telephoned he couldn’t come to lunch. He went on a special relief train. It’s somewhere down around Smith’s Crossing. The rails spread, or something, and the express telescoped the way train, or else it was the other way round, and a lot of people got hurt, and some killed, or at least there was a rumor they did.”
“Mercy!” said Anita, stopping in her work. “Why, that’s awful! Allan Murray might have been on the train, you know.”
“No, I guess not,” said Jane. “He telegraphed last night he was arriving here late in the afternoon. That would mean he would take the train at Alton at noon. This wreck was the morning train. But then, he might have been delayed by it. You know it takes a long time to clear the tracks. Oh well, he’s likely at Mrs. Summers’ now unpacking, or we would have heard. We ought to stop talking and get to work. The celery has to be put in the glasses and the nuts in the dishes. One of those nut dishes is broken, too. Isn’t there another dish up on that high shelf that will do?”
“I brought over some silver nut dishes. They will do for the middle table. Did they say any Marlborough people were on that train?”
“Yes, Dick Foster and some college friend coming home for the weekend, but they phoned they were all right. They were in the last car and only a little shaken up. Mr. Foster took the car and ran down to Smith’s Crossing after them. Then there was that lame shoemaker from under the drugstore, that little shop, you know, and Mrs. Bly, the seamstress. Nobody knows anything about them. At least I didn’t hear.”
“Oh, Mrs. Bly,” said Anita sympathetically. “I hope no harm came to her, poor thing. She’s sewed for us ever since I was a child. Say, Jane, does your brother know this Mr. Murray? He went to the same college, didn’t he?”
“Yes, but it was after Allan Murray left. He saw him once though. He was just adored in college. He was a great athlete, though very slender and wiry, Bob says, and he was awfully clever. Made Phi Beta Kappa and all that, and was president of the YMCA, and head of the student gov, and stunningly handsome. Bob didn’t say that though. It was Marietta’s cousin said that. Her brother was in Allan Murray’s class and brought him home once, and she thought him just a perfect Greek god, to hear her talk, but when I asked Bob about it, he said, oh yes, he was a looker he guessed. He never took particular notice. And I simply couldn’t get a description, though I tried hard enough. He couldn’t even remember the color of his eyes, said they were just eyes, and what difference did it make. But Marietta said he was dark and had very large dark eyes, slenderno, lean, that was the world she usedand awfully tanned and fit. She said he had a smile, too, that you never could forget, and fine white teeth, and was careful about his appearance, but not much of a dresser. She said he had worked his way through college. His father had lost money, and he was going in for thrift and didn’t give much time to social things but was awfully good company.”
“Hmm! That’s just about what the minister said when he told us he wanted us to make him feel at home. I don’t really approve of it myself, this taking a stranger and carrying him around on a little throne before you’ve tried him out, but when Mr. Harrison asked us to arrange this Christian Endeavor banquet on the night of his arrival to give him a kind of welcome to our town, why of course it had to be done. And of course Mr. Harrison knows what he’s talking about, or he wouldn’t suggest it. But it makes it just a little embarrassing for us girls to seem to be so very eager to welcome another young man into our midst that we fall all over ourselves to let him know it right off the first night.”
“Now, Anita! You’re always so fussy and prudish! As if he would think anything about it at all. Besides, his having been an active Christian Endeavorer in his home church and his father having been a member of our church years ago when he was a boy makes it kind of differentdon’t you think?”
“Oh, I suppose so,” said Anita thoughtfully. “Only I do hope he won’t be stuck on himself. The young men are all so sure of their welcome anyhow these days, it doesn’t seem as if it was hardly necessary. And it’s enough to turn a young man’s head anyway to have the whole town bowing down to him this way. Teller in the town bank, taken in to board at one of the best houses in town just because Mrs. Summers knew his mother when she was a girl, and given a church supper on the night of his arrival. I’m sure I hope he will be worth it all, and that we won’t spoil him right at the start.”
“Oh, Anita! You’re so funny! What do you care if he is spoiled, anyway, if we have a good time out of it? I’m sure I don’t. And it’ll be nice to have another fellow around; so many of our boys have gone off to college or to work in the city. And those that are left don’t care a cent for the church affairs. I have to fairly hire Bob and Ben to come to anything we have here, and this Murray man, they say, is crazy about church work. If it proves true, I think the society will grow by leaps and bounds.”
“Well, what kind of a growth is that? Just following after a new man! That’s not healthy growth. When he goes, they’ll go with him if that’s what they come for. Who is that outside? Perhaps it’s the man with the ice cream. It ought to be here by this time. Go out and look. It may be some of those tormenting boys that live across the street. And the cakes and rolls are all under that window. I declare, I should think church members would teach their children better than to steal! Go quick, Jane. I don’t want to leave this butter now till I get it all cut in squares. But for pity’s sake, forget that new man, or you’ll be bowing down to him just like everybody else!”
“Oh, Anita! You’re perfectly hopeless,” giggled Jane as she fled up the basement stairs to the outside door to reconnoiter.
A moment more and Anita heard her friend’s voice ring out clearly in an eagerly hospitable voice among the syringa bushes outside the chapel window:
“Isn’t this Mr. Murray? Mr. Allan Murray? Won’t you come right in? We’re all expecting you.”
Anita, cutting butter into squares in the pantry window in the basement, turned away with a curl of her pretty lip and slammed down the window. If Jane wanted to make a fool of herself with this stranger, she, Anita, was not going to be a party to it. And she carried the cakes to be cut to the far table in the kitchen quite away from the dining room and went to work with set lips and a haughty chin. The new man should not think she was after him, anyway.
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