Page:The Star in the Window.pdf/130

120 had exclaimed was perfect on her, but ridiculously expensive, and which secretly the next day Reba had stolen back and bought, hadn't been out of the little oblong room; nor did she have yet more than a mere smiling acquaintance with the stranger whom she saw lately in her mirror—pompadourless, hair uncrimped, lying smooth and parted, and done low like Miss Park's. Oh, there were worlds and worlds for Reba to discover; and the sailor's love, if she might call it that, unreturned though it was, added magic sweetness to her new freedom.

Reba little guessed throughout that roseate-colored day of hers that her hour of happiness was to be so short. She had no premonition, when she started on her shopping-tour with Miss Park in the early afternoon, that a big, black, steam-driven monster, that had just snorted through Ridgefield, was hurling destruction toward her with every revolution of its ponderous wheels.

She hadn't been afraid of Ridgefield, nor anything nor anybody connected with Ridgefield, for weeks now. At first the persistent silence of her mother and aunts, their apparent resolve not to answer her letters nor communicate with her in any way, had disturbed her. But not lately. Nothing disastrous had developed. Two or three times her father had sent her papers to sign, accompanied by a brief note explaining them. He was never a wordy man, and Reba had not considered his uncommunicativeness about her aunts and mother a bad omen.

Aunt Augusta was far away indeed from her thoughts as she hummed a little quiet song to herself the night after Nathaniel Cawthorne made his