembered that it was our station, and grabbed all our things, and everybody helped us, and there was a good deal of excitement, and we got off the train. It went right on, of course, the way they do, and we were left alone. There was no one in sight, and all we could see were meadows and trees and hills covered with snow. A young man who looked like a farmer came out of the little station-house and locked the door and walked off without even looking at us, and we were so surprised we didn't think to speak to him. But just then we saw a low, flat sleigh come bumping along a rough country road near the station, and when it got nearer we saw an old man and woman sitting in the front seat. There was an empty seat behind them. They drove up to us and stopped and looked at us, and we just stared back hard at them.

They were the queerest-looking little old man and woman I had ever seen. They were small and all dried up and wrinkled and brown, as if they had been out in the sun, and they wore the oddest, most country-looking clothes. The woman had a hood on, and the man wore an old fur cap that drooped over one ear. They both looked at us very kindly, but a little shyly, and there was something about their faces I liked. The woman spoke first.

"Are you my niece?" she said, looking at Maudie. "You look jest like your picture you sent us." Then, at something in Maude's face—for she told me afterwards she simply couldn't speak,—the little old woman climbed down from the sleigh and shook hands primly and kissed us both. She talked as she did it, and I talked too, as fast as I could, to cover Maude's silence. Her face—Maude's face, I mean—looked simply stricken. They were so different, you see, from what she had expected. The old man shook hands with us both without getting out of the sleigh—he had rheumatism—and we climbed into the back seat, and the horse jogged along the frosty country road.

Looking back now on that experience, I think I can say, without violence to the modesty which Sister Perpetua says should be the crown of a young girl's nature, that I saved that situation. Maude was literally speechless with surprise and horror. She had expected people like her father and mother to meet her, and these were—well, it was impossible not to see that the priceless advantages of education and the polish of foreign travel had never been theirs. And the man was Maude's mother's own brother. He said, "Be you tired?" and, "I reckon you air considerable done up," and things like that. The aunt was not so bad. We learned later that she had been the village teacher when she was a young girl.

I just said to myself, "May Iverson, if ever you made yourself pleasant and agreeable, you do it now," and I did. I laughed and talked and told them about the journey and the babies and the other folks on the train, and I said how glad Maudie and I were to come and how we had looked forward to it. I dragged Maudie into the conversation whenever I could, and finally she braced up a little and talked some too, but you would never have known her voice. It sounded flat and queer. I knew just how she felt, with her haughty, sensitive nature thus outraged; and, of course, in one way, having me along made it lots worse, because she had said so much about blood and culture.

The uncle and aunt didn't suspect a thing. They laughed at my stories, and a little pink flush came in the aunt's cheeks and she really looked pretty, I thought. It was plain to see she adored Maudie. She kept turning round to look at her, and I noticed that when Maudie spoke they both listened with a kind of strained interest, as if they were afraid they'd lose a word. And it wasn't because she gave them such a few. It was affectionate interest. Finally we reached the house, after driving about five miles. It was a nice old farmhouse, painted white, with a big porch in front, and there were red barns in the distance and a big wind-mill. I liked it, and Maudie cheered up somewhat. But when we got inside there were rag carpets and worsted mats and hair-bottomed chairs, and an album on the centre-table in the "parlor," and tidies and awful pictures, and all the dreadful stuff people get who don't know things.