Page:The Star in the Window.pdf/144



T was raining the following Sunday evening. It had been raining all day long—a steady, drenching downpour that had waked Reba in the early morning with a hollow, pattering sound on the roof outside her window. She had hoped it might clear toward evening, but when she started out at half-past seven to keep her appointment with Nathaniel Cawthorne, there was still a complaining mist and drizzle. She had not seen him since his declaration. As she hurried along the rain-drenched sidewalk, the expression upon her face, hidden by the dark shadow of her umbrella would have reminded David again of the crayon of his father at nineteen. It was a set, determined expression.

Reba had been doing some deep thinking since Aunt Augusta's unexpected maneuver. She had looked forward into the future, she had looked back into the past, and both ways she had seen before and behind her the same unvaried repetition of familiar details stretching on and on. It was as if she were standing midway on a straight piece of railroad-track traversing miles of verdureless desert, and in both directions there appeared nothing more inspiring than an endless stretch of monotonous railroad-ties and telegraph-poles, fading away to the vanishing-point. Cousin Pattie would run any sort of risk to avoid with honor such routine.

At first Reba had simply played with the idea of