Page:The Star in the Window.pdf/88

78 way to one of the summer resorts. But the city to Aunt Augusta was a dangerous place, full of robbers, horrible traffic catastrophes, fires, germs and filth. Aunt Augusta always clutched her shopping-bag in Boston as if she expected it to be snatched from her grasp at every corner, and lay awake half the night between her hotel sheets (washed no doubt, in the same tub with hundreds of others) sniffing for smoke and wondering if she could possibly descend the skeleton-like fire-escape outside the window at the end of the hall. She suspected everybody in the city, from hotel-managers to ribbon-clerks, of cheating her, or trying to, if she gave them half a chance, and she always drew a sigh of relief when she had escaped in safety from the perilous place.

But Reba delighted in mingling in the city crowds. It gave her secret pleasure just to be convoyed across a crowded thoroughfare by a big, bluff policeman, as if she were one of a thousand equally precious logs to be safely guided around the curve of a river. Nobody observed her, or selected her to stare at, in the city. She found herself taken for granted by the busy crowds, and she thrived, as the timidest of garden flowers will thrive quietly under the impartial sun.

It amazed Reba that it was possible for her to be so happy in her adventure, when so much disfavor was hanging over her. For she well knew that she was still unforgiven by her mother and aunts. In answer to her weekly letters to them she hadn't received a reply of any sort. But she was happy! She was fairly intoxicated sometimes! The folk-dances affected her so—clapping hands with a partner, romping and skipping at her side, nodding at her—that she