Page:The Star in the Window.pdf/38

28 them against the dumb creature's warm investigating nose.

A lonely childhood it had been, a lonely girlhood too.

She sighed now as she looked back down the long years to the time when Aunt Augusta first let down her skirts. They were eventless years—like a long narrow corridor, she thought, empty, unfurnished. She had few memories with which to decorate and adorn them. It seemed impossible, but she had never even had a girl-friend of her own. Oh, how could they blame her downstairs for the present barrenness?

As in most places the size and remoteness of Ridgefield, the social life of the town centered in and about the several churches. Hopefully, as Reba grew older, did she look toward the church as an avenue to the companionship she longed for. Her father and mother and aunts all attended the Congregational Church, were members there—her father was a deacon—and timidly, when Reba was fourteen she had asked permission to join the Christian Endeavor Society at the Congregational Church. But, "What! At your age?" Aunt Augusta had exclaimed. "Humph! I should say not! I've heard of the goings-on down at the church after the Christian Endeavor meetings. All half the girls and boys join the Christian Endeavor Society for, is to walk home with each other afterwards in the dark. I know. Some folks are willing to let their girls run wild, but you don't belong to that sort of family, Reba, and you ought to be glad of it."

At fourteen Reba never even went to morning-service alone. One or the other of her two aunts was