Rose Galbraith Read Free

all, and all the fancied virtues she had put upon him might be from herself, and only figments of her imagination. Yet, of them all, he was the only one she felt she would truly miss. Of course she never would have had the opportunity to be real friends with him, even if she stayed in Shandon. Why should she? She had merely lived on the outskirts of Shandon, and he lived on the Heights, in a big lovely stone house, so screened with evergreens that one could scarcely see it from the street. He lived in another world, and had only touched her world in those few school contacts. Someday he would be a great man perhaps—she felt sure from her estimate of him that he would—and she might hear his name and be proud that she had sat across from him at school. Well, that was that!
    There was poor Jane Shackelton. Jane was a good girl—not the brightest student, but she always did her best. Rose had often helped her with her mathematics. She didn’t even know where Jane was now. She had moved to another part of the state. She had promised to write to her, but Jane wasn’t much of a writer. She probably would put it off so long that she wouldn’t think it worthwhile. And even if she did, it might not get to her now, though Rose had filled out the card for the postmaster to forward her mail, in spite of the fact that she didn’t really expect any. She hadn’t had time to be intimate with anybody. There had always been somebody’s babies to mind after school, to bring in a few extra dollars to piece out mother’s small earnings. And since she left school she had been busy teaching her little music pupils. Well, it didn’t matter anymore. Everything was over, Mother was gone, and somehow she didn’t have much interest in the new people who would be waiting on the other side of the water.
    She sighed and looked apathetically at the swiftly flying suburbs they were passing through. This was Comley, where Cathy Brent lived. They hadn’t any classes together, and Cathy had always come up on the train. Another girl she didn’t know very well, and didn’t care whether she ever saw again or not. But still, Cathy was a link between the old life in which Mother had been the center, and the emptiness of today. Cathy Brent was likely married by now to Jack Holley. They hadn’t done much else during the last year of school but saunter around the sidewalks surrounding the school building, or loiter in the halls on rainy days. How fast time went!
    Or did it? It certainly wasn’t going rapidly now. This journey to the city station seemed interminable, and interwoven everywhere with memories of things that were gone.
    Then suddenly they slid into the big station, and Rose gathered up her coat and her two suitcases and went on her way.
    She shook her head at the red-capped porter who offered to take her baggage. The habit of her upbringing was upon her. She was able to save the few cents it would have cost, and there were things she might need more later. Of course, if Mother had been along, they had planned to have a porter carry their luggage. But now it wasn’t necessary.
    She walked slowly, looking sadly among her fellow travelers. She didn’t know one of them. She felt terribly desolate. Already she was in an unknown world of strangers.
    Since she had her ticket to New York, she went straight to the escalator and reached the upper platform where the New York train would arrive.
    She found an empty seat on the long line of benches and put her suitcases at her feet. How happy she had expected to be when she reached this stage of their journey! And now it was all blank and sad! Mother wasn’t along! Mother’s dear precious body was lying in the quiet little corner of Shandon Cemetery, and her spirit was up in heaven with the Lord. Somehow it seemed to put her mother so very far away to think of that, as if she had become a different order of being who would not understand