were not somewhat queer. They are, I have found out since.
He had left his bag at the station, but he had mine, which was right
heavy, and seeing there was a good stretch of open road before we began
to go up the hill on the top of which was Miss Susanna's home, I told
him he had better sit down a minute and rest, and I got up on the worm
fence and twisted my feet around the rail below, and looked at him
before he knew what I was going to do. He coughed a little and looked
at his watch and said it was rather late to be resting, as Miss Susanna
might be going to bed, and that if I were not too tired he thought we
had better go on; and I told him all right. And then, because I
couldn't help it, I stood up on the top of the fence, balanced myself
on it, and, opening my arms as if I were going to fly, sprang off and
ran up the road ahead of him.
At the gate, which was open and through which I could see the
rose-bordered path leading up to the white-pillared porch on which Miss
Susanna and her niece were sitting, he shook hands with me and told me
good night and said he hoped he would see me very often while I was in
town, and I said I hoped he would. He put my bag down and told me to
send one of the servants out for it, and went on down the road, which I
thought was the queerest behavior I had ever seen in my life. I didn't
know, of course, about embarrassments and broken engagements and things
of that sort, and for a moment I stared at his back and then picked up
my bag and went up to the porch with it. All the boarders had gone to
bed and only Miss Susanna and her niece were on the porch, and as I
came up the steps they got up and stared at me as if I had risen from
the grave.
I hadn't thought there was anything wrong in my coming from the station
at that time of night with a strange man until I saw the look on Miss
Susanna's face when I told her I had done it. If I had been a brand
snatched from the burning I could not have been folded to her bosom
with more fervent thanksgiving or a more pained expression, and at
first, still not understanding, I thought I had done right off the
worst thing a person could do in Twickenham Town. I had walked a long
way with a man who didn't have ancestors, perhaps. He had seemed all
right to me, and I was awfully glad to have him, as otherwise I might
have had to sit on my suit-case all night, for I certainly couldn't
have come up with the man who swung a lantern, and he was the only
other white one in sight. But I found out later it wasn't lack of
ancestors that caused the sudden chill which fell over us when I
mentioned Mr. Eppes's name. It was something else and--oh, my
granny!--the look that pretty little pink-and-white person gave me when
I said what I had done!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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