Suddenly, that long glowworm of a train stopped just long enough at Glendale to eject me and my five trunks, with such hurried emphasis that I felt I was being planted in the valley forever, and I would have to root myself here or die.  I still feel that way.

And as I stood just where my feet were planted, in the dust of the road, instead of on the little ten-foot platform, that didn’t quite reach to my sleeper steps, I felt as small as I really am in comparison to the universe.  I looked after the train and groveled.

Then, just as I was about to start running down the track, away from nowhere and to nowhere, I was brought to my senses by a loud boohoo, and then a snubby choke, which seemed to come out of my bag and steamer-blanket that stood in a pile before me.

“Train’s gone, train’s gone and left us!  I knew it would, when Sallie stopped to put the starch on her face all over again.  And Cousin James, he’s as slow as molasses, and I couldn’t dress two twins in not time to button one baby.  Oh, damn, oh, damn!” And the sobs rose to a perfect storm of a wail.

Just at that moment, down the short platform an electric light, that was so feeble that it seemed to show a pine-knot influence in its heredity, was turned on by the station-agent, who was so slow that I perceived the influence of a descent from old Mr. Territt, who drove the stage that came down from the city before the war, and my fellow-sufferer stood revealed.

She was a slim, red-haired bunch of galatea, stylish of cut as to upturned nose and straight little skirt but wholly and defiantly unshod save for a dusty white rag around one pink toe.  A cunning little straw bonnet, with an ecru lace jabot dangled in her hand, and her big brown eyes reminded me of Jane’s at her most inquisitive moments.

“If you was on a train, what did you git offen it here for?” she demanded of me, with both scorn and curiosity in her positive young voice.

“I don’t know why,” I answered weakly, not at all in the tone of a young-gallant-home-from-the-war mood I had intended to assume towards the first inhabitant of my native town to whom I addressed a remark.

“We was all a-goin’ down to Hillsboro, to visit Aunt Bettie Pollard for a whole week, to Cousin Tom’s wedding, but my family is too slow for nothing but a funeral.  And Cousin James, he’s worse.  He corned for us ten minutes behind the town clock, and Mammy Dilsie had phthisic, so I had to fix the two twins, and we’re done left.  I wisht I didn’t have no family!” And with her bare feet the young rebel raised a cloud of dust that rose and settled on my skirt.

“There they come now,” she continued, with the pained contempt still rising in her voice.

And around the corner of the station hurried the family party, with all the haste they would have been expected to use if they had not, just two minutes earlier, beheld their train go relentlessly on down the valley to Hillsboro and the wedding celebration.  I hadn’t placed the kiddie, but I might have known, from her own description of her family, to whom she belonged.