Little towns came in sight and passed, each one with one or two
churches, a schoolhouse, a lot of tiny houses. Would Tinsdale look this
way? How safe these places seemed, yet lonely, too! Still, no one would
ever think of looking for her in a lonely little village.
They passed a big brick institution, and she made out the words, "State
Asylum," and shuddered inwardly as she thought of what Jane had told her
about the morning paper. Suppose they should hunt her up and _put her in
an insane asylum_, just to show the world that it had not been their
fault that she had run away from her wedding! The thought was appalling.
She dropped her head on her hand with her face toward the window and
tried to pretend she was asleep and hide the tears that would come, but
presently a boy came in at the station with a big basket and she bought
a ham sandwich and an apple. It tasted good. She had not expected that
it would. She decided that she must have been pretty hungry and then
fell to counting her money, aghast that the meager supper had made such
a hole in her capital. She must be very careful. This might be all the
money she would have for a very long time, and there was no telling what
kind of an impossible place she was going to. She might have to get away
as eagerly as she had come. Jane was all right, but that was not saying
that her mother and sisters would be.
It was growing dark, and the lights were lit in the car. All the little
Italian babies had been given drinks of water, and strange things to
eat, and tumbled to sleep across laps and on seats, anywhere they would
stick. They looked so funny and dirty and pitiful with their faces all
streaked with soot and molasses candy that somebody had given them. The
mother looked tired and greasy and the father was fat and dark, with
unpleasant black eyes that seemed to roll a great deal. Yet he was kind
to the babies and his wife seemed to like him. She wondered what kind of
a home they had, and what relation the young fellow with the shiny dark
curls bore to them. He seemed to take as much care of the babies as did
their father and mother.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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