“Not a bit,” said young Eastman, but he did think uncomfortably of Ina’s sister seeing him with Bessy Van Dorn.

Bessie promptly stopped.  They had not yet made the turn from the station to the main road, and Charlotte was just behind them.

“Say,” she called out, “get in here.  I’ll take you home—­just as soon as not.”

“Thank you,” replied Charlotte.  “I have an errand.  I am not going home just yet.”

“All right,” replied Bessy, touching her horse.  “I’d just as soon have taken you as not, if you’d been going home.”

“Thank you,” Charlotte said, again.

“I declare, she looked as if she was just ready to cry,” said Bessy to Eastman, as they drove up the street.

She was quite right.  Charlotte was horribly frightened by her father’s non-arrival on the train.  He had never come on a later train than that since the others had gone.  The thought of returning alone to her solitary home was more than she could bear.  She remembered that there was another train a half-hour later, and she resolved to remain down for that.  She thought that she would go to Mr. Anderson’s store and purchase some cereal for breakfast, that she might have that charged.  She was conscious, but she tried to stifle the consciousness, of a hope that Mr. Anderson would be there, and she might tell him that her father had not arrived on that train, and he would reassure her.  But Mr. Anderson had naturally gone straight home from the post-office to supper.  Charlotte ordered her cereal, and also a few eggs.  Then she went back to the station.  It was nearly twenty minutes before the train was due.  She walked up and down the platform, which extended east and west.  The new moon was just rising, a slender crescent of light, and off one upper horn burned a great star.  It was a wonderful night, cold, with a calmness and hush of all the winds of heaven which was like the hush of peace itself.  Charlotte noticed everything, the calm night and the crescent moon, but she came between herself and her own knowledge of it.  Her mind was fixed upon the train and the terrible possibility that her father might not arrive on that.  It seemed to her that if he did not arrive on that it was simply beyond bearing.  The possibility was too terrible to be contemplated with reason, and yet she could not have told just why she was in such a panic of fear.  A thousand things might happen to keep any business-man in the City later than he had expected.  He had often been so kept while the others were home; but now she was alone, and she felt that he would certainly come unless something most serious had detained him.  Charlotte had naturally a somewhat pessimistic turn of mind, and her imagination was active.  She imagined many things; she even imagined the actual cause of Carroll’s detention, among others, that he had slipped on the ice and injured himself.  The falling of the boy on her way to the six-o’clock train had directly swerved her fancy in that direction.