Armenian Americans -- Juvenile fiction; Families -- Juvenile fiction; Maine -- Juvenile fiction; Peddlers -- Juvenile fiction
In point of fact, Mary Christmas came once more to college, although
this second visit was not generally known. She came one evening in the
spring of Mary’s and Cynthia’s last year, and she brought Mary Wescott
with her, much to the relief of Cynthia and of their house-mother, a
tall, gaunt woman who felt her responsibilities. Waiting that afternoon
in the Boston station for a train that would take her home after an
unusual journey to that city for shopping in the larger markets, Mary
Christmas was startled by the familiar face of Mary Wescott, now almost
unfamiliar through anxiety and fear. She was sitting on the edge of one
of the long waiting-seats, her scanty luggage beside her, her large
eyes feverishly watching the unceasing line of people who came and went
through the great doors. There was something about her strained, eager
face, so intent upon the passing hundreds, that made Mary Christmas
check her impulsive steps toward her and sit down at the farther end
of the long seat just behind, from which, by rising occasionally, she
could see without being seen.
Before a few minutes had passed she had become convinced that her
own presence was quite safe from discovery. Mary Wescott had not the
slightest interest in those about her. Her anxious gaze never for one
moment left the great entrance doors. She was obviously waiting for
someone, and, as Mary Christmas studied her face, she was convinced
that that someone was no Wescott or chance relative unaccustomed to
city ways.
When Mary Christmas heard the big man at the door call her train in
his trumpet-like voice, she did not seize her big bundle and go. She
waited yet another ten minutes--fifteen--twenty. Then through the
station doors, his big suitcase indiscriminately bumping the shins of
his fellow men, tore William Howe, with all the anxiety which could not
find room on Mary’s face on his own.
Mary Christmas allowed them five hungry minutes for looking at each
other before she left her seat behind them. Perhaps she needed that
time to swallow something big that had crept into her throat. And when
she did approach them, still gazing at each other, the upbraiding words
which she had planned quite left her tongue. For all at once, to her
who had lived over again the sad passing of so many centuries, Mary and
William had become suddenly very young and needy.
Perhaps, as she came with such startling swiftness within their line
of vision, they felt a high, classic rage at this retribution-bearing
Nemesis; but they looked only like two children, fairly and
inextricably caught. Mary Christmas did not say one word as she looked
at them, and William felt it again incumbent upon him to manage
the conversation, the motif of which, he quickly decided, must be
determination at any cost.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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