Family -- Juvenile fiction; Fathers -- Death -- Juvenile fiction; Financial security -- Juvenile fiction
Poor Rob, feeling like a maiden of legend surrounded by dragons, with
the yawning, yet unfinished, subway threatening her on one side, and
insanely rushing crowds mercilessly assaulting her on all sides, gladly
let the big policeman's strong arm clear a way for her to the car,
which came westward through Forty-second Street.
"Broadway!" called the conductor, to whom she had confided her desire
to know when that point was reached, and Rob was surprised to see six
people, beside herself, rise to their feet, plunge off the car, and the
men run as for their lives to swing themselves on another car, going in
a different direction, just ahead of them.
"There can't be many Broadway cars," thought Rob, but looked up and
down to see an interminable line of them coming both ways, and decided
that this was the New York unreasonable rush, of which she had heard so
much.
A woman with a gentle face, whom Rob timidly approached, put her in the
way of getting the car she desired, and she perched herself sideways
on the edge of the seat, watching feverishly the numbers, until she
realized that she was twelve hundred numbers above the one which her
father had given her as that of Mr. Baldwin's office, and subsided for
a time to watch the whirl of life around her, with a dizzy interest
that precluded all possibility of thought.
Keenly alive as she was in every sense, Rob could not help enjoying
the ride, though it did seem interminable. Beautiful shops, displaying
everything a girl cares for, were left behind, great buildings began
to tower on either hand; truckmen swore at their horses, small boys
tried to see how near they could come to the fender of the car in which
Rob rode, yet escape unscathed; timid women ran--very like Farmer
Flinders's chickens--head down and arms swinging, before the car,
having waited until it was almost upon them; Broadway narrowed, yet
increased in interest at every block.
An open square, set on three sides with picturesque old buildings--one
really beautiful among them--and a statue which Rob immediately
recognized as a figure of Nathan Hale, turned her thoughts to the
revolutionary New York into which the car had brought her, but seeing,
too, that the street numbers had decreased to the second hundred a few
blocks lower down, her mind swung with renewed concentration to her own
affairs, and her heart fluttered nervously.
Poised on the seat, ready for flight, she kept anxious watch, and at
Cortlandt Street signalled the conductor to stop. Threading her way
with difficulty through the narrow way, crowded at an hour so near
noon, her suit-case proving a menace to others and a trial to Herself,
Rob found at last the number she sought. Without giving herself time
to be more afraid, she plunged in at the wide doorway, and joined the
group waiting for an elevator to descend.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account