Nobody Part 101

Wishart--I dare say we shall--she could not come into the cars--"

The two made their way accordingly, slowly, at the end of the procession filing out of the car, till Madge got out upon the platform.

There she uttered an exclamation of joy.

"O Lois!--there's Mr. Dillwyn?"

"But we are looking for Mrs. Wishart," said Lois.

The next thing she knew, however, somebody was carefully helping her down to the landing; and then, her hand was on a stronger arm than that of Mrs. Wishart, and she was slowly following the stream of people to the front of the station-house. Lois was too exhausted by this time to ask any questions; suffered herself to be put in a carriage pa.s.sively, where Madge took her place also, while Mr. Dillwyn went to give the checks of their baggage in charge to an expressman. Lois then broke out again with,

"O Madge, it's like a dream!"

"Isn't it?" said Madge. "I have been in a regular fidget for two hours past, for fear Mrs. Wishart would not be here."

"I didn't _fidget_," said Lois, "but I did not know how I was going to get from the cars to the carriage. I feel in a kind of exhausted Elysium!"

"It's convenient to have a man belonging to one," said Madge.

"Hush, pray!" said Lois, closing her eyes. And she hardly opened them again until the carriage arrived at Mrs. Wishart's, which was something of a drive. Madge and Mr. Dillwyn kept up a lively conversation, about the journey and Lois's condition, and her summer; and how he happened to be at the Grand Central. He went to meet some friends, he said coolly, whom he expected to see by that train.

"Then we must have been in your way," exclaimed Madge regretfully.

"Not at all," he said.

"But we hindered you from taking care of your friends?"

"No," he said indifferently; "by no means. They are taken care of."

And both Madge and Lois were too simple to know what he meant.

At Mrs. Wishart's, Lois was again helped carefully out and carefully in, and half carried up-stairs to her own room, whither it was decided she had better go at once. And there, after being furnished with a bowl of soup, she was left, while the others went down to tea. So Madge found her an hour afterwards, sunk in the depths of a great, soft easy-chair, gazing at the fanciful flames of a kennel coal fire.

"O Madge, it's a dream!" Lois said again languidly, though with plenty of expression. "I can't believe in the change from Esterbrooke here."

"It's a change from Shampuashuh," Madge returned. "Lois, I didn't know things could be so pretty. And we have had the most delightful tea, and something--cakes--Mrs. Wishart calls _wigs_, the best things you ever saw in your life; but Mr. Dillwyn wouldn't let us send some up to you."

"Mr. Dillwyn!"--

"Yes, he said they were not good for you. He has been just as pleasant as he could be. I never saw anybody so pleasant. I like Mr. Dillwyn _very_ much."

"Don't!" said Lois languidly.

"Why?"

"You had better not."

"But why not? You are ungrateful, it seems to me, if you don't like him."

"I like him," said Lois slowly; "but he belongs to a different world from ours. The worlds can't come together; so it is best not to like him too much."

"How do you mean, a different world?"

"O, he's different, Madge! All his thoughts and ways and a.s.sociations are unlike ours--a great way off from ours; and must be. It is best as I said. I guess it is best not to like anybody too much."

With which oracular and superhumanly wise utterance Lois closed her eyes softly again. Madge, provoked, was about to carry on the discussion, when, noticing how pale the cheek was which lay against the crimson chair cushion, and how very delicate the lines of the face, she thought better of it and was silent. A while later, however, when she had brought Lois a cup of gruel and biscuit, she broke out on a new theme.

"What a thing it is, that some people should have so much silver, and other people so little!"

"What silver are you thinking of?"

"Why, Mrs. Wishart's, to be sure. Who's else? I never saw anything like it, out of Aladdin's cave. Great urns, and salvers, and cream-jugs, and sugar-bowls, and cake-baskets, and pitchers, and salt-cellars. The salt-cellars were lined with something yellow, or washed, to hinder the staining, I suppose."

"Gold," said Lois.

"Gold?"

"Yes. Plated with gold."

"Well I never saw anything like the sideboard down-stairs; the sideboard and the tea-table. It is funny, Lois, as I said, why some should have so much, and others so little."

"We, you mean? What should we do with a load of silver?"

"I wish I had it, and then you'd see! You should have a silk dress, to begin with, and so should I."

"Never mind," said Lois, letting her eyelids fall again with an expression of supreme content, having finished her gruel. "There are compensations, Madge."

"Compensations! What compensations? We are hardly respectably dressed, you and I, for this place."

"Never mind!" said Lois again. "If you had been sick as I was, and in that place, and among those people, you would know something."

"What should I know?"

"How delightful this chair is;--and how good that gruel, out of a china cup;--and how delicious all this luxury! Mrs. Wishart isn't as rich as I am to-night."

"The difference is, she can keep it, and you cannot, you poor child!"

"O yes, I can keep it," said Lois, in the slow, happy accent with which she said everything to-night;--"I can keep the remembrance of it, and the good of it. When I get back to my work, I shall not want it."

"Your work!" said Madge.

"Yes."

"Esterbrooke!"

"Yes, if they want me."

"You are never going back to that place!" exclaimed Madge energetically. "Never! not with my good leave. Bury yourself in that wild country, and kill yourself with hard work! Not if I know it."

"If that is the work given me," said Lois, in the same calm voice.