He swung down the steps at the front end of the car just as the train started, and through the open window she had one more glimpse of him, as he stood there lifting his hat.  Farther back, at the station gate Joyce waited with her arm linked in Henrietta’s, for the moment when Mary’s last glance should be turned to seek her.  She met it with a blithe wave of her handkerchief, and Mary waved vigorously in response.  It was a long time before she turned away from the window.  When she did she had nearly recovered her self-control, and grateful for Betty’s considerate silence, she busied herself with her suit-case a few minutes, fumbling with the lock, and making a pretence of repacking, in order to find room for the book that Phil had brought.

The night before, in the first numb apathy of the shock, it had seemed to her that nothing mattered any more.  Nothing could make the dreadful state of affairs more bearable; but now she acknowledged to herself that some things did help.  How wonderfully comforting Phil’s assurance of sympathy had been; the silent assurance of that firm, tender hand-clasp.  It was easier to be brave since he had called her so and expected it of her.

Betty, in a seat across the aisle, opened a magazine, but Mary could not settle down to read.  A nervous unrest kept her going over and over in her mind, as she had done through the previous night, the scenes that lay ahead of her.  There was the packing, and she checked off on her fingers the many details that she must be sure to remember.  There were those borrowed books she mustn’t forget to return.  Her scissors were in Cornie’s room.  Miss Gilmer had her best basketry patterns.  There were so many things that finally she made a memorandum of them, dully wondering as she did so how she could think of them at all.  One would have supposed that the awful disaster that was continually in her thoughts would have blotted out these little commonplace trivial concerns.  But they didn’t.  She couldn’t understand it.

Presently the sound of a low crooning in the seat behind her made her glance over her shoulder.  An old coloured mammy, in the whitest of freshly starched aprons and turbans, was rocking a child to sleep in her arms.  He was a dear little fellow, pink and white as an apple-blossom, with a Teddy bear hugged close in his arms.  One furry paw rested on his dimpled neck.  The bit of Uncle Remus song the nurse was singing had a soothing effect on him, but it fell dismally on Mary’s ears: 

“Oh, don’t stay long!  Oh, don’t stay late! 
My honey, my love. 
Hit ain’t so mighty fur ter de Good-bye Gate,
My honey, my love!”